Miller was terrific. He also said the same thing Amy's prof did. When in doubt, use Malory as the standard.

I guess...using Malory...but I am a purist and like to get as close to the original as possible - that is why I did 5 years of Keltic studies trying to ferret out the truth behind the embellishments.

I love the way White treats the entire Arthur-Pellinore relationship. While most of the knights are critical of Pellinore and think he's daft for always going off to fight the dragon, Arthur always stands behind Pellinore. But there are two other dynamics in the writing. One, Arthur knows that Pellinore is his physical superior, and two, Arthur is just a wee bit privately patronizing of Pellinore and you can read it, although Arthur is careful to hide it. But to me, "Camelot" ruined White. The though of a singing, dancing Arthur, Lancelot, or Merlin, makes me shudder.

It's difficult to know what the "original" and the "truth behind the embellishments" are, because the Celts largely handed it down as oral stories and Malory's was the first extensive written chronicle of the legend.

And a vacant but gorgeous Goulet was the nasty icing on the whole mess. Yes, I recall Pellinore more vividly than almost any other character. White's Arthur seemed to me to be resigned to being the "nice guy" of the tale, but not necessarily the most effective or happiest. Was there something father-son in the Pellinore-Arthur relationship? He was Indeed, a teeny bit patronizing, but in such a way that Pellinore would never have detected it, I think...

Malory cut his characters out of whole cloth felted together out of Welsh, French and Teutonic sources...most unusual. Perhhaps it could be thought of as an anthology in that way...! (You accessment of the difficulties of determining the original sources is what keeps me at it...I still chase down sources and the internet has made the chore much more immediate. You would not believe the bookmarks...!!!)

To a certain extent, I don't think it matters what the truth is behind the embellishments. All in all, the Arthurian legends are a very dynamic and exciting set of stories, but just that--stories. Their power lies in the fact that they can be changed and rearranged without losing any of their integrity (except, of course, in the case of "Camelot.") I find even bad versions of the Arthur story fascinating, because they each take a slightly different view of the legend. Even the Monty Python movie is on of my all-time faves!

Was that an African swallow???!!!

One must know these things when one is King...*giggle* My art teacher once said that people had been telling him about how wonderful "The Holy Grail" was, and reciting parts for him, and so when he finally saw it, he was disappointed because he thought the people reciting it was funnier than the actual movie! In my English department, you'd better have the whole thing memorized or you can't even get into a conversation!

One of the things of which my son is most proud is that his Mom introduced him to Monty Python...and that was one of their best efforts. (The Geologists all have it memorized, also!)

Hooray! I knew geology was my lost career for a reason! I guess they recite when they're crawling around in caves, eh?

...and around the camp fires at night...(mine, as well!) They can also do a mean version of "I'm a Lumberjack..."

That's funny, because all my geology teacher seemed to know was "Rocky Mountain High" and other crappy, geology related tunes like that! *giggle*

Egad!!! Well, I hung with the grad students and the young profs when David (son)was pursuing his degrees. That'll keep you young better than hanging with the full professors who tend to be tedious or lecherous or both...*grin* I know of which I speak! (Rocky Mountain High??!! Bleah!)

You can go farther than that. John Denver (ugh)!

BTW, grad students and young profs are no less lecherous than the full tenured variety. It's just that most of the younger academics don't need to use their jobs to get laid.

When Stephanie drove me to Denver last year we kept hearing John singing in our heads, but nothing on the radio the entire time we were in the state ( about a week)...they must know something...!)

Very true--although I think the difference is that universities wouldn't hesitate to fire someone like myself, whereas a tenured professor might get to talk his/her way out of the situation...good grief, how do we keep ending up on this subject? This professor with bad taste in music wasn't a letch, either--he was very funny. He had a shirt that said "A professor is someone who talks in other people's sleep," and when we were talking when he was trying to talk, he's say, "Guys, it's 'Miller Time'" (Miller was his last name.)

...John, this is true about lechery not being just for the aged, but it is so much more becoming on them when they are young that it is a grace instead of a fault...!

and lest anyone wonder...it did not work with me, fortunately...the getting laid part...I just laughed graciously and ducked under their arms pinioning me in the corner. Never lost a friend that way nor made an enemy and kept my integrity intact at the same time - not all that easy...!

Yech! If any of my students pinioned me in the corner, I'd kick him in the ballocks!

How much more Arthurian can you get than lechery and debauchery and lusting after someone else's wife/husband/SO ??? Merlin was their tenured professor...!

It was not the students pinioning me in the corner - it was the silver-haired gentlemen in the expensive suits or the natty tweeds visiting from another university which usually did it...! I suppose I should have been flattered, but I was just amused that they thought I was one of the few women in the place who could talk intelligently with them when they were sober and still looked good when they were slightly buzzed!

