The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (68 page)

Lancelot likewise was abducted when only a few days old and raised by the Lady of the Lake in a fortress mysteriously surrounded by water and otherwise unapproachable. Unlike Mabon’s,
Lancelot’s “imprisonment” was not harsh, because he was raised in the ways of chivalry, but he knows nothing of his parentage or origins, almost to the point of being frightened
to know them. Like Mabon, we can consider Lancelot a great hunter inasmuch as he is unceasingly undertaking quests. As the son of Mother Earth, Mabon is seen as the eternal youth, which may be much
of his appeal. Intriguingly the name of Melwas, the abductor of Guenevere, translates as “Prince Youth” (
mael gwas
).

If the character of Lancelot contains a faint folk memory of him likewise being a god of youth and fertility, it may also explain his
relationship with Guenevere as perhaps
representing a pre-Arthurian legend. There is little about Guenevere, or Gwenhwyfar, in the early Celtic tales. Her name means “white phantom” or “white shadow”. She is
mentioned in the Triads as the First Lady of the Island, but this is post-Arthurian. Geoffrey of Monmouth states that she was descended from a noble Roman family. In Marie de France’s
Lanval
we see her portrayed as a seductress who, when spurned, turns vindictive. Her relationship towards Lancelot also waxes and wanes like the Moon, and it may well be that she is the
embodiment of a distant lunar deity fighting for control of the Son of the Earth with Arthur in the role of the Sun.

If these ancient folk deities are distant forebears of Lancelot, what about his name? It is clearly not a Celtic name, nor is there anything similar in the Welsh tales. In his translation of the
Mabinogion
into French in 1913 Joseph Lot put forward the idea that Lancelot was derived from Llenlleawc, the character who wields the sword Caledvwlch in
Culhwch and Olwen
and wins
the Cauldron of Plenty. There is a similar character in the
Preiddeu Annwvyn
whose name is spelled Lleminawc. Lleminawc, or Llemenig, crops up in several places. A Triad lists him as one of
the “Three Unrestricted Guests” at Arthur’s court and since the other two, Llywarch Hen and Heledd, are both refugees at the court of Powys, this may be the same for Llemenig. A
surviving fragment of an otherwise lost poem about Cynddylan (Heledd’s brother and a Prince of Powys in the mid-seventh century) calls Llemenig the “battle-hound of wrath, victorious in
battle.” He is described as the son of Mawan or Mawn, descended from Cadell Ddyrnllug of Powys. I have included him in Table 3.9. The pedigrees are slightly confused and he may be a
generation earlier. Either way he would be contemporary with Artúir of Dyfed. The whole of this dynasty is associated with white, with Cadell of the Gleaming Hilt and Cynan of the White
Chariot, and this may also be true of Llemenig, as it is of Guenevere.

Lot believed that Llenlleawc and Llemenig were one and the same, but that is by no means certain. One translation of
Preiddeu Annwvyn
places both characters in the story, but the most
recent translation by John Koch suggests that the line translated as
“The sword of Llwc Lleawc” actually means “A sword of lightning slaughter”.

Lot equated both these names with a third name, Llwch Llawwynniog, “of the Striking Hand”, which may well relate to someone wielding a sword of “lightning slaughter”. He
is mentioned in
Pa Gur
as defending Eidyn’s border. This character equates with the Irish god of the sun and lightning, Lugh
Loinnbheimionach
, “of the mighty blows”.
Lugh is described as a shining god of light, and Lancelot was first perceived in all white armour with a white crest.

The derivation, as suggested by Lot and developed by Loomis, is that the Bretons believed Llwch Llawwyniog and Llwch Lleminawc/Llenlleac were one and the same. They also believed that Llwch
meant “lake”. Llenlleac transmuted to Lancelin, a name in use in Brittany since the eleventh century, and that by degrees shifted to Lancelot of the Lake. I must confess that although I
can imagine this might have happened I do not find it wholly convincing. Whilst Llemenig may be the source of the character he does not seem a likely source for the name. In Old Welsh
llain
means “blade” or “sword” and
lloyg
is “warrior” or “hero”, so
Llainlloyg
is a composite that could corrupt to Lancelot.

