contest

[CelticRose]

Can we keep it end of Feb. I have handwritten my article but for some reason my mum's computer has whole batches of kittens every time I go to post so I'd rather wait till I'm home again.

 

[pinkgurl92]

i'm in just give me a few days

 

[CelticRose]

Why Arturius?​

By​

CelticRose​

​

518 words.​

His name is Arturius and he has been dead for the best part of two thousand years – if he even lived at all. If he lived, he lived in Britain at the end of the fifth or sixth century at a time of great political unrest and foreign invasion. He may have been a king, a loose term amongst the British peoples of that time. What he undoubtedly was, was a war lord, a cavalry general of extraordinary ability, Dux Bellorum. Historically he may simply be the figment of some romanticists over inflated imagination. He is better known as The Once And Future King, Arthur.

Why do I admire Arthur? Well, not for his character, that’s for sure. Born of adultery he himself fathered a child in incest and then committed mass infanticide to hide that fact. He was a soldier fighting an unwinnable war. I am a pacifist. He was a cuckolded husband betrayed by family and friends. He died at the hands of his own son and lies in an unmarked grave. Yet despite the defects of his character and the fact that much of the mythos surrounding his name is blatantly untrue his was the name remembered and passed down from generation to generation at a time in history when there were no accurate records kept and writing was uncommon. That speaks to me of an uncommon man.

The Celts were in the habit of extolling the virtues of their leaders. There are whole lists of names but I would be hard put to name you another one held in such high esteem. I would dare to suggest that, in the western world at least, most people have heard of King Arthur.

So what is it about Arthur? From Arthur I got my love of pre-history and factual evidence. My life has been richer for what I have learnt in my search for the truth about him and the times he lived in.

Stories of Arthur cultivated in me a deep hunger for a spiritual dimension to life, for that sense of the wonder and the glory of an extraordinary life. They taught me that a single life can have an extraordinary impact on untold generations to come. Arthur’s legacy is not of his countless failings but the success of a dream, a dream that had its foundation in a fortressed stronghold & its spires in paradise.

Arthur is not remembered for his defeat at Camlann but for Camelot – that shinning, perfect time carved out of a time of war and uncertainty. His name shines like a beacon down the centuries, transcending times and seasons, space and time, even death. Arthur is the promise still to be kept and a hope fulfilled. Even though his character is tawdry and tarnished something noble still clings to his name till he has become something more than the sum of his individual parts. That’s not a bad legacy to leave. Nor is it a legacy to be despised. Rather it is something to emulate. One need never abandon hope. The dream lives on. Arthur is proof of that.