Don't let it be forgot,
That once there was a spot,
For one brief, shining moment that was known as Camelot
The castle-city of Camelot, capital of Britian and headquarters of Arthur the
warrior-king, was built by a fairy king and fairy queens. Harps in hand, they created the
city to the sound of music and their harps may still be heard sometimes between the
shadows of one day and the next.
The city stands on a forest-girt hill arising out of a great plain. It is a short
distance from the highway and river leading to the Isle of Shalott. The riverbanks are
lined with willows and aspens that toss and quiver in the breeze, and on each side the
fields of rye and barley stretch away to the horizon.
The traveller to Camelot sees the spires and turrets, towers and battlements, rooftops
and gonfalons of the city like a misty mirage between the green haze of the forest and the
arching sky. At dusk of evening and in morning mists the castle-city fades and hovers as
though to deceive the eye: at night the towering silhouette glimmers with lantern-gleams
through windows and arrowslits; in the great golden light of noon the terraced building
shimmer in the heat and the huge gate gleams golden in the sun. When storms blunder across
the plain the city vanishes within a thunder cloud or hides behind grey curtains of rain.
In autumn it stands above a golden ring of fading forest: in wither the white towers and
snow-clad roofs can hardly be seen against the silvered plain. These endless changes,
flowing one into another, make some wanderers fear that Camelot is an enchanter's city,
and turn aside.
Traffic is busy on the highway and the river. Deep-laden barges ply between Camelot and
the Isle of Shalott, and occasionally the Lady of Shalott skims anonymously among them in
her silken-sailed shallop. Usually she stays in her four-towered castle, working on her
loom while watching the highway traffic reflected in a mirror.
Red-cloaked market girls, village churls, sheperd lads, long-haired pageboys in crimson
livery, fat churchmen on ambling mules, high-loaded haywains and strings of packhorses
move along the highway. Men and women sow and reap and harvest in the fields, working from
sunrise to moonrise, but with their labours ligthened by the songs which float from the
Lady of Shalott's castle.
Whenever a trumpet sounds from the turrets of Camelot, the people on the highway hasten
to move aside. The silver notes herald a cavalcade of knights who canter down the winding
road between the trees, riding from Camelot onto the broad highway.
All in the blue unclouded weather, the knights make a gallant sight as they ride two by
two, the heralds and standard-bearers trotting proudly between each troop with brilliant
banners floating proudly high. The common folk doff their caps as the knights ride by:
black-visaged Modred scowling at the throng; broad-browed Lancelot and Galahad smiling
graciously at the maidens; Merlin the magician riding a little apart from the others, with
his black robes and star-bedizened cap seeming to shimmer strangely in the sunlight.
The knight may be riding forth on another foray against the enemies of Britain, or
perhaps on another attempt to rescue the Holy Grail. They are led by mighty Arthur
himself, and the common folk hardly dare to meet his eagle glance or even to look at the
caparisoned white stallion, led by a handsome squire, which carries Arthur's armour and
his great sword Excalibur.
When a traveller climbs the steep road to Camelot he hears such strange music that he
thinks the fairies may still be at their work of building the city. It grows louder as he
steps through the gate into the first great courtyard, where he meets a guardian who makes
the boldest pause. The Lady of the Lake stands there, her arms outstreched, one holding a
sword and the other an ancient censer. Her dress ripples like water from her sides, a
trickle of droplets falls from wither hand, and her grey eyes are fixed on such eternity
as to make an evildoer's heart turn in his breast.
Each side of the gateway is carved with emblems and devices symbolising Arthur's wars,
so cunningly wrought that the dragonboughts and elvish emblemings appear to move, seethe,
twine and curl.
Once past the gateway the visitor finds a city of stately palaces, rich in emblems and
the work of ancient kings. Merlin, at Arthur's bidding, used his arts to give a spiralling
beauty to the many-towered city, and the eye is drawn continously upwards to the peaks of
spires and turrets.
Sixten hundred knights and barons have their quarters in Camelot, all so jealous of
their precedence that one Christmas feast became a battle over who should sit nearest the
head of the table. Arthur had the Round Table built so that all the turbulent knights
might sit around it in equality.
Within the city, the visitor finds that the strange music he heard is the busy sound of
Camelot itself. The voices of those treading the steep streets and passageways mingle with
ministrel songs and the notes of lute and zither floating from casements. A melodious
clangour rises from the streets of the armourers and swordsmiths, who forge and fashion
armour for horses and men and send great sprays of sparks cascading from their dark
workshops as they sharpen battleaxes and two-handed swords. Fletchers make arrows for
hunting or for war, farriers pound glowing horseshoes on their anvils, leather workers
stitch at richly coloured saddles and harness. The deep chanting of monks rises above the
battlements, where pacing sentinels watch the cavalcade of knights riding into the
distance.
