Something doesn't add up

In message <news:tbk%j.302678$pM4.143662@pd7urf1no>
Sean_Q_ <nospam DeleteThis @no.sapm> spoke these staves:
>
> According to a documentary on Tolkien, he wanted an "English"
> national legend. Apparently the Arthurian legends wouldn't do
> because they were a "French import".

There's something about it also in the introductory part of letter #
131 -- a rather long letter, probably from late 1951, in which
Tolkien gives 'a long yet bald resume' of his mythology including
both Silm and LotR with various explanations -- published partly in
/Letters/ and Silm and partly in Hammond & Scull's /Reader's
Companion/ to LotR.

There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic,
Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but
nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of
course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but
powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized,
associated with the soil of Britain but not with English;
and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one
thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical,
incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important
thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the
Christian religion.
[Letters #131, to Milton Waldman, ?late 1951]

<snip>

> His legends involve mounted knights in armor with all the
> trappings such as squires, lances, jousts etc.

Yes. Arthurian knights are usually depicted and envisioned in armoury
and weaponry which didn't exist until about 1300 -- or about two
hundred years before Malory's /Morte d'Arthur/ from 1485, which cast
the characters as contemporary knights.

<snip>

> Or were they...(?) Hmmm... I don't recall King Alfred leading
> armored cavalry into battle against the Danes either. Something
> awful fishy is going on here.

I won't pretend to be an expert here, but merely direct the attention
to the Wikipedia articles on cavalry and King Arthur:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalry>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur>

Whatever the kernel of truth in the stories, there is little doubt
that they are predominantly made up (with about the same level of
veracity as e.g. Beowulf -- perhaps there was a leader called Arthur
and certainly the countries described did exist). It is, however,
possible that a fifth or sixth century chieftain in England could
have had mounted warriors inspired by Roman cavalry, though these,
due to the prohibitive cost of both obtaining and maintaining horse
as well as armour and weapons, would most likely have been few and
far between (too few, in any case, to be a decisive factor on the
battle-field).

> Tolkien's world is also vivid, but he was careful to place the
> action in a fictional geography.

That depends

His first effort, the Book of Lost Tales, is firmly placed in England
-- even down to identifying specific locations in the stories with
locations important to Tolkien.

By the time he got to LotR, however, his approach had changed a bit,
and his stories were less specifically localized, although the tale
is still located the western part of Europe with a focus on the
north-west. So even though the specific geography doesn't match up,
LotR is nevertheless intended to portray an imagined historical
period of actual western Europe.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
- /Hogfather/ (Terry Pratchett)
 >> Stay informed about: Something doesn't add up 

Sean_Q_ wrote:

> According to a documentary on Tolkien, he wanted an "English" national
> legend.

Tolkien said that.

> Apparently the Arthurian legends wouldn't do because they were
> a "French import".

That part seems more likely to be an interpretation by somebody else. The
most common telling of Arthur - Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur" certainly is
heavily French-influenced, but Arthur goes back a long way before that.
Geoffrey of Monmouth and Giraldis Cambrensis, iirc (wow. It's almost 30
years since I took that course on Arthurian literature...).
>
> And yet Arthur himself was supposed to be a "Briton" -- in his case
> a Romanized Celt in the latter part of the 5th century.

Or some say a Celticized Roman

> Something doesn't add up here. The Normans had knights in armor
> at Hastings. Why didn't Harold ??? -- if they'd already been around
> in England for 3 centuries.

They hadn't.

> The legends of Arthur and Camelot seem so real and so vivid that it's
> hard to believe they're all a construct that has been pulled over my
> eyes to blind me from the truth (as Morpheus in _Matrix_ might say).

That is "Morte d'Arthur" - 13th century or so, placed in a 5th or 6th
century setting. The earlier legends are nothing like that.
>
> Tolkien's world is also vivid, but he was careful to place the action
> in a fictional geography.

And Mallory - understanding Einstein centuries before Einstein - set the
action in a fictional time.
--
derek
 >> Stay informed about: Something doesn't add up 

Others have commented and I'll try not to repeat too much of what they
have said, but simply to add things.

