Arthurian Mythology List

Edern fab Nudd is a knight of Welsh Arthurian tradition, best known as the opponent whom Geraint defeats in the sparrowhawk episode of Geraint and Enid. His name identifies him as a son of Nudd, and Culhwch and Olwen places him beside Gwyn ap Nudd in Arthur's company. Elsewhere he appears as a leader and counsellor rather than an enemy: The Dream of Rhonabwy presents him at the head of the men of Denmark in its imagined Arthurian muster. Forms such as Hiderus and Yder connect him with the Latin and French traditions, while the figure labelled Isdernus at Modena is commonly associated with the same family of names. These appearances belong to different works, not one continuous biography. The saint Edern of Welsh church dedications should not automatically be identified with this knight. His significance lies in the movement of an Arthurian name between tales, languages and images, with each retelling assigning him a somewhat different role.

Edern's Dwarf is the unnamed whip-bearer whose violence launches the opening adventure of Erec and Enide and its Welsh counterpart Geraint and Enid. He rides with the proud Sparrowhawk Knight, later identified in Welsh tradition as Edern fab Nudd, and blocks anyone he considers too low in rank to approach his master. When Queen Guinevere sends a maiden to ask the knight's name, the dwarf strikes her with his scourge. He then lashes the unarmed Erec or Geraint when the hero tries to ask the same question. The insult cannot be answered immediately because the mysterious knight is fully armed, so the hero follows the group instead. That pursuit leads to the sparrowhawk contest, the meeting with Enide or Enid, and the defeat of the dwarf's master. He never receives a personal name, yet two blows from his whip set one of the earliest Arthurian romances in motion.

Efnysien is the most destructive figure in Welsh mythology, the half-brother whose single act of rage set in motion a war that annihilated two kingdoms. He is the son of Euroswydd and Penarddun, the twin brother of Nisien, the peacemaker who could calm two armies at their most incensed, and the half-brother of Bendigeidfran, the giant king of Britain whose body was so vast that no house could contain him. He is the man who mutilated the horses of Matholwch, the king of Ireland, slicing their lips back to their teeth, their ears back to their heads, and their tails to their backs in a frenzy of calculated cruelty because he had not been consulted about his sister Branwen's marriage. He is the villain who threw his own nephew Gwern into a fire during a feast meant to end the war, and the unexpected hero who sacrificed his own life to destroy the Pair Dadeni, the magical cauldron of rebirth that the Irish were using to resurrect their dead soldiers. And he is the catalyst of the greatest tragedy in the Mabinogion, the man whose name means "hostile enemy" and whose actions proved that a single wounded ego can burn down the world.

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.

Elaine of Corbenic is the daughter of King Pelles, the Fisher King and guardian of the Holy Grail, the maiden who bore the sacred vessel through the halls of her father's castle and who became the mother of Galahad, the purest knight who ever lived and the only man to achieve the Grail. She is the princess who was trapped in a scalding bath by the enchantress Morgan le Fay out of jealousy for her beauty, and who was rescued by Sir Lancelot, the greatest knight in the world, falling in love with him at the moment of her salvation. She is the woman who, with the sorceress Dame Brisen's aid, tricked Lancelot into her bed by making him believe she was Queen Guinevere, his forbidden love, and who conceived Galahad from that single night of deception. She is the healer who found Lancelot wandering naked and mad in her father's garden after Guinevere discovered their second tryst and drove him to insanity, and who cured him by bringing him before the Holy Grail itself. And she is the tragic lover who lived with Lancelot for two years on the Joyous Isle as the Chevalier Mal Fet, the Knight Mis-made, only to die of grief when he left her to return to Camelot and the queen he truly loved, a maiden who gave the world its greatest knight and received nothing but absence in return.

Eldad is the bishop of Gloucester in Geoffrey of Monmouth's legendary history, a churchman whose counsel helps determine what happens to the defeated enemies of Aurelius Ambrosius. His brother is Eldol of Gloucester, the warrior who captures Hengist and later carries out his execution. Eldad urges that punishment by invoking the biblical example of Samuel and Agag, yet he also argues that the surrendering Octa should receive mercy. These contrasting interventions place him at the centre of Geoffrey's account of conquest, settlement and the rebuilding of Britain. He is also associated with the burial of the British nobles killed through Hengist's treachery and with the king's later visit to their graves near Salisbury. The episodes belong to a medieval narrative about Britain's past, not a securely documented biography of a fifth-century bishop. Eldad's importance lies in his particular acts of counsel and commemoration, rather than an invented career spanning every reign before Arthur.

