ARTHOUR, ARTHUR(ES) was the son of Uther Pendragon, king of England, and Igraine, wife of the duke of Cornwall. He became king of England when he pulled the sword out of the stone, a feat no other knight could accomplish. With the help of Merlin the magician, he got his sword, Excalibur, from the Lady of the Lake. Against Merlin's advice, he married Guenevere, daughter of Leodegrance, king of Camelerd, who gave Arthur the Round Table, accompanied by a hundred knights. Arthur and his knights held high ideals of chivalry and courtesy. Among the knights of the Round Table were Lancelot, Gawain, Kay, Bedevere, Perceval, and Yvain. Guenevere and Lancelot fell in love, and their passion caused much strife in the kingdom. In a battle with his son Mordred, Arthur received his death wound. He commanded Sir Lucan to cast his sword into the water of a nearby lake, but twice Sir Lucan did not do so and came back to Arthur with a lie. But Arthur insisted, and when the sword was thrown into the water, a hand came up, met it, and caught it, shook it three times, and brandished it. Then hand and sword vanished into the water. Then Lucan and Bedevere took Arthur down to the lake and found a barge there with many fair ladies in it. They placed the king in the barge, and Arthur told them that he was going to Avalon to heal his wounds. But the next day Bedevere found a new grave near a chapel and hermitage, and the hermit told him that the night before he had buried a corpse brought to him by many fair ladies.

The story of Arthur had Celtic origins and belongs to Welsh and Cornish traditions. Arthur appears in the written tradition as early as c. A.D. 800, in Nennius's Historia Brittonum and in the Annals of Wales compiled c. 950. The Welsh Mabinogion (c. 1060) contains an Arthurian analogue in Kulwch and Olwen, perhaps the earliest Arthurian story. The Arthurian story was given wide currency by Breton conteurs at Anglo-Norman courts during the early years of the twelfth century. Then, c. 1137, Geoffrey of Monmouth published his Historia Regum Britanniae or History of the Kings of Britain, which, he claimed, he had translated into Latin from an old book. The fourth book of this work is called Prophetae Merlini and is derived mainly from the oral tradition of the Breton conteurs. Wace, an Anglo-Norman poet, made a paraphrase of Geoffrey's work c. 1155 in Le Roman de Brut, and from this Layamon made his Brut c. 1200 in English. The twelfth century also saw the creation of the cream of Arthurian romances in the work of Chrétien de Troyes: Erec et Enide, Cligés, Le Chevalier de la Charrette, Yvain, Le Conte de Graal. Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale and the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight appear between 1386 and 1400. Gower's Tale of Florent in Confessio Amantis I.1407-1861 is an Arthurian tale. English romances of the Arthurian cycle, known as the "matter of Britain," are Sir Launfal, Sir Tristrem, Libeaus Desconus, Sir Percyvell of Galles, Yvain and Gawain, Alliterative Morte Arthur, culminating in Malory's The Book of King Arthur and his Noble Knights, which Caxton published under the title Le Morte d'Arthur. In the preface to his edition Caxton points out that Arthur is one of the Nine Worthies, an appellation that appears in the Parlement of the Thre Ages, 462-512. A medieval tapestry hanging in The Cloisters collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York portrays Arthur as one of the Nine Worthies, his standard showing the three crowns of England, Scotland, and Brittany. The fifteenth-century poem The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell is Arthurian and an analogue of the Wife of Bath's Tale.

Dame Alys places her tale in the mythical past, in the days of King Arthour, WBT 857. The rapist-knight belongs to Arthour's house, WBT 882-883, and Arthour condemns the knight for his deed, WBT 889-892. The Old Wife's question--Is this Arthur's house?--indicates that Arthur's house is famous for its courtesy, WBT 1089. [Gaufride: Gawayn: Launcelot]

Arthour, the OF variant, appears in final rhyming position, WBT 882, 890. Arthures, the ME genitive case, occurs medially, WBT 1089. Both forms are derived from Latin Artorius. Intrusive h after t was not pronounced.