Speaker 1: One quick and very exciting note before we begin today's episode.
Speaker 1: I have a brand new podcast. It's called Hoax and I,
Speaker 1: with my co host Lizzie Logan, will focus on a
Speaker 1: lesser known or famous poax from history or relatively modern history,
Speaker 1: discussing the question of why people believe things that aren't true, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: a question that seems all too relevant today. The very
Speaker 1: first episode about the Cuttingly Fairies was released yesterday. It
Speaker 1: should be in the Noble Blood feed. I hope that
Speaker 1: you like it, that you want to listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1: If you do, please subscribe, leave a review or rating.
Speaker 1: It absolutely helps. Doing podcasts about history is my absolute
Speaker 1: favorite thing in the world, and your support means the
Speaker 1: absolute world. It means I get to do what I
Speaker 1: love to do. And don't worry. This podcast is not
Speaker 1: in any way a replacement for Noble Blood. Both are
Speaker 1: continuing on for as long as people want to listen.
Speaker 1: Hoax will drop every other Monday, and I hope you
Speaker 1: love it. And now into this episode, which you might
Speaker 1: be able to pick up, has a slight hoax theme.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 2: and Mild from Aaron Manky listener discretion advised. In nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight, an archaeologist digging at Tintagel Castle had this
Speaker 2: sort of moment which I imagine makes people want to
Speaker 2: become archaeologists in the first place. Tintagel Castle, on the
Speaker 2: coast of Cornwall is famous today mainly for being the
Speaker 2: ancestral home of King Arthur.
Speaker 1: Well according to popular myth, there's actually no archaeological evidence
Speaker 1: that King Arthur or or his family was ever associated
Speaker 1: with Tintagil. In fact, there's no actual archaeological evidence that
Speaker 1: King Arthur was real, but maybe all of that was
Speaker 1: about to change. In nineteen ninety eight, the archaeological team
Speaker 1: from Glasgow was digging on the castle's eastern terraces when
Speaker 1: someone uncovered a piece of Cornish slate. The archaeologists pulled
Speaker 1: it away from the craggy earth and saw on the
Speaker 1: slate carved letters. The archaeologists saw an A, an R.
Speaker 1: We can only imagine the excitement he must have felt
Speaker 1: when he saw the third letter A T. The Latin
Speaker 1: inscription on the stone, dated from the sixth century, is faint,
Speaker 1: but it's thought to read something that translates to art.
Speaker 1: No descendant of Paternus Colis made this. It's not exactly
Speaker 1: a smoking gun, but the fact that a Latin carving
Speaker 1: with a name similar to Arthur dated from the historical
Speaker 1: period during which the mythological king might have lived was
Speaker 1: enough to cause excitement in the media. Doctor Jeffrey Wainwright,
Speaker 1: the chief archaeologist at the English Heritage was happy to
Speaker 1: play into that excitement. Quote, Tintagel has presented us with
Speaker 1: evidence of a prince of Cornwall in the Dark Ages,
Speaker 1: living in a high status domestic settlement at the time
Speaker 1: Arthur lived. It has given us the name of a person,
Speaker 1: Artneau Artna was here. That is his name on a
Speaker 1: piece of stone. It is a massive coincidence. At the
Speaker 1: very least, this is where myth meets history. It's the
Speaker 1: find of a lifetime end quote. The connection, in my view,
Speaker 1: is extremely flimsy. But you can't blame doctor Wainwright for
Speaker 1: trying to get the public excited about what would otherwise
Speaker 1: be a fairly dull project about faint Latin inscriptions in
Speaker 1: sixth century stones. King Arthur is a marquee name, someone
Speaker 1: who like King Henry the Eighth, or Anne Boleyn or
Speaker 1: Elizabeth I or Shakespeare seems to get people interested in history.
Speaker 1: King Arthur is arguably one of the most famous historical
Speaker 1: figures in the world, but there's almost no evidence he
Speaker 1: ever existed at all. So who is King Arthur? And
Speaker 1: how did someone who maybe never existed become so famous
Speaker 1: and so sought after. It's a story not about stones
Speaker 1: from the five hundreds, but a story about story about
Speaker 1: how sometimes a mystery that lets the audience play detective
Speaker 1: makes for a better version of history than the real thing.
