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It certainly is a Celtic tale. Not in its present form. Most tellings are derived from later medieval retellings. Arthur and graal cycle are in turn composed fr

It certainly is a Celtic tale. Not in its present form. Most tellings are derived from later medieval retellings. Arthur and graal cycle are in turn composed from even older Indo-European mythical elements. (Hint: his name means bear https://treesforlife.org.uk/into-the-forest/trees-plants-animals/mammals/bear/#:~:text=Celts%20venerated%20the%20bear%20goddess,the%20warrior%2Dking%2C%20Arthur https://treesforlife.org.uk/into-the-forest/trees-plants-ani....) You should dive deeper into the underlying themes. The graal is derived, almost certainly, from elements like Celtic sacred cauldrons which also offered bounty in exchange for service. (https://esploro.libs.uga.edu/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma9925164423902959&context=L&vid=01GALI_UGA:UGA&search_scope=MyInstitution&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=LibraryCatalog&query=sub,exact,Grail%20--%20Legends&offset=0 https://esploro.libs.uga.edu/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alm...) The sacred spear and an element of the cuckoo king—a ritual sacrifice and murder of the reigning king against a “gouk stone” by the pending king on whom the communities ails are offloaded. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14702541.2022.2120628 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14702541.2022.2...) Stones, you might say, are a bit important to the Celts. If it didn’t start with them, it was carried on by them from an earlier culture.(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowk_stane https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowk_stane) In the same turn the fisher king and wasteland are elements that lie at the core of Celtic belief systems and are again overloaded on the backdrop of the saxon invasion of the isles. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/388667?journalCode=mp https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/388667?jou...) Myths are composed of and use archetypes to get at the heart of the matter close to a people by dressing it up in the trappings of their culture. To that end, Arthur is and always has been a Celtic cultural hero (with arguable, and improvable to date, roman connections). Read the Mabinogion and Y Gododdin. (https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/The-Mabinogion/ https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/The-Mab... ) And I’d also recommend the Ulster Cycle as it also contains references to the Calad Bolg. (http://theswordlibrary.blogspot.com/2014/02/caladbolg.html?m=1 http://theswordlibrary.blogspot.com/2014/02/caladbolg.html?m... https://www.britannica.com/topic/Excalibur-Arthurian-legend https://www.britannica.com/topic/Excalibur-Arthurian-legend) This is why studies in humanities matter. People read too literally. Everything valuable in myth will be lost on young minds otherwise.

adastra22 2y ago
I freely admit that my knowledge of Arthur comes from and is pretty much limited to the Monty Python and Disney movies. Is there somewhere I should start for the real story?
- whartung 2y ago
  What’s funny is that the way the tone of this thread is going is that there is no real story and the Python and Disney renderings are as legitimate as all of the others.
- 52-6F-62 2y ago
  There is no singular, “real” Grail story as such. Ignore the lines about Disney, though I enjoyed their version of the sword in the stone. Thats from a retelling written in the early 20th century. The grail legend as we have it was largely assembled in the middle ages, but it is fundamentally a Celtic tale in that the primary thematic elements that are at the heart of it come down from Celtic myth and culture. Which in turn came from even older Celtic myth and culture which in turn came from the common soup of Indo-European myth. That means if you broaden your scope enough, you’ll see elements of the tale everywhere in the eastern and western world, it’s true. But speaking of Arthur… There are many translations of old texts. One of the oldest that mentions Arthur is Y Gododdin by Aneirin (ca 6th century) I mentioned, which has helped fuel speculations about a northern origin rather than one in the south or Wales (as what is now Scotland and Wales and some northern English counties was a series of Celtic and Romano-Celtic kingdoms joined by a similar culture and language). The poet Taliesin is also worth studying as he writes about Arthur and Merlin as well. Both of those poets are from around the same time period. The Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology is an excellent and very rich resource to tie it all together. (https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780198609674.001.0001/acref-9780198609674?btog=chap&hide=true&pageSize=20&skipEditions=true&sort=titlesort&source=%2F10.1093%2Facref%2F9780198609674.001.0001%2Facref-9780198609674 https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...) It may also help to go down a wikihole on some contemporary figures (like Urien mentioned in the poem noted above: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urien https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urien) The Irish tales go back even further in some cases. They had the advantage of a bit of isolation—slightly less cultural domination and churn for a little while at least. If you’re savvy, it helps to dabble in linguistics and etymologies. Some of the mystery is shrouded in the language itself. It might surprise you how many cultures are tied together conceptually through a handful of simple syllables. People who havent really studied this stuff get really hung up on the window dressing. Chivalry, Christianity, noble and ignoble knights—these were the dressings of the middle ages applied to archetypal patterns telling a more profound cosmological and philosophical view that came from the way the Celts saw their place in the world (and pretty much every other ancient cultures share similar perspectives if you study symbols). It’s quite hard to get the most important things across in life. Most people want you to shut up, pay up, or get out of their way while they pay for a new bathroom or something. These stories are regularly adapted by fans but also by people who want to ensure the important themes make new inroads into the imaginations of the time because thats where everything good and bad begins. Being a good king isn’t about the castle. I hope you read into it. There’s something funny in it all. It seems to begin and end with a question.