The
–lot
suffix is a variant of
–let
, which means small or young, and the name is sometimes spelled Lancelet, so it may have meant “young hero” or
“young sword”. This would fit in with the motif of the Fair Unknown, a common theme in Arthurian romances. The Fair Unknown refers to an individual, almost always a youth, who arrives
at Arthur’s court ignorant of his birthright or family origins. He is often ridiculed and sets out to prove himself. He undergoes many challenges and adventures before discovering his origin.
The Lady of the Lake keeps Lancelot ignorant of his past for as long as she can, as if learning his identity is a loss of innocence and youth.

Another possible derivation applies to the character of Lanzelet in the German version by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven. He has no knightly virtues, being raised by an evil water sprite intent on
revenge and unleashed on the world pretty much as a killing machine and rapist. It is only once he has achieved her goals and come of age that he earns his name. Here it may well apply to the lands
he has gained, since
Lanz
is the Old German for land, or at
least that may be how the name was interpreted for Ulrich’s story. It was purportedly based on an
earlier legend, and doubtless one that Chrétien also knew but revised. Whatever story Chrétien used, there is little doubt that he originally modelled Lancelot on Tristan in order to
create a parallel love triangle with Lancelot, Guenevere and Arthur.

There are other explanations for Lancelot’s name, the most interesting being that by Linda Malcor and C. Scott Littleton in
From Scythia to Camelot.
They have explored the legends
of the Alans, Sarmatians and Ossetians, all related tribes, and found many parallels between them and the Arthurian tales. They also suspect that the Alans may be the source of Lancelot’s
name. We have seen that the Alans became Kings and Dukes of Brittany and Counts of Vannes, and they also established themselves in the south of France, in Gascony and Toulouse. One of their centres
was at Montauban in the old County of Lot. There is still a French département of that name but the old county was much larger and was one of the areas that suffered during the Albigensian
Crusade as it was a centre for the Cathars. It does not take long to see that if there had been tales, now lost, of an heroic Alan of Lot, his name would have mutated from Alanus à Lot
>Alans à Lot>Alanç-à-lot>Lancelot. It is more convincing than the derivation from Llemenig, all the more so since the name of the town of Alençon in Normandy
has a similar source.

In
Bloodline of the Holy Grail
, Laurence Gardner provides a different derivation for Lancelot which succeeds in fusing a French origin with the Arthurian Cycle. He cites Lancelot’s
surname as del Acqs, “of the water”, noting that this was a title attached to Mary Magdalen who purportedly died in Gaul in 63
AD
at Acquae Sextiæ (modern
Aix-en-Provence). The title passed through the descendants of Mary and Jesus, the Fisher Kings, to the Counts of Toulouse and, through the female line, to the Comtesses d’Avallon. The first
of these, Viviane del Acqs, is supposed to have married Taliesin and had three daughters. Ygerna became the mother of Arthur, Morgause (who married Lot) was the mother of Gawain, and Viviane, who
married Ban, was the mother of Lancelot. Because of the title their names became anglicised as Ladies of the Lake. This makes Lancelot of French descent but also a cousin of Arthur.

This Messianic descent is of considerable relevance to Lancelot’s involvement in the Grail story in the
Lancelot-Grail
, because it not only provides an
interpretation of a purportedly true secret history of the continued bloodline of Jesus – the true
Sangreal
– but it also explains the significance of Lancelot’s son
Galahad.

Galahad is the child of Lancelot’s relationship with Elaine, the Grail Maiden and the daughter of the Fisher King. This sinless child reunites the lines of descent from David and Joseph of
Arimathea, and is thereby able to achieve the Grail Quest and heal the Land. The Vulgate
Lancelot
states that the name of Joseph of Arimathea’s son was Galahad and, significantly, that
was Lancelot’s name at birth.

The name Galahad has long been recognised as a corruption of the Biblical name Gilead – in fact, both appear as Galaad in respective Vulgate texts. Galaad means “heap of
testimony” and Roger Sherman Loomis determined that the phrase is an allusion to Jesus Christ who was the personification of the “heap of testimony” given by all the Old Testament
prophets. Galahad thereby becomes a symbolic Christ on earth, a sinless child, born of sin, as all mankind is born of original sin. Loomis concludes that the use of the name was a stroke of genius
by the author, and indeed it was. But it does not explain why Lancelot was originally given that name. One might deduce that Lancelot was perhaps destined to become Galahad, but was not ready and
held a temporary name until his “baptism”. The Lady of the Lake raised him as the perfect knight, but Lancelot failed because he sinned in his love for Guenevere and, as a consequence,
like Moses, he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land. A new child, without corruption, was required. Galahad was also raised away from his family, in a nunnery, and although tempted on several
occasions, he succeeded in remaining sinless and thus achieved the Quest.

