A Debate in the Garden of King’s Bookshop at the Callander Poetry Weekend: 9. 09. 2007.
Deborah Tyler-Bennett.
From Sir Thomas Malory to Alfred Lord Tennyson, from Edward Burne Jones to the Monty Python team, and Rick Wakeman, from black-leather clad pagan warriors on film, to the post Pre-Raphaelite dreams of the early twentieth-century Celtic Revival in art, King Arthur and his Knights have continuously haunted the poetic imaginations of, amongst others, prose writers, poets, film-makers, painters, and decorative artists. So, when at the Callander Poetry Weekend, poets were asked to discuss the personal meaning of Arthurian myth for themselves and, also, what they perceived to be the wider significance of Arthurian mythology, we knew there was a lot to debate. The garden of King’s Bookshop, with its quiet ponds and fired colours seemed the perfect setting for such a discussion.
Among the writers taking part in the discussion (led by Julian Daizan Skinner, Marc Sherland, Elizabeth Rimmer, and Poetry Cornwall’s, Les Merton) were Colin Will, Morelle Smith, Ian Blake, Sally Evans, Sally James, Ian King, and others. Many speakers had first come to Arthur by way of books read as children (such as those by Rosemary Sutcliffe), whilst others had found echoes of his legend in T.S. Eliot’s poetry, or G.S. Fraser’s mythologizing works.
What fascinated me about the discussion, was how Arthur represented so many different things to different poets, and how the mythology of T.H. White’s ‘Once and Future King,’ was still so poetically potent. Les Merton told us about Arthur’s particular relevance to Cornwall, and the return of the Chough (in local folklore, Arthur returning to his lands to lead his people). Ian Blake spoke of Arthur via Tennyson and archaeology, and Morelle Smith talked of the rich Romantic heritage of Arthurian mythology. I added that I love the romanticism of Victorian representations of Arthur, but that these seem a far cry from the more vital brutality of Malory’s world. Of course, Monty Python and the Holy Grail has wonderfully tainted the Arthurian landscape, and images of the ‘knight and the coconut shell’ were never far away (similar to images of ‘The Knight and the Umbrella’ created due to the unintentionally hilarious Eglinton Tournament of 1839).
As the discussion progressed, it became clear how many areas of Britain and the Celtic countries lay claim to Arthur, from Celtic sites, to elaborate Round Table forgeries, from car parks, to bones claiming to be those of central protagonists in the myths. Some speakers talked of the emergence of Arthur during perceived times of social upheaval or disintegration, and of the morality of the mythology concerning the Round Table. Yet, Colin Will and others indicated that the myth of a communal circle of knights is one which fragments as the tale continues, maybe this points to the fact that Arthur’s perception of a righteous ‘band of brothers’ cannot survive how human beings actually work.
Whatever the reason for the breakdown of Arthur’s vision of courtly standards, most people debating the myth agreed that it remains so potent that some dwellers in the twenty-first century try and live their lives by its standards: Uther Pendragon, Arthur, and Merlin, are all names taken by several individuals as their ‘true’ identity; Someone mentioned that Doctor Who, the most popular family TV drama of recent years, possesses a central character that could be interpreted as a Merlin for our times.
It is interesting to note that there seems to be a tension between the impulse to regard the Arthurian legends as romantic, moral, and ultimately desirable, and those visions that encompass Malory’s brutal, often un-chivalric, unforgiving world. Ian Blake noted how R.C. Sherriff employed images of the end of a pagan world, and how this theme concerning the last of a particular society returns to haunt his work.
Throughout this part of the discussion, I was reminded of uses of the myth during the First World War, and that the most popular English play of the early war years, was Mrs Clifford Mills and Reginald Owen’s, Where the Rainbow Ends (1912), which ran every Christmas until the 1950s, and was regarded as rival to Peter Pan. I also recalled how Mark Girouard has noted that the Arthurian figures of knights that decorated early war memorials, postcards, and orders of service, died out as casualties escalated and became more visible (see his The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven: Yale UP, 1981). This appears to suggest that perhaps some elements of the romantic Arthurian myth cannot be sustained in the face of darker realities. It is fascinating to note that, whilst the First World War usage of the myth of the knight could be studied as a type of English romanticism, memorials using Arthurian or chivalric symbolism during the period can also be found in Scotland and Ireland.
So, once and future king, a spirit embodied in a returning bird, a moral compass who cannot hold a warring court together, and a magician’s pawn – all versions of Arthur seem to hold infinite poetic possibilities. The discussion at Callander was lively, fascinating, and reminded me of forgotten books, paintings I wanted to re-visit, and films I’d consider sitting through again (as well as a few best avoided).
At one point in the discussion, Ian King brought a large Celtic stone into the garden’s centre, and placed it on a chair. The imprint of a face was clearly visible in the weathered surface. Weird, lovely, and strangely unreadable, its own poetry pointed to why we are so fascinated by a period on which we speculate, dreaming of ownership, but cannot, ultimately, know.
Deborah Tyler-Bennett
Aneirin Y Gododdin late 6 th century Welsh
Gildas Chronicles 590 Latin
Bede History 782 Old English
Nennius Historia Brittanorum 8 th century Latin
Acallam na Senorach 12 th century Irish
Wace Roman de Brut 1150 Anglo-Norman
Geoffrey of Monmouth History of the Kings of Britain c 1170. Latin
Vita Merlini
Chretien de Troyes Romans c1175 French
Marie de France late 12 th century Breton
Thomas of Britain Tristan late 12 th century Middle English
Beroul Tristan 1191 French
Layamon Brut 1200 Middle English
Caradoc/The Knight with the Sword/The perilous Graveyard 1200/1250
Walter Map Lancelot of the Lake
The Quest of the Holy Grail
Death of King Arthur1215-30 Anglo-Norman/French
Black Book of Carmarthen 1250 Welsh
Gottfried von Strassburg Tristan 1210 German
Heinrich von dem Turlin Diu Krone 13 th Century German
Mabinogion 1350 Welsh
stanzaic Morte Arthure 1350 Middle English
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight c1370 Middle English
Chaucer The Wife of Baths Tale 1386-91 Middle English
alliterative Morte Arthure 1400 Middle English
Malory Morte D'Arthur 1469 Middle English
Spenser Faerie Queen 1596
Milton
Tennyson Idylls of the King 1859
William Morris Defence of Guinevere 1859
Mark Twain A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur 1889
EA Robinson Merlin
Lancelot
Tristan 1912-20
TH White: The Sword in the Stone 1938 : The Once and Future King 1958
Henry Treece The Great Captains 1956 The Green Man 1965
Rosemary Sutcliffe The Lantern Bearers 1959, The Sword at Sunset 1963
Mary Stewart 1970-83
Marion Zimmer Bradley The Mists of Avalon series 1983-2007
Bernard Cornwell The Arthur Books 1995-7
Rosalind Miles Guinevere Trilogy, Isolde Trilogy 1999-2002
Elizabeth Rimmer