Pendragonry

Lanval and the Otherworld

*1923 illustration from a collection of Arthurian tales retold*

The Otherworld as the Land of Faëry, and occasionally as the Realm of the Dead, famously figures in many Celtic folktales and legends. Its names are various – Hy Brasil, Tir na nÓg, Annwfn, Ynys Afallon – and it naturally encroaches on the Arthurian world, usually in the form of Avalon. One of its early Arthurian appearances is in the lai by Marie de France called Lanval.

Marie de France is the enigmatic 12th-century author of lais and other works. We know very little of her other than from her existing writings which, as well as the lais (poems translated from the Breton language), include a collection of fables translated into French from English and a translation from Latin into French of the Espurgatoire Saint Patrice, or “St Patrick’s Purgatory”.[1]

Scholars have surmised she lived in the second half of the 12th century, probably moved from France to Britain, most likely knew Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis (“History of the English”) and Wace’s Brut, and moved in courtly circles; but despite strenuous efforts to identify her – Burgess and Busby (1999) note at least five rival candidates nominated by scholars – we simply do not know who she was other than that she was called Marie and came to England from France.

How Igerna conceived Arthur

Some speculation about what may have inspired Geoffrey of Monmouth’s story of Arthur’s birth at Tintagel Castle.

Once upon a time, the “last King of Egypt” was Nectanebos, a royal sorcerer. While in disguise as a court astrologer in Macedonia he becomes infatuated with Olympias, queen to Philip of Macedon.

Nectanebos tells Olympias that she will mate with the Egyptian god Ammon, who is described as “white haired, with the horns of a ram above his jaws”. The first harbinger of the god is to be a serpent which slithers into Olympias’ room in the palace.

Needless to say, the god Ammon is in reality Nectanebos in disguise, and it is Nectanebos and not Philip, Olympias’ husband, who is responsible for the conception of the child who will become Alexander the Great. He later becomes the child’s tutor.[1]

Tom, Jack and Arthur

*Howard Pyle: How Arthur Drew Forth ye Sword*

For those with only a marginal interest in Arthurian literature, nothing much happened between Malory and Tennyson. More clued-up buffs may recall Spenser, Purcell and Dryden, Wagner and (rather dubiously) Shakespeare.

But not all Arthurian heroes and villains owe their popular status to these greats of the literary world, for in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Tom, Jack and diverse adversaries were the once-upon-a-time protagonists who dominated The Matter of Britain.

Who were their literary mid-wives? Step forward Richard Johnson, John White, John Cotton and Joshua Eddowes, names which should resonate as much as Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chrétien de Troyes. Nor should we forget Iona and Peter Opie, who made these tales once again available to the general public in the 20th century.

Thirteen treasures

*Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘The Damsel of Sanct Grael’ (1857)*

Mention cloaks that can make you invisible, dishes that fill themselves with any food you could wish for, magic cauldrons or chess pieces that move by themselves, and most 21st century listeners would think of the Harry Potter books and films.

If, however, you spoke of these objects in medieval Wales, listeners would instead think of Tri Thlws ar Ddeg Ynys Brydain, literally ‘the Three Treasures and Ten of the Island of Britain’. And instead of Harry Potter you might recall the names of Rhydderch Hael, Gwyddno Garanhir and … Arthur.

What were these magical treasures, who owned them and what stories did they conjure up?¹

The Riddle of the Rich Fisher

*The Mass of Saint Gregory (1511) by Albrecht Dürer*.

At the beginning of the 1500s a London grocer called Richard Hill busied himself in compiling a Commonplace Book in which he noted down a number of tales and ballads, possibly for the moral education of his young sons.

Among these “tales and balattis” was the lullaby that we have come to know as The Corpus Christi Carol (though we have no idea of the tune it was sung to). This includes such strange, haunting images that after the text was first published in print in the early 20th century debate arose as to their meaning.

And, because of the image of the bleeding knight, scholars and others began to recall the equally strange and haunting image of the Fisher King in the Grail legends.

Kings at Tintagel Castle

*Tintagel Castle, Cornwall, engraved by G. Cooke (1818) after J M W Turner (1775-1851), Tate Gallery*

We were almost bent double getting to the front doors; for safety the car had been parked with its wheel right up to the kerb.

Having inveigled a stay at the Camelot Castle Hotel at Tintagel (King Arthur’s Castle Hotel as was), we had forgotten how unremitting the winter weather was in North Cornwall. From our four-poster bed we might have had views of Tintagel Castle, if the squalls had allowed, but they didn’t and so we didn’t.

