Posted on 09/02/2021 10:56:31 PM PDT by blueplum
Fragments of a hand-written medieval manuscript telling the story of Merlin the Magician from the legend of Camelot have been translated into English.
The text tells of battles between King Arthur and King Claudas, as well as the romance between Merlin and Viviane — sometimes known as 'the Lady of Lake'.
The seven pieces of parchment date back some 770 years, and were discovered in 2019 among the University of Bristol’s Special Collections Library by researchers trawling though the ancient tomes....
...'The Suite Vulgate du Merlin was written in about 1220–1225, so this puts the Bristol manuscript within a generation of the narrative’s original authorship.
'We were also able to place the manuscript in England as early as 1300–1350 thanks to an annotation in a margin — again, we were able to date the handwriting, and identify it as an English hand....
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
When my kids were little I would make up stories with various characters - with all of them making an appearance in the stories a single story might have Batman, Superman, Bigfoot, Huckleberry Finn, Snow White, etc. in them. Goofy adventures where they got into trouble and their friends would help them.
My last series of stories and the kids were older, was of King Arthur and the Knights of the roundtable. No Bigfoot or stuff in them. All of the stories were about the very young boys trying to join the round table. They each had their own attributes (good fighters, clever/tricky, smart, compassionate, etc. I recall one boy that screwed up big time but somehow redeemed himself just on his sheer perseverance.
The end of the story (probably a month or more in the telling) had King Arthur letting them all join based on their distinct and special skills that they brought to the round table. Obviously trying to instill in my kids what I thought were good attributes to have, and some that I could see in my kids even though they were still very young.
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Sounds like a terrible series.
Your storytelling approach is pretty interesting, and actually relates to the Arthur legends. There was probably no actual, one-the-only, "real" King Arthur. Post-Roman kingdoms are however historical, and there must have been leaders. And each kingdom was probably in a continual struggle with each of its neighbors, gradually getting subsumed into one another, much as England grew out of the Heptarchy (seven kingdoms, plus a bunch of decent-sized other kingdoms with unfamiliar names that didn't make that particular list) and was nailed together well before 1066.
The legendary version of Arthur and his knights shares characteristics of Robin Hood and his Merry Men -- another group for whom there is zero evidence that there ever was such a single, actual, one-the-only person and followers. This is a storytelling practice, and isn't meant to convey history, rather, it's there to, well, entertain the listeners and among young listeners, mentor them.
This differs from historical people such as George Washington -- yet some stories got attached to The General. He crossed the Delaware, but he didn't throw a dollar across it (number one, there were no dollars yet; number two, the actual story as related by his step-grandson is that George in his youth threw a small piece of slate across the Rappahannock). The cherry tree anecdote was apparently invented -- or borrowed -- by a later biographer. That doesn't mean that Washington didn't exist, of course, even his remains are still around and in a marked sarcophagus.
Vortigern, often shown as a villain in the Arthurian legends, was badmouthed in some "Dark Ages" sources as well, but he was a real person. Some of the stories about him are stone cold nuts though, so, V is more like GW.
Thanks! I started watching that one yesterday while looking for the one I’d watched sometime in the past week and couldn’t seem to find at first. :^)
King Arthur : The True Story
by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/478215.King_Arthur
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/king-arthur-the-true-story_graham-phillips_martin-keatman/422768/
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