"Be brave, be impeccable!
Endure challenge, be cheerful!
I go to the summer world
of Afallon, to recover,
But I'll come back to my land
Once more,"
___Thomas Gwynn Jones, "Arthur's Passing"
The prophecy that King Arthur will return has been often uttered and widely believed throughout Britain and beyond. It was so strong a belief centuries ago that twelfth-century cleric Alan of Insulis wrote, "Preach about the market places and villages that Arthur the Briton is dead as other men are dead, and ....Hardly will you escape unscathed without being overwhelmed by curses or crushed by the stones of your hearers." Arthur the British war-leader - the King Arthur of the later medieval legends - derives from a potent Celtic archetype the function of which is to maintain the integrity of the land. His ending is seen as no death, but as a time of recovery for the healing of his wounds, after which he will come again. This legend fueled his Latin title Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus: the King Who Was and Who Shall Be.
There comes in every country's history a time of hardship and a corresponding time of shining deeds to overcome the hardship. When the land plummets into war or other difficulty, the inhabitants of the land need leaders who can reach into the very soul of the land and draw forth the necessary inspiration, courage, and resourcefulness to defend it and them. Every land has its own Arthur, called by a multitude of names, remembered in heroic stories that can be retold to encourage us in later times of trouble. And the same prophecy is uttered: that the hero or heroine is not dead, but shall again.
"What is the sacred trust of your own land? Which figures and emblems have been associated with it? How do they endure?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
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