God help me! I hope I have an extraordinarily intimidating professor husband then to keep the roving hands of lecherous old coots off of me!

I did it just fine...professors by nature are a tiny bit timid when faced with a female of intelligence and not of student age...one who might even be considered an equal. As I said, a sense of humor is a must, and I never told my ex about it.

Amy, if you want a guy like you described, you will end up with a replica of the one I am currently trying to come to terms with....You really do not want that!

You're probably right--but there are some things in life that you just have to experience to believe! What I really want is a husband to fuss over me, who "might not beteem the winds of heaven/Visit her face too roughly." I hate being fussed over for the most part, but when certain men do it...ah! I love it!

Sorry to burst into "Hamlet" there for a moment!

...i know...I truly Know! It makes one feel like a queen and blessed in all things...I guess to get one, there must be compromises and take some things one wishes she did not have to do...(Lovely to see Hamlet - Olivier, of course )

Back to Arthurian business, I'm still reading "The Crystal Cave" and I'm starting to get annoyed at how easily Merlin manages to wiggle out of the stickiest of situations! It's becoming like those old-time chapter plays, where there's a cliffhanger at the end of each week, where you think there's no way the hero is going to get out of this one, and he somehow manages to! I guess James Bond movies are the same way...but not what I'd expect from a book about Merlin!

Give him a chance - he pays for his "easy escapes" in most original ways...!

If you make it through half of The Hollow Hills and are still sick of it, then I will figure you to be the sort who does not like Mary Stewart, but I think she did a GREAT job, and you will too, it you allow her to get her story told.

BTW, have you ever read the source book for Merlin: Vita Merlini???

Marcia, this reminds me of you trying to sell me on the "virtues" of Brussels sprouts. It doesn't matter if I ever go to England, I will never order them by choice and will never again consume them by will. They will have to be forced down my gullet.

OK, she can stop reading now... I just would hate for people to miss out on something fantastic (IMHO) just because of some preconcieved notion...I shall shut up and get out of the selling mode - I am obviously very poor at it!

no, just a tad too evangelistic in tone...

Understood. (Merlin was like that in the earliest references to him...)

The truth is I'm probably too evangelistic about boxing because of its (rightly deserved) poor image, and because I know another side that unfortunately hasn't reared it's beautiful head too much lately.

It does when the Olympics come around. Unfortunately, they do not cover collegiate boxing enough...if at all. I really do understand and I appreciate your passion for the game. Do not change one iota, please! We need enthusiasm!

I will keep reading--once a friend and I made a bet that if I would read Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, then she would wear a dress, and after about 2 1/2 books, I told her I gave up. And believe me, they were a lot worse than Mary Stewart! I think I can stick it out for at least the rest of this book...

ok...Anne Rice is far too weird...

And her characters are so tedious! They're all rich and handsome and lecherous--I can only take so much of that before I think, "Okay, is there someone in this story who doesn't look like a Botticelli painting?" Geez Louise! After two books, I didn't care what happened to any of the characters anymore! I think she should have stopped at one book!

I think that is what gets to me, as well, tho I know someone who read her books. Not sure of his opinion - we did not discuss it, but there are those out there...I am sure I read stuff which would bore him, too.

Anne Rice is making money hand over fist--and not one dollar of it was once mine!

Nor mine...we agree!!!

Me too! We all agree!

Hmmm...has anyone beside me been to Tintagel, South Cadbury Hillfort ("camelot"), Glastonbury and the places in Cornwall with Arthurian connections?

Good grief, Marcia, the farthest I've ever been from home was New York City!

...at your age, that was about the extent of my travels, as well =)

I think I'm a weirdo, though, because almost all of the other GAs have been to Europe, but not me. I don't even know that I want to go because the past few times I've traveled, I've had really bad anxiety attacks and had to go home.

If you are not adverse to medication - there are things you can take for the duration of the flight. That was my worst time - claustrophobic, dontcha know... I got over that by talking to a very charming British gentleman who needed an anonymous female to talk to...and I was it. A most pleasant way to spend a long flight...*smile*

Knowing you (as I do know you...), once you got there you would be so enraptured they could never keep you home again. That is the way it was with me...*sigh* But, that was another life time...

Oh, I hope so...at some point, I'm going to have to go to the Bodleian to look at Byron's manuscripts!

You just need someone in the seat beside you to distract you with his incredible eyes and sweet mouth and velvety colduroys...

Yes, I know...I shall have to tell you a little story about that sometime... And it isn't riding in an airplane that makes me anxious--it' just that when I'm away from home for more than a day or so, I start having this overwhelming feeling that I have to get home. It makes me nervous just thinking about it.

