Arthurian Mythology List

Avalon is the enchanted island at the edge of the Arthurian world, the Isle of Apples where Excalibur was forged and where King Arthur was carried, mortally wounded, after the last battle at Camlann. It is the island ruled by Morgen, the great enchantress and healer, and her eight sisters, where orchards bear fruit without sowing, where no plough is needed and no winter comes, and where the people live a hundred years and more. It is the destination of the black barge with the weeping queens that came out of the mist to take the dying king from the shore, and the bower where Morgan le Fay promised to heal his wounds if he would stay with her for long ages. It is the island that the monks of Glastonbury claimed to prove in 1191, when they dug up a hollowed oak and a leaden cross naming Arthur in the isle of Avalon. And it is the last hope of the Arthurian legend, the place where the once and future king sleeps or heals, waiting for the day of Britain's greatest need.

Beaumains is the kitchen knight who rose from the scullery of Camelot to become one of the most beloved heroes of the Round Table, the young man who let himself be mocked for a year so that he could prove his worth by deeds rather than by blood. He is Gareth of Orkney, the youngest true-born son of King Lot of Orkney and Queen Margawse, Arthur's sister, the brother of Gawain, Gaheris, and Agravaine, and the uncle of the fellowship that gathered at Camelot. He is the knight who arrived at Arthur's Pentecost feast in rags, leaning on the shoulders of two men, and asked only for food and drink for a year before he would reveal his name or claim his birthright. He is the boy whom Sir Kay, Arthur's sharp-tongued steward, nicknamed Beaumains, meaning Fair Hands, in mockery of his uncalloused palms, and whom Kay put to work in the kitchen among the scullions. He is the warrior who, when a damsel named Lynette came begging for a champion to rescue her sister from the Red Knight of the Red Launds, asked Arthur for the adventure and for Sir Lancelot to knight him, and then proved himself the equal of any knight in Christendom. And he is the gentle giant who could have boasted of his royal blood but chose instead to let his sword speak for him, the knight whose humility was as great as his strength and whose story is the purest fairy tale in all of Arthurian legend.

Blaunchard is the magnificent flower-white horse given to Sir Launfal by Tryamour, the fairy queen of Olyroun, as one of three magical gifts that transformed a poor knight into the most celebrated champion in Britain. It is the steed that carried Launfal to victory against the giant Sir Valentyne in the tournament fields of Lombardy, its light-footed speed outmatching every horse in the Lombard host. It is the horse that vanished in an instant when Launfal broke his sacred vow of secrecy, disappearing along with the invisible servant Gyfre and the ever-full purse, leaving the knight poorer than before. It is the destrier that returned at the hour of Launfal's greatest need, brought by Gyfre to the court of King Arthur so that the vindicated knight might ride away to the Otherworld with his fairy lady. And it is the only named horse in the Breton lay tradition of Launfal, a creature whose flower-white coat marked it as property of the fairy realm and whose presence signalled that its rider enjoyed the favour of powers beyond mortal ken.

Broceliande is the most enchanted forest in Arthurian legend, the wild Breton wood where magic is not a visitor but a resident. It is the forest of the Fountain of Barenton, where a golden basin hangs from a pine above a slab of emerald stone, and anyone who pours water on the stone summons a storm of thunder, wind, and hail terrible enough to shake the world. It is the wood where the knight Calogrenant was shamed by the fountain's defender, and where Yvain went to avenge him and found a queen, a lion, and a life's worth of adventures. It is the place where the prophet Merlin first saw the young huntress Viviane, taught her all his magic, and was sealed by her spells inside an invisible tower or beneath a great stone, where he sleeps to this day. It is the site of the Valley of No Return, where the enchantress Morgan le Fay trapped every faithless knight in Britain until Lancelot broke the spell. And it is a real forest: the woods of Paimpont in Brittany, where the fountain, the valley, and the tomb still stand.

Camelot is the legendary city of King Arthur, the seat of the Round Table and the shining capital of the brief golden age of chivalry. It is the city where the greatest knights in the world gathered at Pentecost to renew their oath, where Guinevere presided over the most courtly fellowship ever sung, and where no king would sit down to a high feast until some marvel had ridden into the hall to break the peace. It is the city where the Round Table stood with its Siege Perilous, the fatal seat that only the purest knight could take, and where the Holy Grail appeared in covered light to send the whole fellowship out upon the greatest quest of the age. It is the city that Malory identified with Winchester, that local legend placed at Cadbury in Somerset, and that Tennyson made many-towered and built to music. And it is the city that never existed outside story, yet has outlasted every real fortress of its age, becoming the name we give to any brief shining moment when the world seemed ordered as it should be, before the fellowship broke and the towers fell back into dream.

Camlann is the last battle of the Arthurian world, the field where King Arthur and Mordred fell, and the day the Round Table died. It is the bare entry in the Welsh Annals, the Strife of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut fell, written down four centuries after the fact and never explained. It is Geoffrey of Monmouth's slaughter by the River Camblan in Cornwall, where the flower of two armies destroyed each other and the wounded king was carried away to Avalon. It is Malory's long day on the downs beside Salisbury: the treaty made at a dead man's warning, the adder that rose from the heath and stung a knight, the sword drawn to kill it that two watching armies read as the signal, and a hundred thousand dead by nightfall. It is the field where Arthur, spearing his traitor son through the body, took his death-wound in the same stroke, and where Bedivere watched the black barge come for the king out of the mist. And it is the name we keep for every fight that nobody wins, the day when all debts come due and the age ends.

