# Arthur, King of the Scots



## Dioltach (Mar 7, 2015)

According to an article (http://www.thenational.scot/culture/was-king-arthur-a-glaswegian-from-govan.732) King Arthur existed and came from Strathclyde in Scotland.

I hope the evidence on which this conclusion is based is a bit more compelling than what's in the article. On the other hand, having Arthur in Scotland fits with Gawain being from Orkney, and even with Owein being from Cumbria. There's also the story of the Carl of Carlisle, again putting Arthur in the same area.


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## delericho (Mar 7, 2015)

Yeah, I'd heard about this. According to the theory, Arthur's last battle was fought somewhere around Bridge of Allan, which is a village about an hour's drive from where I'm writing this. And, of course, the Castle Aaargh *is* Doune Castle, also not far from here. 

Edit: I spent about three years living in a flat in a part of Falkirk called Camelon, which outsiders mis-pronounce Camel-on, but which locals pronounce Came-lon. Of course, it's a small step from Came-lon to Camlann.

It would be an understatement to say I'm sceptical. Personally, I'm more inclined to think that Arthur is probably Alfred the Great, and the tales of his legend come about as a corrupted oral retelling of that chunk of history. But that's a guess based on exactly 0 evidence.


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## Dioltach (Mar 7, 2015)

My thought has always been that "Arthur" is related to the Irish title "Ard Rhi", or High King.
 [MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION]: interesting theory. There's probably at least some connection there, with the Anglo-Saxon population using older legends to draw parallels with their own struggle against the Danes.


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## Umbran (Mar 7, 2015)

I hate to say it, but no.  What we think of "King Arthur" today is an amalgam of several to many different people, fictionalized into myth.  Many a scholar has tried to say that he was one man, and pin down locations for the main events of his life, and, not surprisingly, been able to do so in different areas of the British Isles.  

This largely because there's not a shred of real physical evidence that the man existed.  When all you have is inconsistent retellings, it is easy enough to cherry-pick and interpret.  Placing King Arthur is rather like interpreting prophecy, in that sense.  I mean, the guy in the article just throws out the Battle of Badon Hill because it is inconvenient!

If you'd like a review of the various people who could have been Arthur, I can recommend The Mammoth Book of King Arthur, by Mike Ashley.  If you're looking at the known history, he comes up with about 20 suspects.


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## tuxgeo (Mar 7, 2015)

delericho said:


> < snip > . . .
> It would be an understatement to say I'm sceptical. Personally, I'm more inclined to think that Arthur is probably Alfred the Great, and . . .




Wasn't Alfred the Great a Saxon? Didn't Arthur reportedly die in a battle _against_ the Saxons?


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## Umbran (Mar 7, 2015)

tuxgeo said:


> Wasn't Alfred the Great a Saxon? Didn't Arthur reportedly die in a battle _against_ the Saxons?




Depending on what period you are taking your Arthur myth from, not specifically, no.  He falls in battle against Mordred's forces, which are not generally accepted as being Saxons.  The myth has been recast in several time periods.

If you're talking about the Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Artur", then the story is not really about the Saxon conquest of Britain, and flows basically thus:

The relationship between Gwenevere and Lancelot is discovered.  There's some mucking about, and eventually Lancelot flees to France.  Arthur follows, with a small army, to get Lancelot for treason.

While Arthur is in France, Mordred takes the throne.  When Arthur returns, Mordred refuses to let it go.  They fight at the Battle of Camlann.  Mordred is slain, and Arthur is sorely wounded, and is taken to Avalon.  

Now, some later authors will place this all at the time of the Saxon entry to Britain, and will have Mordred backed by Saxons, but other retellings have it that Mordred is backed by allies from his mother's family, which are largely from the western parts of Britain.


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## Dioltach (Mar 7, 2015)

tuxgeo said:


> Wasn't Alfred the Great a Saxon? Didn't Arthur reportedly die in a battle _against_ the Saxons?




A lot of these writings were used as propaganda, and used similarities and parallels between old tales to promote their own ideas and heroes.

A very unsubtle example comes at the end of Lachamon's _Brut_, a twelfth century history of the British (i.e. pre-Anglo-Saxon population) of Britain: after thousands of lines of about the British, it ends with the claim that "Arthur will return to save the _English_ in their hour of need" (emphasis mine).


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## Dioltach (Mar 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> Depending on what period you are taking your Arthur myth from, not specifically, no.  He falls in battle against Mordred's forces, which are not generally accepted as being Saxons.