Speaker 1: I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. If King
Speaker 1: Arthur did really exist, most consensus estimates that he would
Speaker 1: have lived around the fifth or sixth century, a period
Speaker 1: after the Romans left Britain, during which the island was
Speaker 1: in institutional and economic collapse. Rome withdrew from Britain in
Speaker 1: four hundred and ten AD while they were under siege
Speaker 1: from the Visigoths back home, and what was left on
Speaker 1: the island was, in a word, chaos. Former Roman institutions
Speaker 1: were left abandoned and collapsing. Local economies were crumbling, and
Speaker 1: the people in fragmented fiefdoms were tormented by plague, drought,
Speaker 1: and invading Saxons. Mark Morris, the historian and author of
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty one book The Anglo Saxons, A History
Speaker 1: of the Beginnings of England four hundred to ten sixty six,
Speaker 1: puts it very succinctly, quote it was a miserable time
Speaker 1: to be alive. End quote. So why do people think
Speaker 1: King Arthur would have existed during this period? Well, there
Speaker 1: are a few vaguely suggestive sources. The oldest possible reference
Speaker 1: to a historical Arthur comes from a book called Historia
Speaker 1: Britonum or History of the Britons, written by a monk
Speaker 1: named Nennius around eight hundred and twenty eight, although it
Speaker 1: only survives in copies from the eleventh century on. Before
Speaker 1: we even begin, it's worth paying attention to the tenuousness
Speaker 1: of that source. It's a text from the eleventh century,
Speaker 1: which is actually a copy of a book from two
Speaker 1: centuries before that, which is talking about a period several
Speaker 1: hundred years before that. Historia Britonum contains a section including
Speaker 1: a battle list twelve battles in which someone named Arthur
Speaker 1: led troops. This Arthur isn't actually called a king, but
Speaker 1: rather a dux belorum or military leader, a general. The
Speaker 1: battle list ends with the Battle of Baden, where Nennius
Speaker 1: claims that Arthur killed nine hundred and sixty men, a
Speaker 1: resounding and impressive victory. If you're interested in proof that
Speaker 1: that battle actually happened, there's some pretty good evidence you
Speaker 1: can cite. There's some archaeological evidence that Anglo Saxon my
Speaker 1: gration reversed around that time, which is consistent with a
Speaker 1: massive victory of the British. After all, who wouldn't turn
Speaker 1: around when faced with a general who could kill nearly
Speaker 1: one hundred other soldiers himself. There's also another extremely early source,
Speaker 1: a text written in the sixth century called on the
Speaker 1: Ruin and Conquest of Britain by Guildess, which mentions Baden,
Speaker 1: and that's huge. That battle would have been within living
Speaker 1: memory of when Gildas was writing his book, except Guildess
Speaker 1: doesn't actually mention Arthur. It's possible maybe that Arthur figure
Speaker 1: was just too obvious to need to be mentioned, or
Speaker 1: maybe Ninius in the ninth century got his battles mixed
Speaker 1: up and that heroic general Arthur fought in a different
Speaker 1: later battle. But there's also no Arthur mentioned in the
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which would have covered the period he
Speaker 1: was alive. Nor is there an Arthur in the seven
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one Ecclesiastical History of the English People,
Speaker 1: which also mentioned the battle at Baden Guildis does mention
Speaker 1: someone named Ambrosius Arelenius, which excites some people because I
Speaker 1: suppose it starts with the letter A. But that seems
Speaker 1: like the type of thing that only matters if you're
Speaker 1: already determined to find evidence for a real king Arthur.
Speaker 1: Even Nenius's book, which does mention Arthur, the source that's
Speaker 1: most helpful if you're someone clinging to the idea that
Speaker 1: someone named Arthur exists, gets a little, let's say, less
Speaker 1: than factual. There's another section of Nenius's Historia Brittnam that
Speaker 1: claims that Arthur had a dog named Cabal who was
Speaker 1: chasing a bore, and while the dog was running, his
Speaker 1: pawprint became permanently embedded in stone, and people would try
Speaker 1: to steal the stone, Neneas says, but then the very
Speaker 1: next day it would be right back where it was.
Speaker 1: Nenius also tells us that Arthur's son was buried in
Speaker 1: a tomb that's never the same length if you measure
Speaker 1: it more than once quote, And men come to measure
Speaker 1: the grave and find it sometimes six feet in length,
Speaker 1: sometimes nine, sometimes twelve, sometimes fifteen. And whatever length you
Speaker 1: might measure in at one time, a second time you
Speaker 1: will not find it to have the same length. And
Speaker 1: I myself have put this to the test end quote.
Speaker 1: And so even back then, the oldest source we have
Speaker 1: mentioning a candidate who could ostensibly be our King Arthur.
