You Don't Understand King Arthur | Malcolm Guite

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]I have books that my grandfather gave to my mother and my mother gave to me and I will >> this edition just for those who are wondering what we're talking about Galahad and the Grail. Tell us a bit about this.

[00:00:11]>> So this is in one way the kind of fruit of a lifetime's love of these stories. I started with these stories when I was very young actually. My mother told them to me without a book in front of it and she when she told them to me she was not summarizing a kidy's dumb down Arthur you know she she she was a medieval historian. she kind of had the sources and she loved them. So she this the way she told it, you know, it had depth. It had a kind of luminous shimmering that she didn't airbrush out the spiritual and Christian parts of it. And neither did she backtrack on all the the tragedies and the hurts and the flaws that that >> So I mean just to give you an example, I can remember it's really vivid. I so you got to think I'm about 8 years old and I think my mom has decided that I'm old enough for this bit of the story and some people might think maybe I wasn't old enough even then. So she tells me this just doesn't make it into a lot of modern versions. She tells me the tale of the dollar stroke as it's called which is where this rash knight Bin you know who's kind of on a vendetta. He's already been thrown out of Arthur's court for for a bit of violence in the midst of table fellowship that you know.

[00:01:25]So he's trying to achieve some quest to redeem himself. But he finds this castle where there would didn't you know he just like I've been this way before there was no castle you know and of course he doesn't know it's the Grail Castle but he thinks the knight he's pursuing might be there. So he goes in the fisher king is there there's this beautiful feast. They're all told to put their swords at the door. you know, there's no. And then he sees the guy he's been pursuing and he's concealed a dagger and he comes up and stabs him.

[00:01:52]The dagger breaks and he's broken the table fellowship again. He's he's he's he's sinned against prime courtesy and hospitality. So the king, you know, starts pursuing and my mom starts to and he runs out into the castle. He's going up stair off the stair. And you know, in castles you expect to find swords or spears on the wall or shields or something, you know, and he's looking everywhere. He's unarmed now. can't find anything. So, he keeps going. And my mother was telling me this and I realized now it's all in Murray. You know that as he gets deeper into the castle. There's a kind of change in the atmosphere. There's almost like a kind of high ringing singing in his ears. He seems to hear angelic voices. Then he begins to discern the words, you know, man of sin, come no further. Man of blood, stay back. But he's being pursued. Then, of course, he crosses the threshold into the holiest of places cuz in this castle is the chapel of the grail. And the holy grail is there and he comes in and again fall down on your face. You know this place where you are standing is holy ground. I heard that phrase from my mother's lips in an Arthur story before I heard it in scripture when the Lord speaks to Moses from the burning bush. But this is a burning bush. So he looks he sees the grail. You know, this is the very eucharistic presence of Christ, you know, shining. And above it, because this is where the hallows are, is a spear from which three drops of blood are continually falling. And we, >> you know, my mom says Balon didn't know this, but this is the spear that pierced Christ's heart, you know, brought brought to our islands. And again, the voices tell him to stand back. And then he does the worst thing. I say, "Oh, mama." He rushes forward. He seizes this spear, this holy thing, and turns it around and sacrilegually uses it to wound the king. The fishes is where the fisher king gets his wound. And of course, in the in in the minute the king receives the wound, the whole part of the castle falls down. This complete darkness and he and the king, he is wounded and the grail and the spear are buried alive. And it's like being in the sea. Of course, it's three days and three nights. And on the third day, the stones move and Merlin has moved them.

[00:04:04]And he comes up and then Merlin says to Balin, "You have dealt the dollar a stroke. And because the king and the land are one in wounding the king, you have laid the land waste for three counties wide. You know, the fish die in the streams, the crops fail, the cows can't carve, everything is wasted and barren because you've done this." And I and you know he has to ride three days with everybody coming to the door and curse. At this point I have to stop my mom. I say mom like how could that even be like he didn't even know what it was although he'd had plenty of warning you know and and why would how could what one person did lay so many lives and so much land to waste. That doesn't seem right mom. And uh and then she kind of looked at me and said well I'm telling you this story because you need to know that you live in a world as perilous as that. And this is like 1965 and we've had the Cuban missile crisis not long ago. You know, there's the fear of a nuclear winter. You know, then she tells me how, you know, I'm here because my parents love each other, but they they take a risk bringing a child into such a world and they have to take that risk in hope. And I, you know, I'm devastated, you know, by all this. But, but my mom, you know, unlike TS Elliott, my mom did not leave me in the wasteland. So she said the only thing that made Balon's shame and guilt bearable as he rides out through this devastation is that Merlin kind of whispers a word of hope to him and says, "One day the good night will come, the Grail Knight will come and he will win through the wasteland and come to the Grail castle and he will achieve the Grail and then with the same spear that wounded the king, the king will be healed." Mhm.

