Legends are a unique piece of folklore. A legend, by definition, is a folk story that
draws on historic people or events in some way.
We often find them mixed in with our fairy tales, but they’re really not
the same thing. Even if it’s an old
legend that has lost much of its sense of history, I still find that legends
have a greater sense of place and time than fairy tales do. It is because of this and various other
reasons that I thought that legends are more than deserving enough for their
own feature on my blog. So, welcome to The
Stuff of Legends! This is a
limited series for this blog, much like The Swan Lake Project was, only over a
longer period of time. I have chosen
twelve legends or legendary figures. I’m
going to research the historical roots of these tales and the forms they
take. I can’t promise there will be a
new installment every month, seeing as these take a while to research. However, I will try to get these posted at a
fairly good pace. Anyway, I thought I’d
start off strong and post about the most popular legend in all the Western
world: King Arthur!
Now, most of my information comes from a book titled King Arthur: Hero and Legend by Richard
Barber. I don’t know if it’s the most
recent source on this subject, but it does do a good job of explaining the
evolution of the legend with a very readable prose style. So, check your local library for it if you
feel so inclined.
Now the first references to Arthur come in Welsh records of
their battles with the Saxons.
The
Saxons were a confederation of Germanic tribes whose homeland was on the North
German Plain.
The Saxons had been
attempting to invade the
British Isles since
some time in the late third century.
When Roman soldiers and Roman rule withdrew from
Britain, the
English and Welsh chieftains were left to handle the Saxon problem on their
own.
This seems to be where Arthur comes
in, not as a king but as a commander in battle.
The Welsh text
Historia Brittonum
said this “Then in those days Arthur fought against them with the kings of the
Britons, but he was a commander in those battles.”
The text then gives a list of about twelve
battles that Arthur took part in.
Other
than a brief mention in
Annales Cambriae
(which translates as the
Annals of Wales)
and a few verses from scattered Welsh poems, there isn’t much else to draw
from.
Even some of the more reliable
historical chroniclers of the early Middle Ages didn’t mention him.
Of course, there’s also the fact that there
were so few sources to draw from.
The
sense of history among the Britons practically disappeared for a time following
the withdrawl of Roman forces.
However,
if he did exist, it’s plainly clear that he must have been some sort of battle
commander in charge of Celtic forces, specifically those from what is now
Wales.
The Welsh actually have their own set of
legends surrounding Arthur and I’ll provide a link to them right
HERE.
The legend, however, would go on.
The development of the Arthur legend and his role as king
would start in Welsh poetry around the ninth to eleventh centuries. Arthur appears in The Spoils of Annwfn as the leader of a war band and in the Black
Book of Carmarthen, there is practically a roll-call of heroes who are
supposedly his followers. It was in the
story of Culhwch and Olwen that we
start to see the Knights of the Round Table as they would eventually be,
including mention of the character Cei (known in future works as Sir Kay). However, it is much later with Geoffrey of
Monmouth that the legend started to take a modern shape. Geoffrey’s book The History of the Kings of Britain would focus extensively on
Arthur. Here, Arthur is transformed into
a conquering king in the mold of Charlemagne.
He also adds such well known characters like Guinevere, Merlin and
Mordred to the legend. Now, while this
book was accepted as a genuine history for a long time, it’s far more likely
that he was trying to write some sort of national epic for the Briton people.
There is so much more to the development of this legend, but
I fear I can’t transcribe a 200 page book in the space of a blog post. Perhaps I’ll just give the Cliffs Notes
version from here.
Based on Geoffery of Monmouth’s work, various writers write
works on Arthur. It is in these works
that we start to see concepts like the actual Round Table start to appear.
The stories of Arthur would be carried across the sea to
France where
they would become the subject of various French romances.
While the earlier Celtic sources provided such
characters as Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, Bedivere, Gawain, Ywain, Kay and
Mordred, the French writers would add their own characters such as Lancelot,
Galahad, Bors, Gareth and Perceval.
It
was under the French writers that elements of chivalry and courtly love started
to becomes incorporated.
It’s a French
writer named Chretien de Troyes who first writes of Lancelot’s courtly love for
Guinevere in a book entitled
Le Chevalier de la Charrette (
the Knight of the
Cart).
He also is the first writer
to involve the Holy Grail in his romance
Le Conte du Graal (
The History of the
Grail).
Interestingly, though these
days we associate this tale largely with Sir Galahad, it’s Sir Perceval who is
the central figure
in early Grail
stories.
