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Legends of King Arthur and Camelot
and the Origins of the English-speaking Peoples
Introduction
I believe I have established beyond reasonable doubt that Offa and Cynethryth were at the origin of the legends of King Arthur and Camelot. In this booklet I explain in more detail about the origins of the English peoples' culture in which Offa and Cynethryth played an important part.
Imitation is a kind of flattery and people have adopted and even claimed as their own Offa and Cynethryth's tradition in South-West England, Wales, Scotland, more recently in Essex and even as far afield as Brittany in France. There is not much point in saying that history should have somehow taken a different course and more understanding of other peoples' motivations reduces resentment that one's own culture has been done down.
After thinking about these matters for three years or so I realised that the names Offa and Arthur both derive ultimately from the most ancient religious beliefs of the northern lands. Then the Celtic peoples' intensity over "Arthur" made sense. Also a realistic understanding of religious techniques helped as a background in which to place the development of the legends.
For a more thorough treatment of these matters called "In The Name Offa Arthur" please contact me at 26, Patrick St., Market Harborough, Leicestershire, LE16 9HP. Tel. 01858 466790. The ISBN is 0 9536 579 0 6.
1 In the Name Offa-Arthur
After some consideration of the connections between King Offa of Angelland and Arthur - about whom not one fact has ever been agreed by historians - it becomes increasingly obvious that Offa must have been at the origin of the legends and that the legends, therefore, relate in part to the origins of the English-speaking peoples.
The first of the English kings known to have been able to join the English and the Celts to form a powerful nation was King Penda of central Angelland but Offa, who came later, was the greatest of the early English kings. Those kings claimed ancestry going back to Woden, a god, and perhaps to an Offa of Angel. It is reasonable to think that that Offa may have been a god-like character also since he came soon after Woden on the list. In essence the name meant "of the father" and far still means father in Scandinavian speech. Penda's name meant something similar using the Celtic, Da, for father. Brian Bates of the University of Sussex has dealt with early belief in a father-figure as a god in the northern lands and the change from a king's name honouring a Celtic tradition to a more English one reflects the change in the balance of power as the English became more firmly established.
When Celts from outside the central kingdom saw the English gaining great prestige and influence by using people's affinity for that ancient tradition they adopted the main characteristics of the new English cultural blend into their own literature using the related name, Arthur. The DNB says that the name may have been taken from a Welsh deity and this indicates why. The tradition of Arthur, a Celtic king who fought against the English, was begun by Nennius who was from North Wales which had been taken over by Caledonians from Rheged who wanted to keep out the Irish. They were obviously skilled propagandists. His work was dated by the DNB to in or around 796, the year Offa died. A later succession of scholars, including Geoffrey of Monmouth, led people further along that path.
2 Religion
Of all the influences involved in the transformation of the legends from an English tradition honouring Offa and Cynethryth to the ones we know today, which have become linked to the idea of a Celtic resistance movement, religion is, perhaps, the most important. Therefore it seemed appropriate to make an impartial assessment of religious beliefs and methods toward which this may serve as an introduction.
Religions use groups of people all moving and speaking in unison to impose beliefs on newer members in a process which may eventually be studied scientifically. When people consider many different religions it becomes more difficult to think of one being inherently better than all the others so to some extent comparative studies in religion moderate the intensity of religious belief. Considering religious techniques awakens a point of view outside any religious group and makes the observer consider how religious leaders work for long-lasting effects in their followers.
It is reasonably certain that long ago when people lived in caves they already had religious beliefs and furthermore most modern religious meeting-places are cave-like structures built in convenient places, usually in population centres. Probably there were homosexual groups active in such places and that aspect of religion has remained, it seems, because religions with a strong homosexual element are more able to develop and control a following in new areas.
Where religions go merchants and warriors go too and religions which have prospered have helped to smooth the way by embedding important trade items such as wine, bread-flour, statues, metalwork, glass and so forth in their system. Culturally they mostly favour a particular blend to some extent and promote the values of their centre of authority. Where progress is slow they sometimes become disruptive. It is interesting that in India all stages of development of religion can be observed - from a man by the side of the road with a statue to the finest temples.
