King Arthur's Castle at Tintagel in North Cornwall. The birthplace of King Arthur.
King Arthur in North Cornwall - Home of Camelot. Back to thisisnorthcornwall.com Back to thisisnorthcornwall.co.uk Arthur Excalibur Uther Guinevere Merlin King Arthur's page is sponsored by Camelot Castle Hotel in Tintagel
The above view was taken from Camelot Castle Hotel at Tintagel in North Cornwall. King Arthur's Castle is shown above. Both the mainland and the island are shown. If you look you can see Arthur's profile clearly defined in the cliff face of the Castle Island. Castle cove at Tintagel is shown below at high tide. Merlin's cave is located to the left of the picture right on the tide line. Below left, is a close up of Merlin's cave entrance at high tide. Below right is a shot across from Barras showing the beach and the island bridge. At low tide you can walk through the cave and if you look closely you will find a hidden seam where the smugglers used to hide. It is well worn now, but you can still hide and not be seen by all the people who traverse the cave.
Below is an aerial shot of Castle Island. In the centre is a fresh water well. If you look closely at the right hand bottom corner of the picture, you can see the impressions of a civilisation that once dwelled here long before the island became such a grand and opulent location.
Slaughter bridge is famous for being the location of Arthur's last battle. There is an interesting alternative name for Slaughterbridge, that of ‘Slovens bridge’. It is possibly a corruption of ‘Sloe-vaen, from loe, a tumulus, and vaen, a stone, preceded by is – under, or below – . (JIRC 1850: 39) The JIRC suggests that the stone may have stood upon the ‘folly’ mound above where it now lies. In 823AD there was an actual known battle in this area between the Saxon King Egbert and the Cornish Britons. Camelford had a chancery chapel established so that a priest, could say masses for the souls of the slain.
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Here is where it all began. Castle Island at Tintagel in North Cornwall. The Legendary birthplace of King Arthur. Can you see the profile of King Arthur in the cliff face? Several years ago a new footbridge replaced the old bridge after it fell to the sea.
St Knightons Keive (St Nectan's Glen) above. St Knightons Keive is said to be the place were men became Knights by passing through the lower circle to be reborn again cleansed in the pool below. The Keive itself was seen has a potent Pagan symbol of Gaia and has been a place of reverence since before the times of Christ.
The 6th century ‘Arthur’s Stone’ is inscribed with ogham and latin. The stone is alleged to mark the spot near Slaughterbridge, where King Arthur fell mortally wounded after the battle of Camlann.
A. King Arthur's Kitchen
Above are the woods at Slaughterbridge, Camlaan, where Guinevere met Lancelot and where Arthur was mortally wounded.
The Legendary round table viewed from above. |
Arthur grasped the hilt of the sword Excalibur and and to the amazement of the crowd, pulled the sword clean from the stone.
Bossiney Mound wherein lies the legendary round table that is said to rise up on a midsummer's night
Bedevere hurled the magnificent sword far out into the lake and the still waters parted and a hand clothed in a white sleeve, rose from the bottom of the lake and Excalibur flew to the waiting hand.
The Knights names Below are a couple of picture of Dozmary Pool on the edge of Bodmin Moor.
Arthur was carried away over Dozmary pool in the vessel of the Lady of the Lake.
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King Arthur - The Mythology and the Legend. King Arthur
King Arthur is an important figure in the mythology of Great Britain, where
he appears as the ideal of kingship both in war and peace. He is the central
character in the cycle of legends known as the Matter of Britain, which
portrays him as a leader of the Sub-Roman Britons during the Saxon invasions
of the 5th and 6th centuries. Originally celebrated as a culture hero by the Brythonic peoples, by the 12th century his fame had spread to the Briton's
relatives in Brittany, and from there to France, Anglo-Norman England, and the
rest of Europe. King Arthur remains a household name throughout the Western
World today. There is disagreement about whether he, or a model for him, ever
actually existed, or whether he is a mythic figure who has been given a
historicised setting.[1] His title of 'King' is disputed: in the earliest
mentions and in Welsh texts, he is never given the title 'King'. An early text
refers to him as Dux Bellorum ('Duke of Battles'),[2] and medieval Welsh texts
often call him ameraudur ("emperor" in the pre-Medieval sense of the Latin
imperator, i.e. "commander").
