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A mythical figure (media.piefed.zip)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/tumblr@lemmy.world
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Triggered by another post I didn't want to hijack: Excalibur. In the legends, Excalibur comes out of a lake (although some versions have Excalibur as the sword in the stone, those are later...the sword Arthur pulls from the stone breaks and he goes to get a better one). From the "Lady of the Lake." Here's the thing. In northern Europe in the Iron Age all the way through to the early Medieval period, most iron came from bog iron. It was hard to smelt, because it was a rather low grade ore, but you didn't have to mine it and it was a renewable resource (in about twenty years you could just come back and get more, because it formed constantly). Meaning that the iron used to make a sword came... out of water. In most fairy stories, fairies don't like iron. So the vision of the Lady as some kind of fairy or elf? Not likely. The idea of her as a druid? Maybe. But what's far more likely is this: The Lady of the Lake was a smith. But.... but... The Celtic deity in charge of smiths and ironworking was Bridget, a goddess. The mystical associations with the Lady would fit with her being a priestess of Bridget...and thus, a smith. IOW, Arthurian people, maybe we should not be visualizing the Lady of the Lake as a slender, graceful woman in a gown... ...but as a jacked smith in an apron.
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[–] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

We also visualize her emerging from the lake as though she lives at the bottom of it, with the sword fully formed. If she's smithing the sword she needs fire, so does she live next to the lake, or does myth magic allow her to do metalwork underwater?

Once we start applying reality there are a lot of questions. Does she have a full smithing career and trade, or does she only ever make the sword? Because that means that either Excalibur isn't as unique as we were led to believe, or her entire existence is about that one sword handoff, which is somehow more objectifying than thinking of her as some kind of water nymph, slender and graceful or not, who makes or acquires the sword magically, and spends most her time doing mysterious but unrelated magic.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    OTOH, maybe she was just taking a bath in the lake she lived beside when Arthur rocked up asking for a kickass sword?

    And even now, the quality of the sword is often determined by how much you’re willing to pay for it. It’s possible she just gave him the most expensive, high-quality sword she’d ever made, because as the local king he was the only one who could afford it.

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