King. Arthur King Arthur - King Arthur

In the heart of the quiet countryside of southwest England, a yellow limestone hill rises sharply above the village of South Cadbury . Old men who have lived all their lives in its shadow have strange tales to tell. Its a hollow hill, they believe, and if, on St. Johns Eve , the summer solstice, you could find the golden gates that lead inside, you would discover King Arthur holding court. Sometimes, they say, on stormy winter nights, you can hear the king trot by along the well-worn track. As one man put it, "Folks do say that on the night of the full moon King Arthur and his men ride round the hill, and their horses are shod with silver and a silver shoe has been found in the track where they do ride, and when they have ridden round the hill, they stop to water their horses at the Wishing Well.

For generations, such legends have been told of Arthur, the Once and Future King, and his knights at South Cadbury, which has long been identified with Arthurs home of Camelot , but also across England, Wales, and Scotland.

Each county has its legends. In Cornwall, the tale goes that all the farmlands and the forests swarmed with giants until Arthur, the good king, vanished them all with his cross-sword. In Northumberland, beneath the castle of Sewingshields, Arthur and his queen, Guinevere , their knights and ladies, and the kings hounds lie sleeping in the vaults. So, too, do they rest beneath the ruins of Richmond Castle in Yorkshire, waiting to be awakened by the blast of a horn that lies on a table by the entrance to their cavern. An unwary farmer once stumbled upon them, it is said, but lacked the courage to blow the horn that would bring them back to life. Wales is full of tales of caves and hollow hills in which Arthur and his knights await the call to return. One day, these legends agree, Arthur will be roused from his slumber and ride forth to save his people, at a time when they most need him.

As well as legends, there are places Arthur is said to have traveled. His name can be found the length and breadth of the country - from the Scilly islands of Great and Little Arthur off the southwestern coast of Cornwall, to Arthurs Seat , looming above Scotlands capital city of Edinburgh, far to the north; and from Arthurs Chair in the hills of Breconshire in Wales to Arthurs Hill at Newcastle, on the northeastern coast of Northumberland. No other name in Britain turns up so frequently except that of the Devil. No one knows exactly how old these place names are, just as no one knows how old the legends are. But somewhere in the mists of history, there was a real Arthur who inspired them.

The Arthur who has become part of our imagination today is mostly a creation of medieval times, when troubadours and chroniclers made him into a romantic hero, a Christian champion, a noble ruler whose knights were models of chivalry. These Arthurian tales have taken their place in our literature, and over the centuries, poets and painters have recreated the characters and their adventures many times over. The myth has become so real that most people forget the existence of a historical Arthur. He may not have been a king or even a particularly good or idealistic man. Yet, despite the vague historical record, he must have been a remarkable person because fame does not come without merit, and Arthurs fame seldom has been equaled.

The earliest known reference to Arthur dates from the turbulent centuries immediately after 410 A.D., when the last Roman garrison was withdrawn from Britain, then the westernmost outpost of the crumbling Roman Empire . Following the legions departure, the island suffered constant invasions by Jutes , Angles , and Saxons from across the North Sea. In an epic poem written circa 603, the Welsh bard Aneurin describes one of the many desperate battles that took place between these invaders and the Britons. From this long poem, Y Gododdin , Arthurs name already was identified with outstanding courage, for Aneurin describes the feats of a British hero by saying that his valor was remarkable, although he was no Arthur.

Its also significant that a century before Y Gododdin was written, the name Arthur virtually was unknown in Britain. By the late sixth and early seventh centuries, however, there are four or five Arthurs in the scanty records that have survived from this period. One of them was a prince of Argyll born to the Scottish king Aedn mac Gabrin about 570. Another Arthur entered the world at much the same time in southwestern Wales, great-grandson of a ruler named Vortiporius , while in 620 the Irish king Morgan was killed by one Artuir, son of Bicoir, a Briton. It is difficult to account for this sudden popularity of the name unless a real Arthur existed whose exploits had so excited his contemporaries that several British leaders named their sons in his honor.

Although these references suggest that a historical Arthur was living in Britain sometime during the sixth century, the sources do not mention his name directly. It is not until some 250 years later that Arthurs name first appears in the Historia Brittonum, compiled in Latin by a Welsh monk named Nennius in the ninth century. In tantalizingly brief references, Nennius mentions Arthur as the British victor in a series of sixth-century battles fought by the Britons against the Saxons. Nennius gives little reliable information, but he does confirm Arthurs legendary reputation for bravery and makes clear that Arthur was a figure around whom fantastic legends already had begun to cluster.

Nennius recounts two stories that illustrate this; he calls them mirabilia - marvels. The first concerns Carn Cavall , a cairn , or monument, made from stones piled on top of each other, in the Welsh county of Breconshire. On the top of the cairn was a stone bearing the footprint of Arthurs dog, Cavall, who had marked it by treading on it during a boar hunt. Arthur had built the cairn as a memorial to his beloved dog; whenever the stone with the footprint was removed, within twenty-four hours, it would be back on its heap.

The other story was of the miraculous tomb of Arthurs son Anir, who was buried beside the River Gamber in Herefordshire on the Welsh border. Anir was the son of Arthur the soldier, Nennius writes, and Arthur himself killed him there and buried him. And when men come to measure the length of the mound, they find it sometimes six feet, sometimes nine, sometimes twelve, and sometimes fifteen. Whatever length you find it at one time, you will find it different at another, and I... have proved this to be true.

Fanciful as Nennius stories appear, they were outdone by a twelfth-century scholar known as Geoffrey of Monmouth . In his book, Historia Regum Britanniae (A History of the Kings of Britain), he provided an account of the kings who dwelt in Britain before the coming of Christ, and especially of King Arthur and the many others who succeeded him after the coming of Christ. Geoffrey probably was born in South Wales, although he may originally have been of Breton stock. All we know for certain is that his father was called Arthur and that he ended his life as bishop of St. Asaph, a town in North Wales. Geoffrey, an imaginative man who was proud of his Celtic origins, also was a well-read and ambitious man who shared the heritage of the Normans, the overlords of Britain at the time. His History of the Kings of Britain presents the Arthurian legend in a way that appealed to a far wider audience than the Norman noblemen to whom it was dedicated.

History is divided into twelve books, three of which are devoted to Arthur, and it is clear that he excites the authors imagination more than all the other British kings. Here, Arthur appears as the great romantic hero of the Celtic tradition. He has a magical sword, shield painted with the likeness of the Blessed Mary, Mother of God, spear thirsty for slaughter, and helmet whose crest is carved in the shape of a dragon. His court is described as magnificent as that of the Emperor Charlemagne , and its atmosphere is pervaded with twelfth-century chivalric ideals: For none was thought worthy of a ladys love, unless he had been three times approved in the bearing of arms. And so the ladies were made chaste and the knights the better by their loves.