The Search for the Historical King Arthur: Excalibur

Excalibur, or Caledfwlch and it’s first appearance.

Excalibur, the sword of Arthur, a weapon more legend than history at this point. Where does this famed sword first appear? The answer comes in the Welsh story Culhwch and Olwen. In this story Culhwch with his cousin Arthur's help (King Arthur himself) sets off to find his bride.

You shall have what your head and tongue may seek, as long as the wind dries, the rain wets, the sun moves, as far as land and sea encompass, except my ship and my mantle, Caledfwlch my sword, Rhongomiant my spear, Wyneb-Gwrthucher my shield, Carnwennan my knife, and Gwenhywfar my wife . . .

Caledfwlch being the original Welsh name for Excalibur, meaning "Hard Cleft" or sometimes "Cut Steel". Many have drawn a connection between the Irish Caladbolg, and Caledfwlch, upon phonetic grounds. Both names likely share a common root, but many scholars agree that it is unlikely one was derived from the other. Bromwich and Simon in their work Culhwch and Olwen: an Edition and Study of the Oldest Arthurian Tale address this as follows.

For a number of years Caledfwich was looked upon as a borrowing from the cognate Ir. Caladbolg (calad 'hard', as noun 'hardship'; DIL, 'C' 58 + bolg 'gap' DIL'B' 139, on which see O'Rahilly, Ériu xiii, 163-4). But this now seems unlikely, in spite of the superficial correspondence between the two names. In the Táin Bó Cúailnge from the Book of Leinster (ed. O'Rahilly, (DIAS 1967), 1.4720 Caladbolg is the name of sword which Fergus mac Róig inherited from Fergus mac Leite; elsewhere in the same manuscript (LL 1. 32517) caladbuilg (pl.) appears in the tale Togail Troi as a general and unspecific name for swords (cf. EIHM 68n.). Vendryes has argued convincingly (EC v (1940), 15) that in Irish Caladbolg was originally a generic name for a sword, rather than the name for any one sword in particular. The editors of the Book of Leinster, R. I. Best, Osborn Bergin, and M. A. O'Brien (DIAS 1954-67) state that the manuscript is the work of one hand written over a long period in the second half of the 12th cent. (see further W. S. O'Sullivan, 'Notes on the Script and Make-up of the Book of Leinster', Celtica vi (1966) I-31, esp. 26-8). Since Geoffrey of Monmouth's HRB first appeared c. 1136-8, Geoffrey's Caliburnus is older than the date now accepted for the Book of Leinster: if Caliburnus is accepted as the Lat. rendering of Caledfwlch, the Welsh name must predate 1138. With respect to the occurrence of Caletfwlch in Culhwch, it must remain uncertain whether the name is a borrowing from the early 13th-cent. Brut, or whether it can go back to an earlier redaction of the tale. In favour of its antiquity, however, is the very early occurrence of the name of Arthur's ship Prydwen (see n. to 1.938): CaledfwIch, as the name of Arthur's sword, may well be equally ancient and traditional. In his Heldensage 114-15, Thurneysen took it for granted that Caliburnus is a borrowing from Ir. Caladbolg, and this led him to believe that the Book of Leinster predates HRB. Since modern palaeographical scholarship does not concur with so early a dating for the Book of Leinster, Thurneysen's view can now be discounted. As there is no means of knowing how much older the names Caladbolg and Caledfwlch may be than the manuscripts in which they first appear - whether in written or in oral sources the question of the relationship between the two remains incapable of final solution: both may have similarly arisen at a very early date as generic names for a sword. With Caladbolg the name of Cú Chulainn's spear the Gai Bolga, may also be compared. See further EIHM 68-71, and P.

The sword then appears later in the tale being wielded by Llenlleawg the Irishman, killing the giant Diwrnach and his men with a single stroke.

Llenlleawg the Irishman seized Caledfwlch and let it go out in a circle: it killed Diwrnach and his entire retinue. The hosts of Ireland came to fight them, and when they had been driven off completely, Arthur and his men took the cauldron—full of Irish treasures—and entered the ship before their very eyes. They disembarked at the house of Llwydeu son of Cel Coed at Porth Cerddin in Dyfed. And “Cauldron’s Measure” is there.

As I have mentioned in before, Llenlleawg is sometimes thought to be a proto-lancelot, and may be in fact based on the historical figure Llennaec, father of Gwallog who we will discuss later.

From there the legend of the sword grows with every tale told after, From Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Caliburnus, to the present we are still writing of Exalibur, some adding more and more embellishments, and others trying to trim it back to it's roots, The sword of a late 5th century Brythonic warlord.

When I see Caledfwlch in my mind I think of a late Roman spatha, like these from the Kragehul bog find in Denmark, especially the leftmost example. An heirloom inherited from father to son since the old days of Roman occupation. A fitting sword for the waning Dux Britanniarum, grasping onto the old ways, but surrounding by crumbling memories.

"For a heartbeat she was a shining bar of blue flame poised in the heavens, and then she fell." -Bernard Cornwell "Excalibur"