The Welsh have a great capacity for music, song and story. I was recently invited to a showing of "Camelot" as part of a Welsh function on Queen Anne. The Welsh claim King Arthur as their special hero; I was asked many questions on the subject of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and came up with the following, which I'd like to share with you.
Camelot was Arthur's capital where, according to legend, he reigned over the Britons before the Saxon conquest in the sixth century. It is not found on any authentic early map. However, the words "Cam" and "Camel" do occur as elements of British place names of pre-Saxon origin.
The oldest known stories of Arthur never refer to Camelot as such. The first mention is in "The Romance of Launcelot," written by Chrétien de Troyes between 1160 and 1180. Three centuries later, Sir Thomas Malory makes Camelot the chief city of the realm, where the Round Table was housed; he sometimes equates it with Winchester, where the great cathedral stands.
Yet, at one passage of his work, Malory seems to place Camelot farther to the north, at Carlisle. For his part, Alfred, Lord Tennyson in the "The Idylls of the King," never attempts to localize Camelot; it is symbolic.
Local legend and numerous guessers have proposed several sites for the elusive Camelot. One is Colchester, the Roman "Camuliodunum." Another theory places it near Tintagel in Cornwall, Arthur's reputed birthplace in a district that contains the River Camel and Camelford.
However, the locale with the strongest claim to the genuine underlying Arthurian tradition is Cadbury Castle in Somerset. The castle is an earthwork fort of the pre-Roman Iron Age, on an isolated hill 500 feet high that looks over the Vale of Avalon toward Glastonbury Tor in the distance. It is a space of 18 acres on top of the hill.
The village of Queen Camel is fairly close to the River Cam. John Leland in the reign of Henry VIII speaks of local people referring to the hill fort as Camelot.
King Arthur's Well is located inside the ramparts; the summit plateau is called King Arthur's Palace. The king is said to lie asleep in a nearby cave. In summertime, the ghostly hoofbeats of his mounted, armored knights are said to have been heard.
That this place-or any other- is actually Camelot invites question.
Whatever the precise truth about the real Arthur, he symbolizes a historical fact that is no longer disputed. The British Celts, having lived under the rule of Rome and having received a degree of Roman civilization, rallied against the first Anglo-Saxon invaders during the first half of the sixth century and threw them back.
During much of this time, it is remembered, the Britons enjoyed relative peace and prosperity. Arthur appears to have been the British commander to whom the main credit is due. He may or may not have had some royal title, but his legendary reign is based far more on his exploits in war than on the fruits of the peace that war may have won.
Cadbury Castle is easily the largest and most formidable of the known British structures of the period. It is easy to picture it as the headquarters of the greatest of British leaders. In that sense, we may locate there the real Camelot and the real Arthur.
An imaginative concept of Arthur's Britain has gone through two phases. The early Welsh tradition looks toward the glorified Arthur. Geographically, England was then "Logria," and the Cymry-or Welsh-had domain over it. Then the Cymry lost Logria, and the Welsh alone preserved the remains of Arthurian splendor.
Someday, it was prophesied, Arthur would come back as a Celtic Messiah and subdue the English. This view was more or less adopted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130s, when he wrote the "History of the Kings of Britain," which did so much to promote the exaggerated and glamorized view of the Arthurian realm throughout the whole of England, aside from the Welsh.
While you're enjoying the wonderful music of Camelot, remember that such a place and such a king represents a long, long story to be told and retold on many a winter's night.
And if you're interested in Welsh music, the Puget Sound Welsh Association will be presenting Crasdant, the foremost instrumental band in Wales, on Oct. 15 at 7:30 p.m. They perform at the Dusty Strings, at 3406 Fremont Ave. N. For more information, call 634-1662, or visit www.dustystrings.com.
TTFN-or, in Welsh, Nostr. (For confirmation on pronunciation and spelling, please contact your nearest Welsh speaker!)[[In-content Ad]]
