Editing Excalibur (section)

=== The Sword in the Stone and the Sword in the Lake ===
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| image1 = An island story; a child's history of England (1906) (14801002423).jpg
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| image2 = CRANE King Arthur asks the lady of the lake for the sword Excalibur.jpg
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| caption1 = Arthur draws the sword from the stone in [[Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall]]'s ''[[Our Island Story]]'' (1906). Here, as in many more modern depictions of this scene, there is no anvil and the sword is lodged directly within the stone itself
| caption2 = "King Arthur asks the Lady of the Lake for the sword Excalibur". [[Walter Crane]]'s illustration for [[Henry Gilbert (author)|Henry Gilbert]]'s ''King Arthur's Knights: The Tales Retold for Boys and Girls'' (1911)}}

Romance tradition elaborates on how Arthur came into possession of Excalibur. In [[Robert de Boron|Robert de Boron's]] c. 1200 French poem ''[[Merlin (Robert de Boron poem)|Merlin]]'', the first known tale to mention the "sword in the stone" motif, Arthur obtained the British throne by pulling a sword from an anvil sitting atop a stone that appeared in a churchyard on Christmas Eve.<ref>Bryant, Nigel (ed, trans), Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval: the Trilogy of Prose Romances Attributed to Robert de Boron, DS Brewer, 2001, p. 107ff.</ref> In this account, as foretold by [[Merlin]], the act could not be performed except by "the true king", meaning the [[Divine right of kings|divinely appointed king]] or true heir of [[Uther Pendragon]]. (As [[Thomas Malory]] related in his English-language Arthurian compilation, the 15th-century ''[[Le Morte d'Arthur]]'', "whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England."<ref>Sir Thomas Malory, William Caxton. ''Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table''. p. 28. J. B. Lippincott and Company, 1868.</ref><ref group="lower-alpha">This line from Malory is also quoted in the 1938 Arthurian novel ''[[The Sword in the Stone (novel)|The Sword in the Stone]]'' by British author [[T. H. White]] as well as its [[The Sword in the Stone (1963 film)|Disney adaptation]].</ref>) The scene is set by different authors at either explicitly London (historical [[Londinium]]) or generally in the land of [[Logres]] (which can be a city and also associated with London<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8ywEEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA267 | title=The Arthur of the French: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval French and Occitan Literature | date=15 October 2020 | publisher=University of Wales Press | isbn=978-1-78683-743-1 }}</ref>), and might have been inspired by a miracle attributed to the 11th-century bishop [[Wulfstan (died 1095)|Wulfstan of Worcester]].<ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27870843|jstor = 27870843|title = The Staff in the Stone: Finding Arthur's Sword in the 'Vita Sancti Edwardi' of Aelred of Rievaulx|last1 = Dutton|first1 = Marsha L.|journal = Arthuriana|year = 2007|volume = 17|issue = 3|pages = 3–30|doi = 10.1353/art.2007.0018|s2cid = 162363447|url-access = subscription}}</ref> After many of the gathered nobles try and fail to complete Merlin's challenge, the teenage Arthur, who up to this point had believed himself to be biological son of [[Sir Ector|Ector]] and went there as a squire to his foster brother [[Sir Kay|Kay]], succeeds effortlessly. Arthur first achieves this feat by accident while unaware of the contest and unseen. He then returns the sword to its place in the anvil on a stone, and later repeats the act publicly as Merlin comes to announce his true parentage.

[[File:Dozmary Pool - geograph.org.uk - 1570107.jpg|thumb|left|[[Dozmary Pool]], a lake in Cornwall associated with the legend of Excalibur due to its proximity to [[Slaughterbridge]], a potential location of the [[Battle of Camlann]]<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mVkoDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT66 | title=The Lost Tomb of King Arthur: The Search for Camelot and the Isle of Avalon | isbn=9781591437581 | last1=Phillips | first1=Graham | date=11 April 2016 | publisher=Simon and Schuster }}</ref>]]

The identity of this sword as Excalibur is made explicit in the Prose ''Merlin'', a part of the thirteenth-century ''[[Lancelot-Grail]]'' cycle of French romances also known as the ''Vulgate Cycle''.<ref>Micha, Alexandre (ed.). ''Merlin: roman du XIIIe siècle'' (Geneva: Droz, 1979).</ref> Eventually, in the cycle's finale Vulgate ''Mort Artu'', when Arthur is at the brink of death, he enigmatically orders his surviving knight [[Griflet]] to cast Excalibur into a nearby lake. After two failed attempts to deceive Arthur, since Griflet felt that such a great sword should not be thrown away, he finally does comply with the wounded king's request. A woman's hand emerges from the lake to catch Excalibur, after which [[Morgan le Fay|Morgan]] appears in a boat to take Arthur to [[Avalon]]. This motif then became attached to [[Bedivere]] (or [[Yvain]] in the chronicle ''[[Scalacronica]]''), instead of Griflet, in the English Arthurian tradition.{{sfn|Lacy|1996}}

However, in the subsequent [[Post-Vulgate Cycle]] variants of the ''Merlin'' and the ''Merlin Continuation'', written soon afterwards, Arthur's sword drawn from the stone is unnamed. Furthermore, the young Arthur promptly breaks it in his duel against King [[Pellinore]] very early in his reign. On Merlin's advice, Arthur then goes with him to be given the actual Excalibur by a [[Lady of the Lake]] in exchange for a later boon for her (some time later, she arrives at Arthur's court to demand the head of [[Sir Balin|Balin]]). In the Post-Vulgate ''Mort Artu'', it is this sword that is eventually hurled into the pool [[Battle of Camlann|at Camlann]] (or actually [[Salisbury Plain]] where both cycles locate the battle, as do the English romances) by Griflet in the same circumstances as told in the story's Vulgate version. Malory included both of these stories in his now-iconic ''Le Morte d'Arthur'' while naming each of the swords as Excalibur: both the first one (from the stone), soon shattered in combat in a story taken from the Post-Vulgate ''Merlin Continuation'', and its replacement (from the lake), returned by Bedivere in the end.{{sfn|Malory|1997|p=[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/MaloryWks2/1:2?rgn=div1;view=fulltext 7]}}{{sfn|Malory|1997|p=[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/MaloryWks2/1:3.7?rgn=div2;view=fulltext 46]}}