Dae aCe Bea orca Ta For one brief, shining moment Pee a a Ta ae A a for leet = about Arthur and:Cameiot;-such as last July's film King Arthur; fall into the realm of legend: Like tales of Robin:Hood or the moun- tain Utopia Shangri-La, legends spun from touchstones a E eal fact. Guilievere, Among the ‘Did Camelot, the idealkingdom, and grounds, minstrels arid poets Teaily exist? Historians, archaelo made merry and music. Lords and. gists, mapmakers,and language ready knights with tough armor. Tadies worshiped the Holy Grail, ‘experts have\long purstied 4 quest and. gentle hearts vows Kept the dream of for that treasured truth. Their He based his poom on a 15th-cen- uphold a code of chivalry. Known * answer, after all these yebrs,is tury work callod The Death of as the Knights ofthe Round Or 90 the «tory goss Fhindrads ‘both'yes and maybe. = ‘Arthur (Le Morte: PArthur) Table, they had-equal cay immat- ‘have been written a : ‘ters of state and promised loyalty. A Literary Place tory from Chrétien de and ity onvbehalf of their huge cycle ‘of litetatisreknowennd ros no doubt about the literary. A2th-century- work ‘Arthurian lore. Books and movies 4 nelot, the storybook utopia. Its READ 21mention of Camelot: “King Arthur . held a most magnificent court at Camelot with all the splendor appropriate to the day.” Thus the literary place was born, A Literal Place? But was, there ever an actual, literal, historical Camelot! where was that golden realm? ‘Some his was a place in Scotland ‘Camelon, But most archaeologist + on Arthur's trail have searched in England. At the ruins of a castle in Cornwall, a stone was found with Artognov inseribed on it. Close to Arthur—but close enough? A large round table was found at 22 READ Winchester Cathedral. But it was made hundreds of years after the time when Arthur supposedly lived. In Glastonbury Abbey, the bones of a man Arthur's size were they were his. If Camelot were a real place, wouldn't there be traces of it? Tale of Wales ‘Many history sleuths have looked to a book written in the 1130s by His History of the Kings of Britain contains the first full account of Arthur, Some say it’s fiction. Oth- led together tidbits at a place called Cacr- Jeon. Modern researchers now add source was not today’s Brit an early Celtic language—" ‘The team also notes that a French tale called Perlesvaus, written shortly after Lancelot, supplies another important clue. It reads, “Camelot, of King Arthur's, was situated on the entrance of the ‘kingdom of Logres.” ‘Where was Logres? Finding the answer took Blake and Lloyd deep into the records crypt. They unearthed the precious remaining copies of primary sources used by Geoffrey—ancient Welsh texts. One is a collection called Chronicle of the Kings. Tongue-Twisting Hints Few people have gone back to examine the Welsh sources about Arthur. Why? The Welsh language: is mind-boggling! Have you ever seen it? Her, for example, is the to decipher—Wt ti wedi darllen yfr?—unless you're from Wales, ‘a5 ere Blake and Lloyd. ‘The two scholars found that in Welsh manuscripts, city. Moreover, the wall surround- ing the town had an entry called Arthur's Gate, and the road leading from it was called ‘Arthur's Road, ‘Taken alone, such clues might not be convincing. But Blake and Lloyd compared early Latin sources to early Welsh sources and found that many names and had been translated from names with present-day Welsh locations and concluded that almost every detail about Arthur and his realm points to Wales as the true site of Camelot. An Ideal Place Blake and Lloyd's theories are bbound to be challenged for years. ‘What cannot be contested, though, is that Camelot lives in many a which everyone is equal; where peace, not war, abides; where love is more important than power, and ‘where magic colors the landscape. Camelot has become a metaphor for the perfect society, cone we strive to create, As writer David Day said, “In the Utopian ideal of Camelot, mankind always ‘ees a message of hope: What the ‘imagination ... once built, [we] can build again.” ® WRITE AWAY! In groups, write a code of rules the Knights of the Round Table might have followed. Then, asa class, talk about the ways rules of individual behavior define a society—for better or worse. READ 23