Culhwch is the hero of the oldest Arthurian story in the world, the Welsh prince of Culhwch and Olwen, who was born in a pig run, cursed by a stepmother, and set forty impossible tasks to win the most beautiful maiden in Britain. He is the son of Cilydd and of Goleuddydd, Fair Daylight, who bore him among the swine in her madness, and the cousin of King Arthur through his mother's house. He is the radiant youth who rode to Arthur's court in gold and scarlet, demanded that the king trim his hair as the pledge of a gift, and asked for Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden the Chief Giant, whose fate it was to die the day she wed. He is the suitor who faced the giant's propped-open eyelids and poisoned spears, and accepted the anoethau, the wonders no man could do: the comb and shears between the ears of the enchanted boar Twrch Trwyth, the cauldron of Diwrnach, the blood of the Black Witch, the finding of Mabon who was stolen at three days old. And he is the hero who does almost none of it himself, winning his bride through the fellowship of Arthur's court, the oldest image we have of what Camelot was for.

The Each Uisge is the most feared water spirit in Scottish folklore, a shape-shifting monster that haunts the sea lochs and freshwater lochs of the Highlands and Islands, luring riders to a death so terrible that only their livers survive to tell the tale. It is the creature that appears as a beautiful horse with an unnaturally fine coat and rich harness, mingling with mortal herds until some unsuspecting soul climbs upon its back, at which point its skin becomes adhesive and the horse gallops to the deepest part of the loch to drown and devour its prey. It is the handsome stranger who approaches young women on the shore, betrayed only by the sand and water-weeds tangled in his hair or the hooves that replace his feet when he thinks no one is looking. It is the monster that killed nine children at a single stroke in Argyll, leaving only one boy who cut off his own finger to escape, and the beast that the blacksmith of Raasay slew with red-hot hooks after it took his daughter. And it is the creature that dissolves by sunrise into a soft greyish jelly, leaving no corpse to prove it ever existed, the eternal reminder that the most beautiful things in the Highlands are often the most deadly.

Elaine of Astolat is the maiden who died of love for Sir Lancelot, the greatest knight of King Arthur's Round Table, whose heart already belonged to Queen Guinevere. She is the girl who nursed Lancelot back to life after a spear nearly killed him at a tournament, and who loved him the more hopelessly with every day of his healing. She is the owner of the red sleeve embroidered with pearls that Lancelot wore on his helmet as a disguise, the only lady's favour he ever carried into battle. She is the tragic centre of the tale Thomas Malory, the fifteenth-century writer of Le Morte d'Arthur, called his most noble story of Lancelot, in which her body was laid in a funeral barge and rowed down the Thames to Camelot with her last letter in her hand. And she is the inspiration for Alfred Tennyson's Lady of Shalott, the cursed weaver whose death-boat became one of the most painted images of the Victorian age, making Elaine the most famous of all the women who loved Lancelot in vain.

The Enchanted Forest Spirits are the invisible guardians of the woodlands that lie at the heart of Arthurian romance, the supernatural presences that turn every forest path into a test of courage and every clearing into a threshold between the mortal world and the Otherworld. They are the spirits of Broceliande, the legendary forest in Brittany where Merlin, the wizard who placed the sword in the stone by which Arthur proved his right to the throne, met his fate at the hands of the Lady of the Lake, the enchantress who raised Lancelot and gave Arthur his sword Excalibur. They are the fairies who dwell in the Mirror Lake, emerging only at night to admire their reflections, and the elemental guardians who govern earth, water, air, and fire within the sacred groves. They are the grisly spectre that rose wailing from Tarn Wadling in Inglewood Forest, the spirit of Queen Guinevere's mother who condemned the Round Table for its pride and predicted the fall of Camelot. They are the trapped knights of the Val sans Retour, the Valley of No Return, imprisoned by Morgan le Fay, Arthur's half-sister and the enchantress who engineered the Green Knight's beheading game, until Lancelot, the greatest knight in Christendom, freed them. And they are the oldest power in Arthurian legend, older than Camelot itself, the spirits who remind every knight that the forest does not recognise royal blood and that the trees have witnessed kingdoms rise and fall before Arthur drew his first breath.

Excalibur is the legendary sword of King Arthur, the most famous weapon in Western mythology. Its origins lie in the Welsh name Caledfwlch ("hard cleft" or "lightning sword"), which appears in the tale Culhwch and Olwen (c. 1100), part of the Mabinogion. Geoffrey of Monmouth latinized the name to Caliburnus in his Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136). The sword became "Excalibur" through French adaptations (Escalibor, Excalibor) and finally Malory's English Le Morte d'Arthur (1485).

Two distinct swords are conflated in the later Arthurian tradition: the Sword in the Stone (Caliburn), which proves Arthur's right to rule, and Excalibur, given to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake. Caliburn was a ceremonial weapon of selection; Excalibur was a practical sword of combat. Over centuries of retelling, these two weapons merged into one narrative, with Caliburn becoming the "first sword" that Arthur breaks in battle, necessitating the acquisition of Excalibur.

Glastonbury is the town that claimed the Isle of Avalon and made the claim stick, the one place on earth where Arthurian legend keeps a permanent address. It is the site of the grave of King Arthur, dug up by the monks of its abbey in 1191 between two ancient pyramids, with a leaden cross naming the isle of Avalon as his resting place. It is the landing place of Joseph of Arimathea, the disciple who caught Christ's blood in the cup of the Last Supper, and who was said to have brought that Holy Grail to Britain and planted his staff on Wearyall Hill, where it took root as the thorn that blossoms at Christmas. It is the mound of the Tor, the strange conical hill crowned by the ruined tower of St Michael, once an island in the winter floods and once the gate of the Celtic otherworld. It is the spring of the Chalice Well, running red with iron as if the earth itself remembered the Grail's blood. And it is the modern capital of every seeker of the old magic, where ley hunters, pilgrims, and the largest music festival on earth all pay their respects.