[Editor's Note: All the photographs in this article were taken by the author while on the tour.]

Stonehenge

Of all the famous monuments in England, the enormous stone ring on Salisbury Plain known as Stonehenge stands out in nearly everyone’s imagination.

Stonehenge is still a mystery: while there are any number of books offering explanations, few of them agree. Many of these modern explanations associate the alignment of the stones with the rising and setting of the sun and moon, describing Stonehenge as a kind of solar and lunar calendar; John North, in his book Stonehenge, suggests that the stones are also aligned with the rising and setting of different stars and constellations at different times of year. In early Arthurian tales, the blue stones of Salisbury were described as a stone circle transported from Wales and erected in their proper arrangement by Merlin.  The connection between Stonehenge and the stars may have played a part in connecting Merlin with the power of fate: in the Middle Ages, it was a common belief that the stars predicted or determined the fates of men.

Of course, Stonehenge has been around far too long for any historical Arthurian association. It is worth considering, though, why such an association exists in the tales. Did the stone circle bring to mind thoughts of a round table? Did the blue stones, which appear to have come from Wales, trigger associations with Merlin whose legendary birthplace was also in Wales? Landscapes shape stories told by the storytellers in particular regions, and the stones at Stonehenge loom incredibly large on the landscape. It is hard to imagine them not being incorporated into the stories — particularly in a culture more mythos-minded than our own. (It is interesting to note that in the 1800s, in a much more materialistic and logos-minded culture, Stonehenge was known as  “that great eyesore on Salisbury Plain.”)

Tintagel Castle

The stories say that Uther Pendragon united all of England under one crown; they also say that he was undone by his lust for Ygraine, the wife of the Duke of Cornwall. Ygraine was beautiful, and Uther desired her. Uther had Merlin disguise him as Ygraine’s husband so that he could lie with her. In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account in History of the Kings of Britain (written in the twelfth century) Uther killed the duke, made Ygraine his queen, and the two ruled as equals. But their bliss did not last: England was again divided after Uther’s betrayal of Cornwall. In some stories, Uther promised to give the child of their union to Merlin. After the collapse of the kingdom, that child (Arthur) grew up without knowing his royal ancestry.

Tintagel Castle was a seat of power in Cornwall in the 1200s, when Richard Earl of Cornwall built the castle whose ruins still stand. This castle in Cornwall is the traditional birthplace of Arthur. The castle itself would have been difficult for Uther to besiege, with only a thin bridge of land connecting it to the rest of the mainland. In the legends, this made it necessary for Merlin to use magic in order for Uther to achieve his goal. But the connection between Arthur’s birth and Cornwall may be much older than Tintagel Castle. Tradition identifies Cornwall as a seat of power much earlier. Archeological evidence shows trade between Cornwall and the Mediterranean occurred in the fifth century, suggesting there was an important settlement there during the time of Riothamus.

Merlin’s Cave

Below the great heights of Tintagel Castle is a system of caves. One of the caves, known as Merlin’s Cave, pierces through the land bridge.

More of a tunnel than a true cave, Merlin’s Cave is what modern psychologists or anthropologists might describe as a “liminal space,” a threshold place of in-between or transition. At high tide, the cave is unreachable by foot: water churns through it from both sides. According to locals, the rip tides below Tintagel make swimming in the area dangerous. At low tide, the water recedes, making the cave quite accessible to anyone who wishes to visit. The cave certainly has a numinous or magical feel about it.

There are no legends, as far as I know, that explain why the cave is named after Merlin. In the legends Merlin would have had a place to practice his magic at Camelot when Arthur was king, so it seems he would have had no reason to use this site. But even without any literary evidence, given Merlin’s association with both Arthur’s birth and with magic, it makes sense for such a place to be named in his honor. Did storytellers imagine he used the cave, with its connection to the tides and the moon, to enhance his magic? Or might they have speculated that the proximity to such a liminal space allowed his magic to form in the first place? Perhaps.

Arthur’s Rattle

This natural landscape formation near Tintagel once served, according to local folklore, as a plaything for the child Arthur.

How would a baby play with something as large as a rocky cliff, you ask? In some early stories, Arthur was actually born a giant. Only later did he shrink to normal size and became a normal child with a great destiny ahead of him. (Cornwall is actually full of tales of giants. Saint Michael’s Mount, just off of Penzance, is known as the home of the last giant in England: he was eventually killed by Jack the Giant Slayer. In many of the Arthurian stories, Arthur and his men fought off a number of giants in both England and France.)

St. Nectan’s Glen

Near Tintagel is a beautiful glen that features a waterfall with a straight drop of forty feet. After its initial fall, it cascades through a natural hole in a rock wall before plunging another ten feet into a shallow pool.

St. Nectan is said to have settled here around 500 CE, but other stories say that Arthur knighted the members of his Round Table here, plunging them into the water at the falls and sending them through the hole and into the pool below. This was the sign of their rebirth — they were no longer men, but knights. It was from St. Nectan’s Glen that the knights were said to have received their blessing and left on their quest for the Holy Grail. St. Nectan’s Glen and Hermitage still serves as a destination for pilgrims today, in part because the waters there are reputed to have healing powers. They’re also said to be haunted, either by fairies or ghosts.

King Arthur’s Hall

Though not a site of ancient history, King Arthur’s Hall is a place that honors Arthur and the chivalry found in the stories.