Actually, the first reference to Mordred is as "Medraut" in the Annales Cambriae: it mentions the Battle of Camlynn, and simply states, "where Arthur and Medraut died". No clue about who he was, or whether they were enemies or on the same side.

Like I mentioned in my first post, I hope the learned professor has more proof of his claims than is given in the article if he's staking his reputation on it. That said, he could write a book about it and it will sell like hot cakes: there's always an audience for books like these.


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## tuxgeo (Mar 7, 2015)

The Battle of Camlann* is dated to AD 537 on Wikipedia; and Alfred the Great lived from AD 849 to AD 899 per the same website. 

I don't believe that Arthur, who fell in AD 537, could possibly have been the same person as Alfred the Great, who was born in AD 849. (Or did Arthur travel backward through time as some say Merlin did?)

_* no "*Battle of Camlynn*" is listed on Wikipedia._


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## Umbran (Mar 7, 2015)

tuxgeo said:


> The Battle of Camlann* is dated to AD 537 on Wikipedia;




Not quite.  WIkipedia notes that the earliest report of the Battle of Camlann records it to be in 537.  Mind you, that source is the Annales Cambriae, which is a 10th century document.  All that mention proves is that by the 10th century, folks were referring to it, so if thdre was an actual historical battle the're referring to, it must have been before the Annales.




> _* no "*Battle of Camlynn*" is listed on Wikipedia._




The battle took place before the concept of standardized spelling


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## Umbran (Mar 7, 2015)

Dioltach said:


> Actually, the first reference to Mordred is as "Medraut" in the Annales Cambriae: it mentions the Battle of Camlynn, and simply states, "where Arthur and Medraut died". No clue about who he was, or whether they were enemies or on the same side.




This is exactly why I said, "Depending on what period you are taking your Arthur myth from..."

That is the oldest surviving mention of Mordred, which is *not* the same as the first.  It is merely the first we know of.  It is known that the writers of the Annales were working from other sources.  Much of the story is apt to have been carried from before the Annales to after in oral tradition, or in other documents that are now lost to us.  The Annales probably makes no description because, by that time, it actually was a "everyone knows what happened" kind of thing, and the authors didn't feel any need to explicate the details.

To my knowledge, there is no version of the story from the older periods that have Mordred and Arthur as anything other than antagonists.  Having Mordred be Arthur's son may be a more recent alteration to the story, but they weren't ever friends.


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## Umbran (Mar 7, 2015)

I think ultimately, here's the basic problem:  Things attributed in the Arthur myth come from a wide swath of times.  While there's a general idea that Arthur sits in the time shortly after Rome left the British Isles, some elements of the story are outright Celtic, and thus probably pre-Roman. 

So, how do you say who Arthur was?  You have to cherry-pick some elements, and figure out if one person could have done those things, and where and when they actually happened.  And maybe you could find that some historical person of the day was leader in some of the battles attributed to Arthur, sure.  But some *other* king may have done the other battles.  So, is either of them really Arthur?


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## Dioltach (Mar 7, 2015)

I agree entirely -- like I already mentioned, the guy who wrote the article needs to have some pretty strong arguments. Personally, I think the historical value of the Arthurian legends is pretty minimal: there is evidence to support every single theory, or none at all. If we're to believe a certain movie, based on new "archaeological evidence" Arthur was Roman and his knights Russian.

To me, the real value of the Arthurian legends and related chivalric romances -- enough to devote two years of my MA degree to them -- lies in their mythological and psychological elements. Even in the corrupted, hand-me-down stories set in writing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries you can identify traces of sun god myths, year kings and death and rebirth cycles.

I once received a good grade for an essay where I used _The Empire Strikes Back_ to prove that Percival killed his own father. I was going to do further research -- possibly a PhD -- about how he's a sun god, but I got distracted by a career and other studies. Still, hugely fascinating, and I don't think anyone's made those arguments before.


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## Dioltach (Mar 7, 2015)

tuxgeo said:


> The Battle of Camlann* is dated to AD 537 on Wikipedia; and Alfred the Great lived from AD 849 to AD 899 per the same website.
> 
> I don't believe that Arthur, who fell in AD 537, could possibly have been the same person as Alfred the Great, who was born in AD 849. (Or did Arthur travel backward through time as some say Merlin did?)




