Searching for King Arthur — Nennius.
Looking
for King Arthur is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Almost impossible, but for me it is very difficult to resist such a challange.
One
of the earliest written accounts of Arthur was given to us by a 9th-century
monk who went by the name of Nennius. Nennius wrote Historia Brittonum — The
History of the Britons. It is not an easy read. Structure and organisation were
two words Nennius chose to ignore. But it is worth persevering with his work
because there are some real gems in there.
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What
I love about the work of Nennius is how he portrays Arthur. Think of a Dark Age
version of Iron Man and you might be getting somewhere. However, nowhere in The History of the Britons does Nennius describe Arthur as a King.
"then
Arthur fought against them in those days with the Kings of Briton, but he
himself was leader of battles."
Has
time and folklore turned a general into a King?
Most definately.
So
what does Nennius say about Arthur? First and foremost, he describes Arthur as
a great warrior and lists the twelve battles which Arthur led. I am not going
to describe all the battles here, but I am briefly going to look at the two
most interesting.
Battle number 8
"The
eighth battle was in Fort Guinnion in which Arthur carried the image of St
Mary, ever virgin, on his shoulder..."
With
old text, I think we have to be very careful as to how we translate them. And I
believe that the translation here is wrong. I do not think that Arthur carried
an image of St Mary on his shoulder. I think he carried the image on his
shield, which would make slightly more sense. Ignoring the translation, it does
tell us that Arthur was a Christian.
Battle
number 12
"The
twelfth battle was at Mount Badon, in which nine hundred and sixty men fell in
one day from one charge from Arthur, and no one overthrew them except himself
alone."
Badon
Hill
This
is the most famous battle that Arthur fought in. It is generally accepted that
this was Arthur's greatest triumph and he did hold back the Saxon
invasion. Did Arthur slay 960 men in a
single charge without any help? Probably not. Was he a great military man?
Almost certainly.
Arthur,
whoever he was, had captured the imagination of a nation and in later works, he
became the hero that we all know and love.
Take a journey back to Dark Age Briton
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