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John Darrah - Paganism in Arthurian Romance (Religion & Mythology)

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`Darrah makes the valid point that episodes in the Arthurian romances read like motifs from the ancient mythologies...(he) reconstructs a lost British paganism, grounded in the rivers, hills and woods, and especially those grey monoliths...reminders of a cosmology vanished from this island. NIKOLAI TOLSTOY, DAILY TELEGRAPH Contends, with a good deal of evidence, that the impact of pre-Christian Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Cornish and Breton religion is greater than has been previously thought... Extensively researched and well written. CHOICEThe origins of Arthurian romance will always be a hotly disputed subject. The great moments of the legends belong partly to dimly-remembered history, partly to the poets imagination down the ages, yet there is another strand to the stories which goes back deeper and further: the traces of ancient pagan religion, found both in Arthurian heroes who have inherited the attributes of gods, and in episodes which reflect ancient religious rituals. Darrahs careful study of the thematic relationships of, particularly, the more obscure episodes of the romances and his identification of the relative geography of Arthurian Britain as portrayed in the romances will be valuable even to those who differ with his conclusions. His most original contribution to an unravelling of a pagan Arthurian past lies in his appropriation of the fascinating evidence of standing stones and pagan cultic sites. This is dark and difficult territory, but building on elusive clues, and tracing a range of sites, especially in south-west Britain, John Darrah has added a significant new dimension to the search for the sources of the legends of Arthur and his court. JOHN DARRAH has also written The Real Camelot.

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title Paganism in Arthurian Romance author Darrah John - photo 1

title:Paganism in Arthurian Romance
author:Darrah, John.
publisher:Boydell & Brewer Ltd.
isbn10 | asin:0859914267
print isbn13:9780859914260
ebook isbn13:9780585177595
language:English
subjectArthur,--King, Britons--Kings and rulers--Folklore, Great Britain--Antiquities, Celtic, Paganism--Great Britain--History, Great Britain--History--To 1066, Arthurian romances--Sources, Paganism in literature.
publication date:1997
lcc:DA152.5.A7D358 1997eb
ddc:942.01/4
subject:Arthur,--King, Britons--Kings and rulers--Folklore, Great Britain--Antiquities, Celtic, Paganism--Great Britain--History, Great Britain--History--To 1066, Arthurian romances--Sources, Paganism in literature.
Page iii
Paganism in Arthurian Romance
John Darrah
THE BOYDELL PRESS
Page iv
John Darrah 1994
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner
First published 1994
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
Reissued in paperback 1997
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
ISBN 0 85115 350 X hardback
ISBN 0 85991 426 7 paperback
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14601-4126, USA
A catalogue record of this publication is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging Card Number: 93-37182
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Great Britain by
St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Page v
CONTENTS
Foreword
vii
Introduction
1
Part One: An Arthurian Adventure Analysed
The Calendar of Arthurian Romance
19
The Challenge
38
Tournaments and the Spring Marriage
63
Fire from Heaven
71
Severed Heads and Sacred Waters
83
Healing Blood and the Dolorous Stroke
99
Part Two: Further Aspects of Paganism in the Romances
Births, Lives and Deaths of Heroes and Heroines
107
The Nature of Paganism in Britain
137
Ceremonial and Ritual
153
Part Three: The Physical Background to the Romances
Constructions
165
The Geography of Arthurian Romance
186
Time and Place
209
The Once and Future King
213
Gazetteer
I. Places whose Location can be Roughly Established
215
II. Unidentified Places
251
Appendix
Who's Who in the Romances?
259
Bibliography
282
Index
287

Page vii
FOREWORD
Cervantes was well aware how slender is the link between Arthurian Romance and reality. 'What are we to say of the ease with which a hereditary Queen or Empress throws herself into the arms of an unknown wandering knight' he asked?1 The answer to his question did not become apparent until, about a century ago, Sir James Frazer made known the significance of the rule of the priest-king of Nemi (described in more detail below). It was then noticed that something rather similar to the events at Nemi occurred in the earliest French versions of the romances, and it is to them we must turn, with some help from the ancient Celtic tradition, to find how Cervantes' question is to be answered, and how a great many other instances of apparently irrational behaviour are to be explained.
The strangeness of the Arthurian story is there for all to see. Arthur's life began when Merlin transformed Uther Pendragon's appearance so that he could sleep with another man's wife; and it ended with the mortally wounded king expending his last remaining energies in getting his sword thrown into a pool. In between there are many strange incidents, such as: the sword drawn from a stone; Lancelot's upbringing at the bottom of a lake; Gawain's increase in strength with the waxing of the sun; and Morgan le Fay's 'Valley of No Return'. And there are many other instances of behaviour in which the laws of nature seem to be disregarded. The Arthurian legends, in respect of their strangeness, can only be compared with ancient mythologies and with those epics in which the course of the lives of heroes is regulated by interfering deities. I propose to show that the romances look like mythology because they are influenced to a considerable degree by recollections of pagan thought-patterns.
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