March 20, 2020 • 42 mins
The legend of King Arthur is very old and very established. By the time the king who saved Britain and united it was first written about, his story was already hundreds of years old. And while many of the details of his life and adventures, from the Lady of the Lake to Merlin the Magician, seem fictional some archaeologists believe that Arthur -- and much of his life -- was real.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry Waved. Everybody quiet, Jay,
that's stuff you should know. Yeah, that's us. That is
(00:22):
us still legend. You know. It was impossible for me
to research this without only thinking of two things. Two
movies Clive own Nope, Uh, I didn't see that one
was it's good? Was that the one called King Arthur? Okay,
it was a good I thought, so I'll check it
(00:42):
out because I dig this character. And I've seen a
lot of the movies that that tackle Camelot, but Excalibur
and uh Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Of course,
I I surely I've seen ex caliber because I had
showed time when I was a kid. It was a
big hot movie when you were twelve in the early Yeah. Yeah.
(01:03):
And then of course the Holy Grail. I mean, how
do you not see that it's the Holy Grail of comedies?
Some say, yeah, I can see that. You should check
out the Cowler. It actually holds up pretty well, does it. Yeah,
And it's um has its somewhat notable for having a
couple of early appearances by actors that went on to
be uh much bigger. Oh yeah, I love movies like that. Yeah,
(01:24):
Gabriel Byrne is in it and just barely and um
Liam Neeson and I think both of them, it was,
were first roles and they're like hardly in the movie.
Who was who played King Arthur? Um? Was it anybody
like I've heard of? Or they had to have been
big at the time, right, Who was it? Richard Burton?
(01:46):
You know? When I was uh like thirteen, I saw
Richard Harris do Camelot the Fox Seater in Atlanta. So
is that, like, is that based on the Arthurian legend?
What the musical Camelot? You sure? Okay, but I mean
you know it's a musical, yeah, and it's from the sixties,
so you can never tell, like it could have just
(02:06):
been named Camelot, That's what I was asking. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
it's about the Arthurian legend. But out of all of them,
I would say, hands down, Monty Python and the Holy
Grail is the best of the Arthurian Legend movie adaptations. Yeah.
I haven't seen it in years, but it's like one
of those that I saw so many times I can
still quote most of it, you know, I mean it
(02:29):
has it all. It has the killer rabbits, the killer bunnies. Yeah,
it has the coconut carrying swallows. It has the nice
say knee, It has the Black Knight who merely has
a flesh wound. Has everything. It has singing dancing yeah. Um,
(02:49):
I mean the great Graham Chapman as uh Arthur. Yeah,
and um bring out Your Dead Yeah. So many things
that are in the lexicon all from that movie. Yeah. Uh.
Nigel Terry played Arthur in the Excalibur movie. I don't
I don't know who he is. He'd probably recognize him.
Helen Maren was morgana though, oh wow? Um, but yeah,
(03:11):
small roles. Oh. Patrick Stewart was the other guy he played.
Was he bald? Has he always like? He always been bald? One?
I'm sure he had hair at some point. Oh, I'll
bet he looked weird with hair. I can't imagine him
with hair. What if he was born with like a
full head of hair and that was it. He started
losing it after that, right for two days, and then
it all came out all right. So anyway, I started
(03:32):
to disrupt this early on. But those two movies, I
just every time I saw it with a pen dragon.
This is a cool name, that's a great name. I
couldn't help but just kind of say those lines in
my head. So I mean you you make a good
or you raise a good point. Um, there's so many
Arthur movies out there, Arthur books. Sword in the Stone
(03:53):
was pretty good too. Um that everybody has a kind
of a basic idea of um, the King Arthur legend,
the Arthurian myth or romance it's sometimes called to But UM,
what I think probably a lot of people don't know
is that it is a syncretized meaning. The Catholics got
(04:14):
their myths on it and through a bunch of Christianity
on top of something that was already extant. And in
this case, um, what was excellent was a group of
myths that arose from the Celts, the Celtic people, which
is pretty substantial that we have this because the Celts
never wrote anything down, mainly on account of the fact
(04:35):
that they didn't have a written language. Their tradition was
entirely oral, which is why we have very little of
an understanding of the Celts. Most of our understanding of
the Celts comes from outside observers like Pliny the Elder.
Thank God for Pliny, or else we might not even
know the Celts ever existed. Um, but the Arthurian legend
(04:58):
is very clearly based on Celtic mythology. But even more
enticing to me is the idea that it's possibly there.
It's possible that that um Celtic legend, that Celtic mythology
is rooted somewhat in fact, like Arthur may have been
a real person. That's sort of the age question. Yeah,
(05:19):
but I mean I find that in astoundingly fascinating. Like
there's places that are part of the Arthurian legend that
do exist in real life, but whether or not they
actually were a part of Arthur's life if there wasn't
real Arthur, I mean, each spot um generates awesome debate,
you know. So for the anthropologist, the history major in me,
(05:43):
I just I'm fascinated by the whole thing. So let's
go over the basic legend of of Arthur, uh killer king,
legendary hero saved Britain when Britain needed saving. Yeah, because
the Roman Empire crumbled, um, and the Saxons were all
(06:04):
over Britain, the Germanic tribes, and he defeated them and
brought great peace to the land and built a castle
called it Camelot, gathered up nights together around around a
round table, which we'll get into, and to help bring
peace to to the land, and and he did, and
(06:26):
he did so very successfully. In In fact, in two
thousand two, the BBC voted King Arthur as number fifty
one and the poll of one greatest Britons, even though
he might not even be a real dude, and the
Britons are smart folks, and they still voted him that
they're pretty sharp. Yeah. So, um, those are the broad strokes.
(06:47):
But depending on which version you're reading, it's gonna be different.
Did he pull a sword from a stone? Was it Excalibur?
Did he get it from the lady in the water?
Was his undoing, uh, Mordred or was it Gwen of
the Air and Lancelot? Yeah, it depends on which version
you're reading. And we'll go over those versions, right, and
we can you can kind of trace these back to
(07:09):
you know, you can see layer after layer being added.
So when you look at the Arthurian legend as we
understand it now, you can kind of peel back layer
by layer and get to the original stuff, um, which
is pretty old indeed, like they think that, Um, well
we'll get to that. Let's let's talk about the Arthur's story. Um,
(07:29):
so you've got Arthur. He comes along at a time
when Britain is in its greatest need. There were some
great kings, possibly relatives of Arthur, like Uther Pendragon, his
father supposedly would have been one of the rulers. Right,
what you're smiling because you like that name. All I
can think of is I am off a son Pendragon. Okay,
(07:51):
so you just say that anytime you want, man um So,
but he arrives at a time when Britain is being
overrun by the Saxons. It's being um ruled by the Saxons,
Like there's no British king on the throne. And there's
a legend that comes up that there is a sword
in a stone and only the rightful king, meaning only
(08:15):
the line of Luther pen Dragon. I'm not gonna say again. Uh,
we'll be able to remove the sword from the stone,
and when that person comes, he will be dubbed the
King of Kings and will restore um, the the rightful
um lineage to the British throne. Yeah, and uh. In
(08:36):
some stories, like I said, a young man, a young
Arthur pulls the sword stored it's a sword on the
swan and uh, and other legends it does come from
the lady in the lake. He rides out on a
barge and the hand stretches up with the sword in it.
All you sees the arm coming from the water and
he gets the sword that a way well, and and
(08:57):
then I think a third a third way. He holds
the sword from the stone, proclaiming himself Arthur, and every
one was like, he's the dude, right, like we got
one of our own back in power now. And then
that sword breaks and that's when he gets ex caliber
from the Lady of the lake. It's right, the most
powerful magic sword in all the land. Uh, it's a
(09:18):
it's what you call a bitchen swords pitch and sword
Merlin and some stories comes around, uh, right about this time,
and he appears on Arthur's a teen generally Um associated
with the Lady of the lake. There and Avalon, they're
both from the same neck of the woods. Avalon is
a magical mystery place even outside of the Arthurian legend.
(09:40):
As far as the Celts go, it was a it
means apple land, yeah, um, and I guess apples were
super magical to the Celts. But Avalon itself is um
almost in other worldly afterlife. He kind of area, even
though it's a physical place you can go two in Britain.
(10:01):
Still interesting. Uh, it's interesting that the apple is always
then a uh strange fruit. Yeah, like I know it
was probably wasn't an apple and eating but it's all in.
