THE ROUND TABLE OF ARTHUR DISCOVERED

Castle Killibury, Egloshayle, Cornwall

King Arthur's Round Table is first mentioned in Wace's ROMAN DE BRUT.  But the mention is slight, so casual, it is impossible to make anything of it in terms of its source.  We must go to the next writer whose work contains a reference to the table, viz. Layamon.  This last author includes a curious account of the actual building of the Round Table and it is here that we find the clues we need to determine the origin of this literary motif.

From Layamon's BRUT (http://faculty.smu.edu/bwheeler/arthur/layamon.html):

 ...the king went to Cornwall; 

There came to him anon one who was a skilled craftsman, 

And went to meet the king, and courteously greeted him: 

"Hail to thee, Arthur, noblest of kings. 

I am thine own man; I have traversed many a land. 

I know in woodwork wondrous many devices. 

I heard beyond the sea men telling new tidings, 

How shine own knights at thy board did fight 

On midwinter's day; many there fell; 

For their mighty pride they played the death-game, 

And because of his high race each would be on the inside. 

Now I will ,make for thee a work most skillful 

That there may sit at it sixteen hundred and more, 

All in succession, that none may sit at the end, 

But without and within, man beside man. 

Whenever thou wilt ride, with thee thou mayst take it, 

And set it up where thou wilt after thine own will; 

And thou needest never dread throughout the wide world 

That ever any proud knight at thy board stir a fight; 

For there shall the high be equal to the low. 

Let me but have timber, and begin that board." 

In four weeks' time that work was completed. 

On a high day the court was assembled; 

And Arthur himself went forthwith to that board, 

And summoned every knight to that table forthright. 

When they were all set, the knights at their meat, 

Then spoke each with the other as though it were his brother. 

All of them sat round about; none had an end seat; 

A knight of every race had there a good place; 

They were all side by side, the low and the high; 

None might there boast of a better beverage, 

Than had his companions who were at that table.

This was the same board that the Britons boast of...

It is a pity we do not have the name of this mysterious master craftsman.* But we do have one very valuable piece of information: the table, whether one chooses to believe it was really portable or not, was made in Cornwall. Furthermore, as those who stubbornly insist this is a folk memory of some prehistoric dolmen or 'table stone' or henge monument or even a Roman amphitheater, we are told in no uncertain terms that it was made out of wood.  I cannot emphasize this point enough: trees were required for the building of the Round Table.

We are also told that this tradition derives from British lore.  Thus we may be dealing with a Welsh or Cornish source.  Such were often poorly understood by Latin or French writers.  All kinds of marvelous mistakes naturally occurred "in translation."  

While we don't have any evidence for an early British Round Table, we do have another remarkable monument memorialized in the Welsh TRIADS and the MABINOGION tale "Culhwch and Olwen." I'm speaking here, of course, of Arthur's Cornish court at Kelliwic.  O.J. Padel etymologized this as "the Forest Grove." The Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru gives celli as 'grove, copse, woodland', and gwig as 'wood, forest, grove.'  The site has been variously identified with Callington, Gweek Wood or Castle Killibury.

It is to Castle Killibury that I believe we should now turn our attention.  This hillfort was once called Kelly Rounds.  The description of the fort from Historic England's PASTSCAPE reads as follows:

Known also as "Kelly Rounds", the remains of a double vallate earthwork. It is near circular, the inner diameter being 350' and the outer 630'. Its position is important as it commands the road from Padstow River and Wadebridge, over the first accessible passage of the estuary, towards Helston and Camelford. There are also traces of outworks. Henderson and Ashe consider it to be the "Kellywic" of the Arthurian legends. 

Perhaps the reader will already have guessed where I'm going with this.  The Round Table is, obviously, round.  It is made of wood taken from trees.  It is also huge, as 1600 or more men can sit at it.  What I'm suggesting is that a hillfort that was round and named for a forest grove was at some point in the transmission of Arthurian story wrongly interpreted as being a very large round object made of wood.  And with this error in translation the "Round Table" was born.

Kelly Rounds, however, is not the original Kelliwic.  I have written about this latter site here:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-location-of-kelliwic.html

That a circular fort could be referred to as a table in folk belief is confirmed by the use of Bwrdd Arthur for Din Sylwy in Gwynedd (http://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/93842/details/din-sylwy-or-bwrdd-arthur).

Din Sylwy, 'Arthur's Table'

* Is the builder of the table/Celliwig none other than Glwyddyn Saer?  This was Arthur's craftsman.  Here is the entry on this personage from P.C. Bartram's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY: