King Arthur's [i]REAL[/i] Sword

K

Ken Cox

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I have read recently (can't remember where) how King Arthur actually had two swords.

One sword we know of as Excalibur.

The other, his everyday carry and self-defense sword, sounded from the description like a Keltic Leaf sword.

The short Keltic sword had a name, and purportedly people knew Arthur more by this short sword than by the great Excalibur.

Interesting idea, except we mostly consider Arthur a mythical figure, invented and embellished upon by a succession of story-tellers.

However, some historians connect King Arthur with Artur, a Keltic/Roman whom I think came under a title called Dux Bellorum.
Apparently, the Romans would select a son from one of the traditional warlords or chieftains of a recently conquered place, take him back to Rome, raise and train him in the arts of war, and then return him to his native land as a Roman ruler.

This practice allowed the Romans to maintain an acceptable fiction that the local peoples ruled themselves in allegiance to Rome.
One of the two Herods, the king who sat on the throne of Judea during the time of Christ, came to power in this manner.

Has anyone else heard a story about King Arthur's Keltic short sword, or its name?
I don't think I dreamed it, but my memory has gotten weird in recent years.

Post Script:
Apparently, UBB code does not work in the Topic Heading.
I meant for REAL to appear in italics and not regular caps.
Can't change it now.
Sorry 'bout that.


------------------
Luke 22:36, John 18:6-11, Freedom
If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.

[This message has been edited by Ken Cox (edited 04-09-2001).]
 
IIRC the whole Excalibur thing is due to Malory.

------------------
"..it is foolishness and endless trouble to cast a
stone at every dog that barks at you.."
 
As one who has studied Arthur as much as is possible for a quasi-mythical figure, I would place him on hte time scale some time well past the 410 CE date when the last of the Eagles were withdrawn from Britannia. This would mean that he grew up after the Romans had departed. It does not mean, however, that the locals had given up on Roman culture. This culture had many benefits for those on top and even for most of the way down the social pecking order, so there was a selfish interest in maintaining that system as long and as solidly as possible. My own guess is that he was raised in a Romanesque household, but one with growing Celtic influences as the Romans grew farther into the past. It does appear that there was a war leader who arrested the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain for about 50 years around 500 CE, it is thought by using the heavy cavalry tactics of the Late Roman Empire. Imagine yourself as a basically infantry Saxon warhost crossing a field and suddenly a body of some 200 armored cavalry on heavy horses come charging down on you, thrusting at you with their 4-5 yard long konta(light lances, used overhand, not couched) and guiding their horses with their shield arms. When their konta break, as they must, the cavalry draw their 30+" spathae and start into slashing at you as they continue to ride you down. It was some time before they discovered the classic cefense against a cavalry charge, a line bristling with sharp long pikes, so the result was a panicked flight. This was, of course, the worst possible choice, as the cavalry could cut you down at leisure.br Whether this war leader was Arthur is unknown, although the Welsh ballads and epic poems certainly claim that it was. These ballads and epic poems were the basis for the work of Geraldus Cambriensis(Jerry the Welshman), then Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of England", followed by the French High Medieval troubadours and their torturing of the story (my opinion)by such as Chretien de Troyes, and finally Sir Thomas Mallory's famous "Le Morte d'Arthur". BTW, if you ever can get a hold of it, Aubrey Beardsley did the illustrations for an eedition around the turn of the century, and it is something. Dover books has a paperback of the illustrations available, but I would suggest that it is at least "R" rated. As to what I would say about Excalibur, please remember that it was NOT the Sword in the Stone, but it was given to Arthur by the Lady in the Lake, an archetypal Celtic Water Goddess. I doubt thst this would have been the creation of a French troubadour or of Mallory, and I visualize it as a spatha or semispatha of the typical Migration Age type, but better made and more richly trimmed. I do not see it as a High Medieval great sword or as anything approaching that. As such, I don't see the need for arthur to carry any other sword, since Excalibur had a blade of extra fine steel that held up especially well under hard use.

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh Fuller
 
The source of my idea that Arthur carried two swords keeps trying to surface.
I will ask my 13 year old son about it since he has most of the Arthurian legend books.

Nonetheless, the version that keeps surfacing in my mind involves a short sword carried, like a wakizashi, in house or when involved in activities which make a long sword impractical or cumbersome.

