How to Find Truth within Legend

Post III May 15, 2012

Many books based in modern day romance, or history itself for that matter, will tell you how Arthur successfully defended all of Britain from invasion by Saxons, Engles (Angles) and Jutes.  We are told Arthur halted the Saxon invaders for a considerable period of time and won all his engagements except the last one, in which he as fatally wounded.  Up to this point, a point which is extremely generalized, everyone is in concordance.  Then it becomes interesting.  Very few scholars still insist that Arthur fought in Cornwall or that he was born there, for the simple reason that the Saxons were not invading Cornwall during Arthur’s lifetime.  The Welsh have never claimed that he was born and raised in what is now Wales -much less that he came from Brittany.  However, it becomes muddled as the translation of Brittany itself is argued.  Now, of course historians have wandered far and wide in ascribing some English city as the site of one or another of the battles there is some agreement he fought, especially that of the great victory of Mount Badon.  Some used to say that Badon was Bath, which is not exactly a mountain.  They also used to say that Avalon was Glastonbury, which is not exactly and island in the middle of the sea!  Some also would write that Arthur must have landed on the coast of southern England near Portland Bill, where the ancient Romans came ashore at various times.  Or that, as Malory had it, he came ashore at Dover where the Romans left a lighthouse.  Sometimes Arthur’s forest of Brocéliande in Scotland, where ancient Ptolemy had put a little picture of the Caledonian Forest on his map, and where Geoffrey of Monmouth had also put Arthur’s forest.  But the French are still hunting for the forest of Brocéliande somewhere inside Celtic Brittany, but so far they haven’t found a trace of it.  Their problem seems to be that they think Brocéliande is a French name and not, as Dr. Goodrich demonstrates in her book, actually a poor translation from the original Celtic and British place name.  The word Brocéliande thus gives one a fairly simple problem in phonetics.

Historians of the Anglo-Saxons say that Arthur could not have won his battles in England because the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that the Saxons conquered England in King Arthur’s lifetime and that it has been English territory ever since.  It this is true then, if Arthur fought a battle in “Salisbury,” near “Winchester,” he did not fight at the Salisbury in southern England or at that Winchester either.  And Malory was wrong to write “Westminster,” referring to the city on the Thames River in London, for what the French text had called King Arthur’s fortress, or “Snowdon West Castle.”  Meanwhile a historian at Winchester has denied categorically any connection between that ancient city and King Arthur.  Nor does Winchester claim that its relic, of a wooden table is the Round Table of King Arthur. 

This Anglo-Saxon Chronicle premise, you see, opens the discussion wide, doesn’t it?  I mean; with so little written and so many differing points of interpretation, it becomes difficult to get at the truth. 

Two more posts for the Introduction and then on to the specifics.