3 Cultural Treasures
The early kingdom of central Angelland prepared the way for the other centres of authority in England which followed later, most notably Winchester and London. The great church at Brixworth of the 7th century shows that Penda's and Offa's kingdoms were settled and developed. Religious councils were held at Clovesho - probably Lubenham - for about a century and a half from 672 onward and in later times political meetings were added on to that system. People often want to know about origins and it was preferable later for leaders and their scholars based elsewhere to allow a false understanding of the past to arise.
Celtic scholars developed an idea of a great Celtic king called Arthur who had fought the English and most likely no serious scholar would have been convinced. However, it suited many to take the characteristics of early English culture and make it their own and so the plundering of the central region's cultural treasures got under way.
The River Welland gave access to the iron of the East Midlands area which makes sense of the legend of the Sword in the Stone and the legendary smith, Weland, was acquired in the last century for the chalk downs south of Oxford - by a place now called Wayland's Smithy. That was after the importance of the blacksmith in the heroic tradition had been more fully realised through contact with other lands. Wagner added to that.
Winchester was an important political centre after Angelland. It was well connected with the church and managed to adopt the tradition of the Round Table, representative of the early council meetings of Clovesho.
Camelot was acquired by Cadbury Hill and the name has been useful in developing American interest. At some point, features on maps were given valuable names which required some official involvement because maps are strictly controlled.
4 Angles & Angels
Most of the important developments in human history seem to have come from the northwest of the Eurasian land mass and looking back in time from today we know that peoples from the northern lands have had a great deal of influence in the Mediterranean and the Middle East in this century and the preceding centuries. It was a similar situation at the time of the crusades. Earlier, alliances under the Goths attacked Greece and conquered Rome. Earlier still, Celts had forced their way southwards over the Alps into Italy. There was a similar invasion of Asia Minor. A few hundred years before that peoples from "islands and mainlands on the edge of the ocean in the north" had attacked Egypt, according to Ramses III. That was around the time that deposition of acid, probably from Iceland's volcanoes, had caused famine in the northern lands. Also in pre-history there seems to have been a connection between the material cultures of the North Sea and Baltic Sea and the eastern end of the Mediterranean according to the Cambridge Ancient History.
It seems, then, that the northern peoples' involvement with the Mediterranean region goes a very long way back and John Romer gives details of the situation at the time Egypt was attacked in his work on historical authenticity in the Bible - Testament. When stories got worked into the Bible about messengers in the desert who helped people and advised about places to avoid because they were going to be destroyed, like Sodom and Gemorrah, those advisers were probably people of northern type. The Greeks translated "malak jhvh" as angelos which corresponds to Anglos, their name for the early English, in which there is a faint "e" sound. Probably the name referred to people from a very wide area early on. The Greeks could bridge the gap of a few hundred years from their own historical knowledge when translating Hebrew religious writings. In the interim the stories concerning the Angloi had been given a magical quality.
5 The First English Peoples
Few would expect that the earlier inhabitants of Britain were very grateful when larger numbers than those involved in trade started to come over to Britain at the time the Roman empire was collapsing. The earliest of them were led by Hengist who, it seems, set up a trading station on the island of Thanet. The northern peoples and their trading associates needed ports for transshipment of goods along the trade routes and the entry to the Channel would have been a valuable location. They soon became involved in local disputes. Those early English peoples called themselves Danes as did many later English peoples. Later, English leaders discouraged further settlement and then it was not acceptable to say that the first English peoples had been Danes.
Rome developed a very powerful blend of culture and dominated lands far and wide, including southern Britain for 350 years or so. Because the Roman church later became so powerful in Britain some people look back on those times as a high point in British development. Aethelweard's Chronicle suggests that the English invited the Pope to send a mission to Kent because they saw that they could use the impressive features of Roman culture to set their seal on their new lands. In Italy, the Pope and the other Roman leaders were under pressure from the Lombards who were of the Orthodox church and it took a long time to re-establish the Roman church's dominance there. English missionaries converted many in Germany and were expelled and then the Roman church developed an alliance to liberate it from the Lombards. The biblical connection between Angles and angels made it preferable for a church based in the Mediterranean to develop a new identity for English peoples - Saxon - which is still important for the church's scholars today.
