archaeology is divided over the question of large-scale invasions in post-Roman times. More conservative opinion still favours mass folk movements from the Continent to account for the widespread changes in dress style, funeral rites and buildings. Other scholars point out that such changes can be brought about by other means. This alternative view, which I support, would have been inconceivable thirty years ago. Viewed as a piece of archaeological history, it seems to me that the Anglo-Saxon invasions are the last of a long list of putative incursions that archaeologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used as catch-all explanations when they encountered events they could not explain. It is far more healthy, intellectually speaking, to admit sometimes that we don’t fully understand a particular phenomenon, rather than to rush to an off-the-peg ‘solution’. Doubts can sometimes prove wonderfully stimulating.
As has been noted, however, wherever archaeologists have taken a close look at the development of a particular piece of British landscape, it is difficult to find evidence for the scale of discontinuity one would expect had there indeed been a mass migration from the Continent. We will see this in several case studies, including the Nene Valley (Chapter 4), West Heslerton in Yorkshire, and in the Witham Valley near Lincoln (both Chapter 8). I believe it will be a close study of the landscape that will clinch the archaeological case against large-scale Anglo-Saxon invasions, just as it did for their supposed ‘Celtic’ predecessors.
CHAPTER TWO The Origins and Legacy of Arthur
LIKE MANY CHILDREN, I found the tales of King Arthur enthralling. Everything about him seemed to fire the imagination. I did not fully understand the rather murky business surrounding his conception in Tintagel Castle; nor did I realise that the various elements of the tales came from different sources and periods. That didn’t matter, because the whole epic was driven by the energy that comes from a good story.
Arthur was the son of Uther Pendragon (King of Britain) and Igraine, the beautiful wife of Duke Gorlois of Cornwall. This union was made possible by the wizard Merlin, who altered Uther’s appearance to resemble that of the Duke, who was away fighting. Conveniently he was killed in battle shortly after Arthur’s conception. Uther married Igraine and Arthur became their legitimate son, growing up to be a handsome, generous, brave and virtuous prince.
According to legend, Britain could not find a king, so Merlin devised a test: the man who could withdraw a sword embedded in a stone was the rightful heir. Arthur duly accomplished the task. His reign was a busy one. As King of the Britons he fought the invading Anglo-Saxons, and won a famous victory at Mons Badonicus (Mount Badon). His final battle was at Camlann, where he opposed his usurping nephew Mordred. Arthur may have been killed on earth, but he was taken to the magic island of Avalon by the indispensable Merlin, where his wounds were cured. Other versions have only Arthur and one of his knights, Sir Bedevere, surviving the battle. Arthur proceeds to Avalon, while Bedevere is charged with returning his sword Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake. Arthur resides on Avalon to this day, and will return if Britain is ever in need of him.
Arthur’s capital was at Camelot, which in the Middle Ages was supposed to have been at Caerleon on the Welsh borders, and his court was organised around the Knights of the Round Table. All the knights were equal in precedence but they all vowed to uphold a code of ethics laid down by Arthur, who was one of their number. The best-known of the Knights of the Round Table were Bedevere, Galahad, Gawain, Lancelot, Mordred, Percival and Tristan. From Camelot the knights set out on their adventures, of which the most famous was the quest for the Holy Grail, the mystical chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper. The myth was centred around Percival, Galahad and Glastonbury, where the Grail was supposed to have been taken by Joseph of Arimathea, who looked after Christ’s body after the Crucifixion. Joseph’s staff, driven into the ground at Glastonbury, took root as the Holy Thorn.
Apart from Arthur and Merlin, the most celebrated character is Sir Lancelot, Arthur’s most trusted adviser. Lancelot had many adventures, of which the most hazardous was his love for Guinevere, Arthur’s Queen, which was foretold by Merlin. She returned his love, and they had a protracted adulterous relationship. Despite Arthur’s anger when he learned the truth he was strangely forgiving of his old friend. Lancelot missed the Battle of Camlann and subsequently learned that Guinevere had become a nun at Amesbury. He himself became a monk at Glastonbury, where he was told in a dream that he should ride at once to Amesbury. He arrived too late to be present at Guinevere’s death, and died of grief soon after.
If the myths surrounding the arrival in Britain of the ancient Celts, and perhaps the Anglo-Saxons too, have been discredited or are beginning to crumble, what of King Arthur? One might suppose that as he is portrayed as a heroic, mythical figure he would have been particularly vulnerable to critical assault. Strangely, however, the reverse seems to be the case: Arthur and his legends stubbornly refuse to die, despite everything that is hurled at them.
One reason for this is that the Arthurian legends are suffused with strange echoes of antiquity which seem to possess more than a faint ring of truth. The stories contain elements which would have been completely at home in the Bronze and Iron Ages: the importance of the sword Excalibur, its ‘disposal’ in a lake in which lived the Lady of the Lake, and the fact that Avalon is an island: Arthur’s ‘peerless sword, called Caliburn’, in the twelfth-century account of Geoffrey of Monmouth, ‘was forged in the Isle of Avalon’.1 Swords, lakes and islands were of known religious significance in prehistoric times, not just in Britain but across most of northern and central Europe. These are ancient myths, and there is good evidence to suggest that they survived in Britain throughout the Roman period too; that they even flourished during the Dark Ages, and survived well into medieval times.
Another element in the story with an ancient feel to it is the tale of the sword in the stone. The story does not appear in the principal earlier medieval writers, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Layamon or Chrétien de Troyes, and seems to have been introduced by writers of the Old French ‘Vulgate Cycle’, which I will discuss shortly. It must surely be explained as a mythic reference to the casting of a bronze sword. I have witnessed this process, and it is most spectacular: the orange-glowing sword is actually pulled from a two-piece stone mould by the metal-smith. It’s rather like the process of birth itself, and is altogether different from the shaping of an iron sword, which is fashioned by repeatedly hammering out and reheating an iron bar. Other early components in the Arthurian story include the tales surrounding the Holy Grail, although, as we will see, these are rather less ancient, and may contain Late Roman and Early Christian elements.
It could be argued that it was the popularity of the Arthurian legends that kept these myths alive, but there is an increasing body of evidence to suggest that a great deal of pre-Roman religion and ideology survived, in one form or another, into post-Roman times. These tales would have been recognised as being ancient, and would have been selected for inclusion within the Arthurian tradition for that very reason. The Roman period, in other words, does not represent a clean break with earlier traditions; we will see in Chapter 9 that certain important and supposedly ‘Anglo-Saxon’ introductions were actually earlier traditions continuing in altered forms—as one might expect after nearly four centuries of Roman rule.
Perhaps the main point to emphasise is that these ancient observances were living traditions that were shaped and recreated by subsequent generations for their own purposes. In many instances they were not intended to be taken literally, as history. They always existed within the realms of legend, myth and ideology. People in the past would have understood this. Sadly, we appear to have lost that sense of wonder or transcendence that can accept different realities for their own sake, without feeling obliged to burden them with the dead hand of explanation.
The principal modern proponent of King Arthur has been Professor Leslie Alcock, who believes that South Cadbury Castle in Somerset was the site of