I wonder Southern Baptists called it an apple, yeah, and
when what it was originally in like air Maic and
(10:22):
when it was converted to apple, because where's the apple indigenous?
I don't know, or the or the apple and the
what was the children's was it not snow white? Snow white? Yeah? Yeah,
with the poison apple? Poison apple again. I saw a
video today that we've been eating apples wrong. Did you
know that I've seen that I can't bring myself to
(10:44):
eat an apple like that. There's a there's a middle
spindle a k a. The core that is not to
be consumed that I won't do it. It's just too weird.
But you can eat the core. There is no core.
There is a core. I make it. Every I create
the core everything I I show it. Just like a
(11:04):
sculptor reveals the sculpture within a slab of stone, So too,
do I reveal the core in an apple. Let me
ask you this. If you cut the apple up into
the eight pieces and get the seeds out, you can
just eat. That's the whole apple you have to shave off,
like the inner part the core. For those of you
who don't know, there's a video of a dude eating
(11:24):
an apple from the bottom end forward and he just
eats the whole thing because he's a psychopath. Um. Okay,
sorry to get sidetracked by the history of the apple. Well, no,
I think you do raise a really really interesting point, Chuck.
I wonder you know when the apple started getting a
bad rep, when the apple stood in for other fruit. Yeah.
(11:47):
I think that's an excellent thing to look up. Okay,
so let me know what you find, all right. So, Arthur,
like I said, he builds Camelot. That's his castle once
he restores peace. Yeah, well, now I know. No, I
think that was he went out and got all the
knights to help him restore peace. So he built Camelot
an anticipation of restoring exactly, and recruited nights, uh for
(12:10):
the round table. And we might as well go ahead
and leak that the round table was supposedly round, because
we're all equals and there's no head of a round table,
makes sense, yeah, Um. And it was either fashioned by Merlin, yeah,
or it was a gift from Guenevere, who we haven't
gotten to yet, a wedding present from Guenevere's father, even
(12:32):
though he got it from Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon. Yeah,
and her father was King Leo de Grants who I
think that was Patrick Stewart an excalibur. Um. So the
nights go out, they defeat all the outsiders there, peace reigns,
and that it's why Camelot to this day has the
connotation of and especially with the Kennedy's like this, you know,
(12:56):
peaceful idyllic situation. Right, that's Camelot. Although it was a place,
you know what I'm saying, it sort of represents more
than a place, right, it represents the piece that he
brought with these knights. Okay. Um. Then he meets Gwenevere,
falls in love with this little hottie and uh. Then
(13:18):
depending on what story you read, there might have been
an affair with Lancelot or Mordred, who was either his
nephew or depending on what you read, or his son, uh,
which technically he could be both because supposedly he had
Mordred with his half sister Morgan. Yeah, that makes sense,
(13:40):
who is translated into Morgan le Fay, who's like this
kind of enchanting temptress, evil woman um who helps Mordred
Um try to take over Camelot tries to take over
the throne, and Arthur says, nay to you, we will
do battle at a place called came Law. That's right,
(14:01):
and that's where Mordar is killed and Arthur is um wounded,
and depending on the version of the story, Arthur's either
mortally wounded or just kind of wounded, but either way.
He gives his his sword ex Caliber to Bedevere and says,
you need to return this to the lady in the lake.
After kind of waffling because Bedevere is like, I could
(14:24):
use ex Caliber, uh, he finally gives he throws ex
Caliber to the lake and this arm comes up and
goes ching and like catches it and then goes back
down and he's like, there was a Lady of the Lake. Yeah,
that's the ex Caliber movie version. They followed that version
because I remember distinctly him chunking the sword out there
in the arm coming up. That's cool. I think I
(14:46):
have some vague mental memory of that as well. Um.
And then Arthur has taken to Avalon to either die
and be buried, which is um, or he recouper eight
and hangs out there to come back to reign over Britain.
And it's next time of greatest need, which is why
(15:07):
Arthur is frequently referred to. And there was a book
titled The Once and Future King, because he will return
again when Britain needs him, which makes him like kind
of the British Superman. Yeah, before we go any further,
my friend, I think it's a good time for a
message break. Hey, now we're back. So that's the uh,
(15:32):
that's the basic legend. I mean, like we just basically
condensed thousands of pages of different books and thousands, well
not thousands, but hundreds of years of um folklore into
a few minutes. But to get the gist of it,
Sure you know the story, and if this, if this
ignited your fancy and you're like, I want to know more. Man,
(15:52):
You've got a you could dedicate the rest of your
life to researching and reading our Thurian legends because there's
tons of it and and it's all like we said, Um,
it's a literary tradition, but it's rooted in an oral
tradition among the Celts, the pagan Celts. Um. But this
literary tradition itself is really really old. They they first
(16:13):
mention of Arthur is um from I think the fifth century, right,
the fifth century Welsh poem, six sixth century Welsh poem
years back then. Um, especially with a man who may
or may not have existed. But Arthur pops up in
one line in this Welsh poem called the Goddin good Odin. Yeah,
(16:35):
it's a great word, and this poem eulogizes the Welsh warriors,
maybe Britain's oldest poem. Yeah. Because the Celts would have
started to have become Christianized around this time, hence things
would have started to have been written down, So this
poem would have popped up really right around that cusp
between the end of purely Celtic culture. Because the British
(16:59):
Isles were the last stronghold of the Celts, which swept
all the way to Asia, like they covered Europe, parts
of North Africa. The Celts were everywhere, but um, it
was the Um, the British Isles that were the last
holdouts until about like the fifth, six, seven eighth centuries UM,
when they became Christianized. All right, so they're Christianized at
(17:21):
this point. Yeah, by the time this poem came out,
the very fact that there's a written poem, it shows
you that made their way in this area, and the
Celts are all just telling stories, looking their wounds and
telling stories, still not writing stuff down there like have
you are you familiar with Missileton? Yeah? Do you know
about knocking on wood? Look at you utilizing all your information?
(17:44):
Uh so. Uh. Some other references in literature, um, the
Historia Brittonum, History of Britain eight hundred and the Analysis Cambria,
the Annals of Wales a few hundred years after that.
They were they were basically history books, the main history
books of Britain and Wales and UM. But they themselves
(18:07):
were just compilations of of other books and can't be
like factually verified. Yeah, but nevertheless they were used and
Arthur was mentioned in both um. The Arthur we Know
and love today you can trace back to Jeffrey of Monmouth.
He was a priest who wrote Historia regum Britagnia, The
(18:27):
History of British Kings and the eleven hundreds. But he
based his stuff on the history of Britton. Um. But
it just became really popular, right, So like he kind
of based it on the other thing. Well, I mean
most some people even say he plagiarized, but it became
so popular. He was kind of golden, right, and I
(18:48):
think great. I think also he um. I mean, most
histories are based on previous histories. Um, So that's that
in and of itself isn't a bad thing. But yeah,
I don't know what this article is implying, like he
was that he stole work or he fabricated it. Well,
he was accused of fabricating some of it, so so
well either way, he gave the world the Arthurian legend.
(19:11):
That's right, Like Arthur existed before this, like as we've seen.
But he was the one that said, like, there's a
great story here and I'm gonna bulk this up, and
so he started naming places. He started contemporizing things like
he took um this legend and put it into a
context that the people who lived in his time would
(19:33):
understand and be fascinated by. Yeah, and he introduced Christianity
for the first time to the story. Um, the French
got ahold of it. And then they're all about a
good romance novel, so they sort of introduced the love
elements or not introduced, but uh emphasize the love elements
a little bit more. Yeah. About fifty years after Geoffrey
(19:54):
of Monmouth made his history, um, Chrestian Detroit uh came
up with some stories that added that romantic part and
a lot like the I think the Grail stuff too.
Oh yeah, Yeah, he was the one who who came
up with the romance between Lancelot and Glenevere and the
(20:15):
Grail of search for the Grail, which wasn't a part
of the story up until the twelfth century, and most
of the stuff had been like history books and poems. Um.
