LL-L "In the media" 2004.07.12 (01) [E]

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: In the media

Beste Ron,

> Folks,
>
> I believe that on this list we have a large number of people
> that are interested in British history and folklore.  Those
> of you, and perhaps even others, might be tempted to watch
> the newly released movie _King Arthur_
> (http://kingarthur.movies.go.com/main.html).  I watched it yesterday.
>
> The movie is of course predominantly entertaining, and
> educational messages must be taken with a couple of grains of
> salt.  Nevertheless, it is interesting in that it goes beyond
> the traditional story by incorporating some more recent
> research findings which point toward Arthur having been a
> part-British (i.e., Brython, Pictish) and part-Roman officer
> in Roman employ who attempted to fill the void when the
> Romans withdrew from Britain and the Saxons were just
> beginning to invade.  Furthermore, it shows Arthur's knights
> as Samartians* that had been drafted by the Romans from their
> homeland in what are now areas of Poland and Ukraine.
>
> Some reading and TV-watching revealed that according to the
> latest theories the King Arthur saga is largely based upon
> Samartian* folk epics, including drawing the sword from a
> rock, the Holy Grail being based on a cauldron that revived
> fallen warriors and made them indestructable and unfeeling
> battle machines, and even the name Lancelot being based on
> the name of a hero in one of these Samartian* epics.
>
> In the movie the Picts speak what I assume is a made-up
> Celtic-based language.  The Saxons -- who, understandably are
> portrayed in a less than flattering light and, being deemed
> "German," display slight shades of Hollywood Nazi stereotypes
> -- actually use an Old Saxon battle cry.  (Mark, I wonder if
> it would make your hair stand on end ...)  For the sake of
> those of you who (will) wonder about it, and for the sake of
> discussion, let me say that I identified it as being _Slahan
> fîand!_ ['sla:xan 'fi:ant], something like "Slay(ing) the
> foe!"  _Fîand_, being a cognate of both English "fiend" and
> German _Feind_ 'enemy', means 'demon', 'ghoul', 'fiend'
> and also 'foe' or 'enemy' in Old Saxon.  I wonder if others
> agree with my understanding of the battle cry.
>
> * The Samartians are believed to have moved to Eastern Europe
> from Central Asia and appear to have been nomadic or
> semi-nomadic.  They were the eastern neighbors of the
> Scythians whom they later annexed.  Most scholars believe
> that they spoke an Iranian varity.  In the early part of
> Slavonic colonization of Poland, the nobility of that region
> claimed to be Samartian and referred to their land as
> Samartia.  Even though Samartia was not a part of the Roman
> Empire, Romans routinely "recruited" (by force) Samartian
> youths (who came with superior equestrian skills) and posted
> them at the far reaches of their borderlands in the west, for
> instance along the Rhine and also along Hadrian's Wall in
> Northern Britain.

I take it you are willing to refer to the Sarmatians here? Metathesis? Maybe
caused by the Samara oblast? Anyway, very interesting, to say the
least...unfortunately "King Arthur" has not been released here yet.
I read something equally compelling in an article on how British men could
easily be descendants of Genghis Khan. You can find it here:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040621/genghis.html
The survey was held at Oxford University by Bryan Sykes, a geneticist, and
the results could be explained by the fact that the Mongols first killed all
the men, then inseminated all the women and finally handed down the empire
from son to son...this would explain why Genghis' Y chromosome spread as far
as the UK.

Greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "In the media" 2004.07.11 (06) [E]

About the new King Arthur movie:
Here's a review I read, and it's not very flattering:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5343992

By John Hartl
Film critic
MSNBC
Updated: 2:24 p.m. ET July 06, 2004

Everyone has a favorite Camelot movie. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and
director Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” tries very hard not to resemble any
of them.

Aside from a few lustful glances, very little is left of the
Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot triangle. The gritty style suggests “Braveheart,”
the script’s occasional pretensions recall “Lord of the Rings” and
“Gladiator” (which was partly written by this film’s screenwriter, David
Franzoni), while the grotesque makeup and special effects appear to be left
over from Bruckheimer’s “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

 Quick facts
Starring: Clive Owen, Stephen Dillane, Keira Knightley, Hugh Dancy, Ioan
Gruffudd
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13

But where is Johnny Depp, or any actor willing to walk the plank to give
this “Arthur” a lift? Clive Owen’s Arthur is relentlessly morose, Ioan
Gruffudd’s Lancelot is poorly defined, and it comes as a major surprise —
almost a plot twist midway through the movie — when it’s revealed that they’
re the best of friends.

