concepts of ARthUR

288 Pages·2007·2.86 MB·English

concepts of
arthur

Concepts of
Arthur
THOMAS GREEN
For Frances, Evie, John, Jeannette and Vikki
First published 2007
Tempus Publishing
Cirencester Road, Chalford
Stroud, Gloucestershire, gl6 8pe
www.tempus-publishing.com
Tempus Publishing is an imprint of NPI Media Group
© Thomas Green, 2007
The right of Thomas Green to be identified as the Author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing
from the Publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
isbn  0 7524 4461 1
Typesetting and origination by NPI Media Group
Printed and bound in Great Britain
CONTENTS
Chapter  The Arthur of history: the evidence and its critics 
Chapter  The earliest stratum of the Arthurian legend 
Chapter  The nature of Arthur: ‘a mighty defender’? 
Chapter  The nature of Arthur’s war-band and family 
Chapter  The origins of ‘Arthur’ 
Chapter  The historicization of Arthur 
Chapter  ‘The Arthur of the British’: a maximum view 
Notes 
Bibliography 


THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY:
THE EVIDENCE AND ITS CRITICS
introduction: ‘no smoke without fire’?
The principle of ‘no smoke without fire’ is both popular and ancient. It is also a
creed of credulity. Why, it is asked, would anyone claim a person or place existed
without having a solid basis for the belief? An inability to conceive a situation
in which this might happen means that any hint of history is often seized upon
with a zeal that can surprise those of a more cautious or sceptical bent. These
sometimes brief and ambiguous hints are the ‘smoke’, and adherents to this
creed often expend an astonishing amount of time and energy searching for the
‘fire’ they believe must have produced them.
This credulity often appears to be increasingly unchecked. We find the
Epic of Gilgamesh interpreted as a true story that proves aliens visited ancient
Mesopotamia. Plato’s exemplar of utopia, Atlantis, is similarly made into a real
country that existed, exactly as Plato describes it, at the end of the last Ice Age
before being destroyed by some geological catastrophe. We also encounter
elaborate theories about the origins of the Merovingian kings of France, built
upon the most transparently false legends. Even avowedly fictional and literary
heroes such as Sherlock Holmes are, on the strength of a ‘real’ address being
assigned to him by Conan Doyle, treated as historical by some readers, who go
so far as to write him personal letters that they mail to his Baker Street lodgings
(Ashe, : ).
Arthur suffers from this creed of credulity perhaps more than any other single
figure of folklore and legend. The shelves of bookshops are heavy with tomes
that claim to have ‘finally’ identified the ‘true’ Arthur, from whom the whole
vast body of medieval and modern legend and fantasy stemmed. Sometimes
these are modest and claim him only as a local fifth- or sixth-century warlord;
other times we are told that Arthur was indeed an emperor and all the tales
8 concepts of arthur
of his knights, the Round Table, Guinevere and the rest have their origins in
history.
The question we must ask, naturally, is whether this creed is right in its a priori
assumption that, for figures of medieval legend, where there is smoke there must
be fire? Whether the supporters of this creed are right to assume that, if one of
these figures is portrayed as historical in some sources, there must be some reason
for this, some element of truth to the portrayal? Certainly it is not a wholly
foolish belief. Charlemagne is a fine and oft-cited example of someone who
was, like Arthur, at the centre of a vast legend in the medieval period but who
is indisputably historical in his origins. But, contrary to what many Arthurian
enthusiasts seem to think, his is not the only relevant parallel to Arthur that can be
found. There are in fact numerous examples of the opposite development – not a
move from history to legend, but from legend, folklore and myth to history.
Fionn mac Cumhaill is a particularly splendid example of this. He, like Arthur,
has a vast legend associated with him in the medieval period, this dominating in
the Gaelic-speaking areas (Ireland and parts of Scotland) of the British Isles, in
contrast to the Arthurian legend which was strongest in the Brittonic (British-
speaking) regions, such as Wales, Cornwall, parts of southern Scotland and also
Brittany. Fionn, in fact, is often said to be the ‘Irish’ Arthur on the basis of the
close similarities and parallels between their native legends. Fionn, like Arthur
in the early British tradition (see below), exists in a world of giants and magical
animals, taking part most especially in supernatural boar-hunts and appearing
constantly in legends connected with remarkable features in the landscape. He
arbitrates in disputes between mythical and divine beings and he defends the
land from demoniacal and supernatural invaders and threats, such as the Fomore,
submarine demons.
Nevertheless, Fionn is also assigned by medieval writers, like Arthur, a place
in the history books – he is frequently associated with the winning of great
battles against the Viking invaders of Ireland and this became a dominant
feature of his legend (Arthur is, of course, ascribed a role in the – temporary
– defeat of the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain). However, in this case ‘no
smoke without fire’ clearly cannot work – a detailed study of the Fenian
legends reveals that Fionn’s role as a figure of myth, folklore and legend comes
first, and his historical associations are a later (and natural) development of
these. Indeed, not only was he not genuinely a historical figure, he was quite
clearly originally a pagan god (see Ó hÓgáin, ; Ó hÓgáin, ; Murphy,
, especially pp.lxx-lxxxvii; Padel, : -; Van Hamel, ; MacKillop,
). In this case, then, despite there being smoke, there is no fire to be found:
if Charlemagne is an example of a historical figure mythicized, then Fionn is
an example of a mythical figure historicized.
Another interesting instance of this concerns the two famous brothers, Hengest
and Horsa. This pair, once a staple of British schoolroom history, owe their modern
the arthur of history 9
