English · Drill 55
English practice 55
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The story of King Arthur, complete with Merlin the wizard, and the magic sword Excalibur1 first appeared in texts about legendary British swords.2 I and discount Arthur's famous victory's3 as historians mentions4 of the man were likely composed we know, of which the earliest were composed5 in the sixth century. Some scholars succeeding7 commands such as the claim that he killed 960 men single-handedly at the Battle of Badon.
Most of us10 believe this claim than most realize.11 The Arthurian legends seeming strongly like12 fact to residents of England are the13 year's hope14 for a great king who would unite the land and drive out invaders.
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in a fanciful history of England composed in the 12th century by a monk named Geoffrey of Monmouth. Since today we know that there
this version of events, but there are earlier works that mention Arthur as well. His first appearance in a surviving text is in the Historia Brittonum, composed by a Welsh monk around the year 830. Since
are all supposed to have taken place over three hundred years prior, the fact that
him is suspicious. On the other hand, this was not a terribly literate age, and of the few histories that were
many have been simply lost.
And yet, the earlier texts that corroborate the accounts of the battles
the Historia does not even call Arthur a king at all, but only a “war
the Britons in several battles against the invading Saxons. This would seem an account sufficiently humble at least to persuade us that someone named “Arthur” was involved in British history at this time, if not for the fact that the deeds attributed to him are so obviously exaggerated,
can’t even remember being young enough not to have heard of him. His name is inseparable from all our romantic ideas about knights and chivalry. A majority of people think of him as an actual historical figure. But did King Arthur really exist?
an insertion of popular legend into an otherwise historical text. The two most reliable
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History—make no mention of Arthur, though they do include accounts of the battles with which he was allegedly
of proving Arthur’s existence, only to meet with the frustration that caused archaeologist Nowell Myres to remark that “no figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian’s time.” 