True, Keira Knightley (from “Pirates”) is easily the most aggressive
Guinevere in film history, challenging Arthur’s political and religious
allegiances and savagely fighting back in the battle scenes, but there’s not
much more to her character or her relationships.

And the supporting cast, which includes such accomplished actors as Stephen
Dillane (as Merlin) and Stellan Skarsgaard (as a vicious Saxon warlord),
have even less to work with. Fuqua may have guided Denzel Washington to an
Oscar in “Training Day,” but he often seems defeated by the size of this $90
million production.

He appears to be most comfortable with the battle scenes, especially a tense
episode in which Arthur & Co. lure the gullible Saxons into an icebound lake
that starts to crack up when they try to cross it. Yet even the action
scenes are always on the verge of collapsing into “Monty Python and the Holy
Grail” hilarity.

Guinevere never misses with her bow and arrow, while the supposedly tough
and well-trained Saxons rarely seem capable of doing anything right. There’s
even a fake Stonehenge by the sea that seems to embarrass the actors. Owen
in particular appears to be cracking up as he tries to deliver a somber
curtain speech.

The movie begins as the story of the child Lancelot, who is taken from his
family in 452 A.D. Fifteen years later, it suddenly becomes Arthur’s story,
and there are other dismayingly abrupt changes in the point of view. For
awhile, Franzoni’s dialogue emphasizes religious debates, between Arthur and
Lancelot, between Arthur and Guinevere, and between Arthur and the sadistic
priests and traitorous representatives of Rome, but it all seems like filler
between battles.

Franzoni’s screenplay does try to break from the past by positioning Arthur
as a reluctant pawn in the Roman empire’s abandonment of the British Isles.
Alas, Arthur’s gradual realization that Britain needs a unifying king, and
that he’s the man for the job, is sketchily handled. Perhaps “King Arthur”
is closer to historical truth than any previous Camelot movie, but it really
doesn’t matter because so little about the characters rings true.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------

So much for the review. By the way, what Ron wrote about
> "the Holy Grail being based on a cauldron that revived fallen warriors
> and made them indestructable and unfeeling battle machines
sounds like it's taken straight from Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books (the
Taran series; there's even a Disney movie about "The Black Cauldron").

Gabriele Kahn

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "In the media" 2004.07.11 (06) [E]

Dear Ron,

Subject: In the media

Don't you mean Sarmations?

I loved the 'Matter of Britain' since early childhood. It is one of the most
consistant collections of books I have made. One of these is an interesting
view from the - well 'West Saxon' perspective, entitled, 'The Conscience of
the King' (He was notable for not having one), as clinical an analysis of a
sociopath as I have read in fiction), but but not destructive for all that.
Here for the first time, I read of the British use of Catephracti against
the Saxons. Actually, it seems to me the Clinibarii (ovens), even more
heavily armoured, even with armoured horses, were more likely, if they were
Sarmatian based.

Too few people bear in mind that at the end of the Roman Empire most of
their Army (like 90%) was German, & of the very tribes that invaded them.
They had had hundreds of years of exposure to Roman military & cultural
techniques, & by then there was little difference between the humble Roman
peasant (Humilior) & the German peasant, except that he wasn't humble, was
armed, & moreover, wouldn't pay any tax at all, let alone a crippling one.
Little enough attention is paid to the part that bureaucratic proliferation
played in the collapse of the Roman Empire - & NASA

>(Mark, I wonder if it would make your hair stand on end ...)  For the sake
of those
> of you who (will) wonder about it, and for the sake of discussion, let me
> say that I identified it as being _Slahan fîand!_ ['sla:xan 'fi:ant],

I would understand that: & it probably would! Afrikaans _ Slaan die Vyand!_
['sla:n di f@:iand'] = Slay the enemy! Afrikaans 'slag' [slax] = slaughter &
'in die slag gebly' [@n di slax x at bl@:i] = defeated in battle.
This is probably 'Old Hat' to you, Ron, though others may be interested.