Sean_Q_ wrote:
> According to a documentary on Tolkien, he wanted an "English" national
> legend. Apparently the Arthurian legends wouldn't do because they were
> a "French import".

Quite. While the Welsh Arthurian materials are preserved, they are few
and far between and do not seem to have made it across the border into
England in the pre-Norman period. The Normans intermarried with the
important families around them, including those in Brittany where they
heard the Arthurian tales, and then Norman authors recast them into the
Arthurian tales we know from the 12th century, most notably at that
period Chretien de Troyes and Marie de France. Historiographers were
also busy making use of Arthurian traditions to claim that William and
his house were descended from Arthur (as well as to support the claim to
the English throne from Alfred), and others have mentioned those writing
in Latin, but I'll add Wace and Layamon to the pile.


> And yet Arthur himself was supposed to be a "Briton" -- in his case
> a Romanized Celt in the latter part of the 5th century.

Maybe. More importantly what no one has pointed out is that Briton does
not mean English. "Briton" refers to the pre-Anglo-Saxon Celtic
inhabitants of the Roman province specifically or sometimes to the
pre-Anglo-Saxon Celtic inhabitants of the island as a whole. "English"
comes from "Anglish", an adjective from the tribal name "Angle",
originally claimed to have been those Germanic peoples who dwelt in the
Angle between modern Germany and Denmark. What Tolkien bemoaned in
those early days was that ENGLISH had no such great mythology or cycle
like the Briton Arthur, the French Charlemagne/Roland, the Roman Aeneid,
the Greek Odyssey/Iliad etc. The closest English comes to this is
Beowulf, and that tale speaks of characters and events in Scandinavia,
not among the English in England.

> His legends involve mounted knights in armor with all the trappings
> such as squires, lances, jousts etc.

Sometimes. The Arthurian tales are anachronistic and read the high and
late medieval period backward as if it were earlier. Further, the
Arthurian tales take place "back in the good old days". As Chretien
opens his first Arthurian, back when they knew about love and
chivalry....key concerns of the late 12th century.

> However it's my understanding is that all this didn't really get its
> start in Europe until the 8th century; specifically at the Battle
> of Tours (732 AD) when Charles Martel's infantry defeated the mounted
> Umayyads and then began to adopt their foes' cavalry technology.

Too true, though mounted cavalry had long been used both within the
Roman empire and among the Germanic tribes.

> In fact even by 1066 the English were *still* fighting on foot,
> as did Harold's Saxons at Hastings.

They had to in this case: they took a defensive position on a hilltop
forcing the Normans to come UP to them to engage. It would be entirely
inappropriate and stupid to use cavalry in that defensive posture.
Think of the battle before the Black Gate in LoTR--you obviously have
cavalrymen among the forces of the West gathered there, but the cavalry
wasn't used: they formed a defensive wall on their respective slag
mounds and hunkered down. Same at Hastings.

>
> Something doesn't add up here. The Normans had knights in armor
> at Hastings. Why didn't Harold ???

Harold did. Look at the Bayeux Tapestry: Harold's troops are dressed
basically the same as William's troops.

-- if they'd already been around
> in England for 3 centuries.

Well, depends on what you mean here. Knights and armored warriors had
certainly been around, but they weren't armored in the way that I think
you're conceiving really until the 14th century.
>
> Or were they...(?) Hmmm... I don't recall King Alfred leading armored
> cavalry into battle against the Danes either. Something awful fishy
> is going on here.

The Battle of Edington again is a defensive battle. Regrettably we know
little about Anglo-Saxon military tactics in most cases.

>
> The legends of Arthur and Camelot seem so real and so vivid that it's
> hard to believe they're all a construct that has been pulled over my
> eyes to blind me from the truth (as Morpheus in _Matrix_ might say).

Depends on what you mean by "truth". There is a great deal of truth in
the tales, they just aren't historical, though there may be some
historical material in them.

>
> Tolkien's world is also vivid, but he was careful to place the action
> in a fictional geography.