A slight case of agoraphobia? Not all that unusual, actually. You just need the right companion and enough interesting stuff to anticipate that home is just a place you have to go back to when you'd rather remain in the British Museum (me) or the Bodleian Library (both of us)...

How about the Victoria and Albert? I'd stay all month in the British Museum!

Oh, indeed! Yes! We stayed on Cromwell Road which runs right by the V&A...knew it well. There is so much to see and do in London - it is my all time favorite city. Wait'll you get into Westminster Abbey...! You'll need hours there, as well.

Did Wales exist then, or was it just a bunch of battling Celts and tree-hugging Picts?

The original Britons were the Welsh. Cymri, actually... Welsh is a name like "American Indian"

The Picts were the original Highlanders of Scotland before the Gaelic tribes got there. Do not confuse the two. I have spent a lot of time researching things like this...perhaps it deserves its own topic! The Picts were so thoroughly obliterated that only a few carved stones remain of their once-flourishing language and culture.

AnneH, I am telnetting which allows me to see what happened to your comments which I read briefly. It says they were censored and scribbled which means deleted. You did not do it...I cannot do it. How does this happen to so many of your posts?! You need a new ISP !

Since Anne's posts keep disappearing on us, she sent this comment via Email: Marcia - a fascinating book by C.S. Lewis called that Hideous Strength brings Merlin back to life in about 1950, its an extraordinary book but has some interesting ideas about all things Arthurian and gives some insights into what it was like in those times, woods, forests and all sorts of wild things in a wet, mistly land, little enclaves of Roman/British forts and small towns. You get the feel as Merlin speaks. Try it. Its most unusual.

The Picts were the original Highlanders of Scotland before the Gaelic tribes got there. Do not confuse the two. I have spent a lot of time researching things like this...perhaps it deserves its own topic! The Picts were so thoroughly obliterated that only a few carved stones remain of their once-flourishing language and culture.

Something is happening - I am overloading Spring, I guess. I did not post the above comment twice, and I do not know what deleted Anne's comments...!

Ah, it must be Morgan le Fay at work!

Must be! Who's the threat to her? Surely not I...

Hmm...any anti-pagans around here?

Curious - have not heard of that term...I imagine Jerry Falwell might fall into that category along with the rest of that ilk...(leaving that alone so I don't get stoned by the "true" believers...)

No wonder you've never heard of the term...I just made it up!

*lol* Are you sure you are not the little sister that I never had? I make up words all the time and put them in my fictionary.

My sister is going to start a campaign to put "monstrophic" in the dictionary--her own creation.

Good word! She can be in "our" family, as well =)

You got anthropologically technical without really answering my question. I've heard of the Cymri, but Wales (the country) didn't really exist then, nor did any "nation."

The Cymraeg from Cymru are a celtic people who displaced the original small-statured dark people who inhabited what is now Wales in about 500BCE. The small dark people were probably from the Iberian area. The Celts ruled Britain until the Romans arrived followed by the Anglo-Saxon-Jute tribes and the Danes. The Norman were the last.

Did those small-statured dark people have a name? Or were they eradicated like the Picts?

Technically, they did not have a "Wales" (Cambria to the Romans) until they got beaten back into their mountains. The Romans considered the land not worth the fight (just as they did the highlands of Scotland and the Picts) and left them that part of Britain. What the Romans could not tolerate was the Druids who held the country together with their religious faith. The Romans eventually slaughtered every last one of them in the Menai Straits between North Wales and the Isle of Anglesea - a holy island o the Druids.

No one has named them - in fact so little of their legacy remains that only anthropological differences in their bones is what separates them from the rest of the population. There was probably some interbreeding and there are still smallish dark (Caucasian)complected Welsh, but they tend to remain in the hills and cwms and not mingle in the rest of the world. Gypsy is sometimes attached to them, but it is not correct - from an entirely differect origin and very much earlier than the gypsies showed up o the record.

How did these dark people get to Wales from Iberia? Shipwrecks?

Migrated over the land bridge connecting Britain with the continent during the last ice age.

Oh, I always forget about that. I said "shipwrecks" because I was thinking of how the Black Irish came about.

Yes, but they also had large migrations. They were Celts as well as the red Irish were...just from different areas. You cannot get a thriving populace complete with myths and legends and culture from just shipwrecks, though they make interesting stories!

Yes, but you know what storytellers we Irish are, especially when we're in our cups!

No worse than the rest of the Celtic Bards. That is the way Merlin Emrys made his living - being a Bard - but you are not reading that one anymore....*sigh*

Sorry! I really shouldn't be reading anything at all, considering how much stuff I'm supposed to be doing... It's funny how many Arthurian books, at least those told from a first-person viewpoint, begin with, "Well, the bards tell it this way, but here's what really happened..."

Indeed! It is as though they were there are the inception and have the "only true version."

