King Arthur lives?

[Repost from 9 July 2004—because burning through a light fever isn't conducive to writing new stuff, and because there just hasn't been enough Tolkien-blogging around here.]

Last week at Tech Central Station, Kenneth Silber offered thoughts on the Once and Future King's lasting appeal.

There is much debate about the historical Arthur — whether he was one individual or a composite of several, or existed at all. Various candidates have been presented, mostly leaders in post-Roman Britain of the 5th and 6th centuries. Possibly, the name Arthur derived from a title or from the Celtic word Art, for bear. In any event, it appears that someone drove back the invading Saxons during that period. References to Arthur in literature occurred not long thereafter, in Welsh poetry of the 6th century.

A generation after their setback, the Saxons, with their allies the Angles, gained control of most of Britain. But the legend of Arthur now served as a rallying point in the western regions of Wales and Cornwall, where the invaders had not penetrated, and among the exiled Britons of northern France (in what came to be known as Brittany). Arthur was an inspiration to William the Conqueror's army, which swept northward across the English Channel to defeat the Anglo-Saxon rulers in 1066.

There is a deep irony here; Silber provides the dots, but does not connect them. Consider: the Celts of southern Britain, perhaps allied with the tattered remnants of a Roman aristocracy left behind after the Empire's retreat, fight off waves of barbarian invaders. They lose, and the Celts are driven back to present-day Wales. Tales of fabled resistance against the Saxon hordes reach their sundered kin in Brittany.

The history of Brittany and the surrounding areas over the next few centuries is a tad complicated. Two aspects are important for this overview. First, although the region was not formally annexed by France until 1491, the Breton culture was nonetheless strongly influenced by the Gallic. Second, the Norman invasion of Great Britain in 1066 was not some long-delayed revenge by the Celts, for (as their name suggests) the Normans were by derivation Norsemen, even if rather Frenchified ones.

The conquering Normans re-imported the Arthurian cycle to Britain. And the defeated English learned to revere the legendary warrior-king, even though their Anglo-Saxon forbears were the barbarian heavies that he supposedly repelled. To make matters worse, the original tales were laden down with all sorts of extraneous elements, in particular the very French obsession with courtly romance adultery, in which no knight was complete unless he was either bedding some other nobleman's wife or suffering (very vocally) over a longing to do so.

(Except, of course, for the virgin Galahad, who by some accounts was Lancelot's bastard by one Elaine, who died of heartbreak because Lancelot did not return her love. Lancelot's affection was reserved for Guinevere—that would be Arthur's wife—who was displeased indeed over his begetting a son by someone else.

And so it goes. And all the stuff in this parenthetical? French in origin. Naturally.)

Philologist J.R.R. Tolkien—being a good conservative and all—keenly felt the loss of Anglo-Saxon heritage which followed the Norman conquest. Middle-earth began in part as an attempt to create a truly English myth for England. Eventually, of course, it became much more, although the Anglo-Saxons are well represented in The Lord of the Rings by the Riders of Rohan.

Where now is the horse and the rider?
Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?