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The Twelve Labours of Hercules    Hercules was the son of Zeus, but he was born into the family of a mortal king. When he was still a youth, being over-whelmed by a madness sent upon him by one of the goddesses, he slew the children of his brother Iphicles. Then, coming to know what he had done, sleep and rest went from him: he went to Delphi, to the shrine of Apollo, to be purified of his crime. At Delphi, at the shrine of Apollo, the priestess purified him, and when she had purified him she uttered this prophecy: "From this day forth thy name shall be, not Alcides, but Hercules. Thou shalt go to Eurystheus, thy cousin, in Mycenć, and serve him in all things. When the labors he shall lay upon thee are accomplished, and when the rest of thy life is lived out, thou shalt become one of the immortals." ....read the full text here

Elaine, The Lady of Shalott

But Lancelot mused a little space; He said, 'She has a lovely face;

God in his mercy lend her grace,

The Lady of Shalott.'

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......read the full poem here

Lady of the Lake  From one perspective the Ladies of the Lake were a community of otherworldly women guarding the Sovereignty of the land, from another they were an early Christian monastic community ... read more

Lancelot   The earliest written Arthurian romances are a series of 12th-century poems by Chrétien de Troyes. 'Lancelot, The Knight of the Cart' introduces Lancelot, Arthur's chief knight and his rival for Guinevere's love...read more

Morgan le Fay   Morgan ('Born of the Sea') le Fay is first mentioned, as Arthur's elder half sister by Cretien de Troyes. In the Romances she is the daughter of Ygerne (Igraine) and Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. In Welsh tradition she is the daughter of Avallach or  Avalloc, king in the Otherworld. Morgan is one of the Ladies of the Lake ... read more

The Grail Legends  'The Principal Romances associated with the Holy Grail fall into two classes; [1] Those which relate the adventures of knights of King Arthur's time who visit by chance or design the castle in Britain where the vessel is kept. [2] Those which relate the history of the vessel from the time of Christ to the time of Merlin and which account for its removal from the Holy Land to Britain....read more

The Wasteland  After the defeat of the invading Anglo-Saxons by Arthur at the Battle of Mount Badon the Celtic kingdoms in the west maintained independence and maintained their Romano Celtic traditions for at least another hundred years. But when the Anglo-Saxons finally conquered Devon almost all traces of the existing Celtic society were obliterated, a situation strongly paralleled in the wasteland of the grail legends ....read more

The Evolution of Legends  'Many a hermit, anchorite, and venerable figure in religious garb who crosses our path in Arthurian romance may be legitimately suspected of being a god or goddess in disguise.'  ..............  read more

Le Morte D'Arthur - Thomas Malory    Edited and first published by William Caxton in 1485, Sir Thomas Malory's unique and splendid version of the Arthurian legend tells an immortal story of love, adventure, chivalry, treachery, and death......read the full text here .....download in pdf eBook format

Sea Levels In "The Age of Arthur," John Morris notes, "There is ample evidence for a drastic change in the sea level of Europe and the Mediterranean towards the end of the Roman Empire; its severity affected the coast and rivers of southern and eastern Britain."  "When the Britons wrote their plea to Aetius, they said: "The barbarians push us back to the sea; the sea throws us back to the barbarians; thus two modes of death await us, we are either slain or drowned." .....read more

Geoffrey of Monmouth - The Vita Merlini - Life of Merlin.....download in pdf eBook format

St. Michael Lines 'A High rocky place on the top whereof stands a church, full bleak and weather beaten, all alone, as it were forgotten.'  ...read more

The Mabinogion  MANAWYDDAN THE SON OF LLYR  WHEN the seven men of whom we spoke above had buried the head of Bendigeid Vran, in the White Mount in London, with its face towards France; Manawyddan gazed upon the town of London, and upon his companions, and heaved a great sigh; and much grief and heaviness came upon him.....read the full text here .....download in pdf eBook format

Logres, a word which in Arthurian romance is never far removed from the Otherworld,  was one of the ancient names for north Devon / Cornwall - Arthur's kingdom ....read more

Lundy  Lundy island stands in the mouth of the Bristol Channel, thirteen miles NNW of Hartland Point on the North Devon coast and thirty two mile SSE of St.Govan's Head on the Welsh coast.....read more

Lundy, Isle of Avalon

Derivation of Lundy   the old norse word 'lundr' is the root word for the modern 'lund' 'lunt' and '-land'. The meaning is ' grove' 'copse' 'sacred grove' and the old eng '...ëg'  'island ...read more

Ecclesiastical History of Lundy  'J. R. Chanter, our best authority, in his monograph 'Lundy Island', speaks of its ecclesiastical position as 'anomalous, it being not only extra-parochial, but extra-diocesan as it seems, having been left pretty much to itself since the suppression of monasteries. When attached to the Manor and Abbey of Hartland the spiritual duties were no doubt attended to by the monks of that abbey. At a subsequent period it appears to have become a distinct parish, with a church dedicated to St. Helena, and having attached to it an oratory dedicated to St.Ann.' ....read more

Giant's Graves   During harvest time in 1851 islanders on Lundy discovered two immense granite coffins, one of them said to have been ten feet long the other eight. When these sarcophagi were opened, the excavators found the skeletons of two eight feet tall humans....read more

Early Christian Gravestones  'These stone allude to British Christian dead, were erected by British, were an aspect of continuous British Christianity."  "The four inscribed stones alone make it (Lundy) archaeologically unique" ...read more

Knight Templar Rock  Knight Templar Rock is almost midway up the eastern side of Lundy, facing the rising Sun....read more

Kistvaen    On Lundy in 1851 a barrow, the kistvaen, was discovered by workmen and opened up. Soon after, it was visited by a Mr Gosse who gave the following description; - " A block of granite was found a little below the surface.......read more

Lundy Island and the Knights Templar   Lundy Island has two indisputable links to the Knights Templar. One past, one present. Firstly, the Templars owned Lundy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and, secondly, on the eastern side of Lundy Island, where it faces the rising sun, there is a rock formation in the shape of a head, known as Knight Templar Rock. ...read more

Towers on Lundy   Irish and Welsh legends contain numerous instances of  towers on  islands, the 'Tower of Bre?', the tower of Arianrhod, the tower under which the head of Bran is buried. Is there any evidence on Lundy for the existence of such a tower on Lundy? ....read more

The old name for Lundy - 'Ynys Wair' - Gwair's Island.  Gwair is a Celtic - Sun God. 'The noted 19th century authority, Professor Rhys, was among the first to identify the imprisonment of Gwair on the Isle of Lundy, with the Paphlagonian (Greek) myth of the binding of Chronus on a western isle. He also points out that Classical legend is the original source of the basic myth of the god imprisoned on a western isle traceable through the Arthurian Romances....read more

Luned names    The tale of 'Owain and the Lady of the Fountain' appears in the Mabinogion a collection of welsh prose tales put together between the latter part of the 11th and the end of the 13th centuries....read more