Eldol of Gloucester is the lone survivor of the greatest massacre in British legend, the only man who fought his way free when four hundred and sixty of his fellow nobles were butchered at a peace feast. He is the Count of Gloucester, the warrior who arrived at Amesbury unarmed and in good faith, who watched the Saxons draw their concealed long knives, and who seized a wooden stake from the ground and killed seventy men in a desperate fight between sunset and darkness before reaching a horse and galloping home. He is the avenger who joined Aurelius Ambrosius, the exiled prince who returned to reclaim the throne of Britain, and who helped burn the traitor Vortigern alive in his tower at Ganarew. He is the champion who duelled Hengist, the Saxon warlord who had orchestrated the massacre, who seized the enemy by his helmet and dragged him into the British ranks to face justice. And he is one of the Three Vigorous Ones of Britain, a figure whose name became synonymous with the refusal to die quietly in the face of treachery.

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.

Engygeron is Clamadeu's seneschal in Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval, the military commander whose defeat helps release Blancheflor's town from siege. He confronts a young knight who has only recently learned the practices of chivalry from Gornemant, and his surrender becomes a practical test of those lessons. Perceval initially intends to kill him, then remembers the instruction to spare an opponent who yields. Mercy proves complicated, however, because Engygeron fears execution if he is sent to either Blancheflor or Gornemant. Arthur's court becomes the alternative, and the defeated commander arrives there before his own lord. His name appears in several forms, including Anguigueron and Anguingueron. Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival gives the corresponding seneschal the name Kingrun, within a related but different version of the siege. Engygeron's story concerns defeat, obligation and admission to Arthur's company; it does not require an invented lifetime of service or the merging of every later knight with a similar name.

Enid is the heroine whose warnings repeatedly protect her husband during the dangerous journey at the centre of Geraint and Enid. She is the daughter of the impoverished Yniwl in the Welsh romance and becomes Geraint's wife after the sparrowhawk contest. A related story appears as Erec et Enide in Chrétien de Troyes, where the couple bear the French names Erec and Enide. Both narratives explore the strain between married life and knightly reputation, but their details are not identical. In the Welsh tale, Geraint misunderstands Enid's distress and suspects her loyalty; in Chrétien, the couple explicitly discuss the damage to Erec's reputation. Enid rides ahead under a command of silence, yet speaks when remaining silent would endanger him. Her story is therefore more than a portrait of passive obedience. It concerns judgement, fear, loyalty and the eventual recovery of trust, themes later reshaped by Hartmann von Aue and Alfred Tennyson.

Eopa is the Saxon assassin whose single act of treachery changed the course of British legend, the man who walked into a king's bedchamber disguised as a healer and walked out leaving a corpse behind him. He is the agent of Pascentius, the surviving son of the traitor Vortigern, who had already failed once to reclaim the throne his father had lost. He is the speaker of the British tongue who used his knowledge of the language and his skill in physic to pose as a Christian monk and a learned physician. He is the murderer who shaved his beard and his head, who donned the habit of a holy man, and who promised a sick king that his potions would restore him to health. He is the poisoner who mixed a slow-acting draught, who told the king to cover himself and sleep, and who slipped away into the night while the venom crept through Aurelius Ambrosius's veins. And he is the catalyst of the Arthurian age, for without his dagger of deceit, Uther Pendragon would never have become king, and the boy who would draw the sword from the stone would never have been born.

Eosa is the Saxon warlord who refused to accept defeat, the kinsman of Hengist who led the surviving Saxons through three wars, two imprisonments, and one desperate escape before finally falling on the field at Saint Albans. He is the cousin or son of Hengist, the warlord who had butchered four hundred and sixty British nobles at the Treachery of the Long Knives, and who came to Britain with Octa and the other Saxon warriors when Vortigern, the British king, invited them in as mercenaries against the Picts. He is the co-leader who, after Hengist was beheaded by Eldol of Gloucester and Aurelius Ambrosius had shown mercy, accepted a covenant of peace and lands bordering Scotland, only to break that oath the moment the king who granted it was poisoned in his sleep. He is the prisoner who was captured by Uther Pendragon in a night attack on Mount Damen, who was marched to London in chains, and who escaped from that prison to raise a new army in Germany and return to Britain for one last campaign of burning and destruction. And he is the man who died at the Battle of Saint Albans, killed alongside Octa when the half-dead Uther Pendragon, roused from his sickbed, led the Britons to the final victory that cleared the Saxons from the south of the island.