Kind of. It was more a fictional time than a fictional geography.
 >> Stay informed about: Something doesn't add up 

In rec.arts.books.tolkien Sean_Q_ <nospam DeleteThis @no.sapm> wrote:
> According to a documentary on Tolkien, he wanted an "English" national
> legend. Apparently the Arthurian legends wouldn't do because they were
> a "French import".

Most of the legends as we know them were created during the 12th century by
Geoffrey of Monmouth, and with some important addititions from Chrétien de
Troyes who was responsible for adding Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the
legends.

Much of this was of course based on older legends. There is also a Welsh
story-cycle about Arthur and his knights which differs in many ways.


>
> And yet Arthur himself was supposed to be a "Briton" -- in his case
> a Romanized Celt in the latter part of the 5th century.

That depends on which version of the legends you read.
He is probably based on some real historical person, but any details
on who that might have been is largely guesses.


>
> His legends involve mounted knights in armor with all the trappings
> such as squires, lances, jousts etc.

Yes, the people writing down the legends (in the 12th century as I said)
put in the trappings they were familiar with.


>
> However it's my understanding is that all this didn't really get its
> start in Europe until the 8th century; specifically at the Battle
> of Tours (732 AD) when Charles Martel's infantry defeated the mounted
> Umayyads and then began to adopt their foes' cavalry technology.
>
> In fact even by 1066 the English were *still* fighting on foot,
> as did Harold's Saxons at Hastings.

Yep, mounted knights as we think of them did not really come into
existence until 11th-12th century. Most of the social institution
of 'knights' and feudalism got its early start during the reign
of Charles Martel's grandson Charles the Great (aka Charlemagne)
in the early 9th century.

>
> Something doesn't add up here. The Normans had knights in armor
> at Hastings. Why didn't Harold ??? -- if they'd already been around
> in England for 3 centuries.

They simply hadn't been around in England for 3 centuries.

>
> Or were they...(?) Hmmm... I don't recall King Alfred leading armored
> cavalry into battle against the Danes either. Something awful fishy
> is going on here.
>
> The legends of Arthur and Camelot seem so real and so vivid that it's
> hard to believe they're all a construct that has been pulled over my
> eyes to blind me from the truth (as Morpheus in _Matrix_ might say).

The Arthur legends are an anachronistic mixture of some scant historical
sources that have very few details, some older story-cycles, and lots of
fanciful writers adding their own ideas and embellishments to it.


>
> Tolkien's world is also vivid, but he was careful to place the action
> in a fictional geography.
>



--
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 DeleteThis @student.uu.se
 >> Stay informed about: Something doesn't add up 

On May 29, 9:58 am, Erik Trulsson <ertr1... DeleteThis @student.uu.se> wrote:
eyes to blind me from the truth (as Morpheus in _Matrix_ might say).
>
> The Arthur legends are an anachronistic mixture of some scant historical
> sources that have very few details, some older story-cycles, and lots of
> fanciful writers adding their own ideas and embellishments to it.
>
>
>
And they still are - read Bernard Cornwell's trilogy, Winter King,
Enemy of God and Excalibur.
 >> Stay informed about: Something doesn't add up 

Larry Swain wrote:

> Maybe. More importantly what no one has pointed out is that Briton does
> not mean English. "Briton" refers to the pre-Anglo-Saxon Celtic
> inhabitants of the Roman province specifically or sometimes to the
> pre-Anglo-Saxon Celtic inhabitants of the island as a whole.

Quite. You're right, that _is_ "more importantly".

> Too true, though mounted cavalry had long been used both within the
> Roman empire and among the Germanic tribes.

That's rather redundant, as the Romans themselves disdained cavalry and used
their Germanic/Celtic auxiliaries for that
>
> Depends on what you mean by "truth". There is a great deal of truth in
> the tales, they just aren't historical, though there may be some
> historical material in them.

And of course, much of it not "history" of Arthur, but history none the
less.
--
derek
 >> Stay informed about: Something doesn't add up 

Larry Swain wrote:

> Kind of. It was more a fictional time than a fictional geography.

