Читать книгу 366 Celt: A Year and A Day of Celtic Wisdom and Lore - Carl McColman - Страница 53

It’s great fun to explore history with an eye to discovering the fate of the “real” Arthur. Probably a tribal chieftain in the chaos of Britain after fifth-century Roman troops suddenly withdrew, he may have been a leader in fighting against the encroaching Saxon presence on the island. Our knowledge of the historical figure—assuming he ever existed—can only be speculative, but the development of the mythic King Arthur is far easier to trace. He began as a shadowy figure in Welsh poetry and Romance, only to become something of a literary sensation after being exported to Brittany and France. The marriage of Celtic myth and medieval courtly literature proved powerful enough to still arouse our hearts and imaginations a thousand years later. The Arthurian cycle grew in the telling, combining shadowy figures like Merlin and Morgan LeFay, whose origins clearly lie in Celtic myth, with more purely literary creations like Lancelot. Ironically, the tales of King Arthur have long eclipsed all other forms of Celtic mythology as the image of Celtic romance that most people would first think of—ironic because the Arthurian saga is the least authentically Celtic of any myths associated with this heritage.