Ardey claims Sword in Stone is real

I have been reading Ardey's book on Merlin it is remarkable in its ability to ignore all historical standards. His new book is coming out soon and he has been coverage in The Times. Now he is claiming the Sword in the Stone is real! So how exactly did the French Romancers here about this?

King Arthur 'was warlord from Argyll' - Times Online

From The Sunday Times

May 24, 2009

However, a new book claims Arthur’s roots are further north than originally believed — across the border in Argyll.

Adam Ardrey, an author and amateur historian, claims his research proves that the legend of Kind Arthur is based on the life of Arthur Mac Aedan, who was born in 559AD.

Mac Aedan was the son of Aedan, a king of Scots who ruled from 574-608 and became a powerful warlord.

Ardrey claims the myth of Arthur pulling Excalibur from a stone is based on a ritual performed by Scottish kings and their chosen successors at the hill fort of Dunadd.

During his ceremony the kings and their successors placed their feet in a footprint carved in the stone. In 574, Mac Aedan literally followed in his father’s footsteps, then lifted a sword that had been resting on the stone, brandishing it to the four points of the compass. Ardrey says the story became more elaborate as it was passed from generation to generation until the sword was “pulled” from the stone.

Ardrey, an advocate and former SNP candidate, said that he discovered the link between Mac Aedan and the mythical King Arthur while researching his own family name at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. He claims Mac Aedan’s true identity was suppressed by Christian writers because he was a pagan.

Merlin officialy from Glasgow?

Interesting claim by Glasgow City Council building on Ardey's book that Merlin was from Glasgow which has irritated Carmarthen of course. Ardey's claims are nonsense of course. I looked at reviews of the book online here Adam Ardey Finding Merlin - reviews but most mentions in the newspapers are uncritical.

I found one unbiased review in a blog which does not make me keen to read the book and treats it as a joke:

polutrope @ 2009-02-12T20:56:0012 Feb 2009 by Blameless Ethiopian #1

It is par for the course in the world of Arthurian popular history. I might have to read the book and post a decent refutation.

Wizard Weegie wheeze or Scam-alot? Glasgow stakes claim

The campaign to have the wizard's Strathclyde roots recognised was started by advocate and author Adam Ardrey, who made the claim in his book Finding Merlin – The Truth Behind The Legend.

He said: "I am thrilled that Glasgow has recognised Merlin as a Glaswegian and that, almost 1,400 years after his death, he can take an official place in Glasgow's glorious history.

"I am especially pleased because it is Merlin's twin sister, Languoreth the Queen of Strathclyde, who is commemorated in the fish and the ring on Glasgow's coat of arms."

According to legend the Queen's husband, King Riderech, suspected her of infidelity and asked to see her wedding ring, which he himself had thrown in the Clyde.

However, her name was cleared and her life spared when one of the monarch's messengers caught a fish and miraculously found the ring inside it.

Over six years Ardrey used his legal expertise to sift through ancient public records to amass evidence to back up his sensational claims.

He concluded that Merlin was a scholar and politician, son of a chief called Morken, who lived in Scotland in the late 6th and early 7th centuries.

The former SNP candidate even identified where he believed Merlin lived.

He said: "I believe it was in Partick where the River Kelvin meets the Clyde.

"It's no coincidence Merlin was at the Battle of Arderydd in 573. There's only one street called Ardery Street, which is the modernised form of Arderydd, out of 10,000 in Glasgow and it happens to be where the evidence suggests he lived."

Merlin provokes diplomatic row after being named a Scot

Telegraph.co.uk - ‎May 17, 2009‎

By Simon Johnson Glasgow City Council has added the confidant of King Arthur to a list of its greatest sons, alongside Donald Dewar, Sir Alex Ferguson. spokeswoman for Glasgow City Council confirmed that the iconic Arthurian figure had been added to its list of "Famous Glaswegians".

She said: "Like most mythical historical figures it is often difficult to accurately trace their origins. However, recently an amateur historian has pointed to the fact that the legendary Merlin lived a 'comfortable life', with his wife Gwendolyn in Partick, not Camelot.

"We are sure that most Glaswegians will think that's just magic."

Carmarthen in south Wales has long claimed strong connections to the legendary wizard and hosts an annual Merlin & Magic Festival.

Uri Geller buys Scotish island with "Arthur" links

Spoon-bender buys Scottish island
BBC News - Feb 11, 2009

Celebrity spoon-bender Uri Geller has bought a tiny Scottish island he believes has links to the pyramids at Giza and the Knights Templar.

Geller paid £30,000 for The Lamb, an uninhabited lump of volcanic rock in the Firth of Forth.

He claimed he felt a "strong instinctive urge" to buy it after reading it was for sale..

"This island has links not only to the pyramids, but to King Arthur, King Robert the Bruce and to the ancient Kings of Ireland too," Geller added.

"It might seem forbidding, and it is certainly uninhabitable, but it is one of the keystones to British mythology, and I am thrilled to be its owner.

Castle Hill with Arthur folklore passes into public ownership

Four villagers who bought a hill which, according to local legend, is where King Arthur married Guinevere want to turn it into a nature reserve.

The four paid £86,000 for woodland at Castle Hill at Knucklas, near Knighton, Powys, and intend to allow archaeologists to excavate the site.

Folklore says that Guinevere married Arthur on the hill's grassy slopes.

King Arthur' hill nature plans

BBC News - Jan 9, 2009

King Arthur's 'wedding site' sale
01 Nov 08 | Wales

However academic research shows the links to Arthur is folklore and probabally recent folklore at that:

Legendary Castle Hill near Knighton up for sale
WalesOnline - Nov 4, 2008

But Dr Ian Hughes, a lecturer in mediaeval Welsh prose at Aberystwyth University, said he has researched the marriage claim at Castle Hill and has struggled to find a written reference to it.