I guess the characters telling the stories didn't have much respect for the bards because they were paid to make people sound more important and brave than they really were--it reminds me of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (again) and Sir Robin's minstrels! "And so they had to eat Sir Robin's minstrels...and there was much rejoicing..."

That is where the term "singing for your supper" came from - the bards travelled from estate or castle to castle trading news and stories for food - a sort of travelling periodical. Some go respect - but most were pretty pathetic, I gather! (Poor Sir Robin, I remember him well...)

Alas, I forgot poor Yorick!

Yorick was a bard? I thought he was a fool.

...a fellow of infinite jest...the king's Jester (which was not a fool but a person who brought wise and clever levity to conversations when they sot too contentious.

Alas, Poor Yorick...I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite wit etc etc. John was responding to my all too often misquoted "I knew him well" Well was not in Shakepseare's dialogue.

infinite wisdom...it is late I should close the book!

I may be mistaken, but I think that was one of the many liberties Olivier took with Shakespeare when he committed Hamlet to film. I do know they should have fired the director (Olivier) and told the lead actor (Olivier) to stick to the script. He's was no Robin Williams, that one.

I have followed my own text version of Hamlet so carefully I have every passage he used and cut marked them well. It has been a very long time since I did any refreshing my memory in there - you could well be correct...but I loved his Hamlet...*sigh* (Of course he took liberties - it was not intended to be a literal version!)

hope this topic's not been evacuated... read much of the previous discussion, found it fascinating... read a few books on this topic, and was most impressed by goodrich's (which marcia, i think, referenced)... from what i know, goodrich is a respected historian, and it seems hard to dismiss her conclusions, radical though some of them may be... the matter of arthur's historicity i believe pretty firmly established, and her other points well worth consideration... mainly, (and i'm citing from memeory, and it's been a few years since i read her book, or anything else arthurian) the idea of arthur's kingdom being located to the north (being born, himself, in galloway, near the candida casa)... the idea of guinevere as a pictish princess, and lancelot (actually, according to goodrich, 'angus'- lancelot merely being a linguistic corruption from middle-french) being a pictish king... of the historic injustice done to the reputations of both (the alleged infidelity, a fabrication invented to entertain bored french courtiers)(who required, undoubtedly, a lot of entertaining)... and- maybe most interesting of all, to me, the idea that the geographic location of avalon was a small islet on the west coast of the isle of man... at any rate, would like to know your impressions of her conclusions... and would encourage anyone that hasn't read her book to do so (i found it magnificent)...

Aloha, Nick! Not vacated or evacuated by any means. It is one of my most favorite things to discuss (as you have seen.) My computer is surrounded by shelves containing all manner of Arthuriana from Idylls of the King to the most recent Archaeological books on Somerset (Glastonbury and South Cadbury Hillfort); including my favorite non-fiction by Goodrich and favorite historical fiction by Mary Stewart discussed above...and the infamous Geoffrey of Monmouth as well as Nennius. Interesting you discuss t e Picts, who are so elusive as to give me fits of frustration when I try to dig into their origins and culture. North of England-cum-Scotland is also the site for Vita Merlini so imo, it is most probable that some of the historical personages in this epic were native to the area. What conclusions have you come to as to the origin and roots of the Picts. Keltic or no? I would love to discuss this with you because we know so very little about them. Their language had no progenitors.

Oh yes, my opinions on the conclusions of Goodrich...There is nothing I can think of (it has been a few years) with which I disagree. Her work is so thoroughly footnoted and her sources so impeccable... There is no doubt she has compiled what there is to KNOW about these shadowy characters who have held our imaginations for these aeons.

yes, the picts rather haunt the imagination... though i've probably not researched the matter as thoroughly, i know what you mean re: the frustration... there's so little out there that i've seen, and much of what one can find is trivial or half-informed... (any sources you can share would be appreciated)... i believe the picts to be celts, though why i hold this belief currently eludes me (as i said, been awhile since i read or thought about this... and most of my good books, with the exception of goodrich's 'king arthur', and a few others, are in storeage back in texas)... this topic, however, has wetted my appetite, and i'll be doing some reading the next few days... should admit i found all of goodrich's conclusions especially gratifying... each of them seemed to confirm a thing i wished to be true (which is no way to approach research, i realize... though usually, i think, the way it IS approached)... the claims of the english for arthur have always rubbed me the wrong way (he being so thoroughly un-english in his... reputation)... goodrich's book has given these opinions (or conclusions) a place to hang their hats, which is very cool... (do seem to remember it theorized that the picts were first-wave celts, as much as a thousand years ahead of the rest... and that their language was aboriginal... 'bog man', or whatever, mixed with whatever form of celtic tongue that would have been used at that time)(if, indeed, any)...