It brought home to me the perennial question, why would anyone have wanted to stay at Tintagel Castle in its heyday? Surely Arthur, king or otherwise, if he ever had residence there, must have asked himself the selfsame question?

The Symbol in the Stone

A good litmus test for popular conceptions of King Arthur comes with the newspaper cartoon. Along with the Round Table and the hand in the lake grasping the sword, the image of the sword in the stone is pre-eminent in Arthurian reference. CartoonStock.com includes typical examples, though for copyright reasons we can only describe a selection, not show them.

In a cartoon by Dave Carpenter, a medieval official remarks to a peasant clutching a résumé in front of a sword in a stone, “Actually there’s no interview necessary. Just pull out the sword and the job’s yours.” In another US cartoon (by ‘Kes’) an exhausted office employee, obviously unsuccessful in his attempts to remove the sword, is being addressed by a boss behind a desk: “Well, Foster. It doesn’t look like you’ll be getting that promotion after all.” A third cartoon reveals a knight who has removed the sword, only to retrieve the written message, “Congratulations! You may already be King!”

One cartoon minimises its impact by weak draftsmanship, though to be sure the caption is weak enough. Merlin is examining a giant safety razor in a stone, which we are told represents The Wilkinson Sword and the Stone. Another memorable image I’ve seen is of a boy, watched by his parents, struggling to remove a knife from his birthday cake.

Leaving aside the question of whether fans of Arthuriana will find these examples funny, we see that they aim to achieve their effect through sudden incongruity, synchronously juxtaposing two anachronistic but commonplace ideas. The now familiar image of a sword in a stone is so strongly associated with the young Arthur that it may then come as a shock to find that it is not exclusive to this legendary figure, and that in fact its origins may equally lie elsewhere.

A look at other possessors of wonderful swords and how they acquired them may help to put the young Arthur’s deed into context and explain why the story had (and still has) such resonances.

Digging in the dark

*‘The discovery of Prince Arthur’s tomb by the inscription on the leaden cross’ by* *John Mortimer, 1797 (British Museum)*

Archaeology and the Pendragon Society

Note: This article first appeared in print in 2006, a short while before the Society disbanded in 2009.

The Pendragon Society has rarely dabbled exclusively in armchair archaeology, and since its inception in 1959 its members have not been frightened to get their hands dirty.

However, in the half-century of its existence the Society’s experience of excavation has evolved with the changing nature of the discipline, with the result that it is unlikely that what it managed to achieve in the past will ever be repeated in the future.

So here, for what it is worth, is a very brief history of Pendragon archaeology to date.

A concise Arthurian bestiary

*Rex Arturus: detail of 12th-century mosaic, Otranto Cathedral, Italy, depicting King Arthur astride a goat*

This concise (but by no means exhaustive) listing in alphabetical order is a mere sampler of beasts appearing in Arthurian narratives: significant omissions are inevitable, and the scope excludes, for example, animals associated with Dark Age saints.

First published in 2005 in Pendragon, the journal of the Pendragon Society, ‘A concise Arthurian bestiary’ borrows from the concept of medieval bestiaries – compilations of weird and wonderful creatures that may or may not have existed, drawn from classical, literary and folkloric sources and often featured in heraldry and local legends.

I’ve kept the original references but slightly emended and expanded the text for clarification. It’s possible that the late fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones may have been influenced by this article when she began her posthumous novel, The Islands of Chaldea, later completed by her sister Ursula.

Arthur’s cross?

*Detail from* **The last sleep of Arthur** *by Edward Burne-Jones (1898)*

A discussion centred on the so-called Glastonbury Cross, an object claimed by the 12th-century monks of Glastonbury Abbey to have been excavated from above a Dark Age grave in their cemetery and inscribed with the name Arturius or Arthur. The text is substantially that of an article written for Pendragon, the Journal of the Pendragon Society, in late 1997, first posted online here 25th February 2018 and updated in 2024.

Cross purposes

On April Fool’s Day, 1982, an extraordinary story broke nationally in the UK. Back in November 1981 Derek Mahoney, while searching through mud excavated from an Essex lake, found a small lead cross. At the British Museum the Keeper of Medieval and Later antiquities noted that the cross was within an eighth of an inch of the size of the cross alleged to have been found above King Arthur’s grave at Glastonbury in 1191.

But, following on from his family’s dispute with solicitors over a house sale, Mahoney said he had subsequently buried the cross in a “completely waterproof” container “well down in the ground” because possession of the cross gave him “power and authority”.

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