Is there any truth to the King Arthur legends? - Alan Lupack
“Here lies Arthur,
king who was, and king who will be.”
So reads the inscription
on King Arthur’s gravestone
in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.
Writing in the 15th century,
Malory couldn’t have known how prophetic
this inscription would turn out to be.
King Arthur has risen again
and again in our collective imagination,
along with his retinue of knights,
Guinevere,
the Round Table,
Camelot,
and of course, Excalibur.
But where do these stories come from,
and is there any truth to them?
King Arthur as we know him
is a creation of the later Middle Ages,
but his legend actually has its roots
in Celtic poetry from an earlier time:
the Saxon invasions of Britain.
After the Romans left Britain in 410 CE,
Saxon invaders from
what’s now Germany and Denmark
quickly capitalized on the vulnerability
of the abandoned territory.
The inhabitants of Britain fought
fiercely against the invaders
through several centuries of turmoil.
There are hardly any written records
from this time,
so it’s difficult to reconstruct
an accurate history.
However, surviving poetry from the era
gives us some clues.
One of the poems, The Gododdin, contains
the very first reference to Arthur,
though Arthur himself
doesn’t actually appear in it.
It says a different warrior,
named Gwawrddur,
was skilled at slaying his enemies,
but was no Arthur.
That’s not much to go on,
but whoever this Arthur was,
he must’ve been
the gold standard of warriors.
Whether he ruled anyone, or even lived
at all is, unfortunately, less clear.
Despite this uncertainty,
references to Arthur caught
the attention of an aspiring historian
hundreds of years later.
In 1130, Geoffrey of Monmouth
was a lowly cleric with grand ambitions.
Using Celtic and Latin sources,
he spent years creating
a lengthy chronicle
titled, "The History
of the Kings of Britain."
The centerpiece
of this tome was King Arthur.
History is a generous term
for Geoffrey’s account.
Writing six hundred years after
the Saxon invasions,
he cobbled together fragments
of myth and poetry
to compensate for the almost
complete lack of official records.
A few of his sources contained
mentions of Arthur,
and some others were realistic accounts
of battles and places.
But many featured mythic heroes
fighting long odds
with the help of magical swords
and sorcery.
Geoffrey blended them all:
A magical sword called Caledfwlch
and a Roman fortress called Caerleon
appeared in his source material,
so Geoffrey’s Arthur ruled from Caerleon
and wielded Caliburnus,
the Latin translation of Caledfwlch.
Geoffrey even added a wise
counselor named Merlin,
based on the Celtic bard Myrrdin,
to Arthur’s story.
If Arthur did live, he would likely
have been a military leader,
but a castle-bound king better fit
Geoffrey’s regal history.
Geoffrey’s chronicle got the attention
he’d hoped for,
and was soon translated from Latin
into French
by the poet Wace around 1155 CE.
Wace added another centerpiece of
Arthurian lore to Geoffrey’s sword,
castle,
and wizard:
the Round Table.
He wrote that Arthur
had the table constructed
so that all guests in his court
would be equally placed,
and none could boast that he had
the highest position at the table.
After reading Wace’s translation,
another French poet, Chrétien de Troyes,
wrote a series of romances
that catapulted Arthur’s story to fame.
He introduced tales of individual knights
like Lancelot and Gawain,
and mixed elements of romance
in with the adventures.
He conceived Arthur,
Lancelot,
and Guinevere’s love triangle.
In addition to interpersonal intrigue,
he also introduced the Holy Grail.
Chrétien probably based his Grail’s powers
on magical objects in Celtic mythology.
He lived in the middle of the Crusades,
and others imposed the preoccupations
of the time on the Grail,
casting it as a powerful relic
from the crucifixion.
Numerous adaptations in French
and other languages
followed from Chrétien’s work.
In the course of these retellings,
Caerleon became Camelot,
and Caliburnus
was rechristened Excalibur.
In the 15th century,
Sir Thomas Malory synthesized
these stories in Le Morte D’arthur,
the basis of many modern accounts
of King Arthur.
In the thousand years since Arthur
first appeared in a Celtic poem,
his story has transformed over
and over
to reflect the concerns of his chroniclers
and their audiences.
And we’re still rewriting
and adapting the legend today.
Whether or not the man ever lived,
loved,
reigned,
or adventured,
it’s undeniable that the character
has achieved immortality.