True, but I meant that JRRT wanted an "English" legend and yet there's
no identifiable geographic England in his legendarium. The Shire may
resemble an English village and the Rohirrim may use Anglo-Saxon style
alliterative verse, but part of English culture has always been a sort
of insular mentality; it belongs to Europe and yet stands slightly
apart. ("Heavy fog blocks Channel shipping - Continent isolated.")

SQ
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"Erik Trulsson" <ertr1013 RemoveThis @student.uu.se> skrev i meddelandet
news:483e7019@news.midgard.homeip.net...

[snip]

> Most of the legends as we know them were created during the 12th century
> by
> Geoffrey of Monmouth, and with some important addititions from Chrétien de
> Troyes who was responsible for adding Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the
> legends.

However, I have seen scholarly specualtions that the Holy Grail was
originally a mythical Celtic pot of plenty, a pot which was always full of
food..

> Much of this was of course based on older legends. There is also a Welsh
> story-cycle about Arthur and his knights which differs in many ways.

The French stories built on the Welsh ones; as others have pointed out,
Tolkien clearly felt that the mythology never really belonged to the
English, being "imperfectly naturalized".

Öjevind
 >> Stay informed about: Something doesn't add up 

In rec.arts.books.tolkien JJ <john.TakeThisOut@jones5011.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> On May 29, 9:58 am, Erik Trulsson <ertr1....TakeThisOut@student.uu.se> wrote:
> eyes to blind me from the truth (as Morpheus in _Matrix_ might say).
>>
>> The Arthur legends are an anachronistic mixture of some scant historical
>> sources that have very few details, some older story-cycles, and lots of
>> fanciful writers adding their own ideas and embellishments to it.
>>
>>
>>
> And they still are - read Bernard Cornwell's trilogy, Winter King,
> Enemy of God and Excalibur.

I have never heard of that particular trilogy, nor of the writer, but over
the last century there must have been several hundred writers (if not more)
adding their takes on the Arthur legends in various books, movies, games,
and comics (and probably songs, poems and theatre plays as well.) I don't
expect people to stop mining the Arturian legends for material any time
soon.






--
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013.TakeThisOut@student.uu.se
 >> Stay informed about: Something doesn't add up 

"Larry Swain" <giles.DeleteThis@poetic.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:y4adnfAf-Mo8UKPVnZ2dnUVZ_jCdnZ2d@rcn.net...

[snip]

> Maybe. More importantly what no one has pointed out is that Briton does
> not mean English. "Briton" refers to the pre-Anglo-Saxon Celtic
> inhabitants of the Roman province specifically or sometimes to the
> pre-Anglo-Saxon Celtic inhabitants of the island as a whole. "English"
> comes from "Anglish", an adjective from the tribal name "Angle",
> originally claimed to have been those Germanic peoples who dwelt in the
> Angle

That is to say, Stoors.

Öjevind
 >> Stay informed about: Something doesn't add up 

On Wed, 28 May 2008 21:32:09 GMT, Sean_Q_ <nospam.DeleteThis@no.sapm> wrote:

>According to a documentary on Tolkien, he wanted an "English" national
>legend. Apparently the Arthurian legends wouldn't do because they were
>a "French import".
>
>And yet Arthur himself was supposed to be a "Briton" -- in his case
>a Romanized Celt in the latter part of the 5th century.
>
Yes. The Arthur stories were in origin Celtic legends from the
post-Roman period, about a warlord who fought the Saxons, originally
transmitted orally, and collected by Geoffrey of Monmouth in _The
History of the Kings of Britain_. The story was then used by the
minstrels of France and Italy as the basis of the 'Matter of Britain'
- one of the three great story-cycles from which their popular stories
in the vernacular languages - 'romances' - were drawn. The others were
the 'Matter of France' - Charlemagne and his paladins - and the
'Matter of Rome' - the ancient Greek and Roman myths.

The minstrels included in the Matter of Britainfantastic
embellishments not in the original, plus some stories from other
sources that were not in the original: the Grail quest, the Lancelot
stories, Tristan and Isolde and so on. Also the minstrels composed
their stories with their own contemporary societies in mind, so their
heroes were idealised versions of mediaeval knights.