Speaker 1: He's not a king, first of all, and second of all,
Speaker 1: he's already a figure of popular mythology. There's another source
Speaker 1: people often bring up, the Analyst Cambria or welsh Annals,
Speaker 1: originated in the tenth century, but which survives as a
Speaker 1: copy from two centuries after that. The welsh Annals also
Speaker 1: mention Arthur and the Battle of Baden, but the text
Speaker 1: went through so many revisions over the centuries it's impossible
Speaker 1: to know what the original text was, or whether it
Speaker 1: was ever a corroboration of the Historia Brittonum, or whether
Speaker 1: it was just using the Historia Brittonum as a source.
Speaker 1: And so the King Arthur of our popular imagination exists
Speaker 1: really only in the margins of historical sources, and it
Speaker 1: requires plenty of squinting. Certainly, a very very long time
Speaker 1: ago people had an idea of someone called Arthur, whether
Speaker 1: he was real or not. There's a Welsh poem called
Speaker 1: Egododeine from between the seventh and eleventh centuries, and it
Speaker 1: mentioned some random warrior and then adds he was no Arthur,
Speaker 1: the way someone today might say he was no George
Speaker 1: Clooney or whatever. Of course, once again we're faced with
Speaker 1: the question of whether it's possible the author of that
Speaker 1: poem had just read the Historia Brittonam and took note
Speaker 1: of this guy who allegedly killed nine hundred men. He
Speaker 1: might be referring to Arthur as a man who was
Speaker 1: understood to be a figure of myth already and not
Speaker 1: of history. That's really kind of all we have. Countless
Speaker 1: books and articles have been written about the quote unquote
Speaker 1: real King Arthur, and the idea that there might be
Speaker 1: some hidden clues we've overlooked sends historians and amateurs alike
Speaker 1: into Da Vinci code esque tizzies every few decades, only
Speaker 1: for nothing really worthwhile to come up. The archaeologist Noel
Speaker 1: Miles once Riley made the declaration that no figure on
Speaker 1: the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of
Speaker 1: the historian's time. On the evidence, it does seem astonishing
Speaker 1: that an occasionally referenced general somehow became one of the
Speaker 1: most celebrated figures in all of British mythology. So how
Speaker 1: did Arthur dux Belorum become a king? We have a
Speaker 1: Welsh cleric named Jeffrey of Monmouth to thank for the
Speaker 1: King Arthur, who has captivated our imagination for centuries. Three
Speaker 1: hundred years after Nennius wrote his battleist that included a
Speaker 1: battle leader named Arthur, Jeoffrey of Monmouth decided on a
Speaker 1: slight rebrand. In his eleven thirty six Historia Regnum Brittania,
Speaker 1: he wrote about King Arthur, the monarch who defeated the Saxons.
Speaker 1: This is the first version of Arthur that has elements
Speaker 1: of the story that remain in our mythology today, sort
Speaker 1: of the biggest hits of Arthurian legend Guenevere, Excalibur Merlin.
Speaker 1: In Jeffrey's version of the story, King Arthur's father was
Speaker 1: Uther Pendragon, and Arthur was conceived at Tintagel Castle and
Speaker 1: then ultimately died while battling Mordred, and he was laid
Speaker 1: to rest in Avalon. The larger cast of side characters
Speaker 1: aren't there, but the general shape should be familiar to
Speaker 1: anyone who went through a King Arthur phase. But Jeffrey
Speaker 1: didn't even really purport to historical accuracy, or at least
Speaker 1: not all that convincingly. Remember, he's writing in the twelfth
Speaker 1: century about something that allegedly was taking place in the
Speaker 1: sixth century. Jeffrey claimed he was basing the Arthur story
Speaker 1: on a quote very ancient book, but inconveniently for us,
Speaker 1: he doesn't actually mention what that book might be. Even
Speaker 1: at that time, Jeffrey's contemporaries were aware that he was
Speaker 1: writing a work of if not entirely fiction, then almost
Speaker 1: entirely fiction. William of Newburgh, a twelfth century historian, wrote
Speaker 1: of Jeffrey, quote, it is quite clear that everything this
Speaker 1: man wrote about Arthur was made up, partly by himself
Speaker 1: and partly by others, either from an inordinate love of lying,
Speaker 1: or for the sake of pleasing the Britons. The legend
Speaker 1: of Arthur was forming in real time, a folk story
Speaker 1: that was giving Britain its own identity. Jeffrey's book did
Speaker 1: please the Britons. It was a sensation. The most popular
Speaker 1: text in the Middle Ages after the Bible. The idea
Speaker 1: of Arthur was exciting a matter of national pride. In
Speaker 1: twelve thirty three, the Earl of Cornwall made what objectively
Speaker 1: seems like a terrible trade three prime estates in exchange
Speaker 1: for Tintagel. Tintagel was remote and served no real defensive
Speaker 1: or strategic function, but it did have one thing going
Speaker 1: for it. It was romantic in the sense that it
Speaker 1: was already associated with the man who was swiftly becoming
Speaker 1: a mascot for Britannia herself. The next big leap in
Speaker 1: the story of King Arthur as he became a legend,
Speaker 1: was a leap across the English Channel. The twelfth century
Speaker 1: French poet Schretien de Troy added his own spin on
Speaker 1: the Arthur lore, and, like a game of improv adding
Speaker 1: in new elements, he came up with Lancelot, the Holy
Speaker 1: Grail and Camelot, And from this point in the Arthur
Speaker 1: legend it becomes interwoven with Welsh mythology and Romantic traditions,
Speaker 1: and so our version of King Arthur is born not
Speaker 1: from sixth century history, but from twelfth century literature. But
Speaker 1: there were a lot of stories circling around nine hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, and the vast majority of them aren't household names.