6 Art & Science
There has been debate for a long time in British education about the difference between Art and Science and traditionally students have to choose between them. So it need not be surprising that this reflects a deep-rooted fact about British culture. During the Bronze Age the centre of power in southern Britain was more on the western side and that is where the centres of tin and copper production were. Later the iron of the East of England and Sweden caused a shift of power towards the East which fits with people moving across the North Sea and taking control. That produced a change in emphasis among the Celtic peoples to the West, toward producing ornamentation for the wealthy and copper roofing, bells and other items for churches. They turned more to the scholarly and monastic life and music and poetry.
Knowledgeable people must have struggled to find an alloy as tough and durable as carefully produced and worked steel from what was more readily available in the West but we now know that was not possible. The legend of the Sword in the Stone shows how people from the East took advantage of the situation, although the story may be from the Bronze Age.
Science in Britain has traditionally been oriented toward steel especially for military purposes and toward chemical works for explosives and early on the English needed to keep control of military matters. The word, art, seems to come from At, Ata and Tat and relates to Oto, Da and other variants. Aten seems to be connected also. Arti is use of devotional lamps in India. These names all seem to relate to a Celtic father-type god and artistic development was probably earlier among Celtic peoples than among the English. So it was art for At's sake and works of At. It seems, then, that something of this division between the English and the Celts survived into the modern educational system.
7 The At-land
Orbital and geological changes have caused prolonged periods of cold weather on Earth lasting many thousands of years and it is known that at the end of the last Ice Age the sea rose and the North Sea basin was flooded. At that time, people used fine stone tools which are found mostly in the North Sea and Baltic Sea area. More developed technology grew from that.
Some of the earliest human remains in the European region were found in the early 1990's in southern England and shortly thereafter somewhat earlier remains were found in Spain. In England only a small piece of bone and a tooth had been preserved so almost all human remains decay in northern lands in a half million years or so. All modern humans have DNA which originated in Africa and more such finds have been made there so little time has been given to the possibility that very early human development depended heavily on the movement of people to and fro with the advance and retreat of the ice sheets but it seems to be a very important factor and at least one influx into Africa correlates with the onset of an ice age. The cold necessitated more rapid development and it seems that the winter's production of artifacts became the basis for the trading system we know today in which the northern lands play the leading role.
Some of the earliest Egyptian sculpture shows people who look like Central-Americans and Plato said in his work on Atlantis that the earliest developed peoples came into the Mediterranean from the West. There may be some connection to real events and cocaine has been found in Egyptian mummies so at least later there was a trade connection between Egypt and the Americas. Later statues with more northern faces suggest there was conquest from the north.
Peoples from around the North Sea area still retain a similar word for their home country. It is Vaterland in German, Vaderland in Dutch, Farland in Danish and Fatherland in English. These words seem to come from the same origin as Atlantis which probably referred to the North Sea basin.
8 Kings & Queens
Kings and queens must have developed gradually from wealthy people who eventually took guidance on important affairs from military, spiritual and financial supporters. In time councils became more independent and the system transformed in many places into something more of republican type. That was an important aspect of ancient Greek and Roman history. Nowadays, although Greece and Italy were kingdoms recently, most Mediterranean lands are republics.
The lands associated more with the origins of the English peoples have retained the kingly and queenly ideal to the present day and it seems that among those peoples that ideal has long been very deeply rooted in their culture. The name, English, comes from Angle and that word in turn most likely stems partly from a word for the rings of dunes or dykes which people from the water margins used to protect their land from flooding or attack. Their sloping sides gives another meaning of the word, angle.
It is a very ancient tradition that a gold ring is involved in wedding ceremonies and there seems to be no more sensible derivation of the name, Angle, than from ang-gul meaning "gold ring" and this points to the peoples of English type having led the way in the development of the attitude to men and women which underlies the ideal of marriage and the symbolic role of a king and queen in emphasising the importance of it in peoples' lives.
The home where Offa and Cynethryth brought up their children and where Offa loved to return when circumstances allowed was most likely Gumley which was an important and especially secure place and it fits as the original of Camlan, an earlier form of Camelot. Deep-rooted cultural values change only slowly and people long for their leaders to live up to them. Offa and Cynethryth helped to establish those ideals in the new English system developing in their lands.
Copyright ã Andrew Burbidge 1994, 1998, 2002. All rights reserved.