Merlin & the Witch-Queens

For centuries the legends of King Arthur and his knights have enthralled audiences throughout the western world. Their cumulative efforts has resulted in a large, extant corpus of poetry and prose detailing the adventures of Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain, King Mark, King Arthur.... Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae testifies how contemporaries considered Arthurian legends to be serious history. King Arthur is included in Monmouth's list of kings of Britain, and his wars to resist foreign domination (first Roman, then Saxon) are described in loving detail. Arthur's exploits are inspirational and stirring tales of adventure: and my sympathies are firmly enlisted on the side of all those who wish they were actual history. In the English speaking tradition, readers are likely already familiar with Malory's Le Mort d'Arthur and Tennyson's blank verse Idylls of the King. Each work presents a powerful and compelling summary of the Arthurian material in their own right. In retelling Arthurian legends, authors are forced to sift and select from the huge mass of adventures available, and even variant endings of a given adventure. Composition invariably involves much harmonising of disparate source materials. Of such stuff are legends made. The present work selects stories from both Malory and Tennyson and retells them in rhymed verse. Readers of the works just mentioned above will have little trouble identifying the source in each particular case. My retellings here are broadly faithful to the originals: but I have taken an author's liberty to smooth out contradictions and omit details deemed superfluous.