Arthur of Albion

James Archer, The death of King Arthur

There is no more British myth than that of Arthur and the Round Table, the so-called ‘Matter of Britain.’  Arthur is depicted as hero-saviour.  If the original Albion was a mythical giant, the huge personality of Arthur is his present embodiment, a giant figure who overshadows almost all others from both history and fable.

John Garrick, The death of King Arthur

Arthur’s return

“Vain it is, to seek for the grave of Arthur.” (Y beddau/ The graves)

The Matter of Britain is woven into the geography of the British Isles: from Lyonesse (Cornwall), through Glastonbury and Cadbury (Camelot) to Arthur’s Seat near Edinburgh.  This is not historical geography, though, but rather living myth and prophecy, because of the promise that King Arthur is not dead and shall return.

As is well known, Arthur was mortally wounded fighting his nephew Mordred, but he did not die on the field of battle at Camlann.  Instead, he was carried away to be healed by the fay maidens Morgan and Nimue.  From this myth of fairy salvation, a wider supernatural nature developed.  Layamon, in his Brut of around 1190, recorded that:

“Bruttes ileveð ɜete þat he beon on live,

And wunnien in Avalun mid fairest alre alfen,

And lokieð evere Bruttes ɜete whan Arður comen liðe”

“The British believe yet that he is alive,

And dwells in Avalon with the fairest of all the elves

And the British ever yet expect when he shall return.”

As we have seen from the old Welsh verse, Arthur lacked any known grave, so that the story of his survival was fostered (William of Malmesbury,  The deeds of the kings of England, 1125).  This idea became firmly established amongst the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons, and then spread to the English:

“He is yet in Avalon, awaited of the Britons; for they say and deem he will return from whence he went and live again.” (Wace, Roman de Brut, 1155)

“Yet your relations the Britons deny his death and regularly expect his coming.” (Henry of Huntingdon, History of England, 1154)

Monastic writer Gerald of Wales was particularly outspoken on the subject.  In De principis instructione (of about 1195) he mentioned the discovery of Arthur’s tomb at Glastonbury, adding:

“… the legends had always encouraged us to believe that there was something otherworldy about his ending, that he had resisted death and had been spirited away to some far-distant spot.” (I, 20)

Gerald returned to the subject in his Speculum ecclesiae of about 1216, in which his views on his fellow Welshmen’s beliefs about Arthur are made rather more forcefully:

“Many tales are told and many legends have been invented about King Arthur and his mysterious ending.  In their stupidity the British people maintain that he is still alive…. [and that] the King will return in strength and power, to rule over the Britons, as they think… wherefore they await his coming, as the Jews their Messiah…” (II, 8-10)

Gerald then repeated, in greater detail, his account of the discovery of the king’s tomb at Glastonbury Abbey.  His reason for writing was to support the English Plantagenet claims to dominion over Wales, whilst the Abbey needed the money from visitors to pay for repairs.  The tomb was fairly evidently a fake- not least the lead cross marking it, which announced that Arthur lay buried there “in the Isle of Avalon.”  There seems little reason to record on a tomb where it is, as anyone reading the inscription can probably be assumed to know where they are already…  Arthur’s remains had not been unearthed and the legend (like the king) lived on.

Holinshed, several centuries later in 1578, told much the same story as the earlier writers.  People believed that “King Arthur was not dead, but carried away by the fairies into some pleasant place, where he should remain for a time and then return and reign again in as great authority as ever.” (Chronicles, Book V, c.14)  In The fall of princes (Book VIII, c.24), Lydgate had developed the story further:

“He is a king y-crowned in Faërie,

With his sceptre and pall, and with his regalty,

Shalle resort, as lord and sovereigne,

Out of Faërie and reign in Bretaine,

And repair again the oulde Rounde table.”

In the Morte d’Arthur Malory was more circumspect on the subject “I find no more written in my copy of the certainty of his death” (c.167).  Later, he expanded: “Some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our lord Jesus Christ into another place and men say that he will come again and he shall win the holy cross. But many say that there is, written upon his tomb, this verse: ‘Hic jacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futuris.“” (c.168)  (Here lies Arthur, the once and future king.)  Rather as with the Glastonbury inscription, we may note that curious declaration on the monument- that this is the grave of a king who is, in fact, not actually dead at all…

Malory’s vagueness was inherited by Tennyson in the Idylls of the King, in which Arthur- just before his departure for Avilion- merely observes that “Merlin sware that I should come again/ To rule once more; but let what will be, be.” (The passing of Arthur, lines 192-3).  The Reverend Robert Hawker was rather more assertive in a verse he addressed to Tennyson:

“They told me in their shadowy phrase,

Caught from a tale gone by,

That Arthur, King of Cornish praise,

Died not, and would not die.