Starting with the Vulgate cycle or pros lancelot as when
you started getting these great prose stories and Christianity is
woven in even more. And this is between twelve ten
(20:36):
and twelve thirty, right, just to give you an idea
of where we are. And they don't know if these
stories were like maybe part of a popular literary trend
at the time where a bunch of people were writing them,
like Chilvary was a big thing to write about, or
if it was one author writing a series of stuff
and they were not they're not attributed to any single author,
but they're they're collected together as a body of work,
(20:57):
the Vulgate cycle and those ones for because a little
more on like Lancelot and the chivalrous nights and all
that we had in the Grail to Uma. Yeah, they
said that um, Joseph of Arimathea, who was in the Bible,
he was the one who gave Jesus his tomb after
Jesus was crucified and brought back. And uh he said no,
(21:20):
well he didn't say that, but they they said Joseph
Mathea brought the Grail to britain Um. But then Galahad,
Sir Lancelot's illegitimate son, was said in the Vulgate cycle
that he discovered the Grail because he was pure of course,
until he went to the Castle Anthrax. Remember that scene
(21:42):
and the pure and chased goes to the castle and
there's all there's all the ladies that are like tempting him.
It's uh, Michael Palin is just like wide eyed. Uh.
And then the big one UM that most of our
modern stories are based on is Thomas Mallory's Le Morte
(22:03):
Darthur The Death of Arthur. And I read this in college.
Oh yeah, and it was tough. It was. It's sort
of like a bit of a modernized Middle English. It
wasn't quite Chaucer, wasn't that tough um. But it was
still a tough read. And I remember thinking at the time,
(22:24):
can I just watch Excalibur? And it turns out it could,
because that was that movie was specifically based on the
Death of Arthur. Yeah. And so as you're you're kind
of seeing like each um, each new century, each new um,
authors adding their own thing to it. Yeah, he didn't
actually write it. I should say that he compiled the
stories together. Surely he cleaned him up and well, yeah,
(22:46):
but he didn't he didn't create a new work, because
he's known as it's known as a compilation. Well, he
did add some new stories about some other nights, Sir
Gareth and Sir Tristan Um and he he he also
kind of took the um the focus off of the
Celtic pagan mythology and really focused it onto the Christian mythology. Um.
(23:12):
And and at this point the idea that this whole
thing is based on Celtic ideals and and myths is
lost largely to history. I mean, at the very least
it doesn't become nearly as a parent. Um. It was
he the one that added the Lady in the Lake though,
Oh no, that was the Vulgate cycle um, which is
(23:34):
supposing to me because I would think that would be
ancient Celtic mythology, but that wasn't added until the thirteenth century. Yeah. Yeah,
the Lady in the Lake and the idea of Mordred
is Arthur's son by his sister. You think those two
would be real old No, no, no, it was a
part of the preoccupation of the weirdos in the thirteenth century. Well,
(23:55):
I think Mallory did add them. After Gwenevere and Lancelater busted.
They go their separate ways to become a nun and
a monk. Oh yeah, respectively. Right. Um, So after Mallory
you have Alfred Lord Tennyson UM. Who wrote the idols
of the King that creepy looking dude, and uh yeah,
(24:16):
but scary looking and I love his name too, yeah. Um.
And then th H. White wrote the ones in Future
King and that was the basis of the Sword in
the Stone. Yeah. Well, Disney Action. That was a good
movie if I remember correctly. And Merlin was kind of
like a cookie. I mean it was weird right in
that story. Yeah. And in the Sword and the Stone.
(24:38):
I don't remember that one that much. Was was that
the animated okay? Yeah, where he's like a young king
Arthur pulls the sword from stone And I didn't see that.
I must have seen it, but I was all about
the Jungle Book. This sword came out about the same time,
exact animators and everything. Yeah, you're like, I can't pay
attention to this. Lend my fascination too, all right, So
(25:03):
we we should talk a little bit about the real
um ties to real history and whether these people were
real or these places are real. So let's get to
that after this message break. Okay, buddy, So what's the deal?
Was there a camelot? Was there an Arthur? Were these
(25:26):
nights real? Dudes? Um? Probably right? Send it so well,
So take Merlin for example. Okay, he seems probably the
least likely to have existed because he is a magician
source for a magical wizard. Yeah, yeah, a wizard. That's
that's a great word. So is he a wizard or
is he just a magician? So well, I mean, come on,
(25:47):
the two are fairly interchangeable. You just wait, my friend,
there will be some larger emailing. It is not nearly
the same series. Let me explain to you the difference
between a cleric and me um. So uh. He was
apparently based on one or two people that really did exist,
and both of them were holy men. They would have
(26:10):
been druids. At least one of them would have been druids.
Um he was. One was named Merdin Wilt and another
one was named Emirus Wladig. That's a tough one, w
L E d I G. There's two vowels and both
of those names combined, right, you know, it's just yeah,
it's almost like Russian. It's um. And both of them
(26:33):
lived in the late sixth century, and one was Um.
The first one, Merdin. He was this wild man who
went into war and saw too much and like went
crazy and fled into the jungle. I've seen too much. Yeah,
Apparently he suffered from some sort of PTSD and went
and fled into the jungle while not the jungle because
(26:54):
this is a British isles, but the woods will call
them uh, and lived as a wild man for many years. Um.
And he was apparently a famous local like magic wild man.
The other one, Emriss, was like a full on, straight
up druid. He was like a prophet and advisor and
he definitely lived. So they think that possibly, um, one
(27:16):
of them was Merlin or uh, folklore combined the two
together and made him Merlin. I think that's what most
of the stuff is possibly based on real people. A
dash of this and a dash of that, and mix
it up and you come up with a literary figure.
That's just my take. Camelot Supposedly, if you read the
(27:37):
Historia Regum britagner Um, he wrote that it was Cornwall
at Tintengel Castle, and they've actually found a stone there
in the eighties nineteen eighties with an inscription that said
a descendant of Arthur, father of a descendant of cole
Um in Monmouth. Actually, the writer of that history book
(28:01):
UH names King Cole as in Mary old soul. Was
he that same king cole Um as one of Arthur's ancestors.
But there's a little bit of a rub because that
castle was built in the early eleven hundreds, so many
hundreds of years later after Arthur was supposedly living. Right,
and the author of this article accuses uh Geoffrey of
(28:22):
basically using tinto Jail Castle as a way to please
his patron who had a cousin that lived there at
the time. Um. But the some archaeological excavations have found
that this tinted jail area was settled from at least
three D and was definitely in full swing, was a
(28:45):
trading post basically and a fortified castle around the time
when Arthur would have been conceived. So it actually is
archaeologically possible that this was a place where he was born,
at the very least, if there was a real Arthur
and he was born in the time frame that we're
talking about, Tinnanjiel Castle was settled and in full operation
(29:05):
in that area. Yeah, so it wasn't built hundreds of
years later there. The castle as it stands now was
settlement settlement upon settlement, and as they've excavated down where
they found that at that time. Yes, there's plenty of
so that stone could in fact be real. Wow, all right, busted. Uh.
Thomas Mallory said Camelot was Winchester Castle. Uh, And for
(29:28):
many hundreds of years there was a wooden round table
that hung on the wall with all the little names
of the knights of the round table there. Um. But
Winchester Castle was built in the eleventh century and they
carbon dated the table tot and said it was probably
painted during the fifteen hundreds under King Henry the eighth,
because everyone was way into chivalry in medieval history at
(29:51):
that point. Are you gonna bust that one? That one? No,
that one makes sense, that is busted. Unbust. I mean
they the Cadbury Castle, for that's in Somerset. That's mentioned
in here too, that one. If anything was Camelot, it
would have been that place. Yeah, but it wouldn't have
been Arthur's. It would have been a one of the
(30:14):
rulers that basically handed over Britain to the Saxons that
Arthur had to come in and whose mess he had
to unmake. Um. It would have been that rulers. And
there's a sixteen ft thick um fort fortress made of
timber and stone. UM that is apparently unique to this
(30:35):
castle that's from the fifth century. Um that was written
about from that time frame, from that period of time,
was supposedly built around that period of time. So you
have um documentary evidence in the literature, and then you
also have the actual physical evidence of this castle that's
built in the way that's just unique to it. UM
that supposedly belonged to this guy that Arthur may or
(30:57):
may not have come in and taken over if he
if he were ruling in this area at the time,
that would have been the castle that he would have
taken over because they were both heavily fortified and it
was just like a prime castle in the area that
he would have been in. UM. So if there was
a camelot a castle that he ruled from, that probably
(31:18):
would have been it. All right, So you're going, Josh
Voates for Cadbury Castle in Somerset. Okay, um avalon is
supposedly Glastonbury where they have the music festival. Now, oh yeah,
I think they have a big music castival there. My
TV tells me, um, and uh, here's the deal there.
