Unit 1: Selection Vocabulary 5

But Arthur's fame before Geoffrey was strictly among the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons, the Celtic peoples of the west, descended from Britons of his own time or apparent time.

Later, propagandists for the Tudor sovereigns, who were part Welsh, made much of their alleged Arthurian ancestry, and it enhanced the prestige of the greatest of them, Elizabeth I.

In Dark Age Britain we have to recognize various adverse factors, such as the loss and destruction of manuscripts by invading armies; the character of the early material, oral rather than written; the decline of learning and even literacy among the Welsh monks who might have kept reliable records.

So, with the Arthur story, characters in a milieu which the authors knew quite well to be ancient were still dressed up as knights and ladies appropriate to the twelfth or thirteenth century.

No complete parallel for the Cadbury fortification has been found anywhere else in post-Roman Britain.

That might account for Arthurian echoes which their advocates have detected.

[The Enemy] knows that it is not one of the Seven, or the Nine, for they are accounted for.

It now appeared plain and smooth, without mark or device that he could see.

But there is no smith's forge in this Shire that could change it at all. Not even the anvils and furnaces of the Dwarves could do that.

I am not made for perilous quests.

'You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.'