My 15 year old daughter, Kelly Ann, has a strong interest in mythology.
She just looked over my shoulder and said she thought everyone knew that Arthur had two swords.

Kelly Ann thinks Arthur kept Excalibur as a symbol of his office and divine selection.
Her reading indicates he primarily displayed Excalibur rather than wore it, and also that he would have an armor bearer carry it when he did go afield with it.

She attaches special importance to the emphasis placed on Arthur's use of Excalibur to fight Mordred.
Kelly Ann recognizes that Arthur used Excalibur in other battles, but she sees the significance in the case of Mordred as an indication Arthur did not use Excalibur on an everyday basis.

I acknowledge the bad example of historical documentation I have presented by using what my daughter thinks as a reference.
A strange appeal to authority, I have no defense except to say she reads a lot.
smile.gif


Continuing: I read an interpretation of the Merlin/Arthur/Roundtable story, possibly by Joseph Campbell.
This interpretation makes Arthur the mythical transition figure between the Keltic animist culture of matriarchy, chieftains and spirits inhabiting the natural world; and the Anglo-Saxon culture of patriarchy, kings, and Christ as the determining force of creation.

On the one side we have Arthur the boy raised by a Keltic Wizard, or Warlock, whom we know as Merlin; and on the other side we have Arthur the man, and now King over a roundtable of devoutly, and even rigorously Christian knights.
Arthur with one foot firmly planted on Wicca and Druidism, steps with the other foot into Christianity and Chivalry.

The Lady of the Lake, the woman, gives Arthur the sword Excalibur.
With this sword she authorizes him to make the transition from a female dominated world to a male dominated world.
She hands him the symbol, the hilted sword, the Cross which gives him power over Druidic Wizards and authority over Christian Knights.

A Keltic short sword, a foot-soldier's leaf sword, would serve him everyday as he lived and moved amongst the Keltic peoples of his land.
The short sword constantly at his side would connect him to his ancestral people.

The long sword, the Excalibur, he wore and displayed when he needed to rally his horsemen, his Anglo-Saxon Christian Knights around him.
These horsemen carried the long knife with which they chased down men on foot.

Whether Arthur existed or not, he mythologically represents the transition period in which the Kelts and Anglo-Saxons came to terms.

I may have mentioned earlier David Howarth's extraordinary book 1066 The Year of Conquest.
In his book Howarth gives an excellent description of a rather enlightened and harmonious English world in which Keltic and Anglo-Saxon traditions have happily merged and accommodated each other to mutual benefit.

Arthur represents the Marriage of these two worlds and so he carries both the Clansman's short sword and the Cavalryman's long sword.

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Digression:

Pikes represent the cheapest and easiest way to deal with heavy cavalry, along with raised earth berms and embedded sPikes angled towards the expected charge.
However, once the English kings had the stability and money to keep a small professional army, called House Carls, the English found that the large two-handed battle axe ruled the day, horse or no horse.

Inconveniently, it took an exceptioanally strong, trained man to wield the battle-axe; money to keep him employed and ready; and more money to equip him with chain mail and battle-axe.

Money, money, money.

At the Battle of Hastings, the 300 House Carls who shouldered their way to the front line repeatedly turned the most heavily armored cavalry to yet appear on any battlefield.
The highly proclaimed and feared heavy cavalry of the Normans could not prevail against 300 foot soldiers armed with battle axes.

Less than four hundred years later Englishmen on foot would again face the mighty French heavy cavalry, this time at the Battle of Agincourt.
The English, outnumbered by at least six to one, embedded their spikes to face the expected charge.

Again, the French never met the spikes: the English bowmen toppled them mid-charge, and the ranks of French knights behind rode up and over the bodies of the knights in front of them, eventually miring down in the tangle of dying horses and men.

The English bowmen put down their bows, took the hand axes from their belts, walked out on the battlefield to meet the now unhorsed French knights and slaughtered them by the thousands.
A few years later, Joan of Arc would call the English King who prevailed in this battle - the King whom we know as Henry V, or Harry - Joan would call him The Butcher of Agincourt.

------------------
Luke 22:36, John 18:6-11, Freedom
If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
 
Ken, the whole point of the story was in a native BRETON chieftain keeping the Angles and Saxons at bay.

Stick with Celtic/Roman; Arthur and his men were neither Angles nor Saxons.

-Dave
 
Dave K might know more about this than I do.

