Owain Foel

Owain Foel (fl. 1018), also known as Owen the Bald, was an eleventh-century King of Strathclyde. He may have been a son of Máel Coluim, son of Dyfnwal ab Owain, both of whom ruled as king. Owain Foel is recorded to have supported the Scots at the Battle of Carham in 1018. Although it is possible that he died in the conflict, no source states as much, and it is uncertain when he died. Owain Foel may be an ancestor—perhaps the father—of a certain Máel Coluim who is described as the "son of the king of the Cumbrians" in the 1050s.

Owain Foel seems to have been a member of the ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Strathclyde. For much of the tenth century, the kingdom was ruled by Dyfnwal ab Owain, King of Strathclyde (died 975). The chronology of Dyfnwal's apparent abdication is uncertain. He seems to have vacated the throne by the 970s. His apparent son, Rhydderch (fl. 971), may have briefly reigned as king, although no source states as much. Certainly, English sources reveal that Dyfnwal's son, Máel Coluim (died 977), ruled in 973 whilst Dyfnwal was still alive. Following Máel Coluim's death in 997, the kingship appears to have passed to a certain Owain ap Dyfnwal (died 1015), a man who seems to have been yet another son of Dyfnwal.

According to the "B" version of the eleventh–thirteenth-century Annales Cambriæ, Owain ap Dyfnwal was slain in 1015. This obituary is corroborated by the thirteenth/fourteenth-century texts Brut y Tywysogyon and Brenhinedd y Saesson. Although the notices of Owain ap Dyfnwal's demise seem to indicate that he had been killed in battle, nothing is known of the circumstances. Whilst it is possible that these records refer to Owain Foel himself, Owain Foel clearly lived on years afterwards, and there is no reason to disregard the obituaries as erroneous. If the like-named men are indeed different people, they could well have been closely related, with the latter perhaps being a son of Owain ap Dyfnwal's brother, Máel Coluim. The likelihood that there were indeed two contemporary Cumbrian rulers named Owain could account for Owain Foel's epithet (meaning "the bald").

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