Perceval himself is depicted as
something of a foolish, naïve figure that attains some degree of spiritual
enlightenment through his quest.
The
French writers are also the ones who first brought the ancient story of Tristan
and Iseult into the Arthurian legends.
Among the French writers, it was Robert de Boron who linked
all the myriad works together in a very long, sweeping work known as the
Vulgate Cycle. It was the Vulgate Cycle
that first incorporated the love between Lancelot and Guinevere as a crucial
part of Camelot’s downfall.
The stories of Arthur and his court would be popular in many
parts of
Europe.
However, back in the
British
Isles, the English would take their own approach to the
stories.
Arthur and his knights start to
take on the character of folk tale heroes, appearing in largely unconnected
stories and poems and dealing with various elements of the magic and the
supernatural.
The English also found a
most unlikely hero in the form of Sir Gawain.
Gawain was often listed as being among Arthur’s earliest followers.
However, the French writers often depicted
him in a somewhat negative light.
He was
considered to have great skill in battle but was often shown to be
discourteous, brutish and offensively sexual.
Under English pens, he was the very figure of knighthood.
Stories like the tale of
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and
“Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell” are the legacy of the English
poets.
Now, while the Vulgate Cycle first ties the stories
together, the length of the work made it almost unwieldy. It was in England in the mid-fifteenth
century that Sir Thomas Malory created his Le
Morte D’Arthur which welded the stories together in a more readable
form. Malory is himself a rather
enigmatic figure. There are four people
with the name Thomas Malory living in that time period, and all but one of them
are possible authors of this work. Now, Le Morte D’Arthur is not without it’s
flaws. For one thing, Malory seems
unusually favorable to the character of Sir Lancelot. However, it is still from this work that all
future works on King Arthur are in some way derived.
Now, it would probably be folly to try and list all the
ways in which the Legend of King Arthur has appeared in popular culture.
However, a few high lights and low lights are
not beyond reason.
In terms of
literature, a personal favorite is
The
Once and Future King by T.H. White.
White expands on Arthur’s youth in the section entitled
The Sword in the Stone, which would
later inspire a
Disney movie of the same name.
He also includes such interesting additions as an ugly and single-minded
version of Lancelot and a Merlin who can prophecy because he can remember the
future, seeing as he lives backwards in time.
In the world of satire, there is
A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain.
In this version, Camelot’s downfall is
brought on by the meddlings of a time traveler who tries to modernize Arthur’s
court.
There are also films such as John
Boorman’s
Excalibur which derives a
great deal from Malory and Antoine Fuqua’s 2004
King Arthur which attempted a more historical tone and managed
variable levels of success.
In terms of
comedy, there’s
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The BBC provided its own
version of the Arthurian legends by way of teen drama with the show
Merlin.
One notable video game title is
Knights of the Round by Capcom.
And
since I can’t seem to write a post on pop culture without mentioning the
strange cartoons I watched in my youth, I’d be remiss not to mention
King Arthur and the Knights of Justice.
The plot
basically goes that King Arthur and his knights are trapped in a magic cave by
Morgana and unable to defend Camelot.
So, Merlin recruits a football team called the Knights complete with a
quarterback named Arthur King from the future to stand in for Arthur and his
knights to defend Camelot from a made-for-TV villain named Lord Viper.
No, I’m not kidding you, that is the actual
plot.
The end result is like a strange
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
meets He-Man kind of dynamic.
Oh well,
at least the theme song was awesome.
The
popularity of this legend as a source for popular culture cannot be
denied.
Just recently, the season finale
of TNT’s
The Librarians drew extensively on the legend of King Arthur.
After reading all this, it seems apparent to me that much of
the legend’s popularity comes from its malleability. What started as a vague account of a Welsh
military leader was reshaped in various ways to be everything from fairy tale
to religious allegory to adventure story to tragedy and beyond. As the legend became solidified in recent
centuries following Malory’s book, the tale of Camelot became one of the
heights that the human will can reach to.
Camelot was meant to be sort of a paradise of the West. However, the tale is a warning that nothing
gold lasts forever. Even Camelot falls
and it’s the human failings of key figures that bring it low. It’s Guinevere’s infidelity with Lancelot and
Arthur’s illegitimate son Mordred that lead to Camelot’s fall. Anyway, despite who the real Arthur may have
been and what form of the legend you take, King Arthur and his knights
certainly are The Stuff of Legends!