When I go back to the time of Romans and Kelts interacting, and the aftermath of the Roman withdrawal, I get a little confused.

I can't imagine the King Arthur of that period as having any Christian knights.
Christians, perhaps; knights, less probable.

I think the Arthur to whom Dave K refers did exist and that he played the role as Dave describes it; as a defender of the Romanized Kelts against the Angles and Saxons.
But then again, that seems too early for even the Angles and Saxons.
Please correct me.

We have this popular image of Arthur and his court, but our image fits a later period.
We see Arthur and his knights fighting in sophisticated armor atop magnificent war horses.

I think Arthur and his fighting men, perhaps not yet knights, wore chain mail at best.
If they rode a horse, I think they dismounted in order to fight.

I would like to know when hereditary nobility appeared.
Did the concept of nobility arise before or after the Angles and Saxons?

I have a sense that at some point the Kelts and the Angles/Saxons came to some sort of accord, and whether formally or by default agreed on how they would co-exist.
Did Arthur resist that accord or did he officiate over it?
Perhaps both?

And, from where do Bretons come, and would it offend a Cornishman if I called him a Breton, or a relation to a Breton?
The Romans supposedly came to Britain for the tin to make bronze, and the Cornishmen did mine tin.
Breton...Britain?

Anyway, I really liked the metaphorical comparison of the Keltic Leaf Sword and the Cross-Hilted Excalibur as symbols of a king standing in two cultures.
Clearly, I have a fondness for my own ideas.
smile.gif


------------------
Luke 22:36, John 18:6-11, Freedom
If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
 
one of the best works i have read on historical arthur

Sword at Sunset
by Rosemary Sutcliff



[This message has been edited by ohoisin (edited 04-12-2001).]
 
Knights & Damsels of Steel,

What ho! Interest in my King, Arthur? King of the Realm and Champion of the Isles?
One in the same son of Uther Pendragon. Guided by God. Tutored by Mehryn (Merlin, if you must!).

An original of Mallory's tome may be secured by a search at:

www.abebooks.com

Some are signed by the illustrator, (Beardsley), no less!
Approximately - $175, to a fine, two-volume edition for $500.

Savor the Realm!

Regards,
Lance Gothic
Shibumi
 
Please go back and read my post of 4/10/01. Rome withdrew from Britain in 410 CE. By that time, they had already had sufficient trouble along the Southeast coast of Britain that they had named it the "Saxon Shore" and put a noble in charge of it, the Comes Littores(?) Saxoni (I am uncertain of my prep school Latin here), meaning the Count of Saxon Shore, who was responsible for its defense and for the several large forts that they had built along it. Also, Hengist and Horsa, the early Saxon leaders, were brought over by a British king, Vortigern, to help fight the Picts somewhere in 446-454 CE. He refused to pay these mercenaries and they overthrew him and started the practice of taking land and settling there rather than just raiding. They invited their clans and their clan allies, and so it began. it was rather more like the European settlement of America than a 1066 style invasion, in that they came in over a period of time in waves of families.

