Chapter III - Magnus Maximus and the Welsh Helena

Summary

THE WELSH TRADITION adopted and transmitted the British Helena legend with substantial local modifications, incorporating a new set of associations. The Welsh version of this tale depicts a woman called Elen as the progenitor of the race, leader of hosts, builder of roads, and wife of another Welsh appropriation from Roman history, Magnus Maximus. Because all the extant manifestations of this legend are relatively late (i.e. tenth century or later) and belong to literary fiction or the rhetoric of nationalism, the Welsh contributions to the development of the narrative are distinctively and extravagantly creative. Tony Curtis provides a convincing context for this particular appropriation of a figure who combines British, Roman, and Christian elements. He describes the importance of legends to the creation of that ‘elaborate structure of ideas’, Welsh national identity:

The retreating, ever more constricted, Welsh people were sustained by telling themselves that they were the primary people of the British Isles, … that the origin of their government and ruling families was Roman and Imperial … and that they had been Christians for centuries, perhaps since the visit of Joseph of Arimathea to Britain, and that they were utterly different from the pagan Anglo-Saxons with their recent veneer of Christianity.

The Welsh Elen legend, particularly her role as glorious ancestor of one powerful dynasty, plays a significant role in this construction of the nation.