'Only' 10 questions? yeah, right. But my beef, so I will try and answer them here.<br>
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Quote:</em></strong><hr>Was Merlin based on a Welsh wiseman called Emry?<hr>Nope.<br>
That would be Emrys, btw, the Middle Welsh version of Ambrosius. But while Emrys in the myth is based on the historical 5th-c. character Ambrosius Aurelianus (mentioned by Gildas), Merlin is based mainly on a north British medieval character called Lailoken.<br>
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Quote:</em></strong><hr>Was Excalibur originally called Caliburn and earlier still called Calydwaech (sp?) and in all liklihood held no magical properties but was in fact a high quality steel weapon.<hr>Yes, the first time Excalibur is mentioned is by Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th c.), Wace (12th c.) and Layamon (13th c.), who call it 'Caliburn'. This is presumed to be a later version of 'Caledvwlch', but the earliest source of that, the Mabinogion, was only written in the 14th c., which is quite late. All describe it as a magical weapon from Avalon, which also does not appear earlier in the legend.<br>
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Quote:</em></strong><hr>Is the 'sword in the stone' more the process of refinement of steel from ore than a sword driven into a stone/anvil?<hr>By the 13th c., Excalibur is described first as drawn from a rock or an anvil. By the 15th c., Thomas malory describes Excalibur as the second sword of Arthur (received from the Lady of the Lake, dressed in white samite, who hands our king his weapon of justice.... But I digress). Arthur is supposed to have broken the 'Sword from the Stone' in a 'wrong' duel with Pellinore, in later versions against Lancelot.<br>
The 'refinement of steel' may be a modern explanation for the symbol of a rock or an anvil in the story, sure, but the word for a large stone (sarsen) is often linken to the Welsh word for Saxon (saeson), and sarsens were often seen in legends as the work of Saxons. So, maybe we have a corruption here of a sword 'from a Saxon'. You decide.<br>
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Quote:</em></strong><hr>Has all this come from the mention of historical Arturus in some document I forget the name of.<hr>No, not by a long shot. The first mention (probably, some say it is a gloss) is from Aneirin's poem 'Y Gododdin', in which the the phrase occurs: "although he was no Arthur" (Cyn ni bai ef Arthur). The name Arthur is also used by the Historia Brittonum (Nennius-early 9th c.) and the Annales Cambriae (10th c.). Arthur is a warrior, a leader of battles (Dux Bellorum). The earliest tales as known today about Arthur as a great king of a unified Britain are from later.<br>
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Quote:</em></strong><hr>Was the love triangle of Lancelot, Arthur and Gunievere (sp?) a Victorian addition to the tale.<hr>Nope, but it wasn't original either. In the earlier (and I mean Geoffrey of Monmouth and his 12th-13th translators), the lover of the queen is Mordred. Chretien tells us that he composed his poem of the love between Guinevere (Welsh version Gwenhwyfar) and Lancelot at the request of Marie de Champagne, the daughter of Louis VII of France and of Eleanor of Aquitaine, subsequently wife of Henry II of Anjou and England. The authorship of the Lancelot proper, on the other hand, is invariably ascribed to Walter Map, the chancellor of Henry II, but so also are the majority of the Arthurian prose romances. Some therefore accept Map as the possible author of a Lancelot romance, which formed the basis for later developments, and there is a growing tendency to identify this hypothetical original Lancelot with the source of the German Lanzelet. The author, Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, wrote around 1200. The romance starts as very innocent though, and is only becoming more ‘sinful’ in later versions.<br>
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Quote:</em></strong><hr>Was Lancelot added by Geoffrey of Monmouth to please his Norman over Lords.<hr>Nope. geoffrey must answer for a lot of additions, but not for Lancelot, who evolves out of the independent hero Lanzelel , and it is the French author Chretien de Troyes (later 12th c.), who first mentions Lancelot as the third (!) knight at Arthur’s court. The tradition therefore is Norman/French, but not Geoffrey's.<br>
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Quote:</em></strong><hr>Was the England that the historical Arthur united more likely to have been Cornwall up through to Dorset and Southern Wales.<hr>Erm.. yes and no. A very interesting problem, this. What did Britain look like in Arthur’s day?<br>
1) England was the creation of the Anglo-Saxons, the enemies of Arthur.<br>
2) Arthur never united Britain either, except in later tales.<br>
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If Arthur indeed was a historical character, he lived and fought during the later 5th and early 6th centuries. So what did Britain look like, 490-530 AD? By that time, you can’t speak of anything like Britain vs. England. Romano-British or proto-Welsh lived side-by-side with Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic immigrants all through Britain. It is only from the mid-6th century that territories emerge that later (from the 7th c.) see themselves as ‘Saxon’ or ‘Jute’ or ‘Anglian’, and later as ‘Anglo-Saxon’. Such differences as were later well-known between ‘English’ and ‘Welsh’ may have existed on a personal level, but the ‘Saxon advance’ only was invented later.<br>
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As we also see in other Late-Roman territories, Britain will have seen Late Roman federates of Germanic descent living and defending the Roman frontiers. But when Roman control waned (in Britain that happened during 410-30), they unvaryingly move out of the forts and start settlements in the countryside. Others then move in, and together with the indigenous population the start forming a new mix. We know this happened in Bavaria (Raetia), Francia (Gaul), and Britain as well.<br>
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Later kingdoms, looking back, always tell of landings and invasions by their dynasty, but etymology and history deny their claims. There will have been a lot of intermarriage. Kingdoms seem to have been built out of former provinces, and consisted of sub-kingdoms and local lords, who could be either British or German. It was a slow process that led the Romano-British to finally submerge or identify themselves as English, at best.<br>
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Meaning, if Arthur was fighting c. 490-530, he fought local actions against lords who could be fresh from Germania, but also 2nd-generation Saxons, or British, or any mix. We don’t know of any well-defined kingdoms, but there are many signs of intermarriage and very humble beginnings of the later Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.<br>
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Valete,<br>
Valerius/Robert <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=vortigernstudies>Vortigern Studies</A> at: 4/8/04 10:01 am<br></i>
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