Now, as to who was or was not Christian, please remember that Constantine I, the Great, had started the Roman Empire on the road toward having Christianity as its state religion in 312/313 CE with the Edicts of Turin and of Toleration. THat the establishment of Christianity was his goal was made obvious by his calling the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE to settle (he thought) the Arian controversy. Theodosius I, the last Emperor of a united Empire, who died in 395 CE, succeeded in stampng out the last real vestiges of paganism in the Empire, so we may assume that the Province of Britannia was considered wholly Christian by that time, if not before. This does not mean, however, that the old Celtic religion did not have adherents hiding out in the backwoods or north of the Wall. Britannia was Christian enough to produce two of early Christianity's more fascinating people at this time, Saint Patrick and one Pelagius, ruled a heretic. Saint PAtrick was born in northern Britannia or southern Pictia (now Scotland), was abducted by Scotti raiders back to Ireland and sold as a slave where he received his call to convert Ireland to Christianity. He escaped and went to France to study and then returned and the rest is both history and legend, but he came from Christian Britannia. Pelagius was probably a Scotti from Ireland who went to Britain and became Christian. He developed some ideas about original sin that disagreed with the position of the Church in Rome and in Hippo (St. Augustine) and wound up being declared heretical. For more, you might want to look him up in www.newadvent.org/cathen/ This is the Catholic Encyclopedia, and it contains a great discussion of Pelagius and Pelagianism. It was very much a problem in Britannia throughout the Fifth and even into the Sixth Centuries. Britannia was, most definitely, majority Christian. This Christianity tended toward the Celtic Church, about which you may look up information if you wish, it is too complex to go into here, but it suffices to say that it was, and may still, in some areas be, a blend with the old Celtic practices. These tended to shade more toward the old Celtic breliefs the further back into the hill one went, away from Roman authority, and when the Roman authority left, you may imagine what happened. By the time of Arthur, late 5th Century, there was most likely a mish mash of Christian and Celtic, blending to become one, with a strong cast of Mithaism thrown in by the retired Roman soldiery still left around. Mithraism was, perhaps, Christianity's chief rival as an Empire-wide religion. Its only problem was that it was so secretive and that it did not allow women, so it was pre-ordained to lose to a more open and welcoming religion. So, Christianity, in the form of the Romano-Britains was fighting for its life against the pagan barbarians in the form of the Germanic invaders, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, and the Friesians. That THEY weren't Christians is best exemplified by one of the classic puns of all time. Whatever pope was walking through Rome and saw some young slaves at a slave mart and saw that they were from Britain. They were quite handsome; blonde, blue-eyed, tall, fair, etc. He asked his aide, "Suntne angeli?" ("Are they angels?") The aide replied, "Non, sed Angli." ("No, but Angles", one of the tribal groups settling in Britain, from whom the name England comes). At this point, the pope decided that they needed conversion to Christianity and sent St. Augustine of Canterbury(not the same as the other one, St. Augustine of Hippo) to do so in 597 CE. Before that, the efforts too convert the Germans had been rather a loss, but he succeeded in the Saxon kingdom of Kent, and that gave Christianity a foothold among them, but long after Arthur.

A note to you, Ken. The mobil field armies of the Late Roman Empire were heavily cavalry oriented. They used light cavalry for scouting and skirmishing and heavy cavalry, clibanarii and cataphracti, for smashing the enemy in a charge. Theodosius had brought such units with him to Britannia to role up the barbarian invasions of 365-368 CE, and there is no reason to think that the Britains did not see the advantage of such troops and start breeding the horses needed. Nor is there any reason to believe that a smart war leader such as Arthur is supposed to have been would ignore the advantage that such cavalry would give him over the basically infantry Saxon invaders.

Finally, Bretons are the inhabitants of Britanny, a peninsula on the northwestern French coast that was, as tradition says, settled by Romano-Celtic refugees from the Saxon invasions of Britain.

------------------
Walk in the Light,
Hugh Fuller
 
Hugh does his homework.
smile.gif


Thanks.

Hugh, the question in my mind about the horses arose from David Howarth's book, which I mentioned above.

Howarth maintains that by 1066 and the battle of Hastings, the English did not have horses suitable for mounted warfare, and they rode their horses to the place of battle and then dismounted.
The Normans, as typical of the French, had large horses specifically bred and trained for mounted warfare.
Howarth cites the difference in size between Norman and English horseshoes.

I think we discussed once before the ebb and flow of war technology, how certain tactics and weapons disappeared and reappeared, and so I do not take Howarth's observation about the English horse in 1066 as necessarily indicative of the English horse between the fifth and seventh centuries.
At least, now I don't.
smile.gif


Still, I think of the legend of Arthur as heavily influenced by the French, especially after the Norman invasion.
They could have rewritten Arthur's knights to match their own, just as later painters dressed biblical figures in the clothes styled according to the painter's time.

Please comment on my conceit regarding Arthur's swords as symbols of a dual culture.
I seem only to have impressed myself with this speculation.
smile.gif


Post Script:

Thanks to Lance and ohoisin for the referneces.

------------------
Luke 22:36, John 18:6-11, Freedom
If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.

[This message has been edited by Ken Cox (edited 04-12-2001).]
 
I wonder what Dave K means?
What did Hugh say?

Does he think Arthur had a heavy cavalry composed of large athletic war horses ridden by knights similar in pattern to later day French knights and Chivalry?

Do we know what kinds of horses the Roman heavy cavalry had?
Could not the designation heavy cavalry referred to how much equipment they carried?

