I can’t believe that the end is in sight for my Dragon of the North trilogy which I began way back in January 2024! Book 3 is now written and entering the editing phase with a planned July release so look out for a cover reveal soon! If you haven’t already, then get started here and don’t forget to leave a review! 

I can also reveal the title for the concluding entry in Cunedag’s saga. Book 3 will be called The First Pendraig. What’s a pendraig, you ask? Well, ‘Pendraig’ (or ‘Pen Ddraig’) is an old Brythonic word which literally means ‘head dragon’ and has been anglicized as ‘Pendragon’. Recognisable to any reader of more modern Arthurian literature, Pendragon is often given as King Arthur’s family name, but that’s not quite how it was intended.

The first person to be given the epithet Pen Draig was a warrior in early Welsh poetry called Uthyr whom Geoffrey of Monmouth later claimed was Arthur’s father in his influential History of the Kings of Britain. Originally an entirely separate character, Uthyr is a mysterious figure whose epithet may have been a military title.

This works on the theory that ‘draig’, as well as meaning dragon, was also used to mean warrior. Therefore, Uthyr would have been the ‘chief of warriors’ which certainly sounds like a title rather than a surname, perhaps he was even the ‘leader of battles’ which Arthur would be called later in the Historia Brittonum. 

Dragons feature heavily in early Welsh history and indeed, the modern Welsh flag is emblazoned with Y Ddraig Goch (the Red Dragon). The earliest use of the red dragon as a symbol of British (i.e. Welsh) nationality is in the Historia Brittonum in which King Vortigern struggles to build a castle on a hill due to the presence of two dragons beneath it; a red one symbolising the Britons and a white one symbolising the Saxons.  

The adoption of the red dragon as a national emblem by the Britons may go all the way back to the Roman period in which cavalry units stationed in Britain used the ‘draco’ standard; a hollow bronze head to which was attached a long fabric sleeve much like a modern windsock. When galloping, air would rush through the mouth of the bronze head and inflate the sock, while creating a whistling sound to terrify the enemy. The draco was adopted from eastern peoples like the Dacians and Sarmatians and became the standard for cavalry units of the late empire like those in which Cunedag serves in my novels. 

There is nothing to explicitly link Cunedag with the red dragon or the epithet of Pendraig, but his grandson, Maelgwn, was called ‘Dragon of the Isle’ by Gildas and early Welsh poets used the dragon as an image for military chieftains. The bard Taliesin even refers to Owain ap Urien as ‘Owain ben draic’, making it clear that Uthyr wasn’t the only person to be called ‘Pendragon’. Later Welsh leaders such as Owain Gwynedd, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and Owain Glyndŵr are also referred to as dragons, the latter of which raised the banner of a golden dragon at Caernarfon during the Battle of Tuthill in 1401 (himself being referred to as ‘Y Ddraig Aur’ – the Golden Dragon).

The dragon, sometimes gold but more often than not, red, continued to be used in various Welsh heraldic devices and even by the House of Tudor; a Welsh dynasty which held the throne of England from 1485 to 1603. The current Welsh flag was not officially recognised until 1959.