
He's my ancestor, and I have researched him many sources and none of the wives of Cadwallon, or his son, and grandson don't mention the names of the wives at all.
https://www.genealogieonline.nl/en/stamboom-homs/I60000000022908274...
I have him my 38th ggf through geni.com, but I have him married to Alcfrith ferch Pybba, the daughter of Pybba of Mercia, but geni.com does not identifiy the daughter of Pybba.
She is listed here on rootsweb
https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~dearbornboutwell/genealogy/fam3329....
and again on MyHeritage
https://www.myheritage.com/names/alcfrith_mercia
Other web-sites, like geni.com, have Pybba's daughter as unknown.
Best wishes,
olin.
You can be sure that if Cadwallon's wife's name was known, it would have been included in Bartrum's chart; https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000173392791951. But he just charts her as a daughter of Pybba and sister of Penda.
Apparently, Bartrum could find no source, either. Darrell Wolcott, in The Interim Kings of Gwynedd's First Dynasty (http://www.ancientwalesstudies.org/id306.html) also calls her a daughter of Pybba, and sister of Penda. His cite is Bonedd Yr Arwyr 28 [a], which says that the mother of Cadwaladr Fendigaid was a daughter of Pybba, and sister of Penda ap Pybba.
I stand corrected. Bartrum does list his sources: https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000173426997050
EWGT is his book, Early Welsh Genealogical Tracts, which covers the cite I mentioned above that Wolcott uses.
HRB is the Historia Regum Britanniae, Geoffrey of Monmouth
Colin Henshaw -- as you note above, the links that you give have no sources -- I've never seen sources listed on the MyHeritage links such as you give -- maybe there are there somewhere, but I can't speak to it.
The unsourced family web trees are a very big problem in the medieval tree.
Rootsweb does occasionally have sources, and the link that you give clearly did at one time, as we know from the footnote numbers, but the footnotes have been sheared off.
However!
It comes from Wikipedia, I find by intelligent googling. AAAAND Wikipedia does not mention her at all. So the rootsweb user got the info from someplace, obviously, but not Wikipedia.
Oh, here's the Wikipedia page, by the way -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadwallon_ap_Cadfan
So, more looking.
Wikitree gives her, but has question mark and "uncertain" attached to her, so therefore is not convincing. Especially since, when you click on the footnote number, you are taken to MedLands, where you are informed that we are not given her name in any surviving documents. (That Cawley knows of; he's not in the Welsh tree here, though, but the Anglo-Saxon kings, so I'm happy with that.)
Medlands -- https://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ENGLAND,%20AngloSaxon%20&%20Danish...
Wikitree -- https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ferch_Pybba-1
So now I'm intrigued, cause I want to know who invented this name. So I go wandering around. (At one point I run across a MyHeritage family tree where we are told her name is Helen Pybba. Head desk.)
I mean, I'm especially interested since "Alcfrith" (and the variant "Aldfrith") is not a name given to girls.
Anyway. Garbled Welsh all over the place; people copying things that don't look right to them and so "fixing" them and making them indecipherable, the usual.....
BUT I have found Alcfrith. Yes. Yes, I did.
I will give you the entire paragraph that mentions this person; any discussion of the Ruthwell Cross will do; this comes from "The Origin of Runes and Old English Runic Inscriptions" by Young-Bae Park, Scripta 2008
The date of Ruthwell Cross has been considerably debated on artistic,
linguistic, and runololgical grounds. In the case of Bewcastle the likeliest view still
is that the cross was erected in memory of Alcfrith, the son of Oswiu, king of
Northumbria, both whose names are mentioned in the main runic panel, and that it
records also the name of Alcfrith’s wife Cyniburug, daughter of King Penda of the
Mercians. The art and epigraphy of both monuments are very similar and are
assigned by most recent authorities to the period 670-750. On linguistic and
runological grounds the first half of the eighth century is the more acceptable;
before this time the additional rune ᚸ was probably not yet in use, while at a later
date one should have expected at least the ŝt-rune to occur which by the end of the
eighth century had found its way to Friesland to figure three times in the yew wand
of Westerem-dem.
(I remember Alcfrith now; I did my MA thesis on the Ruthwell Cross.)
Here is what I think is going on:
We do not know the name of Cadwallon's wife; we know that she was the daughter of Pybba. We know that Cadwallon married a daughter of Pybba only because we are told so by Roger of Wendover, a chronicler working in the 13th century at St. Albans, where he was a monk; he was working with sources mostly found at St. Albans.
At some point, somebody trying to make sense of both Welsh and Old English garbled something. And then wrote it down. And then it got copied.
She did have a name; we just don't know what it was. But it for sure wasn't Alcfrith.
Dear Ann,
Many thanks for your kind message. Yes, I agree with you entirely. It is absolutely essential to quote sources when entering information. I suspect so much of what I see is not verifiable, and a lot of stuff that is included is mythological. Anything mythological should not be there, and only solidly confirmed individuals listed. There is so much on the internet that is not verifiable. I saw one that said Wiglaf of Mercia's father was Beornwulf, and that his mother was a lady call Aelfthryth of Kent, who was the daughter of King Eadric of Kent. None of this has been verifiable and the authors of the postings never got back to me. One was on the web-site of the Church of the Latter Day Saints who like to baptise the ancestors to guarantee they get to heaven. I have had to call out sloppy research on several occasions, resulting in entire lineages being deleted.
Colin Henshaw — you are so very welcome. That was. fun.
I often come across things in medieval trees that look GREAT! unless one is familiar with the materials.
Always ready to go look these things up.