In Arthurian legend, Mount Killaraus (Latin : mons Killaraus) is a legendary place in Ireland where Stonehenge originally stood. According to the narrative presented in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae , King Ambrosius Aurelianus embarks on a quest to construct a memorial for the Celtic Britons who were treacherously slain by Anglo-Saxons. When conventional methods fail to produce an awe-inspiring monument, Ambrosius turns to the renowned wizard Merlin for guidance. In response, Merlin advises the king to transport a stone circle known as the Giant's Ring from Mount Killaraus in Ireland, attributing magical and healing properties to these stones, which were believed to have been brought from Africa by giants.
This prompts Uther Pendragon to lead an expedition to Ireland, where a battle against the Irish king Gillomanius ensues, resulting in the successful retrieval of the stones with Merlin's magical assistance. While the story itself is fictional, archaeological research by Mike Parker Pearson suggests intriguing connections between Stonehenge and the Waun Mawn stone circle in Wales, indicating the potential for a historical basis within the legendary narrative.
The first record of the Merlin story is in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century Historia Regum Britanniae ('History of the Kings of Britain'). It tells how king Aurelius Ambrosius sought to build a memorial to the Celtic Britons who were treacherously slain by Anglo-Saxons.
When his carpenters and masons cannot come up with a suitably awe-inspiring monument, Ambrosius asks the wizard Merlin for advice. Merlin tells the king to transport a stone circle called the Giant's Ring from Mount Killaraus in Ireland. He says they are magical healing stones that had been brought from Africa by giants.
Uther Pendragon sails to Ireland with 15,000 men to retrieve the stones. The Irish king Gillomanius marches against them with a large army, but is defeated. With Merlin's help, the Britons transport the stones to Britain and set them up as they had originally stood. [1]
The name mons Killaraus could mean the "hill of Killare" and thus may refer to the Hill of Uisneach. [2] [3] This is an ancient ceremonial site with numerous prehistoric monuments, which was seen as the sacred centre of Ireland.
Many of Stonehenge's original bluestones have been traced to quarries in the Preseli Hills, in west Wales.
Although the Merlin tale is fiction, archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson suggests that there may be a "tiny grain of truth" in it. [4]
Pearson's team of archaeologists found evidence suggesting that most of the Waun Mawn stone circle in the Preseli Hills was taken down and brought to Salisbury Plain, where it became the first phase of Stonehenge. [5]
Ambrosius Aurelianus was a war leader of the Romano-British who won an important battle against the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century, according to Gildas. He also appeared independently in the legends of the Britons, beginning with the 9th-century Historia Brittonum. Eventually, he was transformed by Geoffrey of Monmouth into the uncle of King Arthur, the brother of Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, as a ruler who precedes and predeceases them both. He also appears as a young prophet who meets the tyrant Vortigern; in this guise, he was later transformed into the wizard Merlin.
Merlin is a mythical figure prominently featured in the legend of King Arthur and best known as a mage, with several other main roles. The familiar depiction of Merlin, based on an amalgamation of historic and legendary figures, was introduced by the 12th-century British pseudo-historical author Geoffrey of Monmouth and then built on by the French poet Robert de Boron and their prosaic successors in the 13th century.
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. Inside these are free-standing trilithons, two bulkier vertical sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred tumuli.
Uther Pendragon (Brittonic), also known as King Uther, was a legendary King of the Britons and father of King Arthur.
Pendragon or Pen Draig, is the epithet of Uther, father of King Arthur in medieval and modern Arthurian literature and occasionally applied to historical Welsh heroes in medieval Welsh poetry, such as Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd.
King Lot, also spelled Loth or Lott, is a British monarch in Arthurian legend. He was introduced in Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae as King Arthur's brother-in-law, who serves as regent of Britain between the reigns of Uther Pendragon and Arthur. He has appeared regularly in works of chivalric romance, alternating between the roles of Arthur's enemy and ally, and is often depicted as the ruler of Lothian and either Norway or Orkney. His literary character is likely derived from hagiographical material concerning Saint Kentigern, which features Leudonus as king of Leudonia and father of Saint Teneu.
