After breakfast and the usual meandering in an attempt to get out of a town with no exits, we headed north across the Cornwall peninsula to Tintagel Castle. Growing up, I was very aware of two myth/legend traditions from England - King Arthur and Robin Hood. I wont cover much on Robin Hood here, since his stomping grounds were far to the northeast of Cornwall. There is little evidence of an historic Robin Hood, although he has been a stock character in English literature and other arts since the Piers Plowman poem written in the 1370s. The attribute of stealing from the rich to give to the poor appears to be a later concept. Perhaps we shall get back to him later. For now, we shall focus on King Arthur.
Things are somewhat different for Arthur, possibly tending more toward legend than myth. (A legend is a tale, possibly with much embellishment, but based on some kernel of fact, while a myth is a symbolic story that fabricated.) The Arthurian legends relate to a king who was fighting against the advancing Dark Ages, or, in more concrete terms, defending the native Britons against the invading Saxons from
the Continent some time around the late 5th to early 6th centuries CE. The starting point for most of the known Arthurian legends is Geoffrey of Monmouths 12th century Historium Regum Britanniae. There were many earlier sources, and it is unclear how much of Geoffreys tale was fabricated by him and how much was from these earlier sources. Geoffrey gave us many parts of the legend, including the sword Excalibur, Guinevere, Merlin, Arthurs conception at Tintagel, Arthurs father Uther Pendragon, and Arthurs Death and burial at Avalon. A somewhat later French writer named Chrtian de Troyes added Lancelot and the Grail Quest, and Mallorys 15th century Morte dArthur consolidated many of the sources and legends and essentially gave us the romantic king figure with his Knights of the Round table and chivalric court. Mallorys volume is generally the source of most modern of the Arthurian legends. Most modern historians consider the historical figure of Arthur to be unlocatable, and some question whether there ever was such a king. However, there are some new facts that lead to perhaps a different conclusion.
was centered at Tintagel, implying a strong leader class, from which Arthur could have sprung. Multiple sources refer to a great battle at Mt. Baden in which a great leader of the Britons defeated the invaders, and that 50 years of relative peace and prosperity followed. The location of Mt. Baden has been lost, but there is general agreement that the battle took place. Cadbury Hill is a fortified hill not far from Glastonbury. At around the time of the reputed Arthur (late 6th century CE) it underwent a massive refortification, with construction of a 16 foot thick stone wall around the flat top of the hill. It would have required a strong leader to get that done. Furthermore, it is estimated that it would have taken 800 men to man the fort, at a time when the average war band in England at that time was around 100 men. About 50 years after the time of the Mt. Baden victory (traditionally thought to have been in 449 CE) the name Arthur in various forms began cropping up in royal families, indicating respect for someone of that name. Finally, in 1998 archaeologists discovered a part of Tintagel that
dated from the appropriate time, and there found a stone with an inscription that read Artogonou, father of a descendant of Coll, had this made. Taken altogether, these things suggest that there was a real Arthur who fought to prevent the overtaking of the Britons by the Guinevere may or may not have been real, but certainly the rest of the Arthurian legends that include a democratic court and knights in armor was purely the stuff of entertaining literature. Balancing the evidence for a real Arthur is the fact that having an Arthur made for good propaganda for various and sundry people.