(31:40):
That was the Glastonbury tour, which is a sort of
I guess for England for that area that's a mountain.
It's like a hill. It's a little hill. Yeah, like
the Englishman who went up the hill and came down
a mountain. Um the Glastonbury Tour was had the ruins
of St Michael's, which was an abbey built in the
twelfth century which replayed Sast, an earlier abbey that was
(32:02):
burned down. And while they were building the newer abbey,
these monks said, you know what, we found graves containing bones.
Look at the bones man and a woman, and this
is King Arthur because there's a cross there. It's described
in Latin and it says it's King Arthur and Guinevere.
So there's your proof. Even though the cross doesn't exist anymore,
(32:25):
the bones don't exist anymore. They did read the inscription
that was supposedly copied verbatim from the monks, and they said,
some smart dudes said, no, that's twelveth century Latin, my friend,
not sixth century Latin. The silly people, so I guess
there's a difference, and they knew. So that was quashed.
Are you about to deebust that deebusting that sweet. So
(32:47):
Glastonbury tour, This conical hill um used to be an island,
and at the top of it is Glastonbury Abbey, which
was built in the twelfth century, but was built on
the ruins of an early one. So that thing actually
did happen, It did burn down. Apparently in the nineteen
eighties they excavated and found a pair of sixth century graves,
(33:13):
stone line graves. The bones are gone, there's no markers
or anything like that, but they would have been the
kind of graves and they were dated to Arthur's era. Furthermore, yes, furthermore,
the there was evidence that these graves were disturbed in
the thirteenth century, in the twelve hundreds or is it
the twelfth century, sorry that they were disturbed in the
(33:33):
twelfth century. So there's evidence that these graves are from
the sixth century and that these twelfth century monks did
find them and open them up. So whether or not
they were Arthur and Guenevere, or if this cross ever
existed and what it said, it still remains to be proven.
But I mean, it's very possible that these monks were
just trying to drum up patronage to rebuild their Abbey,
(33:56):
So like, hey, we found Arthur. So they may have
forged cross, but it's still entirely possible that that was
Arthur and Guenevere. Just because they beefed up the story
with the story of a cross doesn't mean it wasn't
truly their final resting place. Yeah, at the very least,
there were a pair of sixth century graves there with bones.
(34:18):
No bones. Oh well where the bones go? Did I
I don't know if they moved him in the twelfth
century or if they just dissolved we were talking a while. Yeah, alright,
so is that your vote? Yeah? All right for uh
the Glastonbury tour, all right, which I want to go to.
(34:40):
This all this makes me want to go to the
English countryside and just like find all this stuff. Yeah
that's pretty neat. Yeah. I like old things, and it's
hard to get anything super old in this country, you know. Yeah,
sixteen hundreds, maybe hundreds if you go down to Saint Augustine.
Let's go to Roma, let's see some old stuff go
round I have, Yeah, I have to eat. It is neat.
(35:02):
It's kind of neat to stand there in the Colosseum
and think, holy cow, Yeah, this is the oldest thing
I've ever seen. That was the one that got me
and Umi was the Colosseum. I mean were everywhere else
We're like, yeah, this is pretty cool for something about
the Colosseum it was that was that was Yeah, I was.
I was pretty blown away too. Yeah. Em boy, the
people man good looking, the Romans, they just all over Italy.
(35:27):
The dudes, the chicks, they were all like models. Yeah,
very stylish, very stylish. And cats everywhere where there. Yeah,
street cats in Rome, They're known for it. I don't
remember seeing too many. Oh you saw some cats. Oh
don't they live in like all of the ruins and everything. Um,
they're they're everywhere. Yeah, I like the Trevy Fountain there.
(35:49):
That was something else. That one kind of took my
breath away. We should start a travel show. I think
we just did. Uh. And finally, um, maybe some of
these knights were real dudes. Sir bedevere Um. He was
one of the earliest knights to appear in the Arthurian
legends and one of his right hand dudes. Um. He
(36:10):
has appeared in other writings, historical writings that have nothing
to do with the Artherian legend exactly, and he was
known as uh bed were Bedroo dant member of the
Royal House of Findhu, which rose to power in Wales
in the sixth century, and then Sir Kay was also
possibly a real dude. Yeah. Both of them appear in
(36:32):
a Wealsh collection of warrior poems called the Mabinogion Mabinah
John take your pick. Yeah, I'm not Welsh, You're not Welsh.
So either one we get craped for not pronouncing things right.
But this is this stuff is tough. Oh yeah, You've
got like thirteen letters in one vowel. It's like, what
(36:53):
do you do with that? You know? And I mean
I'm looking at the alphabet that I recognize. My brain
just won't put it together. Uh huh agreed, And finally
Arthur himself, Um, my vote is on a compilation of
real people. Like I said earlier. Some folks say he
might have been a Roman leader named Lucius Artorius Castus,
(37:18):
or maybe a Roman name Aurelius Ambrosius. See I saw
that Aurelius Ambrotius was his uncle was Luthar Pendragon's brother,
and Uther and Aurelius had to seize power to start
to restore um their lineage and Arthur followed after that. Okay, see, well,
(37:40):
I guess it depends on who you're reading. You know,
some folks say he was a British historian named Alan
wins Wilson says he was a Welsh king uh Arthwist
in the seventh century. I think everyone wants to claim
a piece of it. I think that's what's going on here,
(38:00):
you know. I think they're saying, no, he was this
Welsh king, or no he was this Roman king, when
I think he might have been all of them. Well,
the idea that he was sent by the pope to
basically restore order or take the British Isles back from
the Saxons, definitely, um is like credence. By the idea
that he kind of comes out of nowhere and like
(38:23):
pulls the sword from the stone is like I'm arrived,
I'm the king of kings now um. So the idea
that he came from somewhere else is I mean that
that would suggest that he could have possibly been some
Roman commander. And there were Roman commanders who did come
to Britain and fight the Sex and successfully was one
(38:43):
name Arthur, yea one was named notorious. Well, there you
have it. Uh. And then some people say that Arthur
wasn't a name but a title art and which in
Latin means bear. And if that's the case, it could
just be, like you know, it could be anybody could
be sure for Arthur could be bear. So why does
(39:04):
the story persist? Because it's got romance, it's got chivalry,
it's got all the classic elements of drama, uh in
literature and fiction. So there you have it, and plus
Monty Python's take on it doesn't hurt and perpetuating everything?
What kind of a man can summon fire without flint
(39:24):
or tinder man? You know that movie inside now attention.
I watched it a lot at one point in my life.
I think that's my favorite part of the movie. The
um non shall pass when they have to pass the
the guy that spits tells him about the rabbit. I
remember the nunshell path. I don't remember the spinning. Yeah,
(39:45):
when he when he when he's talking, he's got a
list spitting all over everybody. You got anything else? I
got nothing else? All right? If you want to learn
more about King Arthur, you can type in King Arthur
in the search bar. We also recommend you go just
look up stuff about King Arthur. There's plenty of stuff
out there. It's fascinating. Um you let's see, I said
(40:06):
search bar right, you did, sir, Okay, Well, then that
means it's time for listening. Man. I'm gonna call this
tribute to my father. For Megan, Josh, Chuck, and Jerry
wanted to write to tell you thank you mentally for
the show. My dad, Howard passed away nearly a year ago,
and while I don't think he listened before he passed,
I think he would have really enjoyed it. He was
(40:27):
a tinkerer and loved learning new things. In fact, when
I was younger and visited him during the summers, i'd
be alone most days at his apartment while he worked,
and he would encourage me to search random things on
the Internet and read about them to learn something new.
He would even leave me lists like the planet Jupiter,
the state of Wyoming, or the year. I thought at
(40:48):
the time it was pretty silly and only did it
a few times. But now as an adult, I've since
found your podcast a few months ago, and I find
it really fascinating and it reminds me of my dad
and has been really helpful to me when I get
down about him being gone, makes me happy to know
that he would probably think it's awesome that I spend
my days learning about things now. So, Megan from plain Oh, Texas,
(41:12):
thank you for that. Uh in memory of your father Howard.
I think he would like the show too. That's pretty cool.
I'm sorry he's not around to hear it. No, but
I mean we're carrying on his legacy exactly. Nice. So
I guess we need to do a show on the
year or the state of Wyoming. Um, never not Wyoming. Uh.
