Dinas

1. Dinas
   Dinasso, Dynas, Tinas

   In the Tristan legends, the lord of Dinan and the seneschal (steward) of Cornwall under King Mark. He was a good and loyal friend of Tristan (Tristram), and counseled Mark to ignore the rumors of Tristan and Isolde’s affair and to keep his friendship with the knight. When Tristan was banished, he assisted the lovers by frequently arranging trysts. His son, Liaz, was a count of Cornwall.

   The Prose Tristan and Malory have him playing a very active role against Mark, defecting and organizing a resistance when Tristan is thrown into prison, and eventually freeing Tristan and imprisoning Mark, allowing Tristan and Isolde to flee Cornwall together. Later, when Tristan received a poisoned wound from Mark, he found succor, until he expired, in Dinas’s castle. Dinas organized a second revolt against Mark, which successfully unseated the evil king. La Tavola Ritonda says that he became lord of Cornwall after Mark’s death, but in the Prose Tristan he refuses the position.

   According to Malory, Dinas traveled to Camelot, probably after Tristan's death, and became a Knight of the Round Table, although he left Arthur when Arthur went to war with Lancelot. He fought for Lancelot at the sieges of Joyous Guard and Benoic (Benoye). For his support, Lancelot made him the Duke of Anjou. From what we are told of Dinas, he seems an honorable and capable man.

   According to the Tavola ritonda, after Mark's death Dinas became the King of Cornwall. He did not, however, have the most enviable love life, if the following is a fair example:

   ... hunting she slipped down by a towel, and took with her two brachets, and she yede to the knight that she loved, and he her again. And when Sir Dinas came home and missed her paramour and his brachets, then was he the more wrother for his brachets than for the lady.

   He caught up with them, smote down his rival, and the lady asked to come back to Dinas.

   Nay, said Sir Dinas, I shall never trust them that once betrayed me, and therefore, as ye have begun, so end, for I will never meddle with you. And so Sir Dinas departed, and took his brachets with him, and so rode to his castle

   The Italian La Vendetta Che Fe Messer Lanzelloto de la Morte di Miser Tristano, uniquely, names Dinas as the brother of Sir Sagremor (Sagramore). Dinas’s name may have originally been a place name; dinas is the Welsh word for 'fortress'.

   
   

2. Dinas

   A Knight of the Round Table, brother of Meles the Tall.

   
   

3. Dinas Emrys
   'Ambrosius Fort', 'Fort of Ambrosius' | Dinas Emreis, Eryri

   Dinas Emrys is the Welsh name for a hill fort on the southern fringe of Snowdownia, in Nant Gwynant, two miles north-east of Beddgelert, Gwynedd. This wooded hill can be found just below Llyn Dinas.

   Vortigern had repeatedly attempted to build his tower (fortress) to stand against the Saxons, but every night the stones fell down again. His counsellors advised him that he needed to sacrifice a fatherless child, for which Ambrosius was considered ideal, for he was supposed to have been born without a father, the offspring of an incubus. He were supposed to wet the castle's foundation with the boy's blood. Nennius calls the child Ambrosius - the Ambrosius in question is Ambrosius Aurelianus, known in Welsh as Emrys gwledig (gwledig 'prince' or 'land-holder'). However, Ambrosius managed to prevent his own execution by the claim that a subterranean pool containing dragons under the tower were the cause of the problem. Draining the lake revealed a red and white dragon, whose subsequent battle portended Vortigern’s eventual defeat. Vortigern gave the castle to Ambrosius and fled to the north.

   This is the original Welsh view of the lad's identity. Geoffrey of Monmouth, however, makes him out to have been the young Merlin, explaining away "Ambrosius" as an alternative name. Here Merlin tells Vortigern that the white dragon symbolises the Saxons and that the red dragon symbolises the people of Vortigern. A later legend follows Geoffrey, asserting that before Merlin left the neighborhood he hid a golden, treasure-filled cauldron, which will be found only by the person for whom it is intended. The Welsh called the mountain Eryri, and legends of Merlin’s treasure, buried deep within the mountain, survive to this day. Archaeology has shown occupation of Dinas Emrys in the fifth century, including a household that actually did contain a pool. Merlin subsequently dealt with the red and the white dragons and built his own fortress on the hill-top.

   As to how the dragons became confined there, the story of Llud and Llefelys in the Mabinogion gives details. When Llud ruled Britain, a scream, whose origin could not be determined, was heard each May Eve. Llefelys, King of France, furnished the information that it was caused by battling dragons. The scream would be uttered by the dragon of the British nation when it was about to be defeated. The dragons were captured and buried at Dinas Emrys.

   There are still some earthworks of the ancient fort to be seen on this site, which has its main entrance on the northern side of the hill. Traces of a ruined tower some 36 feet by 24 feet have been found on the summit. There was a Roman building, and nearby there actually was a pool. During the second half of the fifth century, a platform of ground above a swampy hollow was built on and occupied by a prosperous household, seemingly Christian. Presumably, at some unknown stage in legend-weaving, the chief occupant was said to have been Ambrosius. This localization of the name and story may have been due to a prior association with Vortigern, the other main character. A tradition recorded in the seventeenth century tells of a combat in the valley below between a giant and a warrior, Owein (Eugenius), who was a son of the Roman emperor Maximus. Since Vortigern supposedly married one of this emperor's daughters, Owein - who figures in a Triad - would have been his brother-in-law. A lost dynastic saga, only a fragment of it preserved by Nennius, may have brought King Arthur himself to these parts.

   Nearby lies a circle of tumbled stones roughly 30 feet in diameter, which is said to be a mystic ring in which the battling dragons were contained. At one time the fort was known as Dinas Fforan - 'the Fort with High Powers'. Merlin's treasure is apparently hidden in a cave at Dinas Emrys, having being placed in a golden vessel in the cave, along with his golden chair. Merlin then rolled a huge stone over the entrance of the cave and covered it with earth and grass. Tradition state that the discoverer of the treasure will be 'golden-haired and blue-eyed'. When that person comes near to Dinas Emrys, a bell will be heard, inviting him, or her, into the cave, which will open of its own accord the instant that person's foot touches the stone covering the entrance.

   A youth living near Beddgelert once searched for the treasure, obviously wanting to give himself a head start in life. Taking a pickaxe with him, he climbed to the top of the hill and started to dig on the site of the tower. A soon as he did, unearthly noises began to rumble beneath his feet and the whole of Dinas Emrys began to rock like a cradle. The sun clouded over and day became as night. Thunder roared over his head and lightning flashed all around him. Dropping his pickaxe, he ran for home, and, when he arrived, everything was calm, but he never returned to retrieve his pickaxe.

   Not far from Dinas Emrys is Cell-y-Dewiniad - 'The Grove of the Magicians'. There was once a grove of oak trees at the northern end of a field here under which Vortigern's counsellors were said to meet to discuss the events of their times. They were buried in an adjacent field, at one time each grave being marked by a stone, a white thorn tree annually decorating each with falling white blossoms.

   
   

4. Dinas Fforan
   'The Fort with High Powers'

   The name by which the fort atop Dinas Emrys was once known.