The centre of Camelot is the Great Hall of King Arthur, surrounded by kitchens and
sleeping quarters and standing next to the tourney ground. The long vaulted hall stands so
high that its ceiling is lost in smoky shadows. An oak tree smoulders on the huge hearth,
to warm the knights feasting on barley bread, beef, and ale. Along each wall there is a
triple row of shields carved out of stone, each with a knight's name underneath. A shield
remains blank until its owner has done one noble dead, when Arthur has the knight's arms
carved upon it. If he performs more noble deeds, then Arthur has the arms coloured and
blazoned. The shields of Gawain is rich and bright, but that of Modred is as blank as
death.
Arthur caries out all his kingly business within the hall, and from time to time
commands a tourney to be held. The prizes are no more than a lady's veil or glove, but the
knight prepare as ardently as if they were to do battle with the Saracens. Within the
tourney ground, the knights ride at each other on their great warhorses with lances strong
as ship's beakheads. Arthur will sometimes enter the lists, but he does not wield
Excalibur because this would give him an unfair advantage.
At the end of the day, when wounds have been bound up, the knight celebrate loud and
long within the Great Hall, Stories of warfare, mystic encounters, and vows to recapture
the Holy Grail rise to the high arches of the hall.
Among the knights, Merlin sits brooding over past and future, foreseeing the day when
Arthur will be carried to the Isle of Avalon and Camelot will fade into the mists of
evening.
Camelot was the most famous castle in the medieval legends of King Arthur, and where,
according to legend, he reigned over Briton before the Saxon conquest. At Camelot Arthur
established a brilliant court and seated the greatest and most chivalrous warriors in
Europe, the Knights of the Round Table. Camelot was the starting point of the Quest for
the Holy Grail, and by the 1200's, it came to symbolize the center of the Arthurian world.
The oldest known stories of Arthur don't refer to Camelot by name. It is first
mentioned explicitly in the romance Lancelot written by Chretien de Troyes in the twelfth
century. Different writers throughout the ages have placed Camelot in different locations.
Sir Thomas Malory, in Le Morte D'arthur (15th century), placed the castle in Winchester.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his History of the Kings of Britain (about 1136) named Caerleon
Castle in Wales. Another theory puts Camelot near Tintagel, Arthur's reputed Cornish
birthplace. According to the romancers, Camelot was named after a pagan king called
Camaalis. Modern attempts at identifying Camelot have sought to place Camelot at the ruins
of Cadbury Castle in Somerset, excavated in the 1960's. There is much underlying tradition
to support this belief. Cadbury Castle is an earthwork fort of the Iron Age, which looks
over the Vale of Avalon to Glastonbury. Nearby is the River Cam, and the village of Queen
Camel (once known as Camel) The antiquary John Leland, in the reign of Henry VIII speaks
of local people who refer to the fort as "Camalat" and as the home of Arthur.
The mythology of Camelot, and the story of King Arthur has been told and retold over
the centuries, hence there are many versions. The legends of Arthur may have originated
with an actual chieftain named Arthur who lived in Wales in the sixth century, but the
many retellings have moved the story far away from that place and time. Because of the
belief that Arthur will return, he is sometimes called The Once and Future King and
Camelot itself has come to not only be viewed as a place, but as a state of mind or a
reflection of a lost ideal. Tennyson, in the Idylls of the King writes that it is symbolic
of "the gradual growth of human beliefs and institutions, and of the spiritual
development of man."
A castle to the south-west of Camelot, possibly built as one of a
chain of fortresses to protect England against invasion by pixieled Cornishmen. Originally
it was known as Douleureuse Garde, meaning 'Sorrowful Guard', and it was a dark and gloomy
pile of weatherworn stone occupied by knights who had fallen into evil ways.
When Sir Lancelot asked King Arthur for some task to prove his knighthood, Arthur told
him he might have the castle if he could seize it from its wicked owners. Lancelot, then
eighteen, accepted this challenge and attacked the castle single-handed. He drove out the
evil knights, renamed the castle as Joyous Garde, and began a programme of renovation and
reconstruction which converted the building into on of the most spectacular castles of the
western world.
He had the gloomy outer walls covered with plaster and the plaster gilded with gold
leaf, so that the shining radiance of Joyous Garde could be seen for many miles. The
ominous watchtowers and battlements were ornamented with fantastic decorations and
connected by graceful flying bridges, while the dark inner chambers were enlivened by
brilliant tapestries, painted ceilings, and gilded furniture.
Lancelot made the castle fit for a queen, but his unhappy love affair with Guinevere
prevented him from marrying a suitable maiden and enjoying a normal family life. The
beautiful castle eventually suffered badly when Lancelot took Guinevere there and her
husband, Arthur, attacked Joyous Garde in a prolonged seige. Nothing now remains except
for some heather-clad ruins, covering the vault in which the body of Lancelot reposes.
Swords and
Castles 
hese fearsome weapons, edged for hacking or pointed for stabbing, have been made
in a multitude of shapes and sizes for at least 5,000 years, under countless names from
the gladius by gladiators to the claymore of the Highlanders.