Excalibur
In Robert de Boron's Merlin, Arthur obtained the throne by pulling a sword
from a stone. In this account, this act could not be performed except by "the
true king," meaning the divinely appointed king or true heir of Uther
Pendragon. This sword is thought by many to be the famous Excalibur and the
identity is made explicit in the later so-called Vulgate Merlin Continuation,
part of the Lancelot-Grail cycle. However, in what is sometimes called the
Post-Vulgate Merlin, Excalibur was given to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake
sometime after he began to reign. According to many sources, Arthur broke the
sword pulled from the stone while fighting King Pellinore, and thus Merlin
took him to retrieve Excalibur from the lake (as cited in many novels
including Howard Pyle's King Arthur and His Knights, King Arthur and the
Legend of Camelot, and indeed most modern Arthurian literature). In this
Post-Vulgate version, the sword's blade could slice through anything,
including steel, and its sheath made the wearer invincible in that the wearer
could not die so long as they bore the scabbard.
Some stories say that Arthur did indeed pull the sword from the stone
(Excalibur), giving him the right to be king, but accidentally killed a fellow
knight with it and cast it away. Merlin told him to undertake a quest to find
another blade, and it was then that Arthur received his sword from the hand in
the water, and named it Excalibur, after his original sword. The first
appearance of the sword named Caliburn is in Geoffrey of Monmouth, who
asserted that in battle against Arthur "nought might armour avail, but that
Caliburn would carve their souls from out them with their blood.".
The Alliterative Morte Arthure, a Middle English poem, gives mention of
Clarent, a sword of peace meant for knighting and ceremonies as opposed to
battle, which is stolen and then used to kill Arthur. The legend of King
Arthur has remained popular into the 21st century. Though the popularity of
Arthurian literature waned somewhat after the end of the Middle Ages, it
experienced a revival during the 19th century, especially after the publication of Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King. The subsequent
period saw the creation of hundreds, perhaps thousands of books, poems, and
films about King Arthur, both new works of fiction and analyses of the
relevant historical and archaeological data. A spoof on Arthurian mythology,
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was made in 1975. Excalibur is the mythical
sword of King Arthur, sometimes attributed with magical powers or associated
with the rightful sovereignty of Great Britain. Sometimes Excalibur and the
Sword in the Stone (the proof of Arthur's lineage) are said to be the same
weapon, but in most versions they are considered separate. The sword was
associated with the Arthurian legend very early. In Welsh, the sword is called
Caledfwlch. The name Excalibur came from Old French Excalibor, which came from
Caliburn used in Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1140) (Latin Caliburnus). There are
also variant spellings such as Escalibor and Excaliber (the latter used in
Howard Pyle's books for younger readers). One theory holds that Caliburn[us]
comes from Caledfwlch, the original Welsh name for the sword, which is first
mentioned in the Mabinogion. This may be cognate with Caladbolg ("hard-belly",
i.e. "voracious"), a legendary Irish sword (see below). Another theory (noted
in The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, 1995) states that "Caliburnus" is
ultimately derived from Latin chalybs "steel", which is in turn derived from
Chalybes, the name of an Anatolian ironworking tribe. This is noted and used
by the historian Valerio Massimo Manfredi in his novel The Last Legion (2002:
the English translation has Calibian instead of the intended Chalybian).
According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable by Ebenezer Cobham
Brewer, Excalibur was originally derived from the Latin phrase Ex calce
liberatus, "liberated from the stone". In Malory, Excalibur is said to mean
"cut-steel", which some have interpreted to mean "steel-cutter". In surviving
accounts of Arthur, there are two originally separate legends about the
sword's origin. The first is the "Sword in the Stone" legend, originally
appearing in Robert de Boron's poem Merlin, in which Excalibur can only be
drawn from the stone by Arthur, the rightful king. The second comes from the
later Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin, which was taken up by Sir Thomas Malory.
Here, Arthur receives Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake after breaking his
first sword in a fight with King Pellinore. The Lady of the Lake calls the
sword "Excalibur, that is as to say as Cut-steel," and Arthur takes it from a
hand rising out of the lake. As Arthur lies dying, he tells a reluctant Sir
Bedivere (Sir Griflet in some versions) to return the sword to the lake by
throwing it into the water. Bedivere thinks the sword too precious to throw
away, so twice only pretends to do so. Each time, Arthur asks him to describe
what he saw. When Bedivere tells him the sword simply vanished underwater,
Arthur scolds him harshly. Finally, Bedivere throws Excalibur into the lake.
