Camelot

The birds made Melody on branch and melody in mid-air; The damp hill-slopes were quicken'd into green, And the live green had kindled into flowers; For it was past the time of Easter day.

So, when their feet were planted on the plain That broaden'd toward the base of Camelot, Far off they saw the silver-misty morn Rolling her smoke about the royal mount, That rose between the forest and the field.

At times the summit of the high city flash'd; At times the spires and turrets half-way down Prick'd through the mist; at times the great gate shone only, That open'd on the field below.

Anon The whole fair city had disappear'd.

Let love be blamed for it, not she nor I.

Well, we will make amends.

With all good cheer he spake and laughed, then entered with his twain Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces and stately, rich in emblem, and the work of ancient kings who did their days in stone.

Which Merlin's hand, the mage at Arthur's court, knowing all arts had touched, and everywhere at Arthur's ordinance tipped with lessening peak and pinnacle, and had made it spire to heaven.

A 14th century poem done into modern English by Kenneth Hare.

Of the fashion of King Arthur's court at Camelot, and of his banquet made by him upon Yuletide, and of the coming of a fearsome master which laid a challenge that Gawain took up.

when siege and battle-shock had broken troy and burnt that burg to brands and ashes gray when he that was for guile without alloy unmatchable on earth did forfeit pay tried and condemned by those he did betray aeneas then a captain of the best loosed fluttering sails upon the water-way with his high kith and sea-tossed one in quest new realms and golden islands scattered by the west then journeys romulus with strength to rome building her white towers with a little band when with much boasting thither did he come and cast his anchors in the stranger strand and named that rome was erewhile waste and sand from piedmont eastward langobarda won ground and tisius navy rocked by tuscan strand but brutus northward of the silver sound achieved these flowery meads the fair delightful ground a land of war wreck wonder bale and bliss and of bold men that love debate and wrought such marvels as from that time unto this no land can equal of arthur who is thought their courtliest king of all i shall report the most outrageous wonder ever known if ye will listen it is no thing of nought but from long years recorded and writ down and i shall tell it as i heard it sung in town the history arthur the king holds court at camelot upon a christmas tide his princes there were from their many realms together got to hold rich revel that is the flout of care Quick as the nimble creatures of the air, they met in medley of the tournament, oft-times beneath the fluttering banners rare, and thronged back thence to court, the long day spent, sworn brothers all alike to newer merriment.

For this same feast was holden fifteen days continuously, with all man could devise of meat and mirth.

Chapter 4 Arthur's Court and the Order of the Round Table After Arthur had proved his prowess in his contest with the eleven kings, he decided to establish his court and the order of the round table.

The place he chose was the city of Camelot in Wales, which had a good situation, being built upon a hill.

He called the wise Merlin and ordered him to make a great palace on the summit of the hill.

Through his powers of enchantment Merlin was able to do this very quickly, and within a week the king and his personal attendants were settled in the palace.

The king's officers were very important members of Arthur's court.

First of these came the Archbishop of Canterbury, who held the highest place in the king's regard.

It was his duty to conduct the church services for Arthur and his followers, and to christen, marry, and bury the people of Camelot.

Next, Sir Ulfius, as chamberlain, superintended the care of the king's rooms.

But there's a final twist.

The archeologists had been looking for Arthur's Camelot.

The locals actually believed that this was Camelot.

They'd been plowing this field.

They were coming out with all sorts of materials, most of it Iron Age with a bit of Roman stuff coming up, but they thought it was the site of a battle really.

King Arthur's round table is buried here.

And every year, on Midsummer's Day, it levitates.

And this is Arthur's Camelot.

and then built upon and manipulated to suit the times and added to and variously changed right up until our own time, with significant points in that being the early retelling in the 12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth, upon whose story of Arthur...

The medieval Arthur was based then by Thomas Mallory, who wrote at the later part of the Middle Ages what one might think of as the canonical version of the Arthurian legend with Guinevere and Lancelot and the Grail and Camelot and all that stuff.

And then in the 19th century, the work of Alfred Lord Tennyson being the birth, if you like, of the modern understanding of the Arthurian legend, the Arthurian legend of the musical Camelot and the Monty Python film.

So, we have the legend and we can forget about that so far as the possibility of a historical author, a real guy in the 5th or 6th or maybe 7th centuries.

Normally, historians have complete completely dismissed the idea that there could be a historical Arthur at all, since the work of one of my PhD co-supervisors, a man called David Dunville, who was probably, it's fair to say, the most eminent historian of the Celtic-speaking peoples in the later 20th century.

Well, I'm happy to be compared to King Arthur.

Um, but, um, you know, where I have a house in Somerset, there's actually this place called Alfred's Tower, which is a great monument to Alfred, but there's also Camelot.

There's North Cadbury Castle, which is supposed to be where Camelot was.

And I remember writing an A-level essay about, uh, and indeed I did it also at university, I did the same period, is did Arthur exist? And there are kind of tra- where does the Arthurian legend come from? Was there ever a Per- who, you know, why is there a story of this person if they didn't exist? Did Camelot, was there a thing called Camelot? What about the Knights of the Round Table? All of that.

And you can find traces in things like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

And okay, e- even if it's a myth, I mean, you know, this, this summer everyone's been watching the movie The Odyssey, and, like, did Odysseus exist? In some ways it doesn't matter.

That's the foundational story of Greece, Homer, and Arthur is the foundational story of England.

That's the sword in the stone, Camelot, the Round Table, Guinevere, all of that is the English foundational story.

Yes, take the sword and strike with all your might." Now it happened that not long after his adventure, Arthur had an opportunity of testing the powers of this wonderful Excalibur.

As he sat in his throne room one day in the castle at Camelot, two messengers arrived and were ushered into his presence.

"We come," said they, "from King Leodogran of Cameliard, who pays tribute to you as he paid it to your royal father, Uther Pendragon." "Our king is aged, and his knights, too, are well advanced in years, so that they can no longer fight as in the days of old.

And now our kingdom is threatened by one Riance, King of North Wales, for he has sent a message to our master saying that he has in preparation a mantle whose only trimming shall be the beards of kings.

"That," replied the wise one, whose gaze did not even have to follow Arthur's to learn of whom he spoke, "that is the Princess Guinevere, the only daughter of Leodogran, and cherished by him as the apple of his eye." The young man said no more, but at that moment he made a mighty resolve to fight in the cause of the old king as he had never fought before, and he suddenly felt his arm strengthened as it had not been even by that first touch of Excalibur.

He, Merlin, and a few of the chief nobles now passed into the council chamber, where the news of their sudden and mysterious arrival had created even more terror than their march through the streets.

It was Arthur's plan to keep his identity a secret until after the battle, and this was an easy matter, for Leodogran could not imagine it possible that aid could have reached him from Camelot so soon.

But it proved a harder matter to make the old king feel that he could trust these strangers.