Passage Three
Legends about King Arthur have existed since the 6th century. Stories of the man and his doings have grown far beyond anything that could be regarded as factual history. Here are some of the highlights.
Arthur was born as a result of the wizardry of Merlin, who arranged all erous liaisons between Arthur’s father, King Uther Pendragon, and his lover, a married duchess. Merlin agreed to do this only if the lovers allowed him to bring up the child born of the affair. When Uther Pendragon died some years later, there was confusion in the kingdom about who should inherit the throne. Merlin arranged a pageant(盛会) where many knights came to try their luck at pulling a sword out of a stone. Whoever successfully extracted the blade, was the rightful king. After many a brave knight had tried and failed, Merlin presented the young Arthur who, to everyone’s surprise, easily pulled out the sword.
As King Arthur established the knightly fellowship of the Round Table at his castle of Camelot, so appear all the other chivalrous knights associated with the king. The knights of the Round Table spent much of their time on the quest for the Holy Grail(圣杯).The Grail is the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, which was allegedly brought to Britain, then somehow lost. It is notoriously hard to get hold of, as finding it requires an almost superhuman degree of moral purity. At last it was the true gentleman Sir Galahad who ually found it and set off to return it to its rightful place in the Holy Land.
Arthur’s death is a matter of some debate. According to legend, one of Arthur’s less intelt moves was his decision to marry the Lady Guinevere, who fell in love with Sir Lancelot, and their ery led to war among the knights of the Round Table, culminating in the Battle of Catalan and Arthur’s mortal wound. After the Battle of Catalan the wounded king was taken to the mysterious isle of Avalon ruled by his sister Morgan Le Faye. She, being skilled in the arts of witchcraft and healing, was apparently meant to cure him. But evidently Arthur thought he had little chance, because he gave his sword, Excalibur, to Sir Bedivere to return to the Lady of the Lake, an enigmatic(谜一般的) character from whom Arthur had originally received the blade. Bedivere hurled the sword over the water, where a spooky(幽灵般的) hand appeared from the lake to catch it, waved it around for a while and then carried it down to the murky depths where, who knows, perhaps it still lies. As for Arthur, we can only conclude that his sister wasn’t such a good doctor.
Passage ThreeArthur became the king because ______