Can a person make a post composed entirely of questions?
smile.gif




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Luke 22:36, John 18:6-11, Freedom
If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
 
Yes, Ken, I do mean heavy cavalry in the mode of the Late Roman Empire. In this regard, please see the excellent Osprey Warrior monograph, "Late Roman Cavalryman 236-565" by Simon MacDowall and Christa Hook (Illusrator). It well describes the equipments, weapons, tactics of these troops and you should be able to understand them better that I can describe them here, mostly because MacDowall is a better writer than I and Hook is a great illustrator. It is $11.96 from Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1855325675/qid%3D987188766/102-6221868-4529759[/UR L]
I am not trying to claim that the proto-Arthur's cavalry would have been as completely equippede as these, but I am saying that they were likely based on them and as like them as conditions would allow. Ring mail, while labor-intensive, could be made in any smithy, so they were likely equipped with ring mail corselets or hauberks. An alternative would have been lamellar armor, small plates of about 1x2 inches lacesd tightly together in an overlapping manner, as did the Samurai armors. Jacked leather, while easy to make, deteriorates in the rain, so its extensive use in Britain is in doubt. Swords are hard to make and very expensive. Think in terms of a Rolls Royce today and you will have somew idea of relative value. So only the most important or valuable men would have them. Mounted cavalry woould certainly be one such group. They would have shields, likely with arm loops, so that their hands could be freed to hold reins. They would have worn either of the two helmet types common at the time, the spangenhelm, a sort of conical shape made up of segments, or a Roman style ridge helm, two more or less half bowls rivetted together with a ridge running across the top of the helmet. Think of the Sutton Hoo helmet without its face mask. They would also have caried a lance, most likely a version of the Late Roman contus, a light lance some 15 feet long. Since they did not have stirrups, they could not use the lance in the couched manner of the Medieval knights, locked under their arms. This style was developed by the Normans after the stirrup had migrated west, arriving in Western Europe ca. 800CE. The contus was generally used overhand, more like a spear, which was why it was kept light. We assume that the British had tried to breed horses of sufficient size for heavy cavalry. There had been units of heavy cavalry stationed in the Province of Britannia since about 180 CE, when Marcus Aurelius sent a large number of Sarmatian cataphracti there as a part of his peace treaty with the Sarmatians, a trans-Danubian nomadic people. The Sarmatians brought their own horse herds with them, and the Celts were great horse lovers, so........

BTW, I also recommend MacDowall's companion book, "Late Roman Infantryman", also illustrated by Christa Hook, and also available from Amazon.

Another BTW, Ken, this whole business about the chivalric Knights of the Round Table was the product of the French troubadours. They were heavily influenced by women such as Eleanor of Acquitaine, who paid their bills, and told them what to write and who wanted to control the savagery of the knights, so they consciously set about creating the Chivalric Ideal along with the help of the Church. Take a look at the descriptions of the behavior of the crusader knights on the way to Jerusalem in the First Crusade, and you will have some idea how they behaved generally, so what Eleanor and company had in mind was not a bad idea, but it was not ion the least true to the history of the time of Arthur. This was a time when Arthur would have had his Companion Cavalry, rather more like Alexander the Great than like the later Chivalric Ideal, a band of warriors pledged to him personally, armed and equipped mostly by him and loyal only to him. This would have been his "Knights of the Round Table".

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh Fuller

[This message has been edited by FullerH (edited 04-13-2001).]
 
Forgive me for saying so but a most excellent post, Hugh.
Thanks.

I wonder about chivalry, though.
Just as we have talked about tactics and weapons disappearing and reappearing, the same might have occurred with chivalry.

I have read some thought provoking articles on the Grail and its role not only as a Christian icon but as part of the transition from the open matriarchy of the Kelts to the hidden matriarchy exemplified by Eleanor of Acquataine and Chivalry.
As I tell my kids, we play chess as if the King really matters but we all know the Queen rules.

I also find it significant that with full knowledge of each other's tactics, the Normans fought on horseback and the English fought afoot.
Two strong traditions and styles existing side by side at the same time.
Could that extend to Chivalry?

I agree that the personalities of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries whom some allege as chivalrous, others condemn as brutes.
Richard The Lion Hearted comes to mind.

Fascinating point I made about Arthur's Keltic short sword, though, eh?
smile.gif


Too late.
No mercy posts.
smile.gif


------------------
Luke 22:36, John 18:6-11, Freedom
If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
 
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