The Hall was built by businessman Frederick Thomas Glasscock in the early 1930s. He founded an organization called the Fellowship of the Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur, based on the symbolism and ideas in the Arthurian romances. The Hall itself was opened to the public in 1933. It gives visitors a journey from the darkness of Camelot at one end of the Great Hall, to the redemption of Camelot at the opposite end. There are seventy-two stained glass windows that show the story of the rise and fall of King Arthur. (Randy has discussed stained-glass windows connected to narratives in his previous article Myth Beyond Words.)

From Cornwall, our group returned to Somerset. Some of the best Arthurian archaeology has been performed there since the 1970s, including the excavation of the hill fort Cadbury Castle (from which Riothamus may have once ruled) and the site of Arthur’s grave. I’ll talk about those in an upcoming issue!

Works Consulted

• North, John. Stonehenge. New York: Free Press, 1997.
• Monmouth, Geoffrey. History of the Kings of Britain. Circa 1136.
• Ashe, Geoffrey. Mythology of the British Isles. 1990.

Many children leave behind this type of adventurous work of imagination for the world of romance and relationships to be found in Barbie dolls (or Bratz dolls, these days) or the epic battles enacted by G.I. Joes (still the top listed action figures in a Google search). Then, when they are told that playing with toys is an act, not of imagination, but of childishness, they leave these things behind. Those who are lucky enough discover they can tell the same kinds of stories sitting around a table with some dice, or using a video-game controller and console, their customizable hero appearing on screen, moving as they specify. The world of role-playing games, both the table-top and computer or console versions, is a continuation of the need for acts of imagination, for storytelling, which, according to writers from Joss Whedon to J. R. R. Tolkien,  is a  “basic human need” (Whedon) or even a spiritual exercise (Tolkien 79). Interactive storytelling, which comes so naturally to children, could be considered an expression of the mythic impulse — the movement of a modern human toward a more sacred or mythic understanding of the universe.

This is not to say, of course, that playing HALO is akin to a divine experience (though some truly devout gamers would surely disagree with me). An article from the International Game Developers Association certainly claims that computer games solve the problem of storytelling being a static medium:

Computer games promise the potential to move beyond this strictly linear form by offering stories that interact with the player, allowing them to participate in the decisions or actions that shape the narrative. (Source)

But while there is some argument that computer games have greater potential to immerse the player in a storytelling environment, this type of storytelling is limited by its programming. There are certainly more options in the story than offered by a movie, but given the number of visual and auditory elements provided for the player, the game might have only the same level of imaginative interactivity as a novel: in a novel the story doesn’t change, but the details of how scenes are imagined might. In an interactive computer game, the player brings a certain set of instructions — inside the boundaries of the program — for how the story is told. In a novel, though the story doesn’t change, the reader brings the setting, the smells, the colors, and the sounds of voices, creating all of the visual and audio in their heads.

Table-top role playing games, on the other hand, require little more than rule books and dice before they say, “Go. Be the hero.” From the instant you choose to interact, to take part in the story, you and your peers around the table are creating a shared reality that you gleefully inhabit for the next several hours. Many of the elements of Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” pattern find their way into the tale from the start. Characters often fit Jungian archetypes, have had unusual births, or have already left home and begun their journey into a mythical realm. The themes of fantasy are all wrapped up in mythology and the language of the fantastic, and it’s easy to intentionally embrace those elements.

I’ve just begun a game that takes the mythic connection of group storytelling and mythic elements quite literally. The setting is mythic Greece, during the era just before the Trojan War. Mythic time moves differently than more linear storytelling, which makes it hard to pin down which heroes are active when, as their stories tend to intersect the chronology of other tales. The players in the tale are all children of the gods, and they have already received their first quest from the Oracle at Delphi. They have encountered pirates and nereids, have competed in contests of strength, and have poured libations on herms to ensure that their journeys will go well. Over the course of the tale we create together, they will meet many of the well-known heroes and participate in or derail some of the traditional stories. They’ve told me they’d like to take over Egypt. It could happen.

But while I’ve played in games where I’ve sought out the Holy Grail in Edwardian England and run games where people of the bloodline of the Tuatha de Danaan of Irish mythology teamed up with urban-fantasy-styled demon slayers to stop an invasion of the human world, not all games have to have a mythic element to maintain that feeling of enacting creation. The real magic (to use the term loosely) in a table-top role playing game is that the story incarnates: the tale being created takes place in the people sitting around a table, sharing the telling while they share pizza and Doritos. I won’t go so far as to say that the ritual of storytelling echoes religious rituals or coming of age ceremonies where the participants are said to become the mythic personages they represent. But in a modern world where there aren’t too many coming of age ceremonies left, where stories are often told to us by boxes that carry all of the sounds and images with them, where we so rarely have the chance to be a part of a larger story than the one we act out in our everyday lives, sometimes connecting to that mythic spirit of storytelling is as simple as sitting down with some dice, some paper, and some friends, and seeing where the story takes you.

References

• Whedon, Joss. “More Joss Strike Talk.” Whedonesque. 7 Nov 2007. Online article.
• Flieger, Verlyn and Douglas A. Anderson. Tolkien On Fairy-stories. HarperCollins: 2008.
• International Game Developers Association. “Foundations of Interactive Storytelling.” 13 Nov 2001. Online article.