Greg Jenner is joined in medieval Europe by Dr Mary Bateman and comedian Mike Wozniak to learn all about the legends of King Arthur.Most of us have heard of Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. But where do these legends come from? Arthur first appears in the writings of a 9th-Century monk, but he’s not the king we know today: no Merlin or Lancelot, no Excalibur, and no Camelot. These elements were added later, as the legends were retold and rewritten across Europe.This episode traces the stories of Arthur and his knights from their early medieval origins, exploring the changes made as they were adapted over the centuries by everyone from French romance authors to Victorian poets, and taking in some famous medieval texts, including the Welsh Mabinogion and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, as well as some lesser-known tales. Along the way, we also look at the places in modern Britain that still bear Arthurian names and the wacky artefacts that have been associated with the legendary king, and ask the crucial question: did King Arthur really exist? If you’re a fan of heroic quests, knights in shining armour and fantastical medieval stories, you’ll love our episode on the legends of King Arthur.If you want more from Mike Wozniak, check out our episode on Charles Dickens at Christmas. And for more lovely legends, listen to our episodes on Atlantis and Norse Literature.You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Hannah Cusworth and Jon Norman-Mason Written by: Jon Norman-Mason, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and guests of the King Arthur podcast?
Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are saddling our noble steeds and galloping back to the Middle Ages in search of the legendary King Arthur. And to help us on our quest, we have two chivalrous companions at arms.
In History Corner, she's a lecturer at the University of Bristol, where her research focuses on the literature of late medieval and early modern England. Luckily for us, she's also the author of the prize-winning book, Local Places and the Arthurian Tradition in England and Wales, 1400 to 1700. It's Dr Mary Bateman. Welcome, Mary.
Hi, thank you so much. What a joy to be here.
And in Comedy Corner, making a triumphant return to the show, he's a comedian, an actor, a podcaster. You'll have seen him in Taskmaster, Man Down, and again in Taskmaster as Rosematter Fayot's assistant on the wonderful Junior Taskmaster, which is lovely. Plus, you'll have heard his dulcet tones on many podcasts, including my absolute fave comedy podcast, Three Bean Salad. Check it out.
But you'll know him best from our previous episodes, including our festive special about Charles Dickens himself. It's Mike Wozniak. Welcome back, Mike. Thank you very much for having me back. I'm very excited.
I'm particularly excited about the topic.
Interesting. I mean, you're a total legend, but King Arthur, total legend. What do you know?
I think it's the sort of thing you carry through your life if you've grown up in Britain. Oh, yeah, I know about that. But do I know about it? I don't know. That's partly why I'm so excited to be here. I think it's a huge subject. There's quite a lot you can know without knowing the details. Yeah, and is it just because I'm familiar with it? Is it just because of some sort of Osborne book as a kid?
Or because I played a King Arthur battle as a ten-year-old? It's so familiar, but I doubt there's any details. LAUGHTER We're very excited about getting into it.
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Chapter 2: What are the early origins of King Arthur's legends?
Yeah, he's commemorating him.
He's good, but he's not like him.
But no Arthur. It's a bit of a backhanded... It's a bit mean, isn't it?
What's a guy got to do? LAUGHTER
And the thing about this poem is we don't know how old it really is, because as with a lot of these early Welsh texts that we'll talk about today, they're not written down until quite a long time, we think, after they were originally being circulated and composed orally. And to make matters more confusing, there's two versions of a good Arthur as well, and one of them does not mention Arthur.
So that makes it even more enigmatic.
So King Arthur, not necessarily a king, possibly a Roman. Yes. Might be a Briton or a Romano-British. Right.
Just to return to these early texts, the really important mention, the first detailed mention we get of Arthur comes quite a bit later in around 830. And it's in this text called The History of the Britons. For a long time, we thought the author was this guy called Nennius. Now we're not sure. Oh, really? Yeah, we're not sure anymore.
I learned it was Nennius when I was at university.
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Chapter 3: What role does 'The Mabinogion' play in Arthurian legend?
I would say so, yeah. The stories themselves seem to have much earlier roots, a bit like a Godothan, really. There's a few of them that mention Arthur, but one of my favourites and one of the earliest is a tale called Coluch a Colwen. You sometimes hear it in English called How Coluch Won Olwen. This seems to have really quite early roots.
