The virtues of knighthood were more completely embodied in King Arthur, the legendary prince of the ancient Britons, than in any other figure in literature. According to legend, Arthur was the son of King Uther Pendragon. Immediately after his birth, Arthur was given into the keeping of Merlin, the magician. Merlin took him to Sir Hector, who brought the child up as his own son. After Uther's death Arthur proved his right to the throne by pulling out a sword that had been fixed in a great stone and which no one else had been able to move. This was the first of Arthur's two magic swords, both called Excalibur. The other was given to him by the Lady of the Lake. According to the story, her arm appeared above the surface of the lake with the sword in hand. When Arthur took it, her arm disappeared.
King Arthur married Guinevere and held his court at Camelot, which is also sometimes identified as Caerleon, on the River Usk in England, near the Welsh border. Around him he gathered many strong and brave knights. They all sat as equals about a great round table, and thus they ultimately came to be known as the Order of the Round Table. King Arthur extended his conquests far and wide. Then dissension appeared, and his traitorous nephew, Modred, rose in rebellion. In a great battle Modred was defeated and slain, but Arthur himself was mortally wounded. His body was mysteriously carried to the Island of Avalon to be healed. He was expected to return at some future time and resume his rule.
Is there any truth in these stories of King Arthur? The answer is best given in the words of one of the old writers: they are "not all a lie nor all true, not all fable nor all known. . . ." Some scholars believe that there was a historical Arthur, who lived in Britain in the 5th or 6th century and gained fame as a leader of the Christian Celts in the wars against the heathen Saxon invaders. He was defeated and killed in battle. His people fled to the mountains of Wales and to Brittany in France. There they told stories of Arthur's valor and goodness stories that became more glorified in the telling until he was elevated to a wise and powerful king.
Other old stories then attached themselves to the name of Arthur myths of ancient Celtic gods and tales of magic and the supernatural. Later, because Arthur had been a Christian fighting against the heathen, the knights and poets of chivalry fancied him a knight like themselves, even though he had lived long before the age of chivalry. Stories of other knights, such as those of Tristram and of Gawain, were drawn into the Arthurian cycle. Sir Lancelot was considered the most chivalrous of the legendary knights and his son, Sir Galahad, the noblest. Some of the romances involved Lancelot with Guinevere. A religious element was added with the legend of the quest for the Holy Grail, the cup that had been used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper and which only the pure in heart and deed might behold. Thus the Arthurian stories are a combination of history, myth, romance, fairy tale, and religious parable.
One of the earliest chronicles that mentions Arthur is the 'Historia Britonum' (History of the Britons). It is supposed to have been written by a Welsh monk named Nennius, about two centuries after the hero's death. In the 12th century another Welshman, Geoffrey of Monmouth, first gave literary form to the Arthurian stories in his 'Historia Regum Britanniae' (History of the Kings of Britain). In this chronicle Geoffrey fused together history and legend with his creative imagination. Geoffrey, like Nennius, wrote his stories in Latin, which was then the learned and literary language of all Europe.
The stories were carried throughout the continent. The English historian Edward Gibbon said of them: "Every nation embraced and adorned the popular romance of Arthur and his knights of the Round Table; . . . and the voluminous tales of Sir Lancelot and Sir Tristram were devoutly studied by the princes and nobles, who disregarded the genuine heroes and heroines of antiquity."
In the 15th century Sir Thomas Malory translated many of these romances. They appeared as 'Morte d'Arthur' (Death of Arthur), one of the first books to be printed in England. Malory's work is the chief source of the Arthurian legend. T.H. White's 'The Once and Future King' became the basis for the musical 'Camelot' (1960) and the animated film 'The Sword in the Stone' (1963).
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