Prince Madoc, "mythical Welsh discoverer of America" - More emphasis on lack of evidence

A good summary of Madoc, his story and sources is here:

http://www.self.gutenberg.org/articles/madoc

I thought I remembered reading somewhere that Madoc was a real person but his story is (probably) fake. However, this site says, "Owain had at least 13 children from his two wives and several more children born out of wedlock but legally acknowledged under Welsh tradition. According to the legend, Madoc and his brother (Rhirid or Rhiryd) were among them, though no contemporary record attests to this."

Whatever I read must have been based on this, " The earliest certain reference to a seafaring Madoc or Madog appears in a cywydd by the Welsh poet Maredudd ap Rhys (fl. 1450-83) of Powys, which mentions a Madog who is a son or descendant of Owain Gwynedd and who voyaged to the sea. The poem is addressed to a local squire, thanking him for a fishing net on a patron's behalf. Madog is referred to as 'Splendid Madog... / Of Owain Gwynedd's line, / He desired not land... / Or worldy wealth but the sea.'"

Did you watch the videos? It's not so much that he may be fictional, but that there is simply a lack of documentation. It makes me think of the Odin myths. They were based on a historical figure name Whodan (I think I spelled that right), an ancient Germanic Leader. Obviously, Whodan wasn't a god, but he was a real person. The classic fisherman's fishstory.

I agree, his story is probably fake, but there's too many - err... - circumstancial sources that are seemingly unrelated in the past that seem to refer to him as a real person, including native american folklore in Louisiana. So... *shrug*

I can't say one way or another. I just thought it'd be a good add to the world tree.

:3

Alexander, I think it's probably 'Semi-historical', rather than unhistorical. But I leave it to better historians than me to decide.

Interesting to think about. If he lived in the 12th century, the earliest mention of him is 15th century, and the earliest evidence of his voyage is 16th century -- is he semi-historical or unhistorical?

Hi Wendy,

I agree you cannot prove a negative, so it is impossible to definitely state that he did not exist, that is why i am not suggesting deleting him.

I have not watched the videos, the firewall at my work place blocks youtube and time at home is more gainfully employed.

Not to split hairs but calling him "semi-historical" rather than "unhistorical" would imply there is some level of evidence for his existence even if the character preserved is not 100% accurate. In actual fact all you have is an uncorroborated, extremely unlikely story that didn't appear until hundreds of years after the purported events supported by highly dubious and unverifiable circumstantial evidence.

As for Odin being a based on an ancient Germanic Leader name Whodan, i think you will find that is a THEORY which is not very widely supported. Unless you are referring to the Edda which i think suggests Odin was a wandering chieftain who was later raised in status to a deity, but that story needs to be read with an eye to the situation of the author at the time he wrote the story.

PS I am sure there were germanic leaders named Odin, but that turns into a chicken and egg circular argument proving nothing in particular.

Hi Justin,

we cross posted so i wasnt actually responding to your question with my comment that he is unhistorical. Having said that i do think unhistorical is a more accurate term.
"...the earliest evidence of his voyage is 16th century..." what evidence would that be? I assume you mean the first documented mention of his voyage which is not really the same thing.

Stone houses at L'Anse aux Meadows are "evidence" of the viking journeys to Nth America, a manuscript stating that Madog sailed to far away lands in the west is not "evidence" of anything (except perhaps evidence that the 16th century author wanted his readers to believe this was a fact)..

No worries. Any time someone has a theory, someone else has another theory.

If you ever get a chance, grab the books called "Westviking" and "The Farfarers" by Farley Mowat. Madog gets a brief mention.

Mowat's theory is that Greenland and Iceland were inhabited by the Irish long before the Norse arrived. As part of that, he sees Madog and St. Brendan as plausible stories. I'm most comfortable as a skeptic, but I admit Mowat's ideas have a certain elegance I don't often see in historical speculation.

And yes, when I said "earliest evidence" I meant earliest record. I'd argue with you about the meaning of evidence, though. A writing of any kind is evidence, although -- like any evidence -- it can be impeached.

I read the other day that Columbus had visited Iceland prior to his "voyage of discovery" if true he could have been looking for Vinland not China.

The point i was trying to make (which i am sure you understand) is that just because something is written in a book somewhere does not make it a fact.
Lies, confusion, propaganda, mistakes and rumours all get written down and knowlingly or unknowingly passed off as truths by the authours, the fact that they are printed does not make them any more accurate.

This is Historiography 101. Evidence is not the same as proof. A written document can't prove anything. The provenance and dating of a document can make it more trustworthy or less trustworthy, but that's a subjective judgment. No matter what kind of document you're looking at, all it ever proves is that someone wrote it. Maybe they believed it, maybe they didn't. Maybe they had good evidence, maybe they didn't.

Every historical "fact" ever recorded suffers from this same problem. It's a very famous philosophical problem in the study of history. And it's one reason history is so much fun.

That's why you have some people doubting the existence of Jesus, some people claiming that Odin must have been a real person, and many people on Geni debating whether something is really proved or not.

It's all in how much evidence you need to have before you believe. Historical knowledge is essentially social. We all understand intuitively why we agree that George Washington was a real person and why most of us have doubts about Ragnar Lodbrok.

Physical evidence, of course, is very different but not without its own set of problems.

Martin, that's what we're discussing. How should we define someone who maybe never lived and probably never did what the story says he did?

There's no evidence, until hundreds of years later, that Owain Gwynedd had a son Madog.

I had him as a "Fictitious Person". Someone changed him to "mythical". I locked the field to stop an edit war until we could discuss it.

So, you see the arguments. Good.

I set the display name yesterday to "Legendary" but a few minutes later thought better of it and changed it to "mythical".

My intention was that a legend grows up from an original truth whereas a myth can just pop into existence based on imagination. Of course this is just my own point of view i have not actually researched the dictionary definitions of the two words. So i chose "mythical" because in my opinion "legendary" would give the story more credence than it is worth.

On the other hand adding "fictitious person" is a categorical statement that Madog did not exist, while i have no faith what so ever that he did exist as i said to Wendy you cannot prove a negative so we cannot definitively prove that Owain did not have a son named Madog.

I do it the other way around. If good contemporary records exist and someone isn't mentioned, I'm usually going to assume they are fictitious. Otherwise there's no point to relying on records. Just claim someone lived and that should be good enough.

Do good contemporary records exist for this period? In my opinion they do. Owain Gwynedd is one of the most significant rulers in Welsh history. And, this is well into the period of the earliest manuscript histories and elaborate genealogies with fabulous stories about anyone and everyone, much of it written to glorify Welsh history and culture at a time they were fighting the Normans. It's seems suspicious (to me) that Madog doesn't appear at all. I think it creates a strong presumption that his story developed later.

I also think it's very significant that the story doesn't really take off until Elizabethan times, when the Tudors encouraged a variety of Welsh stories (including King Arthur) as part of a political propaganda to establish the antiquity of their kingdom and bolster their claims in the New World.

Agree 100% but until Geni creates relationship locks there is no way to stop people adding the Madog profile to Owain's family.

... so the point is to make the profile as good as possible not argue that it shouldn't be there at all.

I agree. It's better to have a profile for Madog than to not have one and have to deal with the problem every time someone decides to add him.

And -- I think -- better to follow the majority academic opinion that he is fictitious (or mythical or legendary) than to assert that he was real.

Tudor propaganda included shoring up their own (shaky) claims to the throne of England, let us not forget. They were masters of propaganda in the modern sense, "creating reality". And they were *very* successful at it.

I'm skipping much of the discussion above, simply because I agree with most of it.

However, Alexander, you should see at least a couple of those videos. As I'm having a little difficulty with my system at the moment, maybe Justin can recommend which one to watch. All I can recall is it focused a great deal on the Louisiana Fort that was pre-colonial (dated somewhere from c. 1100 - 1500 or so unless I've gotten that wrong) and the native tribes of that area. It's this particular oral history that seems to lend the tales of Madog the greatest weight - at least for me. Otherwise, it would seem to be a standard tale of the type.

As for Odin and Whodan, I actually had to do a lot of research on this some years ago. There was a theory of a Germanic Leader named Whodan (I can't do the German characters so the symbols are missing on that name), who was raised to a god. And the same thing happened with his name as happened with Greek legends as they became Roman and so on. They changed. Hurcles (I may have again misspelled a name, this time a Greek one) became Hercules. Whereas Whodan went through a far larger number of spelling changes. But, again, I'm agreeing with you, Justin.

And yep! I leave this with you, Alexander! Your last comment summed it up nicely. :3

But in any case, I really don't have anything else to add to Madoc's profile. I hope there can be more found to help fill it out if it needs it.

Wendy, I think I know the videos you mean.

There is this one, which is good for skeptics:
Did the Welsh Discover America? at History.com
http://www.history.com/topics/exploration/exploration-of-north-amer...

And there is this one, for people who like to consider the alternatives:
Prince Madog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVyr-C_Qaq8

There is another YouTube series here, in 10 parts, that argues that the real Madog lived 600 years earlier and was a brother of King Arthur II.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa6c6pqgTK8

The search for an historical Madog centers around the idea that he landed at Mobile Bay (Alabama), where the descendants of his colonists intermarried with the local people and became the Mandan tribe.

The evidence for this is based on reports of 18th and 19th explorers who said the Mandan language contained many Welsh words, the Mandan lodges were similar to early Welsh homes, and some Mandans had lighter, more European coloring.

The argument on the other side is that the idea of a tribe of White Indians was very common in early America. There was always some tribe just beyond the horizon that was white, and there are dozens of reports like this, claiming to show that different tribes were descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, the Welsh, the Scots, the Irish, the Vikings, the Trojans, the Phoenicians, the Romans, and on and on.

From reading the literature, I would say it must be pretty easy to find parallels among different cultures and different languages if you want it to be true.

There have been people who try to show evidence from DNA and from artifacts, but the problem so far has been that none of it is very good. The DNA is just generic European, with no way to know that it didn't come from a later time. And the artifacts, the same. Maybe not quite as old as claimed, suspicion that they might have been planted, and even if genuine, no way to know they didn't come to the area after colonization.

Found this to check out also, anyone else see it?

Full text of "Farther observations on the discovery of America by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the year 1170 [electronic resource] : containing the account given by General Bowles, the Creek or Cherokee Indian, lately in London, and by several others, of a Welsh tribe or tribes of Indians, now living in the western parts of North America"
https://archive.org/stream/cihm_17248/cihm_17248_djvu.txt

Hmm. Late 18th century recounting of a legend first reported in the 16th century, purporting to tell of events in the 12th century. Not precisely the horse's mouth, but an indication that the story was widespread and widely believed.