Speaker 1: Why has this legend of Arthur stood the test of time.
Speaker 1: The answer is something that every good female pop star understands.
Speaker 1: When it comes to longevity, you've got to rebrand yourself.
Speaker 1: Arthur stories are incredibly malleable. They can fit like liquid
Speaker 1: into containers of any shape. Over the centuries, Arthur evolved
Speaker 1: into whatever the current moment needed. According to historian Nicholas Hyam,
Speaker 1: back when Nenius was writing about the great general who
Speaker 1: killed nine hundred Saxons in battle, Britain needed quote, a
Speaker 1: god beloved warrior to rally behind. One important detail of
Speaker 1: Neneus's historia is that Arthur went into battle with an
Speaker 1: image of the Virgin Mary on his shield. According to Hyam, quote,
Speaker 1: Arthur was winning battles with the support of Jesus Christ
Speaker 1: and Mary against the Saxons. The Saxons were presented as barbaric, dishonest,
Speaker 1: and latecomers to Christianity. By the time Jeffrey of Monmouth
Speaker 1: was writing his version, he was doing some pr for
Speaker 1: the Welsh, who were seen by some as Celtic speaking savages. Jeffreys.
Speaker 1: Arthur has his roots in the western craggy castle of Tintagel,
Speaker 1: and elements of his story are derived fairly linearly from
Speaker 1: Welsh and Irish folklore. Hard to think of the Welsh
Speaker 1: as savages when British history is oriented around a noble,
Speaker 1: valiant Celtic king, But Arthur wouldn't belong to the Welsh forever.
Speaker 1: In eleven ninety one, monks at Glastonbury made a shocking
Speaker 1: announcement they had found skeletons which they claimed were the
Speaker 1: remains of King Arthur and Queen Guenevere. What a lucky happenstance,
Speaker 1: of course, it's just a happy byproduct that that discovery
Speaker 1: would mean plenty of visitors and pilgrims coming to the abbe.
Speaker 1: One of those pilgrims was King Edward the First. He
Speaker 1: visited the Glastonbury Graves in twelve seventy eight and actually
Speaker 1: disinterred the remains. When observer wrote at the time, there
Speaker 1: in two caskets were found, the bones of the said
Speaker 1: King of wondrous size and those of Guenevere of marvelous beauty.
Speaker 1: I personally would love to know how beautiful a skeleton
Speaker 1: can be, but I'll take their word for it. Edward
Speaker 1: reinterred those skeletons after wrapping them in silk and giving
Speaker 1: them the Royal seal. But his little pilgrimage wasn't just
Speaker 1: to honor a fellow monarch. His loudly and publicly proclaiming
Speaker 1: that he saw the remains of King Arthur served an
Speaker 1: important political purpose. Edward was saying, King Arthur is definitely dead.
Speaker 1: So any Welsh enemy King Edward had who had any
Speaker 1: great notion that this heroic king might be immortal or whatever,
Speaker 1: return from the grave to challenge Edward for the throne.
Speaker 1: While they were sadly misguided. A few centuries later, other
Speaker 1: English monarchs would also use Arthur for their own pr purposes.
