#post vulgate

Here lieth Balan and Balin le Savage 🫡

It depends on the text.

In Perlesvaus, the beast is presented as a small white female creature full of babies which burst out of her womb and devour her. According to J. Neale Carman's essay The Symbolism of the Perlesvaus:

Later the Bizarre Beast or Questing Beast first appears to Arthur in the Post-Vulgate The Merlin Continuation and is explained in the Post-Vulgate Quest for the Holy Grail to represent incestual desire and copulation as it pertains to the toppling of empires. A maiden who wants her brother carnally ultimately makes a deal with the devil, becomes pregnant, and the result of that cursed union is the Questing Beast, here a genderless creature full of barking hounds, who appears to Arthur as a reflection of his own sin.

This is explained in great detail by Antonio L. Furtado in the essay The Questing Beast as emblem of the ruin of Logres in the Post-Vulgate.

(Source: Vulgate Cycle - Death of Arthur)

(Source: Post Vulgate - Death of Arthur)

So here are the two versions of how Arthur gives up Excalibur in the Old French cycles. And it's interesting to me how its presented here.

For one, I've held the notion that Arthur was returning the sword, presumably to the Lady of the Lake. This was probably something Modern retellings had me primed for.

This was not actually the case in the Medieval sources as shown above: Arthur is discarding Excalibur in a manner of Scorched Earth policy - to deny unworthy hands from taking the weapon. Arthur actually wishes Lancelot was there to give Excalibur to, since he thinks he was the most worthy to have it.

The mystical hand that grabs Excalibur does appear in both versions, but the way its treated is that its actually an omen of Arthur's incoming death:

The thing about the mystical hand is that a lot of people interpret it as the Lady of the Lake's hand reaching to take it back.

This is problematic because in Post-Vulgate, the Lady who gives Excalibur to Arthur dies in a feud with Sir Balin. Whilst the Lady of the Lake who was Lancelot's foster mother was never associated with Excalibur and appears much later than the Balin feud.

Meanwhile, in the earlier Vulgate cycle, Excalibur is the Sword in the Stone and was never recieved from the Lake:

- Kay’s only half a year older

- Being chosen by God trumps being a bastard when it comes to whether you should get to be King

- Arthur unhorses not one but two of his brother-in-laws in their first battle. Talk about establishing dominance at the family reunion.

- Excalibur is a Hebrew word? I need verification for this I don’t trust these med-lit authors to not be pulling this out their ass. Apparently means “cuts through iron and steel and wood”. Also she glows, love that.

- Arthur is chopping people and horses in half. This is just a lad. Verily he should be at the club.

- We should make a sport of who can get their King back on his horse the fastest.

- Arthur is so covered in blood, gore, and dirt by the end of his first battle that nobody could see the paint or varnish of his armor through it. That’s actually kinda terrifying, no longer a little lad I suppose.

- I know that often the first and most prominent book read by these medieval authors was the Bible and thus its impact on the writing style can’t be understated but can Merlin stop cosplaying as Jesus for one page please.

- Kings Ban and Bors have an unnamed other brother who is a very learned clerk and knows more about astrology than anyone but Merlin

- Kay made a friend! Astonishing. Griflet the son of Doon must be a special type of person.

- King Ban is in the Merlin fan club.

- Merlin made a friend!! Even more impressive. It’s actually the brother of Ban and Bors who’s been given a name now, Guinebal.

- Medieval sleepovers. The kings get one room to themselves while Merlin and Guinebal stay up all night trading magic secrets.