“My problem is that nowhere in the Mabinogion does it say here is the place where Arthur and Guinevere were married,” he explains.

“We hear that Guinevere is Arthur’s wife. But it doesn’t say that he married her in any particular place.

“The closest thing I can find is in the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth.

“He refers to a marriage but mentions Cornwall.

“We would be talking about the year 1138. And we know that Guinevere was the daughter of a giant, Gorgyrfan Gawr.

“But that doesn’t mean that she was a giant too.

“She is described as a most handsome and beautiful maiden, despite her father being an ugly brute.”

Dr Hughes explained that many communities throughout history have tended to “relocate” events to do with the legend of King Arthur to improve the kudos of their own area.

“King Arthur was a great legendary leader – and I mean legendary, who ruled the island fairly and was viewed as a paragon of virtue.

“As a result of representing everything that a good king should be, everybody wanted a piece of him.

“And there are lots of places across Britain and Wales that claim he was theirs.

“In Edinburgh for example there is an extinct volcano known as Arthur’s Seat, in Cornwall they say he held court there, but in Wales we say it was in Caerllion.

“And Camlan, the scene of Arthur’s last battle, was located between Machynlleth and Dolgellau, according to the locals living there.

“In many cases this sense of community relocation is like propaganda; it is used to build up the importance of an area.”

Book examines Geoffrey of Monmouth as a historian

Past Masters: John Burrows' History of Histories
TIME - Jan 9, 2008

Past Masters: John Burrows' History of Histories

By DAVID WORTH Wednesday, Jan. 09, 2008

The writing of history is one of the great legacies of the ancient Greeks, and its earliest masters, Herodotus and Thucydides, are as central to the foundations of Western civilization as Homer, Socrates and Sophocles. In more modern times, multivolume sagas of crumbling empires, explosive revolutions and nations nudging toward greatness were huge best sellers, making historians like Edward Gibbon, Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle as well known as Stephen King and John Grisham are today.

But the fact that this needs stating, or that we must intermittently re-emphasize history's relevance to understanding ourselves, points to a problem that has hounded the discipline in recent years — its tendency toward clubby academic isolation. A fine antidote to this trend is John Burrow's A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century, an ambitious and accessible account of the historian's craft over the last 2,500 years....

He goes on to discuss "the radical and pervasive" impact of the Bible on history — for example, in the writings of the 6th century French Bishop Gregory of Tours, whom he dubs "Trollope with blood." Equally intriguing is Burrow's discussion of the secular historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, a fabricator who claimed that his 12th century account of King Arthur was in fact a translation of an early work in Welsh — one that nobody else has ever been able to unearth. Geoffrey's "pseudo history," writes Burrow, dressed up myth as fact, thereby launching Arthur and his knights as potent symbols of Britain's "emerging ethos of chivalry."

Another book on real Arthur

Startling Discoveries in Britain May Be Linked to King Arthur's Camelo...
International Business Times - Dec 5, 2008

Recent discoveries in Britain may provide evidence of King Arthur and his legendary Kingdom of Camelot. Stone carvings and rock art found in an exposed seaside cave and on other sites in the Borders area could have been created as memorials to King Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, and the Knights of the Round Table.

(PRWEB) December 5, 2008 -- Author Kaye D. Hennig and photographer Terrance Hennig have discovered and photographed ancient art - unusual, sculptured images that they believe can be connected to a historical King Arthur and his lost kingdom. Just released by Design Magic Publishing, their book King Arthur Lord of the Grail is a fascinating coffee-table style book that relates the story of the couple's search for the truth about Camelot. The book contains photographs of giant sculptures that the couple believes were created as a record of a historical dark-age people who became known as the Arthurians. The photographs reveal royal figures and helmeted faces, images carved in stone that appear to be portraits of real individuals. According to author Kaye Hennig, "This is a book that could turn legend into history!"

The couple's explorations and research began over a decade ago as a search for physical evidence of a legendary kingdom. In the end, it became something else … the author's spiritual quest to understand the beliefs of the ancients and to discover truths that lay hidden within the secrets of the Grail. The couple researched sites in Britain and in France, searching the locations that they believed might contain evidence of the culture of these ancients. Ultimately, they discovered a lost world … one where ancient queens were revered in hidden chapels, where Grail priestesses kept sacred secrets, and where worthy individuals sought to complete a Grail quest.

Adam Ardey Finding Merlin - reviews

Adam Ardey's book on Merlin sounds like another attempt to find the real "Merlin" and to imposes a bunch of anachronisms on Dark Age Britain i.e it is a typical peiece of Arthurian popular history. As a SNP politican he is an accomplished publicist though and has managed to get loads of media attention for his claims.

Merlin 'from Glasgow not Camelot'

BBC News - Aug 27, 2007
But Scots advocate Adam Ardrey, who spent six years researching Merlin, claims he actually lived in what is now Ardery Street with his wife Gwendolin. ...

New book claims Merlin had Scottish roots - Telegraph.co.uk

This review from the Glasgow Herald at least points out that Ardey's claims to be innovating by exploring Arthur's Scottish connections is not true:
review of finding merlin, the truth behind the legend, by adam ardrey9 Sep 2007 by Peter Konieczny

This review from the Los Angles Times is simply lacking in the knowledge to take Ardey to task. The idea that the name Merlin comes from gaelic is just nonsense and his ideas on Dark Age religion well they seem unreliable. I would have to read the book to refute it in depth but it sounds tedious.


In search of a wizard
Los Angeles Times - Nov 23, 2008

In 'Finding Merlin: The Truth Behind the Legend of the Great Arthurian Mage,' Adam Ardrey condemns long-ago chroniclers for their motives but is like a sleuth in tracking ancient details.