I admit I was a bit taken aback a few months ago when Deuce Richardson approached me about writing for The Cimmerian. My first impulse was to turn him down.

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Having sent in postings on Uther and some other Arthurian characters — and written stories based on the King Arthur mythos myself — I’d like to pay tribute to the sources that did most to make me an addict of those very legends. The fascination began when I was just a kid, with the classic Howard Pyle’s King Arthur and His Knights, the now legendary (in itself) comic strip Prince Valiant, which among other distinctions showed here and there that it owed something to Lord Dunsany, and continued into my teens when I discovered, and read over and over, Le Morte d’Arthur by Malory.

There was Edison Marshal’s excellent The Pagan King.

And there was, unforgettably, Rosemary Sutcliff. She wrote some fantasy, retelling famous legends (Beowulf’s story in Dragon Slayer, Cuchulainn’s and Finn’s in The Hound of Ulster and The High Deeds of Finn mac Cool). She also dealt with Arthurian legend in a number of books. The Light Beyond the Forest retells the search for the Holy Grail by Lancelot, Galahad, Bors and Perceval. The Sword and the Circle recounts Arthur’s birth, youth and early years as king. The Road to Camlann tells with a steadily darkening tone the treachery of Mordred, the breach between Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere, and the final battle.

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Previous Posts In This Series:

1. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 1

2. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 2

3. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 3

4. A Bloodstained Map of Britain

5. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 4

(This is the final post in a series about the possible career of Uther Pendragon. I base it on hints and references, and rather derogatory comments by Gaelic pirate Cormac Mac Art, concerning Uther in REH’s stories of Cormac, “Tigers of the Sea” and “The Temple of Abomination”. The previous posts can be linked above. All of it is speculation and guesswork by this writer, extrapolating from statements in REH’s stories and fragments. Wherever any part of REH’s background, or the personages, conflict with accepted history, I’ve taken the Howard version as being correct in this context.

At the end of the previous article, Uther had established himself in Britain, though none too securely. His base was the region known as Dorset today. Immediately to the east of him lay the realm of Cerdic in southern Hampshire, and to the west, Dumnonia, the kingdom ruled by Gorlois. Uther had made an enemy of Gorlois already by sacking Isca (Exeter) upon arriving in Britain, and then at what was putatively a peace conference, he had bedded Gorlois’ young queen, Igraine. Now, as they say, read on … )

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I am still puzzled as to how far the individual counts: a lot, I fancy, if he pushes the right way.

– T.E. Lawrence

The First World War smashed the heroic ideal of the individual warrior under massed artillery barrages, chopped it down on the Somme and drowned it in the mud of Passchendaele.

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Previous Posts In This Series:

1. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 1

2. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 2

3. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 3

4.  A Bloodstained Map of Britain

(As with other posts in this series, I am taking the brief mentions of Uther Pendragon by the Gaelic pirate Cormac Mac Art, in REH’s “Tigers of the Sea” and “Temple of Abomination”, as a basis for further speculation, and treating them as fundamental.  Tie-ins with actual history are being treated as secondary to Howard’s fictional background.)

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Previous Posts on Uther Pendragon:

1. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 1

2. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 2

3. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 3 

In three previous posts I’ve been conjecturing, guessing, and generally filling in gaps concerning the early life and career of Uther Pendragon – based on the comments made about him in the “Cormac Mac Art” stories by REH, set in the fifth century. At least one takes place during Uther’s reign in southern Britain, and one other in the time of his successor, Arthur.

I’ve supposed Uther spent the first thirty years of his violent life in Gaul, from his birth in 440 A.D. until he crossed the Channel to Britain with the fixed purpose of winning a kingdom — and maybe, in the end, an empire. The details can be found in the three posts hyperlinked above. This post doesn’t concern Uther directly. It only describes the kingdoms and power balance in Britain during Uther’s lifetime, particularly in the years to 470, when he left Gaul for Britain, having made the former too hot to hold him.

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Shooting my longbow out in the back yard last weekend, my thoughts turned to one of the most colorful warriors to ever nock an arrow.

Nay, it was not Robin Hood who occupied my thoughts; nor was it Bernard Cornwell’s archer-hero Thomas of Hookton. As is my wont, my archer hero is a man who carried the style and the virtues of ancient warriors into the  cauldron of the 20th Century. “Mad Jack” Churchill sent many an enemy to hell with a well-placed broadhead arrow and forced many a prisoner to throw down his arms at the point of a broadsword. What makes Mad Jack exceptional is that he accomplished these feats in the midst of World War II.

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Previous Posts in this Series:

“Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 1

“Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 2

“Buyer Beware” Notice:  What follows is speculation only, based on certain references to Uther Pendragon in REH’s Cormac Mac Art stories and fragments, such as Cormac’s comment that Uther was “more Roman than Briton and more Gaul than Roman” (the title of this series is taken from a passage in the Cormac Mac Art fragment, “The Temple of Abomination“).  It’s also based on certain facts of history, but even these could, from a different point of view, be given a very different interpretation.  As Mark Twain wrote in his preface to Huckleberry Finn, “Persons attempting to find a motive in this … will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”

At the conclusion of last week’s posting, Uther (still living in Gaul and still known as Eutherius to most) had reached the age of twenty-five or -six with many battles and at least two important murders under his belt. He’d killed his former master, Aegidius, the Rex Romanorum of Soissons, in an ambush on the Loire which he successfully blamed on the Visigoths. Aegidius’s most loyal henchman and best general, Count Paul, had no idea Uther was responsible. Neither did the son of Aegidius, Syagrius, who had become the new Rex Romanorum with Count Paul’s support.

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It is one of the goriest and most bizarre episodes in the bizarre and gory history of Central Asia. In the chaos of the Russian Civil War, a White Russian warlord, descendant of German Baltic Crusaders, arose in Mongolia to build an empire on a foundation of human skulls.

His name was Baron Roman Federovich von Ungern-Sternberg — partisan warrior, mystic and madman.

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When my father was a ten-year-old boy, he lurked around the Huntington Park set of Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), watching stuntmen take arrows to their padded torsos and fall off their horses.

He won’t recognize the 2010 version of Robin Hood.

The Ridley Scott epic is — thankfully — no romp in Sherwood Forest. It is a violent, somber depiction of the origins of the outlaw legend. That may actually hurt the film at the box office. If audiences are expecting wisecracks and derring-do, they will be disappointed. The film makers are telling a serious story, and mostly they succeed.

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