Before the sword strikes the water's surface, the hand reaches up to grasp it
and pull it under. Arthur leaves on a death barge with the three queens to
Avalon, where as his legend says, he will one day return to save Britain from
a threat. Malory records both versions of the legend in his Le Morte d'Arthur,
and confusingly calls both swords Excalibur. The film Excalibur attempts to
rectify this by having the Lady of the Lake only repair the sword after it is
broken.
Uther Pendragon is a legendary king of sub-Roman Britain and the father of King Arthur. A few minor references to Uther appear in Old Welsh poems, but his biography was first written down by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), and Geoffrey's account of the character was used in most later versions. He is a fairly ambiguous individual throughout the literature; he is described as a strong king and a defender of the people. Uther, through circumstances (and Merlin's help) tricks the wife of his enemy Gorlois, Lady Igraine and sleeps with her. Thus Arthur, "the once and future king," is an illegitimate child. This act of conception ironically occurs the very night Uther's troops dispatch her Gorlois. This theme of illegitimate conception is repeated in Arthur's siring of Mordred on his own sister Morgause in the later prose romances. It is Mordred who will eventually mortally wound King Arthur in The Last Battle. Uther is best known from Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (1136) where he is the youngest son of King Constantine II. His eldest brother Constans succeeds to the throne on their father's death, but is murdered at the instigation of his adviser Vortigern, who seizes the throne. Uther and his other brother Aurelius Ambrosius, still children, flee to Brittany. After Vortigern's alliance with the Saxons under Hengist goes disastrously wrong, Aurelius and Uther, now adults, return. Aurelius burns Vortigern in his castle and becomes king.With Aurelius on the throne, Uther leads his brother's army to Ireland to help Merlin bring the stones of Stonehenge from there to Britain. Later, while Aurelius is ill, Uther leads his army against Vortigern's son Paschent and his Saxon allies. On the way to the battle, he sees a comet in the shape of a dragon, which Merlin interprets as presaging Aurelius's death and Uther's glorious future. Uther wins the battle and takes the epithet "Pendragon", and returns to find that Aurelius has been poisoned by an assassin. He becomes king and orders the construction of two gold dragons, one of which he uses as his standard. He secures Britain's frontiers and quells Saxon uprisings with the aid of his retainers, one of which is Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. At a banquet celebrating their victories, Uther becomes obsessively enamoured of Gorlois' wife, Igerna (Igraine), and a war ensues between Uther and his vassal. Gorlois sends Igerna to the impregnable castle of Tintagel for protection, while he himself is besieged by Uther in another town. Uther consults with Merlin, who uses his magic to transform the king into the likeness of Gorlois and thus gain access to Igerna at Tintagel. He spends the night with her, and they conceive a son, Arthur; but the next morning it is discovered that Gorlois had been killed. Uther marries Igerna, and they have another child, a daughter called Anna. She later marries King Lot and became the mother of Gawain and Mordred (in later romances she is called Morgause, and is usually Igerna's daughter by her previous marriage). Uther later falls ill, but when the wars against the Saxons go badly he insists on leading his army himself, propped up on his horse. He defeats Hengist's son Octa at Verulamium (St Albans), despite the Saxons calling him the "Half-Dead King." However, the Saxons soon contrive his death by poisoning a spring he drinks from near Verulamium.Geoffrey based some members of Uther's family on historical figures. Constantine is based on the historical usurper Constantine III, a claimant to the Roman throne from 407–411; Constans is based on his son. Aurelius Ambrosius is based on the legendary Welsh figure Ambrosius Aurelianus, though his connection to Constantine and Constans is an invention. It is less likely, however, that Uther ever existed outside of Britain's mythical history.