Dreams they had, that in fairy bowers

Their living warrior lies,

Or wears a garland of the flowers

That grow in Paradise.” (To Alfred Tennyson)

In any case, though, by the mid-nineteenth century the belief in the King’s survival and centuries’ long slumber was very well established in popular belief and needed little bolstering from literature.

So it is that Arthur sleeps with the fairies in many caves and hills across the land of Britain.  He is to be found in Scotland under Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh, and beneath the Eildon Hills; in Wales he slumbers at Caerleon, Craig-y-Ddinas, Llandegai, Ogo’r Dinas, on Anglesey, in a cave beneath Snowdon and at Pumsaint near Lampeter.  In England there are tales of the waiting king in numerous locations: at Sewingshields, Ravenglass, Blencathra, Dunstanburgh, Freeburgh, Richmond Castle, Alderley Edge and South Cadbury, to name but a few locations.

To each of these sites folk tales of the discovery and waking of the king are attached.  These locations are, too, still capable of generating romantic fiction, as in Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The moon of Gomrath in which magic, faery lore and myth are all entwined.

The meaning of the myth

The sleeping hero who will return to save his people is not a unique myth.  It is also told of Francis Drake in England whilst across Europe Arthur, as well as other more local kings and heroes, are said to be sleeping beneath mountains and hills awaiting their call.

What is the source of these widely spread ideas?  The origin for Arthur must have been the defeat of the British by the invading English in the sixth and seventh centuries and a yearning for recovery and restitution, but the story was subsequently adopted enthusiastically by the conquering English too.  Why was that?  They had no need of its comfort in the face of dispossession and defeat.

The attraction of the Arthurian legend is that offers hope and reassurance in a nation’s darkest hours, of course, and may confer too some sense of special status.  Perhaps, in addition, there is some very much deeper resonance with ancestral dead.  Arthur was taken by the fays to fairyland beneath the hills; the fays have long been associated with tumuli and other ancient sites and, very possibly, both strands of popular belief link us to very ancient concepts of ancestors sleeping beneath the barrows and offering us guidance and protection.

At the very least, the thought of a returning hero gives encouragement and support.  To quote (completely out of their original context) the lyrics of Asian Dub Foundation in their song Naxalite:

“A prophecy that we will rise again
Again and again until the land is ours
Again and again until we have taken the power.”

What the sleeping hero represents, above all then, is a rallying point.  Arthur is a focus for resistance to an unspecified enemy or threat.  He belongs to the land, to the people, and we identify with him and derive strength from the knowledge that he is a permanent confirmation of our right to live and belong.

Edward Burne Jones

For more discussion of the Arthurian myth, see my 2022 book The Spirits of the Land- Faeries and the Soul of Britain (available on Amazon/KDP as a paperback or e-book) and my earlier Who’s Who in Faeryland? (Green Magic Publishing).

‘The true yield of the land’- British fairies in their landscape

As some readers of this blog may already be aware, I also write the British fairies blog on WordPress.  This latest posting sits somewhere between my two sites, but as it takes a more pragmatic and non-folklore perspective, I put it here.

If you’re determined to find a rationalising and ‘psychological’ explanation for the belief in fairies, a fruitful approach may be to view them from the perspective of the British landscape.  It’s arguable that they are a medium for representing aspects of the land and climate.  One way of explaining the fairy faith is to see it as a way of articulating what’s sometimes called the genius loci- the spirit of place- that people have sensed over the centuries in particular places.

Paul Nash, Earth home, or The fortress

Spirits of place

Many British writers and artists have responded in mystic fashion to the British landscape.  The landscape visions of William Blake and Samuel Palmer were shared by later artists, especially by Paul Nash. His writings disclose a strong sense of the unique character of places and the power of those with links to antiquity.  Of Wittenham Clumps, which he painted repeatedly, he said:

“I felt their importance long before I knew their history…  [The landscape was] full of strange enchantment, on every hand it seemed a beautiful, legendary country, haunted by old gods long forgotten.”