(41:32):
If you thanks a lot for that, Megan, that was
nice of you to share that. Um. If you want
to get in touch with me and Chuck to tell
us anything you like, you can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
and you can join us at our super dope home
(41:54):
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com for
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(42:15):
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Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry Waved. Everybody quiet, Jay,
that's stuff you should know. Yeah, that's us. That is
(00:22):
us still legend. You know. It was impossible for me
to research this without only thinking of two things. Two
movies Clive own Nope, Uh, I didn't see that one
was it's good? Was that the one called King Arthur? Okay,
it was a good I thought, so I'll check it
(00:42):
out because I dig this character. And I've seen a
lot of the movies that that tackle Camelot, but Excalibur
and uh Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Of course,
I I surely I've seen ex caliber because I had
showed time when I was a kid. It was a
big hot movie when you were twelve in the early Yeah. Yeah.
(01:03):
And then of course the Holy Grail. I mean, how
do you not see that it's the Holy Grail of comedies?
Some say, yeah, I can see that. You should check
out the Cowler. It actually holds up pretty well, does it. Yeah,
And it's um has its somewhat notable for having a
couple of early appearances by actors that went on to
be uh much bigger. Oh yeah, I love movies like that. Yeah,
(01:24):
Gabriel Byrne is in it and just barely and um
Liam Neeson and I think both of them, it was,
were first roles and they're like hardly in the movie.
Who was who played King Arthur? Um? Was it anybody
like I've heard of? Or they had to have been
big at the time, right, Who was it? Richard Burton?
(01:46):
You know? When I was uh like thirteen, I saw
Richard Harris do Camelot the Fox Seater in Atlanta. So
is that, like, is that based on the Arthurian legend?
What the musical Camelot? You sure? Okay, but I mean
you know it's a musical, yeah, and it's from the sixties,
so you can never tell, like it could have just
(02:06):
been named Camelot, That's what I was asking. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
it's about the Arthurian legend. But out of all of them,
I would say, hands down, Monty Python and the Holy
Grail is the best of the Arthurian Legend movie adaptations. Yeah.
I haven't seen it in years, but it's like one
of those that I saw so many times I can
still quote most of it, you know, I mean it
(02:29):
has it all. It has the killer rabbits, the killer bunnies. Yeah,
it has the coconut carrying swallows. It has the nice
say knee, It has the Black Knight who merely has
a flesh wound. Has everything. It has singing dancing yeah. Um,
(02:49):
I mean the great Graham Chapman as uh Arthur. Yeah,
and um bring out Your Dead Yeah. So many things
that are in the lexicon all from that movie. Yeah. Uh.
Nigel Terry played Arthur in the Excalibur movie. I don't
I don't know who he is. He'd probably recognize him.
Helen Maren was morgana though, oh wow? Um, but yeah,
(03:11):
small roles. Oh. Patrick Stewart was the other guy he played.
Was he bald? Has he always like? He always been bald? One?
I'm sure he had hair at some point. Oh, I'll
bet he looked weird with hair. I can't imagine him
with hair. What if he was born with like a
full head of hair and that was it. He started
losing it after that, right for two days, and then
it all came out all right. So anyway, I started
(03:32):
to disrupt this early on. But those two movies, I
just every time I saw it with a pen dragon.
This is a cool name, that's a great name. I
couldn't help but just kind of say those lines in
my head. So I mean you you make a good
or you raise a good point. Um, there's so many
Arthur movies out there, Arthur books. Sword in the Stone
(03:53):
was pretty good too. Um that everybody has a kind
of a basic idea of um, the King Arthur legend,
the Arthurian myth or romance it's sometimes called to But UM,
what I think probably a lot of people don't know
is that it is a syncretized meaning. The Catholics got
(04:14):
their myths on it and through a bunch of Christianity
on top of something that was already extant. And in
this case, um, what was excellent was a group of
myths that arose from the Celts, the Celtic people, which
is pretty substantial that we have this because the Celts
never wrote anything down, mainly on account of the fact
(04:35):
that they didn't have a written language. Their tradition was
entirely oral, which is why we have very little of
an understanding of the Celts. Most of our understanding of
the Celts comes from outside observers like Pliny the Elder.
Thank God for Pliny, or else we might not even
know the Celts ever existed. Um, but the Arthurian legend
(04:58):
is very clearly based on Celtic mythology. But even more
enticing to me is the idea that it's possibly there.
It's possible that that um Celtic legend, that Celtic mythology
is rooted somewhat in fact, like Arthur may have been
a real person. That's sort of the age question. Yeah,
(05:19):
but I mean I find that in astoundingly fascinating. Like
there's places that are part of the Arthurian legend that
do exist in real life, but whether or not they
actually were a part of Arthur's life if there wasn't
real Arthur, I mean, each spot um generates awesome debate,
you know. So for the anthropologist, the history major in me,
(05:43):
I just I'm fascinated by the whole thing. So let's
go over the basic legend of of Arthur, uh killer king,
legendary hero saved Britain when Britain needed saving. Yeah, because
the Roman Empire crumbled, um, and the Saxons were all
(06:04):
over Britain, the Germanic tribes, and he defeated them and
brought great peace to the land and built a castle
called it Camelot, gathered up nights together around around a
round table, which we'll get into, and to help bring
peace to to the land, and and he did, and
(06:26):
he did so very successfully. In In fact, in two
thousand two, the BBC voted King Arthur as number fifty
one and the poll of one greatest Britons, even though
he might not even be a real dude, and the
Britons are smart folks, and they still voted him that
they're pretty sharp. Yeah. So, um, those are the broad strokes.
(06:47):
But depending on which version you're reading, it's gonna be different.
Did he pull a sword from a stone? Was it Excalibur?
Did he get it from the lady in the water?
Was his undoing, uh, Mordred or was it Gwen of
the Air and Lancelot? Yeah, it depends on which version
you're reading. And we'll go over those versions, right, and
we can you can kind of trace these back to
(07:09):
you know, you can see layer after layer being added.
So when you look at the Arthurian legend as we
understand it now, you can kind of peel back layer
by layer and get to the original stuff, um, which
is pretty old indeed, like they think that, Um, well
we'll get to that. Let's let's talk about the Arthur's story. Um,
(07:29):
so you've got Arthur. He comes along at a time
when Britain is in its greatest need. There were some
great kings, possibly relatives of Arthur, like Uther Pendragon, his
father supposedly would have been one of the rulers. Right,
what you're smiling because you like that name. All I
can think of is I am off a son Pendragon. Okay,
(07:51):
so you just say that anytime you want, man um So,
but he arrives at a time when Britain is being
overrun by the Saxons. It's being um ruled by the Saxons,
Like there's no British king on the throne. And there's
a legend that comes up that there is a sword
in a stone and only the rightful king, meaning only
(08:15):
the line of Luther pen Dragon. I'm not gonna say again. Uh,
we'll be able to remove the sword from the stone,
and when that person comes, he will be dubbed the
King of Kings and will restore um, the the rightful
um lineage to the British throne. Yeah, and uh. In
(08:36):
some stories, like I said, a young man, a young
Arthur pulls the sword stored it's a sword on the
swan and uh, and other legends it does come from
the lady in the lake. He rides out on a
barge and the hand stretches up with the sword in it.
All you sees the arm coming from the water and
he gets the sword that a way well, and and
(08:57):
then I think a third a third way. He holds
the sword from the stone, proclaiming himself Arthur, and every
one was like, he's the dude, right, like we got
one of our own back in power now. And then
that sword breaks and that's when he gets ex caliber
from the Lady of the lake. It's right, the most
powerful magic sword in all the land. Uh, it's a
(09:18):
it's what you call a bitchen swords pitch and sword
Merlin and some stories comes around, uh, right about this time,
and he appears on Arthur's a teen generally Um associated
with the Lady of the lake. There and Avalon, they're
both from the same neck of the woods. Avalon is
a magical mystery place even outside of the Arthurian legend.
(09:40):
As far as the Celts go, it was a it
means apple land, yeah, um, and I guess apples were
super magical to the Celts. But Avalon itself is um
almost in other worldly afterlife. He kind of area, even
though it's a physical place you can go two in Britain.
(10:01):
Still interesting. Uh, it's interesting that the apple is always
then a uh strange fruit. Yeah, like I know it
was probably wasn't an apple and eating but it's all in.
I wonder Southern Baptists called it an apple, yeah, and
when what it was originally in like air Maic and
(10:22):
when it was converted to apple, because where's the apple indigenous?