Queen Guinevere Guinevere was the legendary queen consort of King Arthur. The name Guinevere may be an epithet – the Welsh form Gwenhwyfar can be translated as The White Fay or White Ghost (Proto-Celtic *Uindā Seibrā, "white phantom" or "white fairy"; Brythonic *vino-hibirā; see also Ishara). Additionally, the name may derive from "Gwenhwy-mawr" or Gwenhwy the Great, contrasting the character to "Gwenhwy-fach" or Gwenhwy the less; Gwenhwyfach appears in Welsh literature as a sister of Gwenhwyfar, but in her scholarly edition of the Welsh Triads, Rachel Bromwich suggests this is a less like etymology. Geoffrey of Monmouth renders her name Guanhumara in Latin. Guinevere is most famous for her love affair with Arthur's chief knight Lancelot, which first appears in Chrétien de Troyes' Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. This motif was picked up in all the cyclical Arthurian literature, starting with the Lancelot-Grail Cycle of the early 13th century and carrying through the Post-Vulgate Cycle and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Their betrayal of Arthur leads to the downfall of the kingdom. The earliest mention of Guinevere is in the Welsh tale Culhwch ap Olwen, where she appears as Arthur's queen, but little more is said about her. Caradog of Llancarfan, who wrote his Life of Gildas before 1136, recounts how she was kidnapped by Melwas, king of the "Summer Country" (Aestiva Regio, perhaps meaning Somerset), and held prisoner at his stronghold at Glastonbury. The story states that Arthur spent a year searching for her, found her, and had assembled an army to storm Melwas' fort when Saint Gildas negotiated a peaceful resolution and reunited husband and wife. This is the earliest written account of Guinevere's abduction, one of the earliest and most common episodes in Arthurian legend. A seemingly related account appears carved into the archivolt of Modena Cathedral in Italy, which probably predates Caradog's telling. Here, "Artus de Bretania" and Isdernus approach a tower in which "Mardoc" is holding "Winlogee", while on the other side Carrado (probably Carados) fights Galvagin (Gawain) while the knights Galvariun and Che (Kay) approach. "Isdernus" is most certainly some incarnation of Yder, a Celtic hero whose name appears in Culhwch and Olwen, and who was Guinevere's lover in a nearly-forgotten tradition mentioned in Beroul's Tristan and reflected in the later Roman de Yder. The Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym alludes to Guinevere's abduction in two of his poems, and the medievalist Roger Sherman Loomis suggested that this tale shows that "she had inherited the role of a Celtic Persephone". Geoffrey of Monmouth tells a different version of Guinevere's abduction, adding that she was descended from a noble Roman family and was the ward of Cador, Duke of Cornwall. Arthur leaves her in the care of his nephew Mordred while he crosses over to Europe to go to war with the (fictitious) Roman Procurator Lucius Hiberius. While he is absent, Mordred seduces Guinevere, declares himself king and takes her as his own queen; consequently, Arthur returns to Britain and fights Mordred at the fatal Battle of Camlann. Chrétien de Troyes tells yet another version of Guinevere's abduction, this time by Meleagant (whose name is possibly derived from Melwas) in Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. The abduction sequence is largely a reworking of that recorded in Caradoc's work, but here the queen's rescuer is not Arthur (or Yder) but Lancelot, whose adultery with the queen is dealt with for the first time in this poem. It has been suggested that Chrétien invented their affair to supply Guinevere with a courtly extra-marital lover. Mordred could not be used, as his reputation was beyond saving, and Yder had been forgotten entirely. In the German tale Diu Crône, Guinevere's brother Gotegrim kidnaps her and intends to kill her for refusing to marry Gasozein, who claims to be her rightful husband. In Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet, Valerin, King of the Tangled Wood, claims the right to marry her and carries her off to his castle in a struggle for power that reminds scholars of her prescient connections to the fertility and sovereignty of Britain. Arthur's company save her, but Valerin kidnaps her again and places her in a magical sleep inside another castle surrounded by snakes, where only the powerful sorcerer Malduc can rescue her. All of these similar tales of abduction by another suitor – and this allegory includes Lancelot, who whisks her away when she is condemned to burn at the stake for their adultery – are demonstrative of a recurring Hades-snatches-Persephone theme, positing that Guinevere is like the otherworld bride Étaín, who Midir, king of the Underworld, carries off from her earthly life after she has forgotten her past.
Merlin Merlin is best known as the wizard featured in Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures. Geoffrey combined existing stories of Myrddin Wyllt (Merlinus Caledonensis), a northern madman with no connection to King Arthur, with tales of Aurelius Ambrosius to form the figure he called Merlin Ambrosius. Geoffrey's version of the character was immediately popular, and later writers expanded the account to produce a fuller image of the wizard. His traditional biography has him born the son of an incubus and a mortal woman who inherits his powers from his strange birth.[1] He grows up to be a sage and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic. Later Merlin serves as the king's advisor until he is bewitched and imprisoned by the Lady of the Lake.
For more in depth information about the legendary Ruler follow
the link below. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Wikipedia
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Camelot Castle Hotel
+ 44 (0)1840 770202 Website:: Camelot Castle Hotel E-mail: Camelot Castle Hotel Camelot Castle King Arthur's Castle Hotel Tintagel North Cornwall PL34 0DQ ENGLAND |
King Arthur, Camelot and the Arthurian Legend.
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