Caradoc Freichfras, that is to say Strong-i'-th'-Arm was son of Llyr Merini, a Cornish prince, and his wife Gwen, who was a granddaughter of Brychan of Brecknock.  According to a saying attributed to Arthur himself, he was styled "the pillar of the Cymry."
    His prowess in the great battle of Cattraeth against the Saxons is commemorated by the contemporary poet Aneurin, who is the same as the sour Gildas, historian of the Britons:—

"When Caradoc rushed into the battle
It was like the tearing onset of the woodland boar,
The bull of combat in the field of slaughter,
He attracted the wild dogs by the motion of his hand.
My witnesses are Owen ap Eulat
And Gwrien, and Gwynn and Gwriat.
From Cattraeth and its carnage,
From the battle encounter,
After the clear bright mead was served,
He saw no more the dwelling of his father."

    Aneurin represents Caradoc as having fallen in this battle.
    It is possible that Caradon may take its name from him, and that it may have been Dun Caradock.
    Caradoc and his true wife Tegau were laid hold of by the Anglo-Norman romancers.  They could not understand his nickname, and rendered it "Brise-Bras," and supposed that his arm was wasted away, whereas the Celtic title implies that it was brawny.  To explain the wasted arm they invented a story.  They told of an enchanter who made a serpent attach itself to the arm of Caradoc, from whose wasting tooth he could never be relieved until she whom he loved best should consent to undergo the torture in his stead.  The faithful Tegau, on hearing this, was not to be deterred from giving him this proof of her devotion.  As, however, the serpent was in the act of springing from the wasted arm of the knight to the lily-white neck of the lady, her brother Cado, Earl of Cornwall, struck off its head with his sword, and thus dispelled the enchantment.
    If Tegau was actually the sister of Cado, then we may flatter ourselves that Cornwall presented the two noblest and purest types of womanhood at the Arthurian period—Tegau and Enid, the wife of Geraint. (A Book of Cornwall, Baring-Gould, 1906)