Later in his life, Nash encountered the stones of Avebury.  Writing in Country Life in May 1937, on The Life of the Inanimate Object, he explained that “it is not a question of a particular stone being the house of the spirit- the stone itself has its spirit, it is alive.” This idea of animating inanimate objects was very old indeed, “a commonplace in fairy tale and and occurs quite naturally also in most mythologies.”  Sketching at Silbury Hill near Avebury, he recalled that-

“I felt that I had divined the secret of that paradoxical pyramid.  Such things do happen in England, quite naturally, but they are not recognised for what they are- the true yield of the land, indeed, but also works of art; identical with the intimate spirit inhabiting these gentle fields, yet not the work of chance or the elements, but directed by an intelligent purpose ruled by an authentic vision.”

For Nash there was magic in ancient and significant places that was still real and tangible, even in the mid-twentieth century.  His art tried to express and to contact those deep forces of the English landscape.

Paul Nash, Silbury Hill

In traditional folklore, some fairies have been inextricably linked to specific locations.  The brownies are the best example, being tied to an individual farm or dwelling, but spirits might also be associated with particular natural features- caves, pools, groves or fords, for instance.  Morgan Daimler in her recent book Fairies called these ‘land spirits.’

The intimate associations with certain landscape features has encouraged writers to speculate upon the nature and role of these beings.  In her book Faerycraft Emily Carding describes fairies as nature spirits of place who are “the inhabitants and guardians of the inner landscape of our world, just as we are of the outer landscape.”  They are “the spiritual life force within the land.”  In Sirona Knight’s conception, “the strength of fairies comes directly from the power of the land.  The generations buried in the land give it tremendous sacred power.  This sacred power is the power of the fairies.” (Faery magick, c.1)  Other writers have linked the fays to ley lines; they are ancient spirits magically tied to certain places of the earth.

David Inshaw, Silbury by night.

‘These gentle fields‘- the personality of the land

Fairies may equally be a means of expressing the particular landscape character of different parts of the country.  I have discussed these manifestations in detail on the British fairies blog, but the various fairy forms may be reflections of:

• the unique conditions (and perils) of certain English rivers and ponds, which are personified as lake maidens and river spirits, many of whom are perilous to humans.  Examples are Peg Powler on the upper Tees and the widespread Jenny Green Teeth;
• the harsher conditions of the Highlands, the less forgiving nature of the mountains and lochs, might perhaps have been animated through the monstrous water beasts that are such a feature of Scottish folklore.  The kelpies, shellycoats and other man-eating beasts of the far north are born of tougher climes.

I always hesitate to be too reductionist and determinist about such matters, but it is undoubtedly the natural tendency of people to imbue the world around them with personality; the tiddy men of the Fens may be another good example, but many of the ‘tribes’ of British fairies (pixies, spriggans, hyter sprites and the like) are quite parochial in their occurrence and might, as such, symbolise or portray particular features or traits of that locality.

Even if we reject such close ties between fairy character and the territories they inhabit, I think we can still see the fays as a response of the British people to the British environment.  Even if they are not characterisations of specific landscape features, the still reflect a particular spirit of place.  From a common core of elvish traits, over the medieval centuries the British have elaborated their many fairy tribes, each unique to its region.

Another conception of fairy nature is to see them as protectors of the land.  This aspect of their nature is particularly emphasised in the modern fairy faith, but it has older roots, at least as far back as the nineteenth century.  In the Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The moon of Gomrath, two novels rooted imbued with the spirit of place of Alderley Edge,  Alan Garner portrayed how the elves might fall ill as Britain is progressively polluted.  From this it is a short step to envisage the fairies of Albion as being dedicated to the preservation of their land- a role I have dramatised myself in The elder queen and in Albion awake!

David Inshaw, Silbury Hill on  starry night

The spirits of Albion

The resonance of these ideas derives from a tight bundle of associations.  Fairies have very often been connected in folklore with standing stones and megalithic burial chambers.  They are thus in some way related to our ancestral dead and, by conceiving of them as spirits of place, we are reaffirming our deep roots in the land, re-establishing connections to racial and national origins and reasserting a sense of belonging to, relating to and respecting the land on which we live and depend.

Fairies and elves may therefore be seen as personifications or embodiments of the spirit of Albion.

David Inshaw, Storm over Silbury Hill

For more discussion of this general subject, see my 2022 book The Spirits of the Land- Faeries and the Soul of Britain (available on Amazon/KDP as a paperback or e-book).