This more fantastic version of the myth was the one that became
established as the default version, so Tolkien was quite right to call
it a 'French import'.

>His legends involve mounted knights in armor with all the trappings
>such as squires, lances, jousts etc.
>
>However it's my understanding is that all this didn't really get its
>start in Europe until the 8th century; specifically at the Battle
>of Tours (732 AD) when Charles Martel's infantry defeated the mounted
>Umayyads and then began to adopt their foes' cavalry technology.

'Began to.' The move from infantry-domination to cavalry domination
was a process that lasted centuries. The mounted knight didn't become
a force to be reckoned-with until the invention of the lance; and the
technique for using it, couched under the arm; and the stirrup, which
allowed the knight to stay in the saddle while fighting. Before that,
the leaders rode, but they were not as effective; often they rode to
the battle and dismounted to fight.

And there was already a tradition of cavalry in Germanic Christendom -
the Goths were horse-nomads for a while, andthe strength of their
cavalry defeated the Roman legions at the battle of Adrianople (AD
378); the tradition was always that the Germanic war-leaders would
ride. The Goths probably had better horses than were available to
other tribes, too.

The manorial system of feudal Europe was based on the fact that a
manor was the amount of land sufficient to support one mounted
warrior.
>
>In fact even by 1066 the English were *still* fighting on foot,
>as did Harold's Saxons at Hastings.

But Harold rode to the battle.
>
>Something doesn't add up here. The Normans had knights in armor
>at Hastings. Why didn't Harold ??? -- if they'd already been around
>in England for 3 centuries.
>
>Or were they...(?) Hmmm... I don't recall King Alfred leading armored
>cavalry into battle against the Danes either. Something awful fishy
>is going on here.
>
>The legends of Arthur and Camelot seem so real and so vivid that it's
>hard to believe they're all a construct that has been pulled over my
>eyes to blind me from the truth (as Morpheus in _Matrix_ might say).

It's a collaborative effort by generations of minstrels.
>
>Tolkien's world is also vivid, but he was careful to place the action
>in a fictional geography.
>
>Sean_Q_
>
--
Matthew T Curtis mtcurtis[at]dsl.pipex.com
HIV+ for 26 glorious years!
What Mrs Whitlow had sewn together out of her dress was a lot more
substantial than a bikini. It was more a *newzealand* - two quite
large respectable halves separated by a narrow channel.
- Terry Pratchett
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In message <news:6a8mojF36a0nrU1@mid.individual.net>
> "Öjevind Lång" <bredband.net RemoveThis @ojevind.lang> spoke these staves:
>
> "Larry Swain" <giles RemoveThis @poetic.com> skrev i meddelandet
> news:y4adnfAf-Mo8UKPVnZ2dnUVZ_jCdnZ2d@rcn.net...
>>
>> Maybe. More importantly what no one has pointed out is that
>> Briton does not mean English.

Very good point. Thanks, Larry!

>> "English" comes from "Anglish", an adjective from the tribal
>> name "Angle", originally claimed to have been those Germanic
>> peoples who dwelt in the Angle
>
> That is to say, Stoors.

Brilliant!

I'm gonna try that on the mrs some day -- she's from that part of the
world and she's even quite short, so the connection is obvious (I will,
however, most certainly /not/ give out private details about the
possible furriness of my wife's feet)

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

Science without religion is lame. Religion without science
is blind.
- Albert Einstein
 >> Stay informed about: Something doesn't add up 

Troels Forchhammer <Troels.DeleteThis@thisisfake.invalid> wrote:
> "Öjevind Lång" <bredband.net.DeleteThis@ojevind.lang> spoke these staves:

[Angle]
>> That is to say, Stoors.

> I'm gonna try that on the mrs some day -- she's from that part of the
> world and she's even quite short, so the connection is obvious

I'm probably stupid, and I know my English is worse than yours ,
so may I ask what the connection between "stoor" and "short" is?

- Dirk
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