The Preseli Mountains, also known as the Preseli Hills, or just the Preselis, is a range of hills in western Wales, mostly within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and entirely within the county of Pembrokeshire.
Historia regum Britanniae, originally called De gestis Britonum, is a pseudohistorical account of British history, written around 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It chronicles the lives of the kings of the Britons over the course of two thousand years, beginning with the Trojans founding the British nation and continuing until the Anglo-Saxons assumed control of much of Britain around the 7th century. It is one of the central pieces of the Matter of Britain.
In Arthurian legend, Gorlois of Tintagel was the Duke of Cornwall. He was the first husband of King Arthur's mother Igraine and the father of her daughters, Arthur's half-sisters. Her second husband was Uther Pendragon, the High King of Britain and Arthur's father, who marries her after killing him.
Peredur is the name of a number of men from the boundaries of history and legend in sub-Roman Britain. The Peredur who is most familiar to a modern audience is the character who made his entrance as a knight in the Arthurian world of Middle Welsh prose literature.
Aurelius Conanus or Aurelius Caninus was a Brittonic king in 6th-century sub-Roman Britain. The only certain historical record of him is in the writings of his contemporary Gildas, who excoriates him as a tyrant. However, he may be identified with one of the several similarly named figures active in Britain during this period. In the 12th century Geoffrey of Monmouth adapted Gildas' account for his chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae, and thereafter Aurelius Conanus was remembered as a legendary King of Britain.
Michael Parker Pearson, is an English archaeologist specialising in the study of the Neolithic British Isles, Madagascar and the archaeology of death and burial. A professor at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, he previously worked for 25 years as a professor at the University of Sheffield in England, and was the director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project. A prolific author, he has also written a variety of books on the subject.
Octa was an Anglo-Saxon King of Kent during the 6th century. Sources disagree on his relationship to the other kings in his line; he may have been the son of Hengist or Oisc, and may have been the father of Oisc or Eormenric. The dates of his reign are unclear, but he may have ruled from 512 to 534 or from 516 to 540. Despite his shadowy recorded history Octa made an impact on the Britons, who describe his deeds in several sources.
The Crystal Cave is a 1970 fantasy novel by Mary Stewart. The first in a quintet of novels covering the Arthurian legend, it is followed by The Hollow Hills.
The Misfortunes of Arthur, Uther Pendragon's son reduced into tragical notes is a play by the 16th-century English dramatist Thomas Hughes. Written in 1587, it was performed at Greenwich before Queen Elizabeth I on February 28, 1588. The play is based on the Arthurian legend, specifically the story of Mordred's treachery and King Arthur's death as told in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.
Stonehenge has been the subject of many theories about its origin, ranging from the academic worlds of archaeology to explanations from mythology and the paranormal.
Eldol was Consul or Count of Gloucester in Geoffrey of Monmouth's circa 1136 work Historia Regum Britanniae. In this pseudohistory he was the sole British leader to escape from the massacre of Salisbury, to which Hengist had invited all of the British Leaders to a peace treaty. When all of the leaders were there, about 460 in number, Hengest ordered his men to draw their long knives and kill every leader. Vortigern was spared, but every other ruler was slain, save Eldol, who grabbed a stick up off the ground and killed 70 men in his escape.
The Sword and the Circle, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is a children's novel written by Rosemary Sutcliff and was first published in 1981. The story is a retelling of the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. According to her own statements in the introduction, The Sword and the Circle follows the myths and folktales of King Arthur, crediting inspiration primarily from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur; other sources include Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, English ballads, and Irish folktales. She contrasts this telling of the King Arthur story with her previous novels, The Lantern Bearers and Sword at Sunset, which were more an attempt to connect with a concrete historical figure behind the folktales.
The Giant's Dance or Giants' Dance is a stone circle in an Arthurian legend first documented c. 1136 in Historia Regum Britanniae.
Waun Mawn is the site of a possible dismantled Neolithic stone circle in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire, Wales. The diameter of the postulated circle is estimated to be 110 m (360 ft), the third largest diameter for a British stone circle.