Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site h-sc1.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!bellcore!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!think!harvard!h-sc1!friedman From: friedman@h-sc1.UUCP (dawn friedman) Newsgroups: net.nlang.celts Subject: Re: King Arthur Message-ID: <432@h-sc1.UUCP> Date: Tue, 9-Jul-85 17:17:29 EDT Article-I.D.: h-sc1.432 Posted: Tue Jul 9 17:17:29 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 12-Jul-85 04:29:09 EDT References: <123@rpics.UUCP> <204@persci.UUCP> <281@rti-sel.UUCP> Distribution: net Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center Lines: 40 > > > >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)