Arthur, King of the Scots

Dioltach said:

Actually, the first reference to Mordred is as "Medraut" in the Annales Cambriae: it mentions the Battle of Camlynn, and simply states, "where Arthur and Medraut died". No clue about who he was, or whether they were enemies or on the same side.

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This is exactly why I said, "Depending on what period you are taking your Arthur myth from..."

That is the oldest surviving mention of Mordred, which is *not* the same as the first. It is merely the first we know of. It is known that the writers of the Annales were working from other sources. Much of the story is apt to have been carried from before the Annales to after in oral tradition, or in other documents that are now lost to us. The Annales probably makes no description because, by that time, it actually was a "everyone knows what happened" kind of thing, and the authors didn't feel any need to explicate the details.

To my knowledge, there is no version of the story from the older periods that have Mordred and Arthur as anything other than antagonists. Having Mordred be Arthur's son may be a more recent alteration to the story, but they weren't ever friends.

I think ultimately, here's the basic problem: Things attributed in the Arthur myth come from a wide swath of times. While there's a general idea that Arthur sits in the time shortly after Rome left the British Isles, some elements of the story are outright Celtic, and thus probably pre-Roman.

So, how do you say who Arthur was? You have to cherry-pick some elements, and figure out if one person could have done those things, and where and when they actually happened. And maybe you could find that some historical person of the day was leader in some of the battles attributed to Arthur, sure. But some *other* king may have done the other battles. So, is either of them really Arthur?

I agree entirely -- like I already mentioned, the guy who wrote the article needs to have some pretty strong arguments. Personally, I think the historical value of the Arthurian legends is pretty minimal: there is evidence to support every single theory, or none at all. If we're to believe a certain movie, based on new "archaeological evidence" Arthur was Roman and his knights Russian.

To me, the real value of the Arthurian legends and related chivalric romances -- enough to devote two years of my MA degree to them -- lies in their mythological and psychological elements. Even in the corrupted, hand-me-down stories set in writing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries you can identify traces of sun god myths, year kings and death and rebirth cycles.

I once received a good grade for an essay where I used The Empire Strikes Back to prove that Percival killed his own father. I was going to do further research -- possibly a PhD -- about how he's a sun god, but I got distracted by a career and other studies. Still, hugely fascinating, and I don't think anyone's made those arguments before.

tuxgeo said:

The Battle of Camlann* is dated to AD 537 on Wikipedia; and Alfred the Great lived from AD 849 to AD 899 per the same website.

I don't believe that Arthur, who fell in AD 537, could possibly have been the same person as Alfred the Great, who was born in AD 849. (Or did Arthur travel backward through time as some say Merlin did?)

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I never said he was, I said he was being used for propaganda purposes. Much like Eisenstein did with his movie about Alexander Nevsky -- presenting an idealised hero from the past to champion the views of the present situation.

I don't believe we're ever going to find a single ruler to eh all of the Arthurian legends can be attributed, even as mere inspiration for stories. He seems to be an amalgam.

However, I have found evidence of Arthur, King of the Scotch:

I myself like the idea that King Arthur was a decendant of a roman-britain. After the fall of the roman empire in england there were many legionnaires that could have retired to stay with the families they had created. They didn't lose their since of tactics only their vast resources. So during the begining of the dark ages these people could have created a britain that drove back the saxon invasaions for awhile and had an event that so shook them that they fractured and were conquerored piecemeal.
JAK

I think it quite likely that Arthur is an amalgam of many disparate stories, as Umbran suggested. Myths tend to be handed down from culture to culture, down through the millennia, changing to fit the ultimate tellers of the tales. For example the way that key incidents from The New Testament so closely reflect the far more ancient Horus myth, or even further back to Assyria and Babylon.

Anachronism starts to creep into the story. More familiar things and places replace the old. Now, were you to ask the average uninformed person on the street, he would likely tell you that Arthur wore late medieval plate armour, used a kite shield, and wielded something very akin to an Oakshott Type XIX.

Ryujin said:

I think it quite likely that Arthur is an amalgam of many disparate stories, as Umbran suggested.

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This, basically. My focal point tends to be the story Culhwch & Olwen, from the Welsh Mabinogion. It's believed to be a 13th C. copy of an older tale. It's both amazing and disjointed, but notably (to me) is Arthur's almost complete lack of character. The first half of the adventures - the only ones really described - belong to Cei (Kay) and Bedwyr (Bedivere), and their companions. Then, suddenly, Cei parts ways with Arthur, and the rest of the story gets very dry as Arthur and his court complete the list of tasks.

The poem fragment known as Pa Gur is also interesting, because it also features Arthur, Cei, and Bedwyr. Arthur is seeking admittance to a hall ("Pa gur yv y porthaur?/"What man is the gatekeeper?"), and recounts the deeds of his most renowned followers: Cei and Bedwyr. Arthur's deeds don't come into play; it's almost entirely Cei who is the doer of deeds and slayer of men). To my eyes, Arthur's presence in the stories is very much a device for linking multiple stories, and the identity of Arthur is the latest incarnation of "the high king"; not a historical presence inasmuch as a fictional creation that gathers others together.

This doesn't mean that there wasn't a historical Arthur. Someone was the kernal of the idea, but the feats and deeds he accomplishes are later additions from other stories.

(Culhwch & Olwen names five recognizable Arthurian personages: Arthur, Guinevere, Gawain, Cei, and Bedwyr. Gawain is a stalwart warrior/knight; Bedwyr is Cei's constant companion, a one-handed spear fighter as fast as lightning; and Cei is the unstoppable force imbued with magical powers. He's also a very dirty fighter who absolutely does not fit into the "chivalrous" mode of thinking, which is suggested as one likely reason for his transformation in the Continental versions of the story that became the norm.)

Well cool, I might be related to King Arthur, then. My grandmother is an Irwin, and Grim Erinveine, one of her ancestors was the first King of Strathclyde and Athool of Dunkeld around the time of the Roman occupation of Britain and when Dal Riada was an Irish-Scot kingdom on both sides of the Irish Sea. Whereas Malcolm Irwin was the 4th king of Scotland, but that was during the 9th century. So perhaps Arthur is one of Grim's descendants, and therefore an ancestor of mine.

Of course Arthur was really a general and not a king, so likely I'm not a blood relative - as my blood was of the king, not the general of Strathclyde.

Ah yes but Arthur is buried under Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcano in Edinburgh...