Guest Post: Anna Elliott, author of “Twilight of Avalon”
Why I love Arthurian Stories In the Spring of 2007, I woke up from a very vivid dream of telling my mother that I was going to write a book about the daughter of Modred, son of Arthur and the great villain of the Arthurian cycle of tales. I’d been writing historical fiction and sending books around to agents and editors, always coming close to being published but never actually getting a book sold. I was four months pregnant with my first baby at the time, and had been starting to think that as much as I loved writing, maybe a professional career wasn’t going to happen for me–or at least not for some time. Something about this dream, though, just wouldn’t let me go. I had been an English major in college with a focus on Medieval literature Read more…
Prejudice against the Welsh
In 2004, an official map published by the European Union, “The Eurostat Statistical Compendium”, dropped Wales off into the Irish Sea. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3715512.stm At the time, the Welsh were pretty philosophical about it, and they have a long history of learning to be so. You can see a larger image of the map here: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=29&art_id=qw1096991820904E163 As a sequel, the BBC reported in January of 2005, three months later, that an insurance company had failed to insure someone in SE Wales–“Sentinel Card Protection told 71-year-old Bernard Zavishlock, from Abergavenny, last month that it could not renew the insurance policy he had held for 10 years because Wales was ‘an unknown country’.” These are examples of computer error, compounded by individuals who didn’t notice that Wales was missing. Real prejudice, however, has existed against Wales since the Norman conquest. Prejudice in and of itself Read more…
The Anam Cara
The role of the anam cara or ‘soul friend’ in Celtic pre-Christian religion appears to have been that of a spiritual advisor. While much of the language today is from the neo-pagan/new age spiritual tradition, the anam cara does seem to be rooted in history. This post is a product of a long discussion with a hospital chaplain (waiting for my husband’s colonoscopy–all is well). We shared an interest in history and Celtic people, and he brought up the existence of the ‘anam cara’. He stated that within the pre-Christian tradition among the Celts, the ‘anam cara’ was a spirituall leader or ‘soul friend’ who saw a person through birth (even perhaps, as a midwife), maturity, and death. ‘Anam cara’ were true spiritual advisors. With the coming of Christianity, the Catholic church encountered significant resistance against conformity to Rome and one Read more…
Mount Badon
In the Arthurian legend, as well as in the historical record, Mount Badon (or Caer Baddon) is the location of Arthur’s last battle that pushed the Saxons back into England for a generation. All the literary sources, including Geoffrey of Monmouth, the last of the historical and first of the mythical, indicate its significance. This is what they have to say: Nennius: “The twelfth battle was on Badon Hill and in it nine hundred and sixty men fell in one day, from a single charge of Arthur’s, and no one laid them low save he alone; and he was victorious in all his campaigns. ” Writing in 796 AD (Historia Britonum, Page 35) Annales Cambriae: “The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and Read more…
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