Legends of Britain’s mythic King Arthur and his knights of the round table have been placed in Cornwall for over a thousand years. With roots in the Welsh bardic tradition these stories were told by jongleurs (wandering storytellers and minstrels), then retold by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his 12C book History of the Kings of Britain, a unification myth for post Norman Conquest Britain. Tales of Arthur’s knights (Caradoc, Tristan, Geraint) were woven into chivalric romances by French trouvères, sewn into 14 C quilted hangings in Sicily (Tristan) and retold by Thomas Malory in ‘Morte d’Arthur.’ Malory’s work is still the source of many other retellings of Arthurian tales.
Victorian poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’, sparked a huge wave of interest in Arthurian stories, and new Cornish locations were suddenly linked to tales eg Dozmary pool and Excalibur. Arthur’s Hall, Arthur’s Table and Arthur’s Quoit are on Bodmin Moor.
Although other places in Britain lay claim to Arthur, he was born at Tintagel, and Arthur, Tristan, and Caradoc are Cornish heroes.