I don't know, or the or the apple and the
what was the children's was it not snow white? Snow white? Yeah? Yeah,
with the poison apple? Poison apple again. I saw a
video today that we've been eating apples wrong. Did you
know that I've seen that I can't bring myself to
(10:44):
eat an apple like that. There's a there's a middle
spindle a k a. The core that is not to
be consumed that I won't do it. It's just too weird.
But you can eat the core. There is no core.
There is a core. I make it. Every I create
the core everything I I show it. Just like a
(11:04):
sculptor reveals the sculpture within a slab of stone, So too,
do I reveal the core in an apple. Let me
ask you this. If you cut the apple up into
the eight pieces and get the seeds out, you can
just eat. That's the whole apple you have to shave off,
like the inner part the core. For those of you
who don't know, there's a video of a dude eating
(11:24):
an apple from the bottom end forward and he just
eats the whole thing because he's a psychopath. Um. Okay,
sorry to get sidetracked by the history of the apple. Well, no,
I think you do raise a really really interesting point, Chuck.
I wonder you know when the apple started getting a
bad rep, when the apple stood in for other fruit. Yeah.
(11:47):
I think that's an excellent thing to look up. Okay,
so let me know what you find, all right. So, Arthur,
like I said, he builds Camelot. That's his castle once
he restores peace. Yeah, well, now I know. No, I
think that was he went out and got all the
knights to help him restore peace. So he built Camelot
an anticipation of restoring exactly, and recruited nights, uh for
(12:10):
the round table. And we might as well go ahead
and leak that the round table was supposedly round, because
we're all equals and there's no head of a round table,
makes sense, yeah, Um. And it was either fashioned by Merlin, yeah,
or it was a gift from Guenevere, who we haven't
gotten to yet, a wedding present from Guenevere's father, even
(12:32):
though he got it from Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon. Yeah,
and her father was King Leo de Grants who I
think that was Patrick Stewart an excalibur. Um. So the
nights go out, they defeat all the outsiders there, peace reigns,
and that it's why Camelot to this day has the
connotation of and especially with the Kennedy's like this, you know,
(12:56):
peaceful idyllic situation. Right, that's Camelot. Although it was a place,
you know what I'm saying, it sort of represents more
than a place, right, it represents the piece that he
brought with these knights. Okay. Um. Then he meets Gwenevere,
falls in love with this little hottie and uh. Then
(13:18):
depending on what story you read, there might have been
an affair with Lancelot or Mordred, who was either his
nephew or depending on what you read, or his son, uh,
which technically he could be both because supposedly he had
Mordred with his half sister Morgan. Yeah, that makes sense,
(13:40):
who is translated into Morgan le Fay, who's like this
kind of enchanting temptress, evil woman um who helps Mordred
Um try to take over Camelot tries to take over
the throne, and Arthur says, nay to you, we will
do battle at a place called came Law. That's right,
(14:01):
and that's where Mordar is killed and Arthur is um wounded,
and depending on the version of the story, Arthur's either
mortally wounded or just kind of wounded, but either way.
He gives his his sword ex Caliber to Bedevere and says,
you need to return this to the lady in the lake.
After kind of waffling because Bedevere is like, I could
(14:24):
use ex Caliber, uh, he finally gives he throws ex
Caliber to the lake and this arm comes up and
goes ching and like catches it and then goes back
down and he's like, there was a Lady of the Lake. Yeah,
that's the ex Caliber movie version. They followed that version
because I remember distinctly him chunking the sword out there
in the arm coming up. That's cool. I think I
(14:46):
have some vague mental memory of that as well. Um.
And then Arthur has taken to Avalon to either die
and be buried, which is um, or he recouper eight
and hangs out there to come back to reign over Britain.
And it's next time of greatest need, which is why
(15:07):
Arthur is frequently referred to. And there was a book
titled The Once and Future King, because he will return
again when Britain needs him, which makes him like kind
of the British Superman. Yeah, before we go any further,
my friend, I think it's a good time for a
message break. Hey, now we're back. So that's the uh,
(15:32):
that's the basic legend. I mean, like we just basically
condensed thousands of pages of different books and thousands, well
not thousands, but hundreds of years of um folklore into
a few minutes. But to get the gist of it,
Sure you know the story, and if this, if this
ignited your fancy and you're like, I want to know more. Man,
(15:52):
You've got a you could dedicate the rest of your
life to researching and reading our Thurian legends because there's
tons of it and and it's all like we said, Um,
it's a literary tradition, but it's rooted in an oral
tradition among the Celts, the pagan Celts. Um. But this
literary tradition itself is really really old. They they first
(16:13):
mention of Arthur is um from I think the fifth century, right,
the fifth century Welsh poem, six sixth century Welsh poem
years back then. Um, especially with a man who may
or may not have existed. But Arthur pops up in
one line in this Welsh poem called the Goddin good Odin. Yeah,
(16:35):
it's a great word, and this poem eulogizes the Welsh warriors,
maybe Britain's oldest poem. Yeah. Because the Celts would have
started to have become Christianized around this time, hence things
would have started to have been written down, So this
poem would have popped up really right around that cusp
between the end of purely Celtic culture. Because the British
(16:59):
Isles were the last stronghold of the Celts, which swept
all the way to Asia, like they covered Europe, parts
of North Africa. The Celts were everywhere, but um, it
was the Um, the British Isles that were the last
holdouts until about like the fifth, six, seven eighth centuries UM,
when they became Christianized. All right, so they're Christianized at
(17:21):
this point. Yeah, by the time this poem came out,
the very fact that there's a written poem, it shows
you that made their way in this area, and the
Celts are all just telling stories, looking their wounds and
telling stories, still not writing stuff down there like have
you are you familiar with Missileton? Yeah? Do you know
about knocking on wood? Look at you utilizing all your information?
(17:44):
Uh so. Uh. Some other references in literature, um, the
Historia Brittonum, History of Britain eight hundred and the Analysis Cambria,
the Annals of Wales a few hundred years after that.
They were they were basically history books, the main history
books of Britain and Wales and UM. But they themselves
(18:07):
were just compilations of of other books and can't be
like factually verified. Yeah, but nevertheless they were used and
Arthur was mentioned in both um. The Arthur we Know
and love today you can trace back to Jeffrey of Monmouth.
He was a priest who wrote Historia regum Britagnia, The
(18:27):
History of British Kings and the eleven hundreds. But he
based his stuff on the history of Britton. Um. But
it just became really popular, right, So like he kind
of based it on the other thing. Well, I mean
most some people even say he plagiarized, but it became
so popular. He was kind of golden, right, and I
(18:48):
think great. I think also he um. I mean, most
histories are based on previous histories. Um, So that's that
in and of itself isn't a bad thing. But yeah,
I don't know what this article is implying, like he
was that he stole work or he fabricated it. Well,
he was accused of fabricating some of it, so so
well either way, he gave the world the Arthurian legend.
(19:11):
That's right, Like Arthur existed before this, like as we've seen.
But he was the one that said, like, there's a
great story here and I'm gonna bulk this up, and
so he started naming places. He started contemporizing things like
he took um this legend and put it into a
context that the people who lived in his time would
(19:33):
understand and be fascinated by. Yeah, and he introduced Christianity
for the first time to the story. Um, the French
got ahold of it. And then they're all about a
good romance novel, so they sort of introduced the love
elements or not introduced, but uh emphasize the love elements
a little bit more. Yeah. About fifty years after Geoffrey
(19:54):
of Monmouth made his history, um, Chrestian Detroit uh came
up with some stories that added that romantic part and
a lot like the I think the Grail stuff too.
Oh yeah, Yeah, he was the one who who came
up with the romance between Lancelot and Glenevere and the
(20:15):
Grail of search for the Grail, which wasn't a part
of the story up until the twelfth century, and most
of the stuff had been like history books and poems. Um.