I never said he was, I said he was being used for propaganda purposes. Much like Eisenstein did with his movie about Alexander Nevsky -- presenting an idealised hero from the past to champion the views of the present situation.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 7, 2015)

I don't believe we're ever going to find a single ruler to eh all of the Arthurian legends can be attributed, even as mere inspiration for stories.  He seems to be an amalgam.

However, I _have_ found evidence of Arthur, King of the Scotch:


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## Descartes (Mar 22, 2015)

I myself like the idea that King Arthur was a decendant of a roman-britain. After the fall of the roman empire in england there were many legionnaires that could have retired to stay with the families they had created. They didn't lose their since of tactics only their vast resources. So during the begining of the dark ages these people could have created a britain that drove back the saxon invasaions for awhile and had an event that so shook them that they fractured and were conquerored piecemeal.
JAK


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## Ryujin (Mar 22, 2015)

I think it quite likely that Arthur is an amalgam of many disparate stories, as Umbran suggested. Myths tend to be handed down from culture to culture, down through the millennia, changing to fit the ultimate tellers of the tales. For example the way that key incidents from The New Testament so closely reflect the far more ancient Horus myth, or even further back to Assyria and Babylon.

Anachronism starts to creep into the story. More familiar things and places replace the old. Now, were you to ask the average uninformed person on the street, he would likely tell you that Arthur wore late medieval plate armour, used a kite shield, and wielded something very akin to an Oakshott Type XIX.


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## Nellisir (Mar 22, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> I think it quite likely that Arthur is an amalgam of many disparate stories, as Umbran suggested.




This, basically. My focal point tends to be the story _Culhwch & Olwen_, from the Welsh _Mabinogion_. It's believed to be a 13th C. copy of an older tale. It's both amazing and disjointed, but notably (to me) is Arthur's almost complete lack of character. The first half of the adventures - the only ones really described - belong to Cei (Kay) and Bedwyr (Bedivere), and their companions. Then, suddenly, Cei parts ways with Arthur, and the rest of the story gets very dry as Arthur and his court complete the list of tasks. 

The poem fragment known as _Pa Gur_ is also interesting, because it also features Arthur, Cei, and Bedwyr. Arthur is seeking admittance to a hall ("Pa gur yv y porthaur?/"What man is the gatekeeper?"), and recounts the deeds of his most renowned followers: Cei and Bedwyr. Arthur's deeds don't come into play; it's almost entirely Cei who is the doer of deeds and slayer of men). To my eyes, Arthur's presence in the stories is very much a device for linking multiple stories, and the identity of Arthur is the latest incarnation of "the high king"; not a historical presence inasmuch as a fictional creation that gathers others together.

This doesn't mean that there wasn't a historical Arthur. Someone was the kernal of the idea, but the feats and deeds he accomplishes are later additions from other stories.

(Culhwch & Olwen names five recognizable Arthurian personages: Arthur, Guinevere, Gawain, Cei, and Bedwyr. Gawain is a stalwart warrior/knight; Bedwyr is Cei's constant companion, a one-handed spear fighter as fast as lightning; and Cei is the unstoppable force imbued with magical powers. He's also a very dirty fighter who absolutely does not fit into the "chivalrous" mode of thinking, which is suggested as one likely reason for his transformation in the Continental versions of the story that became the norm.)


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## gamerprinter (Mar 23, 2015)

Well cool, I might be related to King Arthur, then. My grandmother is an Irwin, and Grim Erinveine, one of her ancestors was the first King of Strathclyde and Athool of Dunkeld around the time of the Roman occupation of Britain and when Dal Riada was an Irish-Scot kingdom on both sides of the Irish Sea. Whereas Malcolm Irwin was the 4th king of Scotland, but that was during the 9th century. So perhaps Arthur is one of Grim's descendants, and therefore an ancestor of mine.

Of course Arthur was really a general and not a king, so likely I'm not a blood relative - as my blood was of the king, not the general of Strathclyde.


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## The Grassy Gnoll (Mar 30, 2015)

Ah yes but Arthur is buried under Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcano in Edinburgh...


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## Umbran (Mar 31, 2015)

G. Barrelhouse Esq. said:


> Ah yes but Arthur is buried under Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcano in Edinburgh...




There are actually several such mountains/hills named for Arthur throughout the isles, and they all claim to be where he is buried.

Well, I mean, they don't literally claim anything, as they're big piles of earth and rock, and don't talk much.  People claim it for them.


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