[00:05:51]>> And when the king is healed, the land will be healed. And I was that mom that's Galad. And you know, I was waiting for the stories of the coming of Galad, you know. And when I was out as a kid, you know, that playing nights of the round table like I didn't playing at I I didn't play it being Lancelot cuz like I was never going to be picked for the school football team. Like I was not the captain of the school Lanclot guy, but I figured it could be that guy Galahad. Galahad who has this you know this this spiritual life this awareness of Christ this desire to heal this sense of restoring I mean because I was my mom would tell me about and she said the spear that pierced Christ's heart the spear of wrongness why is why why is that so significant she says well look in all our history since Cain slew Abel there's been a great chain of violence and hurting and every act of violence is met with another act of violence back and the the the pain and the blood just deepens and finally all that violence reaches reaches Christ the son of God and he is the one person who as the spear pierces his heart turns it around and offers love and forgiveness I mean in a way that should been the last time a spear ever pierced a human heart but you know we've carried on with our wars that's the way we are as fallen people but at least that spear >> should have been sacred so to turn the sacred and use it for this intern violence was the kind a great sacrilege.

[00:07:17]But even the greatest sacrilege, God has an answer for you. And there so you know the grail knight comes and this you know and I was only years later I get to you know by his stripes we are healed and the realization of this paradox that that that you know well I mean to me the priest poet George Herbert you know shows all of that is in the love of God. you his like best lines on on the sacrament ever I think which is uh love is that liquor sweet and most divine which my god feels as blood but I as wine you so all of that was to come but when I went was a was a was a was a student in the ' 70s at Cambridge and reading the this this stuff I realized how close my mom was to the actual mallerie she was kind of quoting it so it all comes back to me but now the wasteland means something more because I'm thinking about ecological disaster.

[00:08:11]I'm thinking about, you know, and I gain both the acknowledgement that we did this and we do this because we're sinners because we're out of line with God. So, there's another layer of the wasteland. Then later when I'm when I'm confronting what I feel is the terrible disenchantment of the world and the effects of like bad philosophy in the 17th and 18th century and the split between the you know the spiritual and the material and you know Jew cartesian dualism. I'm realizing that's another kind of wasteland which also needs to be healed. But when I began to think I want to write this as an epic, it was only then that I realized that this I read all the scholarship that said oh all the king and the dying king and the wounded king and the land is wasted and it's all this is pre-Christian you know >> um you know what they call fertility rituals and myths and you know trusted the book you know all this stuff and well I mean first of all you got to be careful with the word pre-Christian if if you're a fully trinitarian Christian because in the beginning was the word and all things were made through in him.

[00:09:18]All you know there is the undergirling presence of the logos everywhere before he does this incredibly gracious thing and makes himself known to us you know in in Jesus. But when I thought about this I realized all these stories I'm sure there there is a pre-Christian element in there but the point is the Arthur stories bring it to Christ. This isn't some random Celtic cauldron of generation or, you know, the spear of brun.

[00:09:45]>> Now, is that illegitimate? Did they take some pagan thing and give it just a Christian gloss? I don't think so.

[00:09:50]>> So, when I was looking back at, you know, obviously if you're going to write an English epic, you kind of have to get it okay with Milton, you know.

[00:09:58]>> So, you know, you think Paradise Lost, right?

[00:10:00]>> Mhm.

[00:10:00]>> You know, plot spoiler, you know, but, you know, it's a 12 book epic on two short chapters in Genesis. He doesn't even get to the moment where Eve reaches for the fruit till book nine. But when he describes this colossal cosmic turner point, this moment of our fall. So saying in in evil hour, Eve's hand, you know, with rash hand she reached. He doesn't say so this particular individual woman did a private pecadillo and it'll be fine with therapy. You know, she didn't she the first thing that Milton says at the moment when humankind falls is this. He says, "Earth felt the wound and nature sighing out through all her works gave sign that all was lost." And he's riffing on the line in Genesis, "Cursed shall be the ground because of you." I thought, "Wait a minute. This wasteland story, you know, Adam and Eve are the king and queen, and there's, you know, we are our royal priesthood. These stories about kings are always story about you, >> you know, and every man is the Adam of his own soul.

[00:11:03]>> So, this story of how when we go wrong the world goes wrong with us and then as you trace it out you think this this it's all you it's all in Romans I mean the the whole creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God and again you know nature was creation was subjected to futility but in hope and in the in the coming of Christ and in the resurrection and in our being made you is the beginning of a new creation. So this story whether it was pagan in so-cal pagan in origin or not of of the unhealable wound, the fall, the wasteland and the recovery and the turning of the recovery being through the blood of Jesus Christ in sacrament.

[00:11:52]That's what the grail is, >> you know, and that the blood that falls into the into the thigh of the wounded king that heals him and then heals the land. It's the blood of Christ. It's not, you know, so what I feel is going on there, and I think the Arthurian stories just do this beautifully, is it's kind of baptizing the imagination of our pre-Christian ancestors. It's taking some of their deepest stories and showing that the thing that really makes sense of those stories is the coming of Christ. It's a bit like Paul, you know, in in Athens where he says, you know, men of Athens, I see your religious in order. As I observed the objects of your worship, I saw this statue to an unknown god. Him whom you worship is unknown.

[00:12:31]Him I preach, you know. And >> so there's just layer on layer.

[00:12:37]>> Beautiful.

[00:12:37]>> But it's not just like a flat Disney cartoon or a kind of Hollywood blockbuster where people are just knocking each other off horses for two hours.

[00:12:44]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:45]>> You know much. I know. I like seeing people knock each other off horses.

[00:12:48]>> Don't get me wrong, you know.

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