adastra22 2y ago

I freely admit that my knowledge of Arthur comes from and is pretty much limited to the Monty Python and Disney movies. Is there somewhere I should start for the real story?

whartung 2y ago
What’s funny is that the way the tone of this thread is going is that there is no real story and the Python and Disney renderings are as legitimate as all of the others.
52-6F-62 2y ago
There is no singular, “real” Grail story as such. Ignore the lines about Disney, though I enjoyed their version of the sword in the stone. Thats from a retelling written in the early 20th century. The grail legend as we have it was largely assembled in the middle ages, but it is fundamentally a Celtic tale in that the primary thematic elements that are at the heart of it come down from Celtic myth and culture. Which in turn came from even older Celtic myth and culture which in turn came from the common soup of Indo-European myth. That means if you broaden your scope enough, you’ll see elements of the tale everywhere in the eastern and western world, it’s true. But speaking of Arthur… There are many translations of old texts. One of the oldest that mentions Arthur is Y Gododdin by Aneirin (ca 6th century) I mentioned, which has helped fuel speculations about a northern origin rather than one in the south or Wales (as what is now Scotland and Wales and some northern English counties was a series of Celtic and Romano-Celtic kingdoms joined by a similar culture and language). The poet Taliesin is also worth studying as he writes about Arthur and Merlin as well. Both of those poets are from around the same time period. The Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology is an excellent and very rich resource to tie it all together. (https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780198609674.001.0001/acref-9780198609674?btog=chap&hide=true&pageSize=20&skipEditions=true&sort=titlesort&source=%2F10.1093%2Facref%2F9780198609674.001.0001%2Facref-9780198609674 https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...) It may also help to go down a wikihole on some contemporary figures (like Urien mentioned in the poem noted above: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urien https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urien) The Irish tales go back even further in some cases. They had the advantage of a bit of isolation—slightly less cultural domination and churn for a little while at least. If you’re savvy, it helps to dabble in linguistics and etymologies. Some of the mystery is shrouded in the language itself. It might surprise you how many cultures are tied together conceptually through a handful of simple syllables. People who havent really studied this stuff get really hung up on the window dressing. Chivalry, Christianity, noble and ignoble knights—these were the dressings of the middle ages applied to archetypal patterns telling a more profound cosmological and philosophical view that came from the way the Celts saw their place in the world (and pretty much every other ancient cultures share similar perspectives if you study symbols). It’s quite hard to get the most important things across in life. Most people want you to shut up, pay up, or get out of their way while they pay for a new bathroom or something. These stories are regularly adapted by fans but also by people who want to ensure the important themes make new inroads into the imaginations of the time because thats where everything good and bad begins. Being a good king isn’t about the castle. I hope you read into it. There’s something funny in it all. It seems to begin and end with a question.