🚀 go-pugleaf

>
>I hadn't thought that King Arthur was a 'Celtic legend', but that Camelot,
>et al, was somewhere in the middle or south of England. I could be wrong..
>

They were everywhere. But they were particularly in England/Scotland area.
-- 
					Random
					Research Triangle Institute
					...!mcnc!rti-sel!rcb

> >
> >I hadn't thought that King Arthur was a 'Celtic legend', but that Camelot,
> >et al, was somewhere in the middle or south of England. I could be wrong..
> >
> 
> They were everywhere. But they were particularly in England/Scotland area.
> -- 
  
Rank amateur with as much Celtic blood as Haile Selassie will now 
attempt answer:
  
I've been plowing through a small percentage of the various versions
of the Arthur legend(s) from Malory on -- say, about twenty books in
the past couple of months.  One idea that modern writers have picked
up on is that Arthur may have been an actual king of the Celts in 
England, around the time that Rome gave up on maintaining a presence
in Britain and the Saxons were able to move in (the Celts having
leaned on Roman protection too long) -- that would be around 400 AD,
I think?  But I don't know anything about the evidence they used; the
Arthur stories were pretty well scattered around long before any 
written record shows up.  What about the monk Gildas?  Did he say
anything about Arthur, or am I imagining things?  
The LEGEND can't really be called Celtic in its current multiplicity
of forms, can it?  Certainly the Angles and Saxons took it up 
cheerfully enough.  When the author of _Pearl_ made his attempt at
bringing back alliterative verse (around Chaucer's time) what did
he write about?  _Gawain and the Green Knight_!  
But then again... there isn't much trace of Germanic heroic tradition
in the legend either, is there?  No ring-giving, and not the same 
relationship of lord to heroes, I think.  Although the final battle
with its efficient clearing of the scene does remind me of the 
Nibelungenlied: no population problem in this literature!
People who know, please give information.  And does anyone know where
I can find a textbook in some Celtic language?  Somehow there don't
seem to be any handy guides in Wordsworth.
  
                                    dsf
                             (tisri chema)
                           and (dawn sharon/the Speaker)
  

I'm sort of fuzzy on this myself, but I think a lot of the things in
Morte d'Arthur (or whatever) were borrowed from the Welsh and Irish
legends.  Merlin is definately Welsh.  I believe that Morgan Le Fay
came from Morrigu.

In article <281@rti-sel.UUCP> rcb@rti-sel.UUCP (Random) writes:
>>I hadn't thought that King Arthur was a 'Celtic legend', but that Camelot,
>>et al, was somewhere in the middle or south of England. I could be wrong..
>They were everywhere. But they were particularly in England/Scotland area.
>					Random
>					Research Triangle Institute
>					...!mcnc!rti-sel!rcb
They?? Who? What? Could you explain?

-- 
Bill Swan 	{ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!persci!bill

In article <432@h-sc1.UUCP> friedman@h-sc1.UUCP (dawn friedman) writes:
>  
>I've been plowing through a small percentage of the various versions
>of the Arthur legend(s) from Malory on -- say, about twenty books in
>the past couple of months.  One idea that modern writers have picked
>up on is that Arthur may have been an actual king of the Celts in 
>England, around the time that Rome gave up on maintaining a presence
>in Britain and the Saxons were able to move in (the Celts having
>leaned on Roman protection too long) -- that would be around 400 AD,
>I think?  But I don't know anything about the evidence they used; [...]

?? I thought that the "Angles" were under protection from the Romans, and that
Hadrian's wall (and another, further north, I think, I can't remember what it
was called) was built as a defence to keep the Celts and the Picts out.

Other than that, I can't argue. It certainly doesn't seem like a Germanic
legend.

I vaguely remember reading something about 8 to 10 years back, I think, in
a newspaper (no, I don't believe all that I read in the newspapers) that some
archaelogists had uncovered a grave that for some reason they thought might
have belonged to the real king upon which the legend was based. Did anybody
else see this? Does anyone remember any details?
-- 
Bill Swan 	{ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!persci!bill

The traditional birthplace of Arthur is usually given as Tintagel
(pronounced "Tin-taj'-el") in Cornwall. "Ancient Legend" places 
his reign as following Roman occupation of
Britain by several hundred years.  If he existed, he was probably a
Cornish (i.e. celtic) ruler who opposed invasion by the Saxons
(English).  Of course, later chroniclers embellished the legends
with medieval chivalry and Christian practices.  
	Concerning Hadrian's Wall, I think that the wall was
constructed by the Romans to separate the territory they had
conquered from the Celts from the territory they hadn't.
-- 
				chris lydgate
				c/o the information vortex
				!tektronix!reed!lydgate

In article <484@calmasd.UUCP> cjn@calmasd.UUCP (Cheryl Nemeth) writes:
>I'm sort of fuzzy on this myself, but I think a lot of the things in
>Morte d'Arthur (or whatever) were borrowed from the Welsh and Irish
>legends.  Merlin is definately Welsh.  I believe that Morgan Le Fay
>came from Morrigu.

Morgan Le Fay almost certainly came from the Celtic goddess Morrigan,
a sinister shapechanger who, on Samhain (Halloween, today) mates with
Dagda, the leading male figure of the British Celtic pantheon.  Morrigan
is a very, very old figure, dating back to when the Celts were in Gaul
and Germany.  Dagda is much more recent (relatively speaking).

There are definitely lots of Celtic borrowings in Arthurian legend, but
Arthur himself is probably not a generic Celtic figure.  There are no
Arthurian legends in Ireland, for instance.  There are lots of theories
on the origins of Arthur.  One interesting recent theory is that he was
originally a Roman cavalry captain who operated in the vicinity of
Scotland, keeping the folks north of the wall from ravaging the south.
Another theory is that he is actually a legendary figure from the 
Caucasus area in Eastern Europe, whose legend was brought to England
by Roman troops recruited from that area.  (The evidence here is some
amazing similarities between Arthurian legend and Caucasus legend.)

Arthurian legends exist all over Britain, but there is an unusually
high concentration around Somerset and Glastonbury, in SW England.
Some people think that this region was the home of the historic Arthur.
-- 
        			Peter Reiher
				reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
        			{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher

> In article <432@h-sc1.UUCP> friedman@h-sc1.UUCP (dawn friedman) writes:

> I vaguely remember reading something about 8 to 10 years back, I think, in
> a newspaper (no, I don't believe all that I read in the newspapers) that some
> archaelogists had uncovered a grave that for some reason they thought might
> have belonged to the real king upon which the legend was based. Did anybody
> else see this? Does anyone remember any details?
> -- 
> Bill Swan 	{ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!persci!bill

I have seen that reference also.  In the book "Arthur's Britain" I believe
the authors stated that a grave was opened, and they found a "large-boned"
individual, and an adjacent grave containing a body with "golden hair".

The authors were of the opinion that it could well be Arthur and his
queen ..