The Case for King Arthur

Most historians would probably say that King Arthur was just a myth. This consensus was established in 1977 in a brilliant paper by David Dumville, in which he argued that the main sources for a historical Arthur – an actual person, rather than a myth – were either written retrospectively, or were pseudohistory, fiction masquerading as fact. He was almost certainly correct, but does that necessarily rule out a historical Arthur behind the later legend?

The origin of the later Arthur legend is the Historia Brittonum, written c.830 in northwest Wales, which purports to offer a narrative history of Britain but which is clearly a work of pseudohistory. Arthur is mentioned twice in this text. The first passage says that Arthur fought against the Anglo-Saxons, alongside the kings of the Britons (the descendants of the citizens of Roman Britain), presumably in the early sixth century, as their ‘leader of battles’. It names his 12 victories, culminating in that at Mount Badon, where it claims 960 men were killed by Arthur alone on a single day. The Arthur of Historia Brittonum is pious as well as heroic, carrying an image of the Virgin Mary on his shoulders in one of these battles.

It has long been realised that the list of Arthur’s victories in Historia Brittonum is probably derived from a Welsh-language ‘battle-listing’ poem, similar to known works of early Welsh poetry such as Marwnad Cadwallon. The second mention of Arthur in Historia Brittonum comes in an appendix to the main text which recounts physically impossible wonders, probably derived from Welsh folklore, such as the story of Arthur’s hunting dog leaving a pawprint impressed into a stone. Together these two sections show that by their composition in the early ninth century Arthur was already a famous warrior, celebrated in Welsh poetry and folklore.

Further evidence for a famous Arthur before Historia Brittonum comes from another text, Annales Cambriae, and a cluster of well-documented men named Arthur born in the sixth and seventh centuries.