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Schoolgirl discovers ‘Excalibur’ sword in lake from Arthur legend

A schoolgirl will have quite a story to tell when she returns to the classroom – after discovering a sword in the same lake King Arthur’s legendary Excalibur was thrown.

Matilda Jones, aged seven, from Doncaster, found the sword when she was paddling in Dozmary Pool, in Cornwall with her dad, Paul.

Paul, aged 51, had told Matilda and her sister Lois, four, about the legend of King Arthur on their journey to the lake.

He said: “It was a blistering hot day and Matilda asked if we could go for a paddle.

“She was only waist deep when she said she could see a sword.

Maybe this was a trial (though not dry) run - if so, Matilda and her Dad should get back to Cornwall / Kernow ASAP.

Although on second thoughts, last time a Matilda laid claim to the English throne there was civil war and anarchy. In fact there was THE Anarchy, which made for a good novel by George Shipway (”Knight in Anarchy”, what a surprise) but by all accounts wasn’t a lot of fun otherwise.

(The “rightwise king born of all England” business was on the Sword in the Stone (and anvil, everyone forgets the anvil) which apparently wasn’t Excalibur at all. A war memorial, perhaps, as T. H. White suggested. What the Lady of the Lake was waving about was a different sword entirely, and the really important bit was its scabbard, which granted invulnerability, or undefeatability, or a reliable broadband signal 24/7…)

Maybe the one in Dozmary Pool was lost during some Arthurian re-enactment - or maybe it was deliberately chucked away by someone who’d hoped for something better on their birthday, because when I saw what Matilda found…

…I recognised it as this…

…from here.

Noble Collection sells movie merchandise nowadays, but back then they sold decorative wall-hangers (SLOs - sword-like objects - is the less kindly term) made by Marto of Toledo among others, with frequently-spiky fantasy blades, ornate cast pot-metal handles and ooh-shiny! gold plating. However their version of “Excalibur" - it’s there on the cover - looked sensible enough to feature in the TV movie “The Librarian”.

Though the catalogue calls the sword found by Matilda a “medieval two handed sword” it’s based, more or less, on a Renaissance “Federschwert” sparring blunt (the flare above the guard was balance-compensation for not having a full-width blade.)

Here’s a real one.

Not especially Arthurian, whether Arthur was Clive Owen’s Romano-Sarmatian, Oliver Tobias’s Dark Age Celt or Nigel Terry’s High Middle Ages Anglo-Brit.

Apparently there are now also synthetic Federschwert from various sources.