But perhaps you can help me with 'sneuwel - gesneuwel' [sni:@v at l -
x at sni:@v at l], a word we use exclusively for one who has died in combat?

Groete,
Mark

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: "In the Media."

Hello, Ron and other Lowlanders!

Ron, in your posting about the new film 'King Arthur' you repeatedly speak
about the SAMARTIANS. I think you must be referring to the SARMATIANS, and
must be guilty of a lapsus keyboardus!

The Sarmatians were called Sauromati by the early Greeks, and Sarmati (Latin
Sarmatae) by their later descendants and by the Romans.Heredotus speaks of
them as living beyond the River Tanais, which corresponds to the modern
Don.They later allied themselves with Rome, and often acted as buffers
between the Romans and hostile Germanic tribes.Not far from my hometown of
Preston is a small place called Ribchester; this was an important Roman
settlement called Bremetennacum Veteranorum, and apparently many of the men
stationed there were in fact Sarmatians.

Much is made by some researchers of the fact that one of the commanders of
the Sarmatian horsemen in Britain was called Lucius Artorius Castus, who put
down a rebellion in Gaul in 184 AD. Others suggest that the Sarmatian
religion revolved around Arthurian-type motifs like people pulling swords
out of stones. I wonder though just how much is actually known about
Sarmatian culture, given the fact that there still seems to be conjecture
even about the origins of their language: although the concensus considers
them to have spoken an early Iranic language, there are still people trying
to claim that thiir speech was Proto-Slavonic or Proto-Hungarian.

C. Scott Littleton and Linda Malcor suggest (in their book 'From Scythia to
Camelot') that many of the elements of the Arturian legends originate in the
mythology of the Sarmatians and Alans. There is apparently a figure in the
'Alan Nart cycle' (actually the Ossetian Nart Cycle) called Batraz whom they
take to be Arthur by another name. Lancelot they suggest takes his name from
'Alanz-lot', 'the parcel of land of the Alan'. One major problem with their
conjectures is that the very elements that the Arthurian and 'Scythian'
legends (Sarmatians and Alans are considered to be Sythians, though I am not
sure that this is totally correct; Herdotus clearly distinguishes between
them) have in common - the sword in the stone, the grail, the return of the
sword to the enchanted lake - so not appear in the earlier versions of the
story. The Ossetian epic cycle too was only written down in the 19th
century, so it would not be possible for outside elements to have entered
it.

Well, I started off correcting one word and I seem to have written a short
essay!

John Duckworth
Preston, UK

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: In the media

Folks,

Yes, yes, I did mean "SaRmatians."  Sorry about the error, and thanks for
the corrections and elaborations.

This one certainly struck a cord with quite a few of you, judging by a few
off-list responses as well.  I assumed many of you would be a lot more
knowledgeable about this than I am, and obviously I was right.  Also, please
bear in mind that this type of movie is first of all for entertainment, not
for genuine education, and supposedly its educational value ought to be
taken with a grain of salt or two, as I had mentioned.

I need to stress that none of the theories are in any way espoused by me.

One off-list response mentioned that it is not necessary to resort to
"exotic" explanations when elements of folk epos, such as that of the
cauldron, can be found within Celtic societies as well.  Again, I stress
that I do not in any way endorse the story line of the movie and the
supposed research it is based on.  Furthermore, I agree that oftentimes
people resort to "exotic" explanations and ignore the obvious, mostly for
reasons of relying on spotty information, obsession with one's own little
research niche, sensationalism and "splash" value.

As far as I am concerned, what this ought to remind us of is that very often
we deal with common or widespread Eurasian folkloristic heritage, a heritage
going back to oral transmission from an ancient and misty past.  Either it
was passed on from group to group (because in the past there used to be much
more interethnic communication across the entire Eurasian continent than
even now many people want to believe or admit) or, as is also possible in
this case, it goes back to a common, pre-diversification heritage.  I feel
that, even though we deal with a relatively small field of interest, we
ought to always bear in mind that there are fewer differences than
similarities among the world's people and their thoughts, languages,
cultures, technologies, beliefs and aspirations, that virtually nothing can
be looked at in total isolation.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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