Еще менее века тому назад филологи располагали весьма скудными сведениями о Томасе Мэлори

3. Folklore and mythological sources of the system of images of Thomas Malory's novel "The Death of Arthur".
The legends about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, about the search for the Holy Grail, went through several stages in their evolution, being reflected in the monuments of the spiritual and material culture of the peoples of Europe in a variety of ways - from the archivolt of the northern doors of the Cathedral in Modena, dating from 1096 or 1106, to the "court of King Arthur ", the famous House of the Blackheads in Riga (XIV century), from the Welsh "novels" of the 9th-11th centuries, which made up the "Mabinogion", to the most extensive prose cycles of the late Middle Ages. In this long series, Malory's book is "as if the last farewell to the world legends and fiction courtly pores " ¹⁸. But the significance of Malory's book is not only in this completion of an important stage of cultural development. She had, as academician V. M. Zhirmunsky noted, "a truly colossal influence on all English literature of the 19th and 20th centuries and is national for the British classical legacy ¹⁹.
Indeed, the history of literary adaptations of Arthurian legends does not stop on Malory. On the contrary: it is with Malory and some of his younger contemporaries that a series of retellings, alterations, transcriptions begins. In this sense, Malory's role is twofold: the courtly tradition is shaken by him, but not overcome. Malory has not yet broken with the courtly medieval tradition , and his book is yet another (last, ingenious, etc.) literary manifestation of medieval legends, in terms of which he describes the world around him. Thus, Malory remains within the courtly ideological and plot-stylistic system.
The roots of Arthurian legends go back to the distant past, to the "dark" era of the 5th-7th centuries. and even further - into the beliefs and legends of pre-Christian and Dorian Britain, into the culture of the ancient Celts. The Celtic element in the creation of Arthurian legends is the oldest and most significant.
The Celtic civilization is one of the great civilizations of ancient Europe ²⁰. And although traces of it, both purely material and spiritual, are found everywhere, we know infinitely little about this civilization. The Celtic tribes once inhabited the whole of Europe, but, being constantly pressed, they were forced to continuously migrate, which inevitably led to the death of the monuments of their culture. The national cultural tradition was largely losing its unity and vitality. For the fate of the literary tradition itself, it is also important that many Celtic tribes had a ban on writing down sacred and literary texts: the literary (and before it - mythological) tradition was exclusively oral here. When the ban on the written fixation of literary monuments was forgotten, only later versions of Celtic legends and traditions were written down. Therefore, for example, the Gallic branch of the general culture of the Celts (which early merged with the culture of Ancient Rome) is represented exclusively by archeological data and the evidence of ancient writers. These latter cannot be fully trusted: ancient Roman writers and historiographers measured Celtic culture with their own standards, thereby imposing criteria alien to it. Thus, the ancient Romans diligently looked for analogies to their myths and legends in the mythology of the Celts, not taking into account (or rather, not understanding) that these two mythological systems are not only dissimilar, but even largely incompatible. This dissimilarity and incompatibility was nevertheless felt and noted by some of the later writers of antiquity, not without bewilderment, for example, Lucian from Samosata ²¹. He noted that the Celtic deities underwent a transformation under the influence of the culture of the Romans. We will constantly encounter similar transformations in the emerging Arthurian legends , which does not exclude the extreme stability of individual components of Celtic culture over many centuries.
By the beginning of our era, Celtic civilization had broken up into several autonomous branches, between which there was, of course, a constant exchange, they had common origins, but their paths and destinies were different. Celtic cultural unity was lost early. Consequently, the participation of these branches in the formation of the general culture of the medieval West turned out to be different, but different, in particular, was their contribution to the formation of Arthurian legends. The Pra-Celtic element is hardly visible in them. With good reason, one can see in the Argur tales echoes of Irish and Welsh versions of Celtic myths and legends, which will be discussed a little later.
The origin of the Arthurian lore has been studied for a long time, and many solutions have been proposed. The disputes were mainly around whether to refer the emergence of these legends to the time of their first written fixation (and here the authenticity of the text of Nennius was often questioned, and therefore it was about the beginning of the 12th century), whether to date them to the moment of the culmination of the struggle between the Celts and the Saxons. (VI century) or look for their origins in Celtic folklore. In the end, it is not so important for us who the legendary Arthur was - a Roman legionnaire or a Celtic leader, "it is not so important whether he existed at all (apparently, he did exist: archaeological excavations of recent years ²²confirm the evidence of medieval chroniclers). Another thing is more important : the extraordinary, truly amazing and persistent popularity of Arthurian legends is undoubtedly due to the conditions of their occurrence and functioning; their evolution reflected the path from mythology to literature (through folklore) and the further transformation of the latter. Each of these fractures and transformations left a mark on the legends we study. Arthur was not only a Celtic leader, only a Roman general, only a mythological hero of the ancient Britons. Therefore, the various etymologies of his name, which we will now enumerate, are not erroneous, but narrow. Arthur's name is traced to the Latin Artorius, to the Indo-European aga- (tiller), to the Celtic aitos (bear), to Irish art (stone), etc." In fact, the name of Arthur, as well as the legends about him, are multilayered. They are like a medieval palimpsest, where an old manuscript is dimly visible through the new text , which is never completely erased. We encounter this multi-layered Arthurian legends not only in extensive summaries and compilations of the 13th-14th centuries, where the abundance and heterogeneity of sources turn into contradictions in the development of the plot, the depiction of characters, etc. (Malory did not escape this), but also in more plot-complete, closed works, as, for example, in the novels of Chrétien de Troyes.
