In an earlier blog, I mentioned that the original Welsh Arthur was a lot closer to the King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail than other more stately versions of him.

The manuscript Culhwch ac Olwen isn't the only old Welsh piece that is rather Monty Python-esque. In the Triads, the "Three Fortunate Concealments of Britain" are listed. Two involve the grave sites (one of a noted warrior, the other that of Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere of later European tradition)) and the third being the burial site of two warring dragons who killed each other.

One scholar did a bit of orthography research into these two warring dragons, and discovered that the original Welsh manuscript uses the word "pryf". "Pryf" in Medieval Welsh means "vermin." Nennius, one of the first to translate the Welsh into Latin, translated "vermin" into the Latin "vermes," which in the 1100s, Arthurian writer Geoffrey of Monmouth took
to mean "worm," as in the German word for "dragon."

This led to Monmouth's version including an account of two warring dragons, instead of two warring "vermin." So this orthography scholar decided that basically it might be two really big badgers that fought and were buried...

This reminds me of the closing line of the failed Trojan Rabbit scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.