While excluded from the original pedigree sources, two later copies of the Anglian collection from the 10th century (called CCCC and Tiberius, or simply C and T) include an addition: a pedigree for King
Ine of Wessex that traces his ancestry from
Cerdic, the semi-legendary founder of the Wessex state, and hence from Woden. Finally, later interpolations (which were added by 892) to both
Asser's
Vita Ælfredi regis Angul Saxonum and the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle preserve Wessex pedigrees extended beyond Cerdic and Woden to
Adam. Further, when comparing the ''Chronicle's
pedigrees of Cerdic and of Ida of Bernicia several anomalies are evident. While the two peoples had no tradition of common origin, their pedigrees share the generations immediately after Woden, Bældæg whom Snorri equated with the God Baldr, and Brand. One might expect Cerdic to be given descent from a different son of Woden, if not from a different god entirely such as the Saxon patron, Seaxnēat, who once headed the pedigree of the Essex kings before his relegation as another son of Woden. Likewise, while the Chronicle'' places Ida's reign after Cerdic's death, the pedigrees do not reflect this difference in age. The name Cerdic, moreover, may actually be an Anglicized form of the
Brythonic name
Ceredic and several of his successors also have names of possible Brythonic origin, indicating that the Wessex founders may not have been Germanic at all. All of these suggest that the pedigree may not be authentic.
Sisam hypothesis The Wessex royal pedigree continued to puzzle historians until, in 1953, Anglo-Saxon scholar Kenneth Sisam presented an analysis that has since been almost universally accepted by historians. He noted similarities between the earlier versions of the Wessex pedigree and that of Ida. Those appearing in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in the published transcript of Asser (the original having been lost in an 18th-century fire) are in agreement, but several earlier manuscript transcripts of Asser's work give, instead, the shorter pedigree of the later Anglian collection manuscripts, probably representing the original text of Asser and the earliest form of the Cerdic pedigree. Sisam speculated that the additional names arose through the insertion of a pair of Saxon heroes,
Freawine and
Wig, into the existing pedigree, creating a second alliterative pair (after
Brand/
Bældæg,
Giwis/
Wig, where the stress of "Giwis" is on the second syllable) and inviting further alliteration, the addition of
Esla to complete an
Elesa/
Esla pair, and of
Friðgar to make a
Freawine/
Friðgar alliteration. Of these alliterative names (in a culture whose poetry depended upon alliteration rather than rhyme) only Esla is perhaps known elsewhere: British historians working before Sisam suggested that his name is that of Ansila, a legendary Goth ancestor or that he is Osla 'Bigknife' of
Arthurian legend, an equivalency still followed by some Arthurian writers, although Osla is elsewhere identified with
Octa of Kent. Elesa has also been linked to the Romano-Briton Elasius, the "chief of the region" met by
Germanus of Auxerre. Having concluded that the shorter form of the royal genealogy was the original, Sisam compared the names found in different versions of the Wessex and Northumbrian royal pedigrees, revealing a similarity between the Bernician pedigree found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and those given for Cerdic: rather than diverging several generations earlier they are seen to correspond until the generation immediately before Cerdic, with the exception of one substitution. "Giwis", seemingly a supposed eponymous ancestor of the
Gewisse (a name given to the early West Saxons) appears instead of a similarly
eponymous ancestor of the Bernicians (Old English,
Beornice), Benoc in the Chronicle and (slightly rearranged in order) Beornic or Beornuc in other versions. This suggests that the Bernician pedigree was co-opted in a truncated form by Wessex historians, replacing one "founding father" with another. Sisam concluded that at one time the Wessex royal pedigree went no earlier than Cerdic and that it was subsequently elaborated by borrowing the Bernician royal pedigree that went back to Woden, introducing the heroes Freawine and Wig and inserting additional names to provide alliterative couplets.
Bernicia pedigree Ida is given as the first king of
Bernicia. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle indicates that Ida's reign began in 547, and records him as the son of Eoppa, grandson of Esa, and great-grandson of Ingui. Likewise, the
Historia Brittonum records him as the son of Eoppa, and calls him the first king of
Berneich or
Bernicia, but inserts an additional generation between Ida and its Ingui equivalent, Inguec, while the Anglian collection moves its version of this man several generations before, in the combined name form Ingibrand. Richard North suggests that the presence of this Ing- individual among the ancestors of Ida in the Bernician pedigree relates to the
Ingvaeones in
Germania, referring to the seaboard tribes among which were the
Angles who would later found Bernicia. He hypothesizes that Ingui, representing the same Germanic god as the Norse
Yngvi, originally was held to be founder of the Anglian royal families at a time predating the addition of the eponymous Beornuc and extension of the pedigree to Woden. The name Brand/Brond also appears at different positions in the pedigree, either as the entire name or part of a combined name, with Gech-/Weg- and Ingi- elements. Northumbria arose from the union of Bernicia with the kingdom of
Deira under Ida's grandson
Æthelfrith. The genealogies of the Anglo-Saxon kings attached to some manuscripts of the
Historia Brittonum give more information on Ida and his family; the text names Ida's "one queen" as Bearnoch and indicates that he had twelve sons. Several of these are named, and some of them are listed as kings. One of them,
Theodric, is noted for fighting against a British coalition led by
Urien Rheged and his sons. Some 18th- and 19th-century commentators, beginning with
Lewis Morris, associated Ida with the figure of Welsh tradition known as Flamdwyn ("Flame-bearer"). This Flamdwyn was evidently an Anglo-Saxon leader opposed by
Urien Rheged and his children, particularly his son
Owain, who slew him. However,
Rachel Bromwich notes that such an identification has little to back it; other writers, such as
Thomas Stephens and
William Forbes Skene, identify Flamdwyn instead with Ida's son
Theodric, noting the passages in the genealogies discussing Theodric's battles with Urien and his sons. Ida's successor is given as
Glappa, one of his sons, followed by
Adda,
Æthelric,
Theodric,
Frithuwald,
Hussa, and finally
Æthelfrith (d. c. 616), the first Northumbrian monarch known to Bede. ==Lindsey==