renown to their supposed role in the fifth-century conquest of Kent by Germanic
invaders. Bede is the first to mention them in this context, this notoriously careful
historian saying rather tentatively of the Kentish settlers that ‘the first chieftains
are said [Latin perhibentur] to have been the brothers Hengest and Horsa’ (Historia
Ecclesiastica, I, ). Although these figures were assigned this important role in
earlier histories of the period, and still have it in many popular accounts, Bede
seems to have been correct in his doubts over their existence. They are now
considered to be, in fact, totemic dioscuric horse-gods of the type well-known
on the continent, who were historicized by the eighth century with an important
role in the fifth-century Anglo-Saxon conquest of eastern Britain, though their
original nature survived on the continent as the protective horse-heads named
Hengest and Hors carved above the crossing gables of houses (see Turville-Petre,
-; Ward, ; Brooks, ; Stanley, : ; Yorke, a. Moisl, :
-, looks at a similar royal animal-cult, with its divine representative made
progenitor, amongst the Franks).
There are plenty of other examples of this type of development, which is
unsurprising given that the portrayal of mythical or folkloric figures as historical
is a common and widely recognized feature of medieval literature. In fact, it has
been noted that the process of historicizing legends was a particularly widespread
feature of ‘Celtic’ literary activity in the Middle Ages, an important conclusion in
the present context (Padel, : ; Dumville, -). Merlin, Welsh Myrddin, for
example, despite claims that he was a genuine sixth-century poet, has been shown
to be in fact an eponymous founder-figure derived from the place-name Caer-
fyrddin and historicized with the deeds of one Lailoken ( Jarman, ; Bromwich,
: -). Similarly if we turn to Ireland, we find divinities historicized.
St Bridget (Bride) is perhaps the best known example of this, but Nuada, Lug
and the others are all assigned a ‘real’ place in the history of Ireland by medieval
authors too. A final interesting example of the historicization of myth is that of
the Norse demigod Sigurd/Siegfried, who was historicized by being associated
in the Nibelungenlied with a famous historical battle in AD  between the Huns
and the Burgundians (Thomas, : ).
To sum up, anyone with any serious or academic interest in medieval history
and the sources that claim to record it should be aware that ‘no smoke without fire’
is very poor methodology when it is used as an a priori assumption. Medieval texts
include examples of both historical figures mythicized and mythical and folkloric
figures historicized, with no a priori grounds for privileging one explanation of
such figures over the other. Fundamentally, the historical existence of figures from
medieval legend cannot simply be assumed – there is no possible justification for
doing this. It must be demonstrated to be likely, possible or proven via a detailed
and critical examination of the relevant sources, taking into account the date of
the various concepts of that person, the reliability of the sources they appear in,
and the whole weight of the evidence in question. Charlemagne isn’t accepted
10 concepts of arthur
by historians as a historical figure because of some a priori assumption that he
must have existed. He is accepted because there are numerous clearly reliable
contemporary/near-contemporary historical references to him, his reign and his
deeds. Good historians are led by evidence, not assumptions. Good history is
written by those who first aim to understand the nature of their sources and their
wider context before ‘mining’ them for facts.
This, then, is the context and aim of the present study. It sets out to question
the fundamental assumptions that lie behind most theories of a historical Arthur.
It asks whether those sources which portray Arthur as historical can be relied
upon to accurately reflect the historical reality of the era in which he is supposed
to have lived (the late fifth and early sixth centuries). Do these sources represent
the earliest and dominant concept of Arthur? In essence, once we reject an a
priori assumption that he must have existed as methodologically foolish, does
the evidence indicate that he was, like Charlemagne, a historical figure drawn
into legend over time, or was he a creature of folklore, myth and/or legend who
– like Hengest and Fionn – was at some point portrayed as historical? On a priori
grounds both are equally likely. The correct explanation can only be determined
through a proper and critical examination of the evidence.
identifying potential sources of evidence
In what follows, the major early sources for a concept of Arthur as a figure of
history will be examined in some detail, in order to establish whether they can
provide the necessary proof for us to be able to believe that the Arthur they tell of
did, in fact, exist. The focus here is solely on those sources that modern historians
accept as potentially reliable and useful, that is those texts which pre-date the
publication of the Historia Regum Britanniae.
The King Arthur we encounter in the later medieval texts, and with which
people are often most familiar, is not the Arthur of earlier works – shortly before
AD  Geoffrey of Monmouth (in Latin, Galfridus Monemutensis) completed
his Historia Regum Britanniae (‘History of the Kings of Britain’) which glorified
Arthur and made him an international warlord, considerably altering the legend
as a result. Geoffrey’s work, although titled a history and certainly a masterpiece
by any standard, is highly inventive and cannot be considered to be in any
way a reliable source of evidence for the history of the periods it describes
or the existence of its subjects, as is now usually acknowledged. It is too late,
too legendary, too untrustworthy and too full of evidence for it having been
constructed and written with a strong and guiding authorial viewpoint, to have
any value in these regards. Furthermore, this work quickly became influential
throughout Western Europe and affected the Arthurian legend in all areas. The
result of this is a general consensus that researchers must look to sources written