Attempts at an exclusively mythological interpretation of the Arthurian legends should be recognized as untenable. There is simply no material for this, although individual remnants of ancient magical rituals (for example, the rite of initiation, etc.) are present even in later literary adaptations of "Breton" plots. Now, the vast majority of researchers have abandoned the exclusively mythological interpretation of Arthurian legends. So, if John Rhys ²³saw in Arthur, based on the etymology adopted by him (ara - plowman), some Celtic agrarian deity, then Roger Sherman Loomis ²⁴convincingly showed that in the legends of King Arthur it is not possible to find any rudiments of agricultural myths. . There are no features of a “first ancestor” or a cultural hero in Arthur, typical of the oldest layer of folklore of a pre-class society ²⁵.” However, some motifs of Celtic mythology are still present in the legends about Arthur, which is convincingly shown by R. Sh. identification of Arthur with the god Bran the Raven). Speaking of Arthur as a mythological character (or rather, about his mythological origins or equivalents), we must not forget that the composition of the Celtic pantheon, which is not well known to us, has changed all the time, not only quantitatively, but also functionally. It is also impossible not to take into account the "feedback": the collision of myths with historical reality responded with a redistribution of old and the emergence of new mythologemes. We sometimes go to old myths by the inevitable path of reconstruction (often by jewelry in subtlety, but also in fragility, by analogy). In this case, the multi-layered nature of myths can hardly be taken into account with sufficient accuracy. bathrooms in Welsh texts are of secondary origin. According to R. S. Loomis ²⁶, they have a lot of Irish elements. There is more than one layer in the Celtic mythological system. This system developed in constant interaction and clash with the rudiments of the mythology of the Picts (who gave the world culture the prototype of Tristan) and with the legends of neighboring peoples (in particular, obviously, the Scandinavians, who had long raided the British Isles).
The Celtic pantheon continues to cause controversy, although its study has been carried out since the time of Caesar, Pliny and Strabo. Already in Caesar we find parallels between the Celtic (Gallic) deities and the gods of ancient Rome. Based mainly on the writings of the ancients, some analogues of the Roman gods were identified in the beliefs of the Celts. Thus, Meadow of the Long Arm, the god of light, who has the functions of all other gods (obviously, remnants of solar cults), is usually compared with Mercury; with Jupiter - Dagda, god-druid, soothsayer, patron of friendship; with Mars - Ogme (Ogmiy, Ogham), the god of war, but at the same time the god of eloquence and writing (his functions also included escorting people to another world); with Vulcan - Goibniu, the god of blacksmithing; with Minerva - Brigid, mother of gods and poets, goddess of poetry and crafts; with Apollo - Oingus (Irish Mac Ock, Welsh Mabon, Gallic Maponius), the god of youth and beauty.
But these parallels cover an insignificant number of Celtic gods. According to archeology, epigraphy, numismatics, literature, we are faced with dozens and even hundreds of Celtic deities with a rather fuzzy and contradictory distribution of functions. Such an abundance has repeatedly baffled
researchers. This abundance can be explained by two reasons. On the one hand, this excessive population of the Celtic gantheon reflects the presence of local deities, whose worship was locally limited and did not quite repeat the system of worship and rituals of neighboring, and even more remote, Celtic tribes. Different tribes also had different testims (with the exception of a few common ones dating back to the Pra-Celtic pantheon, but their functioning among different tribes could not coincide). On the other hand, linguistic analysis shows that this apparent abundance of deities is fictitious: before us are not different gods, but only numerous nicknames (often situational, that is, convolution of the plot, as well as epithet) of very few deities. A number of scientists are generally inclined to assert that the ancient Celts, at least during the period of their independence, were characterized by a tendency towards monotheism. However, reservations are made: a single deity (Prakelts?) usually appears in several persons, most often in three (a sacred number among most primitive peoples).
In addition to the veneration of mythological characters, among the ancient Celts, the cult of water, stones and sacred trees was stubbornly held, even in romanized and Christianized areas. By the way, this cult of various sources and lakes reached the Arthurian tradition, echoing in many texts that talk about water in the legends and novels of the Breton cycle. In these legends and novels, the heroes spend whole periods of their lives in the bowels of the lakes (for example, Lancelot, who was raised in an underwater castle by the Lady of the Lake), constantly return there, are in contact with the inhabitants of the lakes, etc. King Arthur's sword Excalibur, picked up by a hand that appeared from there. In addition to lakes, in Celtic folklore and in Arthurian legends, a considerable place is given to all kinds of sources, many of which are enchanted, miraculous, etc. . Recent archaeological searches at the bottom of lakes, streams and wells indicate that such places have long been the subject of worship among various Celtic tribes.
We also note among the Celts a widespread cult of animals, which were often endowed with supernatural power, with which people and gods are in a difficult relationship, sometimes friendship, sometimes enmity. According to medieval chroniclers, the Celts had a firm belief in the possibility of transforming a person into an animal (wolf, boar, etc.) and vice versa, and even Christianity could not crush this belief. Often fantastic animals appeared in the beliefs of the Celts - three-horned bulls, unicorns, etc. This attentive, to a certain extent even respectful attitude towards animals was also reflected in Arthurian legends, where horses, dogs, boars, hawks, etc. almost necessarily have proper names, are in an active relationship with people, but at the same time retain great independence in relation to them.