Some Notes for the Unbelievers

"The fact is that there is no historical evidence about Arthur; we must reject him from our histories and, above all, from the titles of our books."

David Dumville: "Histories and Pseudo-histories"

This page gets no graphics, no colors, in honor of the dullness of the subject. Many historians and scholars have combed the archeological and literary sources and come to the conclusion that King Arthur never existed, but is some sort of composite mythological Celtic and Medieval avatar. Such old, maybe not so old, f-rts think Hengist was a Saxon horse god, also not real, whereas we all know he took over the Saxon tribes after the death of Sigurd and the rest of the Walsings. Well, benighted as they might be, they deserve their day in court. So here are a couple of links to some scrupulously footnoted but basically sterile debunkments. A less virulently scholarly but more sensible view is expressed by Mark Twain at the bottom of this page.

Dry and unimaginative as these opinions are (which is one reason I dropped out of a graduate school PhD program -- unrelated thesis subject, but academics drove me nuts; Vietnam was the other reason), they are legitimate points of view and deserve to be aired for those 'agnostics' on the Arthurian subject. There is, in fact, no proof that King Arthur ever existed, although Ambrosius, Urien, maybe Vortigern, and some others are accepted as historical, even if not accurately defined, figures. Tristan's monument, at least somebody named Tristan (Drustan), still survives in Cornwall; nobody can prove there was an Iseult, but why shouldn't there have been? That is such an off-the-wall story that the memory of it would have been passed down, however fancied up with scraps of Bran and Rhiannon myths, even the Greek business with the black sails in some versions.

Actually, if you really want to know, I don't particularly believe in King Arthur either, as the real person to whom all that stuff was attributed. However, the historical period is a constant fascination, and when the mood strikes, so is all the romance.

In reality, King Arthur was no more than the requisite British hero whose appearance, appropriately armed and horsed on the boards of history, was necessitated by the fundamental misunderstanding of Gildas's text by less erudite Welsh scholars, centuries later, when the context in which Gildas wrote was indeed a "Dark Age." As an historical figure, he should be laid to rest once more as an unwarranted and retrospective, if readily intelligible, intrusion on the fifth century by a perplexed but anonymous ninth-century cleric, writing in, and primarily of, far distant Gwynedd, wherein Gildas's "dragon" had once dwelt. Not only did Arthur himself not exist but the age which led to his invention was no less fictional.

NJ Higham: "The English Conquest"

"His [Gildas's] silence is decisive in determining the historical insignificance of this enigmatic figure...The fact is that there is no contemporary or near-contemporary evidence for Arthur playing any decisive part in these events at all. No figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian's time. There are just enough casual references in later Welsh legend, one or two of which may go back to the seventh century, to suggest that a man with this late Roman name - Artorius - may have won repute at some ill-defined point of time and place during the struggle. But if we add anything to the bare statement that Arthur may have lived and fought the Saxons, we pass at once from history to romance."

JNL Myres: "The English Settlements"

"... we do not know the name of a single Saxon who lived before the year 500 (unless you can swallow Stallion and Mare, Hengist and Horsa, of whom it can at least be said that they are better authenticated than Adam and Eve and King Arthur)."

EA Thompson: "Saint Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain"

Note: The quotations seem to be from people with English names... I got them off this web page.

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Mark Twain's Preface to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

The ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are historical, and the episodes which are used to illustrate them are also historical. It is not pretended that these laws and customs existed in England in the sixth century; no, it is only pretended that inasmuch as they existed in the English and other civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that it is no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been in practice in that day also. One is quite justified in inferring that wherever one of those laws or customs was lacking in that remote time, its place was competently filled by a worse one.

The question as to whether there is such a thing as divine right of kings is not settled in this book. It was found too difficult. That the executive head of a nation should be a person of lofty character and extraordinary ability was manifest and indisputable; that none but the Deity could select that head unerringnly was also manifest and indisputable; that the Deity ought to make that selection, then, was likewise manifest and indisputable; consequently, that He does make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction. I mean, until the author of this book encountered the Pompadour and Lady Castlemaine and some other executive heads of that kind; these were found so difficult to work into the scheme that it was judged better to take the other tack in this book (which must be issued this fall) and then go into training and settle the question in another book. It is of course a thing which ought to be settled, and I am not going to have anything particular to do next winter anyway.

Mark Twain, Hartford, July 21, 1889