LANCELOT OF THE LAKE from THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON

Sir Lancelot and Queen Quinevere By James Archer

And, finally, there is Lancelot of the Lake to consider. Arthur’s greatest knight is the Irish Lugh (= Welsh Lleu) in disguise. In the early Arthurian poem The Spoils of Annwn, Arthur is accompanied to the Otherworld on a quest for a magical cauldron by a personage called Lluch Lleawc (or, as other translators would have it, lluch, ‘bright, shining’, is an adjective meant to be applied to the sword brandished by Lleawc). In the same poem, this Lluch Lleawc (or simply Lleawc) is provided with an epithet, Lleminawc. Some have interpreted this epithet as meaning ‘the Leaping One’ (from W. llam, ‘leap’), but most prefer to see it as a slight corruption of an epithet belonging to the Irish god Lugh, whose name is found in Welsh sources as Llwch or Lloch (a word also meaning loch, i.e. ‘lake’). The epithet in question is Llawwynnawc (variants Llawwynnyawc, Llauynnauc), i.e. Llwch Windy-Hand or Striking-Hand. In Irish tradition, Lugh had epithets such as Lonnbemnech, ‘of the fierce blows’, and Lamhfota, ‘of the long hand’. The Welsh Lleu had a similar epithet, namely Llaw Gyffes or ‘Skillful-hand’.

The same Lugh/Llwch appears elsewhere in Welsh tradition as Llenlleog Gwyddel, Llenlleog the Irishman. In the story Culhwch and Olwen, it is Llenlleog who brandishes the sword in the cauldron story, rather than Lluch Lleawc (or Lleawc), who is called Lleminawc.

We may begin with Llwch Llawwynnauc, which is probably a Welsh substitute for the Irish Lugh Lonnbemnech. This became Lluch or Lleawc Lleminauc in The Spoils of Annwn. And Lleminauc became Culhwch and Olwen’s Llenlleawc the Irishman.

Lugh Lonnbemnech >

Llwch Llawwynnauc >

Lluch/Lleawc Lleminauc >

(Lluch/Lleawc) Llenlleog

Which leads us to our next question: if Lancelot du Lac = Lugh ‘Lancelot’, with Lancelot being an epithet, what is Lancelot from?

This is pretty obviously an Old French attempt at either Irish Lamhcalad, ‘Hard-hand’, or Welsh Llawcaled with the same meaning. The calad or caled is, of course, the same word we find in the name of Arthur’s sword, Caledfwlch. In other words, Lleu’s/Lugh’s hand is the lightning, a divine weapon symbolized by Arthur’s own weapon.

Llenlleoc the Irishman, i.e. Lugh/Llwch the Irishman, is found in Geoffrey of Monmouth as Lucius Hiberus. No known extant written source or inscription records a Lucius Hiberus or Lucius of Iberia in Spain. Roger Sherman Loomis, the great Arthurian scholar, long ago cited Rev. Acton Griscom’s observation “that the best MS. Authority calls Arthur’s antagonist Lucius Hiberus, and since n is constantly indicated in MSS. by a dash over the preceding letter, nothing could be easier than for Hibernus to become Hiberus.”

Hibernus, of course, means ‘Irishman’ or ‘from Ireland’. We can be relatively confident, therefore, that Lucius Hiberus is actually Llwch Hibernus or the god Lugh of Ireland.

Being able to identify Lancelot of the Lake with Lucius Hibernus/Lugh of Ireland allows us to account for an odd parallel that exists in Geoffrey’s story of the end of Arthur’s kingdom and in the version of the same story which is found in the French romances. In the first, Arthur is battling Lucius/Lugh in Gaul when Medrawd/Modred/Mordred rebels in Britain and takes over his queen and his kingdom. Arthur returns to battle Medrawd and perish at Camblann (Camlann). In the French sources, Lancelot of the Lake takes Guinevere [1] with him to Gaul. Arthur pursues Lancelot and lays siege to the latter’s castle. It is while the siege is in progress that word comes to Arthur of Mordred’s betrayal and he must return to Britain for the fatal battle.

Thus, not only the names, but the story motifs featuring Lucius Hibernus/Lugh of Ireland and Lancelot of the Lake, match. The only reasonable conclusion is that Lucius and Lugh are one and the same divine character.

I've suggested in the past that Lancelot's Dolorous Garde was a fort/castle originally bearing a British theonym containing Lugh's name. [2]  Edinburgh was in Lothian, the Land of Lugh's Fort, but there were other Lugh forts in Britain as well.  

Somewhere in the Old French Vulgate (unfortunately I have lost the reference), Lancelot travels incognito - as Arthurian knights are wont to do - and bears upon his shield a hand or fist.  If I can find this passage again, I will quote it here in full with the appropriate citation.  For now I will only say that it is a remarkable coincidence that a god-turned-knight whose distinguishing feature is his mighty hand should be given a hand as a heraldic device. 

The notion that Lancelot's name should be derived from the Breton name Alan is untenable.  Furthermore, Alan itself is not from the name of the Alan tribe, but is a purely Celtic word that can be related either to Proto-Celtic *el-lant-ī- (?), *el-an-ī, Celtiberian Elandus (?) ‘PNm (?)’, Gaulish , Early Irish elit ‘roedeer’, Scottish Gaelic eilid ‘hind’, Welsh elain ‘young deer, doe, hind-calf, fawn, fig. of young man or woman’, Cornish *elen ? ‘fawn’.  The word is found in Old Welsh as 'alan' (see, for example, Line 949 of THE GODODDIN:

Gnawd yn llwrw alan buan byddai,

"It was usual that on the track of the deer he was swift"

(A.O.H. Jarman ed. and trans.)

[1]

Who is Guinevere, the wife and queen of King Arthur? Her name first appears as Guennuvar in Caradoc of Llancarfan’s Life of St. Gildas (c. 1130), a work finished only a few years prior to that of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History (c. 1136). Geoffrey calls her Guanhumara. The Welsh form of her name is Gwenhwyfar, ‘White Spirit’.

She has usually been associated with the Irish sovereignty goddess Findabair. This is certainly correct, since Arthur conquers Ireland immediately after marrying Guanhumara. In other words, a king must marry the Goddess of Sovereignty of Ireland before he can rule over the country.

[2]

The Dolorous Mountain got its name because the divine name Lugus or Lugh was at some point wrongly linked to Latin lugeo, ‘to mourn, to lament, bewail’. Such mistakes in language could easily have occurred when going from Celtic to Old French. It may even be that in preferring lugeo to Lugos, a pagan religious secret was being disguised and thus protected. 

The Dolorous Mountain is then, properly, ‘the Mountain of Lugus/Lugh/Lleu’.