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.
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 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.
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?
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.
‘The discovery of Prince Arthur’s tomb by the inscription on the leaden cross’ byJohn 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.
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.
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”.
10C warrior burial sculpted in stone, Middleton, Yorkshire
Amateur historians often like to take traditional tales of semi- or pseudohistorical figures as sources for the details of their heroes’ biographies.
This is especially the case with King Arthur where legendary and folkloric tales are presented as evidence for this or that campaign or as proof that Arthur should be identified with a known historical personage.
In this essay (mostly from 1987) I want to suggest that the exploits of legendary heroes in other contexts parallel some of those of Arthur’s, rendering them suspect as historical facts and thus no basis for concocting a presumed biography.
King Arthur’s Country by F J Snell. J M Dent & Sons / E P Dutton & Co, 1926.
Frederick John Snell (1862–1935) – a scholar and historian specialising in ancient English customs and traditions – wrote several popular guides, including this gazetteer or guide to Arthurian topographical sites in Britain and in Brittany.
In its preface he claims “no new, original or revolutionary opinion on the question of Arthur’s historical achievements or the field in which they were effected, nor is any attempt made to reconcile antagonistic theories or conflicting traditions.”
While citing popular and academic titles which listed putative Arthurian sites in Cornwall, Scotland, Wales and elsewhere, he’s neither indiscriminate nor uncritical in his choice of entries, but nor is he totally dismissive of colourful legendary connections. According to modern scholarship we may question some of his easy assertions but, given that this was published a century ago, we may I think allow him a degree of leeway without being overly censorious.
Pendragonry 