Starting with the Vulgate cycle or pros lancelot as when
you started getting these great prose stories and Christianity is
woven in even more. And this is between twelve ten
(20:36):
and twelve thirty, right, just to give you an idea
of where we are. And they don't know if these
stories were like maybe part of a popular literary trend
at the time where a bunch of people were writing them,
like Chilvary was a big thing to write about, or
if it was one author writing a series of stuff
and they were not they're not attributed to any single author,
but they're they're collected together as a body of work,
(20:57):
the Vulgate cycle and those ones for because a little
more on like Lancelot and the chivalrous nights and all
that we had in the Grail to Uma. Yeah, they
said that um, Joseph of Arimathea, who was in the Bible,
he was the one who gave Jesus his tomb after
Jesus was crucified and brought back. And uh he said no,
(21:20):
well he didn't say that, but they they said Joseph
Mathea brought the Grail to britain Um. But then Galahad,
Sir Lancelot's illegitimate son, was said in the Vulgate cycle
that he discovered the Grail because he was pure of course,
until he went to the Castle Anthrax. Remember that scene
(21:42):
and the pure and chased goes to the castle and
there's all there's all the ladies that are like tempting him.
It's uh, Michael Palin is just like wide eyed. Uh.
And then the big one UM that most of our
modern stories are based on is Thomas Mallory's Le Morte
(22:03):
Darthur The Death of Arthur. And I read this in college.
Oh yeah, and it was tough. It was. It's sort
of like a bit of a modernized Middle English. It
wasn't quite Chaucer, wasn't that tough um. But it was
still a tough read. And I remember thinking at the time,
(22:24):
can I just watch Excalibur? And it turns out it could,
because that was that movie was specifically based on the
Death of Arthur. Yeah. And so as you're you're kind
of seeing like each um, each new century, each new um,
authors adding their own thing to it. Yeah, he didn't
actually write it. I should say that he compiled the
stories together. Surely he cleaned him up and well, yeah,
(22:46):
but he didn't he didn't create a new work, because
he's known as it's known as a compilation. Well, he
did add some new stories about some other nights, Sir
Gareth and Sir Tristan Um and he he he also
kind of took the um the focus off of the
Celtic pagan mythology and really focused it onto the Christian mythology. Um.
(23:12):
And and at this point the idea that this whole
thing is based on Celtic ideals and and myths is
lost largely to history. I mean, at the very least
it doesn't become nearly as a parent. Um. It was
he the one that added the Lady in the Lake though,
Oh no, that was the Vulgate cycle um, which is
(23:34):
supposing to me because I would think that would be
ancient Celtic mythology, but that wasn't added until the thirteenth century. Yeah. Yeah,
the Lady in the Lake and the idea of Mordred
is Arthur's son by his sister. You think those two
would be real old No, no, no, it was a
part of the preoccupation of the weirdos in the thirteenth century. Well,
(23:55):
I think Mallory did add them. After Gwenevere and Lancelater busted.
They go their separate ways to become a nun and
a monk. Oh yeah, respectively. Right. Um, So after Mallory
you have Alfred Lord Tennyson UM. Who wrote the idols
of the King that creepy looking dude, and uh yeah,
(24:16):
but scary looking and I love his name too, yeah. Um.
And then th H. White wrote the ones in Future
King and that was the basis of the Sword in
the Stone. Yeah. Well, Disney Action. That was a good
movie if I remember correctly. And Merlin was kind of
like a cookie. I mean it was weird right in
that story. Yeah. And in the Sword and the Stone.
(24:38):
I don't remember that one that much. Was was that
the animated okay? Yeah, where he's like a young king
Arthur pulls the sword from stone And I didn't see that.
I must have seen it, but I was all about
the Jungle Book. This sword came out about the same time,
exact animators and everything. Yeah, you're like, I can't pay
attention to this. Lend my fascination too, all right, So
(25:03):
we we should talk a little bit about the real
um ties to real history and whether these people were
real or these places are real. So let's get to
that after this message break. Okay, buddy, So what's the deal?
Was there a camelot? Was there an Arthur? Were these
(25:26):
nights real? Dudes? Um? Probably right? Send it so well,
So take Merlin for example. Okay, he seems probably the
least likely to have existed because he is a magician
source for a magical wizard. Yeah, yeah, a wizard. That's
that's a great word. So is he a wizard or
is he just a magician? So well, I mean, come on,
(25:47):
the two are fairly interchangeable. You just wait, my friend,
there will be some larger emailing. It is not nearly
the same series. Let me explain to you the difference
between a cleric and me um. So uh. He was
apparently based on one or two people that really did exist,
and both of them were holy men. They would have
(26:10):
been druids. At least one of them would have been druids.
Um he was. One was named Merdin Wilt and another
one was named Emirus Wladig. That's a tough one, w
L E d I G. There's two vowels and both
of those names combined, right, you know, it's just yeah,
it's almost like Russian. It's um. And both of them
(26:33):
lived in the late sixth century, and one was Um.
The first one, Merdin. He was this wild man who
went into war and saw too much and like went
crazy and fled into the jungle. I've seen too much. Yeah,
Apparently he suffered from some sort of PTSD and went
and fled into the jungle while not the jungle because
(26:54):
this is a British isles, but the woods will call
them uh, and lived as a wild man for many years. Um.
And he was apparently a famous local like magic wild man.
The other one, Emriss, was like a full on, straight
up druid. He was like a prophet and advisor and
he definitely lived. So they think that possibly, um, one
(27:16):
of them was Merlin or uh, folklore combined the two
together and made him Merlin. I think that's what most
of the stuff is possibly based on real people. A
dash of this and a dash of that, and mix
it up and you come up with a literary figure.
That's just my take. Camelot Supposedly, if you read the
(27:37):
Historia Regum britagner Um, he wrote that it was Cornwall
at Tintengel Castle, and they've actually found a stone there
in the eighties nineteen eighties with an inscription that said
a descendant of Arthur, father of a descendant of cole
Um in Monmouth. Actually, the writer of that history book
(28:01):
UH names King Cole as in Mary old soul. Was
he that same king cole Um as one of Arthur's ancestors.
But there's a little bit of a rub because that
castle was built in the early eleven hundreds, so many
hundreds of years later after Arthur was supposedly living. Right,
and the author of this article accuses uh Geoffrey of
(28:22):
basically using tinto Jail Castle as a way to please
his patron who had a cousin that lived there at
the time. Um. But the some archaeological excavations have found
that this tinted jail area was settled from at least
three D and was definitely in full swing, was a
(28:45):
trading post basically and a fortified castle around the time
when Arthur would have been conceived. So it actually is
archaeologically possible that this was a place where he was born,
at the very least, if there was a real Arthur
and he was born in the time frame that we're
talking about, Tinnanjiel Castle was settled and in full operation
(29:05):
in that area. Yeah, so it wasn't built hundreds of
years later there. The castle as it stands now was
settlement settlement upon settlement, and as they've excavated down where
they found that at that time. Yes, there's plenty of
so that stone could in fact be real. Wow, all right, busted. Uh.
Thomas Mallory said Camelot was Winchester Castle. Uh, And for
(29:28):
many hundreds of years there was a wooden round table
that hung on the wall with all the little names
of the knights of the round table there. Um. But
Winchester Castle was built in the eleventh century and they
carbon dated the table tot and said it was probably
painted during the fifteen hundreds under King Henry the eighth,
because everyone was way into chivalry in medieval history at
(29:51):
that point. Are you gonna bust that one? That one? No,
that one makes sense, that is busted. Unbust. I mean
they the Cadbury Castle, for that's in Somerset. That's mentioned
in here too, that one. If anything was Camelot, it
would have been that place. Yeah, but it wouldn't have
been Arthur's. It would have been a one of the
(30:14):
rulers that basically handed over Britain to the Saxons that
Arthur had to come in and whose mess he had
to unmake. Um. It would have been that rulers. And
there's a sixteen ft thick um fort fortress made of
timber and stone. UM that is apparently unique to this
(30:35):
castle that's from the fifth century. Um that was written
about from that time frame, from that period of time,
was supposedly built around that period of time. So you
have um documentary evidence in the literature, and then you
also have the actual physical evidence of this castle that's
built in the way that's just unique to it. UM
that supposedly belonged to this guy that Arthur may or
(30:57):
may not have come in and taken over if he
if he were ruling in this area at the time,
that would have been the castle that he would have
taken over because they were both heavily fortified and it
was just like a prime castle in the area that
he would have been in. UM. So if there was
a camelot a castle that he ruled from, that probably
(31:18):
would have been it. All right, So you're going, Josh
Voates for Cadbury Castle in Somerset. Okay, um avalon is
supposedly Glastonbury where they have the music festival. Now, oh yeah,
I think they have a big music castival there. My
TV tells me, um, and uh, here's the deal there.
(31:40):
That was the Glastonbury tour, which is a sort of
I guess for England for that area that's a mountain.
