by Brendan Lehane & The Editors of
Time Life Books
“In that uncertain age, it mattered that
the question of the champion’s precedence have an answer. It was not only for
the honor of the thing that the Ulsterman named champions. So long as the
question of valor remained open, there was division and quarrelling in the
king’s hall, and Ulster stayed weak from squabbling with itself. No one
disputed the king’s authority -kings were born with that - but standing
alongside the king there had to be his champion, his hero. If the king
symbolized the land itself and all of its people, his heroic champion stood for
their warrior spirit and fought for them in battle. The hierarchy of bravery
had to be established and acknowledged as well as the hierarchy of state. A
tribe without a hero was a piteous and vulnerable thing.”
While legends of old had no end of stories
from every culture, obviously a decent sampling of them all would require more
pages than this series allows, and often would be quite repetitive - as one
story pops up in another culture with a similar theme but a different
protagonist. To prevent that the authors of this book decided to limit it to
tales of the Ulster Cycle, which take up the first two chapters. While chapters
three and four take on the Matter of Britain and the legends of King Arthur.
Chapter 1 - “Lords of the Chariot and the
Spear” - While this chapter sounds as if it limits itself to Greek and Roman
heroes, we must remember that the chariot was almost a universal travel device
in the ancient world - until the development of the saddle. Here we learn of Cuchulain and the Red Branch
Knights out of Ireland. Many stories of his bravery and skill are presented
here, which inevitably leads to Chapter 2 - “The Cruel Demands of Honor” which
tells of his death and the betrayal of all the Red Branch Knights and their
eventual fading from the world. For every good collection of stories needs a
tragic ending - or perhaps any ending in and of itself is by nature tragic.
Chapter 3 - “Brotherhood of the Round
Table” begins the Matter of Britain and the foundation of the Knights of the
Round Table. It discusses, mostly in general terms the beginnings of Arthur’s
reign and the reformation of what makes a knight, especially the chivalric
ideas prevalent in Camelot. The knight is meant to be fair and true, help those
in distress, and always offer mercy when it is requested.
Chapter 4 - “The Noblest Quest of All” -
deals exclusively with the story of the Grail. Described as the “last of the
great quests”. It deftly weaves together all the various tales about the Grail,
finished and half-finished, into one near-definitive tale. From beginning to
end, the only difference is that the story refuses to state exactly what the
Grail is. While the narrative mentions the Christian interpretation of it
containing the cup of Christ - which is probably not what Chrétien de Troyes,
the man who invented the story of the Grail, had in mind. The story states that
the device of an ever-flowing container which could heal and feed the world was
not knew in mythology, nor was the idea of a deadly spear as is seen in the
tale of the Fisher King. Whatever view the reader might take, the conclusion of
the Quest for the Holy Grail marks the end of the high point of life in
Camelot.
This inevitably leads into the fifteenth
book of the series The Fall of Camelot. Though Arthur's death, like Cuchulain's
was in Chapter two, is told at the end of this book. So we will see what The
Fall of Camelot has to offer.
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