Why is it that Arthurian Legend is more associated with England more than Wales?

Question

Arthurian Legend encompasses many things- King Arthur, Merlin ( merlyn), Sword Excalibur. dragons so on so on.... all of these stories were originally translated out of Brythonical Celtic texts and scripture and not the "old English" language which was West Germanic of origin. Brythonical Celtic language was spoken in the West part of Britain and has been best described as either ancient Welsh or a version of ancient Welsh- spoken in Cornwall and Brittany. The vast majority of the scripture to fuel the legend that became king Arthur and Merlyn came straight out of Wales written in ancient Welsh. Wales may very well be a smaller country than England but at the time that these stories were written- Welsh speaking people and bythonical celtic people ( cumbric and Cornish)- dominated Britain and were quite possibly a very dominating force also- Who fought the invading Saxons ( the English)- Saxon coming from "Anglo-Saxon" meaning west Germanic group of people.The bythonical Celts, aka brittonic celts aka brythons aka Britons ( NOT ENGLISH) covered the most part of Britain from the West country to across south Scotland at the time. (6th century)
Either way my point is why is it that people ASSUME that Arthurian legend comes from England when It mainly comes From Wales?. And king Arthur was famed for fighting the Saxon invasion on Britain ( ah hem the English) yet people still don't get it, why? Arthurian legend is mainly a load of nonsense but it was originally sourced from historical texts.
why do people think that it came from England.... when it didnt?

Answer 1

Politics, basically. Wales isn't even independent, so the English feel entitled to slime their way onto any thing Welsh that they wish to cherry pick as "their own".

Answer 2

Historically the time period covered by Arthurian Legend is the first century after the Romans left when the Anglo Saxons drifted in and started pushing the Britons either to Wales or to Brittany in France, which was another important source of Arthurian legend. Yes there were Welsh before the Saxon Conquest -- St. Patrick was one -- but after a hundred plus years of the Saxon invasion Wales was the safest place to remember the resistance.

Answer 3

Several reasons-1) They were popular in the courts of the Norman and Angevin kings who ruled England, hence the version we know best today, though of Welsh origins, was added to and changed by the Normans (who probably first heard the legends from Breton allies.)

2) Many places that are of importance in the legends, such as Stonehenge, are in England. Of course in the time of Arthur it would not have been in England; the tribe who were in the area around the time the Romans arrived were the Atrebates. Durotriges also lived nearby.

Actually in the Welsh Mabinogion, Arthur doesn't do much fighting of Saxons; he fights other British kings as well as monsters, witches, ogres, magical boards and so on. Half of his retinue are gods--Lwch Leminawg or Llenleawg, Gwynn, Nudd/Lludd etc. And if you scratch the surface, there seems to be a strong Irish link--with Lwch/Llenleag, the possible inception of Lancelot, being the spear carring solar Irish god Lugh, Nudd Nuadha or Nodens, Morgan-Morrighan etc. Even Excalibur, throgh Welsh Caledfwlch, goes back to the sword of an Irish hero--Caladbolg.The legends of the Green Knight is almost identical to Curoi the Druid, only the old Irish tale is bloodier.

There may well have been a real Arthur (the Saxon incursions did stop fora number of years around the time he was supposed to have lived, but his legend is probably the amalgamation of several Dark Age men with similar names, plus possibly a bear god/demi god whose roots may go back to the bronze age (hence the anachronistic and kind of out of place references to Stonehenge.)

Btw, Devon and a few areas around Swindon spoke a celtic language till the 1100's, and there are still many celtic places names in Somerset, Dorset,Wiltshire etc, such as Pimperne, Pennard,Hackpen. Indeed many English are not as 'Anglo-Saxon' as you might think; there were only 200,000 Saxons at absolute maximum, as opposed to 2 million Britons. They were a dominant warrior society, but anywhere between 30-60% of English people have ancestry from pre-Angl0-Saxon people, especially if their family is in the west of England.

Answer 4

One of the most well-loved and well-known European myths is that of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. In some sources Arthur was originally Arthos, one of the ancient gods of Celtic myth, and the brother of the war goddess , the Morrigan. Artos was eventually sentenced to the skies as a constellation known as the Arcturus.

The myths of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table have remained popular tales in western culture.



Arthur was reincarnated as the illegitimate son of Uther pendragon and Queen Igraine of Tintagel. Brought up in secret, he pulled the magical sword Excalibur from a stone (some sources say he was given it by the Lady of the Lake ) and thus could his right to be the king.

In his early years he united Britain, defeated the Romans and established a fantastic , magical court at Camelot. He married the beautiful princess Guinevere and created the Round Table, where warriors, mortals and magicians alike lived in harmony far away from the mortal world.



Mordred (Arthur's son ) and others conspired to take ove the throne.

Lancelot, Arthur's most loyal knight and friend , had been having an affair with Guinevere. When Arthur found out and banished Lancelot forever, Mordred and his followers took their chance.

They fought bitterly and Arthur killed Mordred, but was so severely wounded himself that he travelled to the land of Avalon where the golden apples of immortality grew and was never seen again.



Camelot,too, vanished, and to this day it is believed that Atthur and his men are merely sleeping under a hill (sources ususlly suggest this is Glastonbury Tor in the southwest of England).

When the need is great, they will awaken to restore the golden age.



The tales lean more of the association of the Arthurian legends with England.