It's like a hill. It's a little hill. Yeah, like
the Englishman who went up the hill and came down
a mountain. Um the Glastonbury Tour was had the ruins
of St Michael's, which was an abbey built in the
twelfth century which replayed Sast, an earlier abbey that was
(32:02):
burned down. And while they were building the newer abbey,
these monks said, you know what, we found graves containing bones.
Look at the bones man and a woman, and this
is King Arthur because there's a cross there. It's described
in Latin and it says it's King Arthur and Guinevere.
So there's your proof. Even though the cross doesn't exist anymore,
(32:25):
the bones don't exist anymore. They did read the inscription
that was supposedly copied verbatim from the monks, and they said,
some smart dudes said, no, that's twelveth century Latin, my friend,
not sixth century Latin. The silly people, so I guess
there's a difference, and they knew. So that was quashed.
Are you about to deebust that deebusting that sweet. So
(32:47):
Glastonbury tour, This conical hill um used to be an island,
and at the top of it is Glastonbury Abbey, which
was built in the twelfth century, but was built on
the ruins of an early one. So that thing actually
did happen, It did burn down. Apparently in the nineteen
eighties they excavated and found a pair of sixth century graves,
(33:13):
stone line graves. The bones are gone, there's no markers
or anything like that, but they would have been the
kind of graves and they were dated to Arthur's era. Furthermore, yes, furthermore,
the there was evidence that these graves were disturbed in
the thirteenth century, in the twelve hundreds or is it
the twelfth century, sorry that they were disturbed in the
(33:33):
twelfth century. So there's evidence that these graves are from
the sixth century and that these twelfth century monks did
find them and open them up. So whether or not
they were Arthur and Guenevere, or if this cross ever
existed and what it said, it still remains to be proven.
But I mean, it's very possible that these monks were
just trying to drum up patronage to rebuild their Abbey,
(33:56):
So like, hey, we found Arthur. So they may have
forged cross, but it's still entirely possible that that was
Arthur and Guenevere. Just because they beefed up the story
with the story of a cross doesn't mean it wasn't
truly their final resting place. Yeah, at the very least,
there were a pair of sixth century graves there with bones.
(34:18):
No bones. Oh well where the bones go? Did I
I don't know if they moved him in the twelfth
century or if they just dissolved we were talking a while. Yeah, alright,
so is that your vote? Yeah? All right for uh
the Glastonbury tour, all right, which I want to go to.
(34:40):
This all this makes me want to go to the
English countryside and just like find all this stuff. Yeah
that's pretty neat. Yeah. I like old things, and it's
hard to get anything super old in this country, you know. Yeah,
sixteen hundreds, maybe hundreds if you go down to Saint Augustine.
Let's go to Roma, let's see some old stuff go
round I have, Yeah, I have to eat. It is neat.
(35:02):
It's kind of neat to stand there in the Colosseum
and think, holy cow, Yeah, this is the oldest thing
I've ever seen. That was the one that got me
and Umi was the Colosseum. I mean were everywhere else
We're like, yeah, this is pretty cool for something about
the Colosseum it was that was that was Yeah, I was.
I was pretty blown away too. Yeah. Em boy, the
people man good looking, the Romans, they just all over Italy.
(35:27):
The dudes, the chicks, they were all like models. Yeah,
very stylish, very stylish. And cats everywhere where there. Yeah,
street cats in Rome, They're known for it. I don't
remember seeing too many. Oh you saw some cats. Oh
don't they live in like all of the ruins and everything. Um,
they're they're everywhere. Yeah, I like the Trevy Fountain there.
(35:49):
That was something else. That one kind of took my
breath away. We should start a travel show. I think
we just did. Uh. And finally, um, maybe some of
these knights were real dudes. Sir bedevere Um. He was
one of the earliest knights to appear in the Arthurian
legends and one of his right hand dudes. Um. He
(36:10):
has appeared in other writings, historical writings that have nothing
to do with the Artherian legend exactly, and he was
known as uh bed were Bedroo dant member of the
Royal House of Findhu, which rose to power in Wales
in the sixth century, and then Sir Kay was also
possibly a real dude. Yeah. Both of them appear in
(36:32):
a Wealsh collection of warrior poems called the Mabinogion Mabinah
John take your pick. Yeah, I'm not Welsh, You're not Welsh.
So either one we get craped for not pronouncing things right.
But this is this stuff is tough. Oh yeah, You've
got like thirteen letters in one vowel. It's like, what
(36:53):
do you do with that? You know? And I mean
I'm looking at the alphabet that I recognize. My brain
just won't put it together. Uh huh agreed, And finally
Arthur himself, Um, my vote is on a compilation of
real people. Like I said earlier. Some folks say he
might have been a Roman leader named Lucius Artorius Castus,
(37:18):
or maybe a Roman name Aurelius Ambrosius. See I saw
that Aurelius Ambrotius was his uncle was Luthar Pendragon's brother,
and Uther and Aurelius had to seize power to start
to restore um their lineage and Arthur followed after that. Okay, see, well,
(37:40):
I guess it depends on who you're reading. You know,
some folks say he was a British historian named Alan
wins Wilson says he was a Welsh king uh Arthwist
in the seventh century. I think everyone wants to claim
a piece of it. I think that's what's going on here,
(38:00):
you know. I think they're saying, no, he was this
Welsh king, or no he was this Roman king, when
I think he might have been all of them. Well,
the idea that he was sent by the pope to
basically restore order or take the British Isles back from
the Saxons, definitely, um is like credence. By the idea
that he kind of comes out of nowhere and like
(38:23):
pulls the sword from the stone is like I'm arrived,
I'm the king of kings now um. So the idea
that he came from somewhere else is I mean that
that would suggest that he could have possibly been some
Roman commander. And there were Roman commanders who did come
to Britain and fight the Sex and successfully was one
(38:43):
name Arthur, yea one was named notorious. Well, there you
have it. Uh. And then some people say that Arthur
wasn't a name but a title art and which in
Latin means bear. And if that's the case, it could
just be, like you know, it could be anybody could
be sure for Arthur could be bear. So why does
(39:04):
the story persist? Because it's got romance, it's got chivalry,
it's got all the classic elements of drama, uh in
literature and fiction. So there you have it, and plus
Monty Python's take on it doesn't hurt and perpetuating everything?
What kind of a man can summon fire without flint
(39:24):
or tinder man? You know that movie inside now attention.
I watched it a lot at one point in my life.
I think that's my favorite part of the movie. The
um non shall pass when they have to pass the
the guy that spits tells him about the rabbit. I
remember the nunshell path. I don't remember the spinning. Yeah,
(39:45):
when he when he when he's talking, he's got a
list spitting all over everybody. You got anything else? I
got nothing else? All right? If you want to learn
more about King Arthur, you can type in King Arthur
in the search bar. We also recommend you go just
look up stuff about King Arthur. There's plenty of stuff
out there. It's fascinating. Um you let's see, I said
(40:06):
search bar right, you did, sir, Okay, Well, then that
means it's time for listening. Man. I'm gonna call this
tribute to my father. For Megan, Josh, Chuck, and Jerry
wanted to write to tell you thank you mentally for
the show. My dad, Howard passed away nearly a year ago,
and while I don't think he listened before he passed,
I think he would have really enjoyed it. He was
(40:27):
a tinkerer and loved learning new things. In fact, when
I was younger and visited him during the summers, i'd
be alone most days at his apartment while he worked,
and he would encourage me to search random things on
the Internet and read about them to learn something new.
He would even leave me lists like the planet Jupiter,
the state of Wyoming, or the year. I thought at
(40:48):
the time it was pretty silly and only did it
a few times. But now as an adult, I've since
found your podcast a few months ago, and I find
it really fascinating and it reminds me of my dad
and has been really helpful to me when I get
down about him being gone, makes me happy to know
that he would probably think it's awesome that I spend
my days learning about things now. So, Megan from plain Oh, Texas,
(41:12):
thank you for that. Uh in memory of your father Howard.
I think he would like the show too. That's pretty cool.
I'm sorry he's not around to hear it. No, but
I mean we're carrying on his legacy exactly. Nice. So
I guess we need to do a show on the
year or the state of Wyoming. Um, never not Wyoming. Uh.
(41:32):
If you thanks a lot for that, Megan, that was
nice of you to share that. Um. If you want
to get in touch with me and Chuck to tell
us anything you like, you can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
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(41:54):
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(42:15):
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