Ingenious though this all seems it may not have been quite so faultlessly planned. Loomis, for instance, suspected that an earlier (now lost) Grail story has Gawain as the successful Grail
Knight and that his name may have been corrupted to Galaan or Galaain. This would neatly counterbalance Balain, the knight who strikes the Dolorous Blow which gives rise to the Grail Quest. This
might then suggest that the Grail Quest is a highly
personalized story of redemption and self-fulfilment in which the sinful Gawain/Balain commits the “original”
sin and, having gone through a rebirth, the pure Gawain/Galaad redeems himself. There may just have been a trace of this in the story of
Culhwch and Olwen
, where two sides of Gawain are
suggested in the characters of Gwalchmai ap Gwyar and his brother Gwalchafed ap Gwyar. Sir John Rhys, in
Studies in the Arthurian Legend
, believes that Gwalchafed is the original Celtic name
for Galahad, but few have supported this.

If, as some believe, Lancelot was a late substitute for Gawain in the story, then we may find the story having some vestige of the Gawain/Galahad partnership, but with Lancelot instead. There is
indeed another character in the story with a similar name. This is Galehaut, King of the Far Isles. Galehaut is initially at war with Arthur but becomes such firm friends with Lancelot that he
submits to Arthur and even joins the Round Table. Lancelot is distraught when Galehaut dies and not only builds a special tomb for him at his castle of Joyeuse Garde, but requests that when he dies
he should be laid next to Galehaut. Galehaut, whose name means “High Prince”, was probably the original Galahad alter ego of Gawain in the early (now lost) story, but once the
“architect” of the
Lancelot-Grail
had the bit between his teeth he embellished the story way beyond its original plan. And in so doing, of course, created a masterpiece.

2. The real Lancelot

One query remains. If we dust aside for the moment the religious overtones of Lancelot’s life and his possible Celtic or Alanic origins, we come back to the fact that not
only did Marie de Champagne request the first story about Lancelot, she provided the
matiere et san
(“subject matter and treatment”). She may not have specified Lancelot as such,
but she does seem to have wanted a story of heroic adventure and adulterous love, a love that seems to be condoned. This may have been an early strike for feminism, but it may also be something
else. It is quite possible that the characters and events were all representative of people either at the Court of Champagne or at some rival court and Marie wanted to expose an adulterous
relationship under cover of
a story. The individuals at the time would have recognised themselves, but can we identify them today?

I suspect Marie had her mother in mind when thinking of Guenevere. Queen Eleanor, wife of Henry II of England and former wife of Louis VII of France, was one of the most beautiful women in
Europe and one of the most influential. Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was mother of one of England’s most famous kings, Richard the Lionheart, and one of its most notorious,
John. The love affairs of her youth were also the subject of gossip. Louis VII had adored his young wife (they were both only about sixteen when they married) but was jealous of the attention her
beauty attracted. Soon after the birth of Marie, Louis banished the troubadour Marcabru from his court for being over familiar. Eleanor had at least two other affairs soon after, firstly with
Geoffrey of Anjou and secondly, and most famously, with her uncle, Raymond of Poitiers, the handsome Prince of Antioch. Either of these may be seen as “her Lancelot”, although both were
older than her and neither really “rescued” her from abduction.

However, there was a famous abduction attempt in 1168, by which time Eleanor was 46 and past childbearing age. Henry had been punishing his rebellious Lusignan vassals, one of whom, Guy de
Lusignan, attempted to kidnap Eleanor in order to gain concessions from Henry. Eleanor’s bodyguard Earl Patrick ensured her swift escape, but he was stabbed and it was left to his nephew Sir
William the Marshal to defeat the abductors single-handedly, though he was eventually captured. Marshal, tall with brown hair, was only twenty-two but had already led an eventful life and was a
renowned champion of tournaments. His valour was recognised by the Queen who personally paid his ransom and later showered him with gifts. The later archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton,
called him “the best knight who ever lived”, an epithet only too obvious in its day.