What’s wrong with carving Merlin’s face into a rock? Nothing, if you care about keeping Britain’s greatest legend alive. English Heritage does, and it is making some changes to the way it displays Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, a place that for nearly a thousand years has been shrouded in the mists of Arthurian romance.
Tintagel is a real medieval castle, ruined but spectacularly posed over the sea – but the main reason most people would make the trek there is a fascination with King Arthur, who is said to have been conceived in this rocky fastness.
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing in the 12th century – and many great storytellers since from Malory to Antonia Fraser – the wizard Merlin helped Uther Pendragon, king of Britain, to take on the form of the Duke of Cornwall so he could trick the duchess Ygraine into sleeping with him in this storm-swept castle on its lofty crag. Nine months later a child was born who would be king of Britain. His name: Arthur.
It seems to me completely legitimate and a very good idea for English Heritage to tell this story boldly at Tintagel. So Merlin’s face has been sculpted below the castle for visitors to find – alluding to his magical assistance in Uther’s adultery – and other additions, including a “round table”, will add to the Arthurian excitement. A spectacular new bridge with a scary gap in the middle, is also planned.
And yet some people are outraged. This is nothing less than a Disneyfication of an ancient site that risks turning it into a “fairytale theme park”, laments a group of 200 Cornish historians who are offended that the myth of Arthur is deemed more important than Tintagel’s real history.
I am impressed that Cornwall can boast 200 historians – the University of Exeter’s Penryn campus must be huge – but come off it. Yes, of course Tintagel has a “proper” history, and I am sure the grain stores and wells of the real castle are fascinating in themselves, as is the use of lime mortar in the south-west tower and the slight evidence of a 13th-century renewal to the corbelling. But King Arthur! This place is associated with King Arthur!
His legend is one of Britain’s greatest contributions to world culture and English Heritage is right to celebrate it – even by carving Merlin into Cornish rocks. Arthur was already famous when Britain was just a minor island off the shore of medieval Europe. After Geoffrey of Monmouth wove this compelling tale of a saviour king into his highly unreliable History of the Kings of Britain, it was taken up and embellished as the founding myth of the age of chivalry. “The matter of Britain”, as it was called, not only inspired great chivalric writers like Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach but provided the costumes, themes and excuses for sexual flirtation of hundreds of medieval tournaments and banquets, right through into the Italian Renaissance. One of the most poignant paintings of Arthur and his knights is a cycle of frescoes by Pisanello in Mantua, northern Italy.
These historians who say English Heritage should tell the real story of Tintagel rather than focus on the “mythical fantasies” of King Arthur fail to grasp the nature of cultural history. In many ways, the myth of Arthur created medieval civilisation. It also helped create Britain as we know it. The British may have invented Arthur, but Arthur in turn legitimated the idea of Britain as a great nation. Henry VII, who founded the Tudor dynasty that did so much to shape the modern British state, called his heir Arthur. This Arthur died young, but his younger brother, as Henry VIII, shared the family passion for Arthurian chivalry. The myth of Arthur helped Henry declare independence from the Catholic church.
Cultural fantasy and real history are not opposites. Arthur is woven into the landscape and identity of Britain, and we’re very lucky to have such a great global myth written into our rocks. People visit Greece to see the land of the Greek gods; in just the same way this is the land of Arthur.
The tales of Arthur add up to a beautiful, complex legend full of melancholy. Today, we’re perhaps in danger of losing touch with the details of these stories. Modern kids have Harry Potter, but Arthur is more magical. English Heritage is evidently aiming its Arthurian reboot at families, and doing its bit to keep the mystery of the grail alive in the 21st century. I think anyone who really loves history, and wants a new generation to love it, should applaud their efforts.