Dr Mary Bateman

speaker
168 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2025 last heard Mar 2025

Dr Mary Bateman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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You're Dead to Me · Legends of King Arthur: from medieval literature to modern myth · 7 Mar 2025 podcast
We find out about Arthur's conception, which is not a very nice story. He's the son of a king called Uther Pendragon. His mother was married to someone else. And then Merlin helps Uther to trick her by disguising him as her husband. And it's all not very consensual. Yeah. What else is familiar here? He has a wife called Guanhamara, who's essentially, again, Guinevere.
He's betrayed by his nephew, Mordred, which becomes a very crucial part of Arthur's story. He has a relative called Morgan Le Fay.
No, she's not.
She's really done dirty by later authors.
No. Is that nonsense? Well, we'll come to that later. But not here, no. So Morgan Le Fay, I think, is Arthur's half-sister here. And she's a healer and a sorceress, essentially.
Yeah.
Oh, yes. She is mentioned in the Green Knight story. And by that point, she's not very nice by that point. Because she wants to frighten Guinevere to death, which is horrible.
Yes.
Caliburnus, which makes sense. You can see how the Latin could become Excalibur very easily.
Well, funnily enough, it's supposed to have been forged at Avalon.
Which I find super interesting because I know that at Glastonbury Tor they found traces of early metalworking. on the tour. It's real. I mean, it's not. But it's just, I like it when there's funny little circumstances like that that line up. And Merlin is the other important addition here.
There's an earlier figure in the Welsh tradition called Myrddin. Right. And he's a poet and he's a prophet as well. But Geoffrey takes him and gives him a much more detailed story. He's not limited to the reign of Arthur. So he's a sort of royal advisor from Arthur's forebears right through down to Arthur.
Yeah. He's also supposedly responsible, according to Geoffrey, for bringing Stonehenge over to Britain. Yes. So he's got some interesting stories connected with him.
Let me give you a clue.
The sound in Welsh is produced with letters that look like a double D. So it looks like Mervyn.
Wow! Yeah, that's the running theory anyway.
Shitty the Prophet doesn't really have the same ring to it.
Yeah, essentially.
I think Geoffrey leaves it open to question. And that becomes a lot more prominent later. So a lot of Geoffrey's other kings, we're told they died in this state. They were buried here quite often. With Arthur, we're told that he's taken off to Avalon for healing after this terrible final battle at Camelan. And then the crown passes to the successor.
But we're not actually given that information about whether he dies or how he dies. And people love to elaborate on that later on. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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