I don’t know who first spelled the name as “Guinevere,” but I’m forever thankful that it’s the form in most common use, because other options include “Guanhumara” “Guennuuar” “Gahunmare” and “Wenneuereia”
thanks to whichever medieval person decided it was time to stop calling the queen by random horse noises
Triggered by another post I didn’t want to hijack:
Excalibur.
In the legends, Excalibur comes out of a lake (although some versions have Excalibur as the sword in the stone, those are later…the sword Arthur pulls from the stone breaks and he goes to get a better one).
From the “Lady of the Lake.”
Here’s the thing.
In northern Europe in the Iron Age all the way through to the early Medieval period, most iron came from bog iron. It was hard to smelt, because it was a rather low grade ore, but you didn’t have to mine it and it was a renewable resource (in about twenty years you could just come back and get more, because it formed constantly).
Meaning that the iron used to make a sword came…out of water.
In most fairy stories, fairies don’t like iron. So the vision of the Lady as some kind of fairy or elf? Not likely.
The idea of her as a druid? Maybe.
But what’s far more likely is this: The Lady of the Lake was a smith.
But….but…
The Celtic deity in charge of smiths and ironworking was Bridget, a goddess. The mystical associations with the Lady would fit with her being a priestess of Bridget…and thus, a smith.
IOW, Arthurian people, maybe we should not be visualizing the Lady of the Lake as a slender, graceful woman in a gown…
This had never, ever occurred to me. But after careful consideration: YES PLEASE.
I can’t believe I got to my forties without thinking of it myself!
i like this, but i think it’s more likely that the lady of the lake is an echo of the primarily female water pilgrimmages that happened across the north from the late stone age up to, quite possibly, the 1400′s or so. still water, particularly the black water of bogs and the unlit water of caves, symbolized both death and birth. these women may have been shamans, or they may simply have been spiritually motivated people, but whether they were magicians or not they were very probably midwives and physicians.
so rather than a muscular smith, i visualize a wise but gentle elder who has brought souls into the world and seen them out for many years. the sword she provides comes out of the water of birth and death; that is to say, it has a soul.
related thought: the lady of the lake was said to be ‘clad in white samite’. samite was a silk cloth from the east; people who would have access to it in england were royalty, and those who had traveled as far as the silk road. like, say, a doctor and holy woman who had taken the water pilgrimmage through the caves of eastern europe.
yeah, the more i think about it the more i like my shaman/midwife headcanon.
DarkestElemental616 