![]() 1200, Arthur obtained the British throne by pulling a sword from an anvil sitting atop a stone that appeared in a churchyard on Christmas Eve. In Robert de Boron's Merlin, the first tale to mention the "sword in the stone" motif c. In Arthurian romance, a number of explanations are given for Arthur's possession of Excalibur. Walter Crane's illustration for Henry Gilbert's King Arthur's Knights: The Tales Retold for Boys and Girls (1911) ![]() "King Arthur asks the Lady of the Lake for the sword Excalibur". The sword in the stone and the sword in the lake It is from this fanciful etymological musing that Thomas Malory got the notion that Excalibur meant "cut steel" ( "' the name of it,' said the lady, 'is Excalibur, that is as moche to say, as Cut stele '"). This statement was probably picked up by the author of the Estoire Merlin, or Vulgate Merlin, where the author (who was fond of fanciful folk etymologies) asserts that Escalibor "is a Hebrew name which means in French 'cuts iron, steel, and wood '" ( "c'est non Ebrieu qui dist en franchois trenche fer & achier et fust" note that the word for "steel" here, achier, also means "blade" or "sword" and comes from medieval Latin aciarium, a derivative of acies "sharp", so there is no direct connection with Latin chalybs in this etymology). In Chrétien de Troyes' late 12th-century Old French Perceval, Arthur's knight Gawain carries the sword Escalibor and it is stated, "for at his belt hung Escalibor, the finest sword that there was, which sliced through iron as through wood" ( "Qu'il avoit cainte Escalibor, la meillor espee qui fust, qu'ele trenche fer come fust" ). 1150–1155), an Old French translation and versification of Geoffrey's Historia, the sword is called Calabrum, Callibourc, Chalabrun, and Calabrun (with variant spellings such as Chalabrum, Calibore, Callibor, Caliborne, Calliborc, and Escaliborc, found in various manuscripts of the Brut). Geoffrey Gaimar, in his Old French Estoire des Engleis (1134–1140), mentions Arthur and his sword: "this Constantine was the nephew of Arthur, who had the sword Caliburc" (" Cil Costentin, li niès Artur, Ki out l'espée Caliburc"). In Old French sources this then became Escalibor, Excalibor, and finally the familiar Excalibur. It is unclear if the name was borrowed from the Welsh (if so, it must have been an early loan, for phonological reasons), or represents an early, pan-Brittonic traditional name for Arthur's sword. In the late 15th/early 16th-century Middle Cornish play Beunans Ke, Arthur's sword is called Calesvol, which is etymologically an exact Middle Cornish cognate of the Welsh Caledfwlch. Most Celticists consider Geoffrey's Caliburnus to be derivative of a lost Old Welsh text in which bwlch (Old Welsh bulc) had not yet been lenited to fwlch ( Middle Welsh vwlch or uwlch). 1136), Latinised the name of Arthur's sword as Caliburnus (potentially influenced by the Medieval Latin spelling calibs of Classical Latin chalybs, from Greek chályps "steel"). Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Historia Regum Britanniae ( The History of the Kings of Britain, c. This sword then became exclusively the property of Arthur in the British tradition. ![]() They suggest instead that both names "may have similarly arisen at a very early date as generic names for a sword". It is often considered to be related to the phonetically similar Caladbolg, a sword borne by several figures from Irish mythology, although a borrowing of Caledfwlch from Irish Caladbolg has been considered unlikely by Rachel Bromwich and D. The name was later used in Welsh adaptations of foreign material such as the Bruts (chronicles), which were based on Geoffrey of Monmouth. Caledfwlch appears in several early Welsh works, including the prose tale Culhwch and Olwen (c. The name Excalibur ultimately derives from the Welsh Caledfwlch (and Breton Kaledvoulc'h, Middle Cornish Calesvol), which is a compound of caled "hard" and bwlch "breach, cleft". 2 The sword in the stone and the sword in the lake.
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