And now for an archaic flavor. Solemn, venerable tales, from remote epochs, distant lands, best
appreciated if one possesses a haunting (or haunted?) memory that one has met
all these knights and ladies, monsters and enchanters, in some remote past or
better still, can relate to them. Because reading legends becomes
meaningful only when one realizes, albeit hazily, the significance of the events in
the background … a feeling that one is moving in regions "where more is
meant than meets the ear", a feeling akin to what Shakespeare's Hamlet felt
when he told his friend, "There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." What is crucial here is
this ability to empathize with visionary figures "full of ghostly midnight
animation, that one is persuaded that they had some strange purpose."
Medieval England looked back to the images and figures of Celtic
and pre-Celtic myths and sagas for poetic inspiration. Having assumed the
form of the quest for the Holy Grail and other romances of the Arthurian cycle,
they eventually caught the imagination of the courtly circles of the whole of
Europe. It is thus that, "The romances of the Round Table have for hundreds
of years laid their spell over the soul of Europe. Wrought by the twelfth and
thirteenth century poets of France, Germany, and Britain, from materials
deriving largely from the ancient treasuries of the Celts, these legends of
faerie, quest, and disenchantment have deeply impressed themselves on the
consciousness (and also upon the unconscious) of the descendants of those who first
enjoyed them." The myths and folktales of the Celts; their nature religion;
their gods and goddesses associated with sacred groves, remote mountains
and lakes; their giants; their Sacred Head myths involving decapitation;
their mystical Otherworld—it is these and more that find its place in the
romances of the Arthurian cycle, thereby keeping alive the great myths of the Classic
civilization.
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