Speaker 1: As I've probably alluded to on this show, before, the
Speaker 1: Tudor claim to the throne of England was fairly tenuous.
Speaker 1: King Henry the seventh was really doing everything he could
Speaker 1: after the Wars of the Roses to try to establish
Speaker 1: himself as legitimate, and one way he did that was
Speaker 1: by claiming that on his Welsh side, he was a
Speaker 1: direct descendant of King Arthur. Henry the Seventh further bolstered
Speaker 1: that connection by naming his first son Prince Arthur. Although tragic,
Speaker 1: Arthur died young and cleared the way for his younger
Speaker 1: brother Henry to become King Henry the Eighth, and even
Speaker 1: later in the Victorian era, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote Idols
Speaker 1: of the King, repopularizing Arthur and framing Arthur's story not
Speaker 1: as one of a Welsh battle saga, but as a
Speaker 1: romance and a love triangle. It's no accident that Arthur
Speaker 1: re emerged during a period when the Industrial Revolution was
Speaker 1: adding a sense of uncertainty and chaos to the country.
Speaker 1: Arthur became a comforting figure of power and stability, and
Speaker 1: new elements of the Arthur story, notably of Guenevere as
Speaker 1: an adulterer, were introduced to reinforce notions of Victorian morality.
Speaker 1: Even today, the myth of King Arthur is pretty profitable,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that Arthur isn't real, and even if
Speaker 1: he was never actually lived At Tintagel Castle, the place
Speaker 1: receives three thousand visitors a day in the summer, most
Speaker 1: of whom probably imagine they're seeing the real Camelot, a
Speaker 1: fantasy not dispelled by the fact that English heritage, which controls.
Speaker 1: The site plays into that lower with Arthurian decor and carvings,
Speaker 1: Tintagel does have an incredible archaeological history. During the Arthurian period,
Speaker 1: the settlement was home to Celtic people who were writing
Speaker 1: on slabs, forging metal, and organizing relatively sophisticated systems of agriculture.
Speaker 1: It's easy to imagine, plausible even that at some point
Speaker 1: that group of people had a leader, and that leader
Speaker 1: was a valiant warrior, and when the Saxon Horde tried
Speaker 1: to cross the narrow Rocky strait to the castle, that
Speaker 1: leader might have been able to defend his people. Maybe
Speaker 1: that man was named Arthur or something like it, and
Speaker 1: the story of his noble victory embedded itself in Welsh folklore,
Speaker 1: eventually becoming embroidered until he was a king with noble,
Speaker 1: pious knight who carried a sword called Excalibur. When you
Speaker 1: tell a story like that, it almost sounds plausible. That's
Speaker 1: the history of King Arthur as we know it today.
Speaker 1: But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
Speaker 1: about how another aspect of Arthur's story came into the
Speaker 1: popular imagination. If you are familiar with the myth of
Speaker 1: King Arthur. You probably know that he became king because
Speaker 1: he was able to pull a sword from the stone.
Speaker 1: Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil
Speaker 1: is right wise king born of all England. You know
Speaker 1: the drill. All of these nobles fail, and then lowly
Speaker 1: Arthur is able to do it. That part of the story,
Speaker 1: and in fact, lots of the most popular elements of
Speaker 1: the Arthur legend today come from a fifteenth century text
Speaker 1: called Lemoort d Arthur by Thomas Mallory. But the identity
Speaker 1: of who Thomas Mallory actually was is a question that
Speaker 1: has been the subject of speculation and debate among historians.
Speaker 1: Not as much debate as who King Arthur was, but
Speaker 1: you know debate. The most prominent answer is that he
Speaker 1: was Thomas Mallory of Noubled Revel in Warwickshire. And that's
Speaker 1: the case. He was sort of an anti Arthur. That
Speaker 1: Thomas Mallory was a thief and a criminal and actually
Speaker 1: would have published Lemoor to Arthur while he was in
Speaker 1: prison for robbery and rape. That is a very downer
Speaker 1: of an epilogue. And so I'll leave you with something
Speaker 1: a little happier. We had an addition to the Noble
Speaker 1: Blood family last November on Thanksgiving Day, a little boy
Speaker 1: named Arthur, and as his chubby cheeks and giggle and
Speaker 1: the fact that I can't stop taking pictures of him
Speaker 1: can attest, he is entirely and definitely real. Noble Blood
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz,
Speaker 1: with additional and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender,
Speaker 1: Amy Hit and Julia Milaney. The show is edited and
Speaker 1: produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producerrima il Kaali and
Speaker 1: executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.