It doesn't bear any resemblance to the other kind of big Geoffrey of Monmouth tradition Arthur texts. And Arthur is most definitely a king in this story. At last! Yes, he's got there. And it's just a fantastic story. So basically, Arthur has a cousin called Culloch, or Killoch, who's a young man. And he's fallen in love, potentially through a curse, but never mind, with a young woman called Olwen.
And her father is a terrible giant called Isbav Arden, chief of all giants. In order to win Olwen's hand, Killoch is given a series of tasks, impossible tasks, 40 of them he has to complete. He can't do this on his own, you know, he's just a weedy young guy. So he goes off to King Arthur's court and enlists the help of Arthur and his kind of almost superhuman knights, his superhuman retinue.
All I'm hearing here, Mary, is he invented Taskmaster. That's what I'm hearing. Mike, 40 tasks, off you go.
That's a series of Taskmaster. Here's a bunch of guys around a round table who might be up for a challenge. The Mabinogion I'm vaguely familiar with, it's incredibly weird.
Yes, it's really complex.
It's wonderfully weird, but it's brilliant. It's amazing, but it's quite Studio Ghibli. It's quite like talking animals and weird forests. There's lots of people turning into boars.
People sort of seem to change form quite regularly.
It feels quite, I don't know.
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Chapter 4: How did Geoffrey of Monmouth influence the Arthurian stories?
He's more of the show pony end of things. You don't want to trust him in a fight, do you? He's prattling about in his handstands, showing off to local peasants.
We've got Ear, son of Hera. He's got fantastic hearing.
Yes.
I feel like the guy who stands on his head didn't get the memo on.
No, maybe they left him behind. They don't all go on the quest, just the useful ones.
Someone's got to stay behind and guard the castle. Upside down. Slowly shuffling around the moat. Mike, what talent do you think Lip, son of Placid, possesses? Lip? Yeah.
Is he a polyglot? Is he a man of many tongues? That's a very, very good guess.
Yeah?
Nowhere near.
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Chapter 5: Who introduced key elements like the Holy Grail and Lancelot?
Oh, yes. She is mentioned in the Green Knight story. And by that point, she's not very nice by that point. Because she wants to frighten Guinevere to death, which is horrible.
So in this early... In Geoffrey of Monmouth, she is a positive figure. She heals Arthur when he's injured. Later on, she will be turned into a villain.
Yes.
We do get... We sort of get Excalibur-ish.
Caliburnus, which makes sense. You can see how the Latin could become Excalibur very easily.
Because X means from, so Excaliburnus, from Caliburn.
Well, funnily enough, it's supposed to have been forged at Avalon.
Okay.
Which I find super interesting because I know that at Glastonbury Tor they found traces of early metalworking. on the tour. It's real. I mean, it's not. But it's just, I like it when there's funny little circumstances like that that line up. And Merlin is the other important addition here.
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Chapter 6: What are the unusual talents of Arthur's knights?
I don't know. I haven't read it. I have heard of it. It's a Rapscallion figure, isn't it? Yeah. It's a prison book.
You know your stuff, don't you, Mike?
I have to confess, I think it's one of those things that I've intended to read for a long time. I've never, do you know what I mean? It's on the list behind all the Grishams. I may have even owned it at some point, you know, and it's been put on the bookshelf in front of the Grishams. Yeah. But then you reach for aggression.
Yeah, you're spot on. Yeah, so, OK, you haven't read it, but you know that he's a bit of a character. Yeah. I mean, Mary, this is very much the Marvel Cinematic Universe of the 15th century. Here is someone trying to grapple with an enormous, sprawling collection of stories where people are rewriting, rewriting, rewriting, and he's gone, oh, we need to standardise this.
We need to bring this all into one coherent narrative, a beginning, middle and end, about King Arthur, and he dies at the end. So what is the mess that he tries to cohere?
I mean, it's really massive. We think Mallory was using sources written in French and sources written in English. But there is at least one book in the book. It's a book split into books, confusingly. And there is at least one book in there where we don't know what his source was, which is very intriguing.
It's an amazing fate of being able to synthesize a huge amount of stories and weave them together into a master narrative.
We call it Le Morte d'Arthur, which sounds pretty sexy. Yes, no, it wasn't called... And it was a major spoiler. Yeah, yeah, actually, that's true. You're right, actually, yeah.
It does massively give the game away. The original title in English was different. It was the whole book of King Arthur and his noble knights of the round table, which I think is more... It leaves you to guess what the ending's going to be.
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