There is both a beauty and a necessity to legends, for they romanticize and preserve a time in the history of a country. These legends give a people a better time to remember than, perhaps their own, providing them something in which they can take pride.
That legends have an important place in a country's culture is underscored in Mark Twain's satire, "A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." In this novel, an American businessman is transported back in time to the Age of Chivalry, but through his desire to make everyone productive and to show profits, he brings ruin to all the beauty of the period.
It is proof of the delight people took in the romantic tales of the Age of Chivalry that the legends come from several countries. The earliest sources were from the Celtic storytellers of Wales and Brittany--there is, though, a written paragraph in Latin by Nennius in the 9th century--and then, as previously mentioned Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote them down; not long after Monmouth's work, which was translated into Latin (Historia Britonium). Later, a writer in the 12th century named Walter Map romanticised the tale into Norman French prose since this was the language of the court of England at that time. Other writers from Wales, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and even Scandanavia perpetuated the legend. In medieval times when there were few amenities and diversions for the common people, the tales of maidens in distress, bold and honorable knights, evil beings, magical happenings, and love transported people to a much needed respite from their hardships. And, even though the common people in England had done no noble deeds, vicariously they could experience them as a fellow countryman of Arthur and his court of "merry olde England."
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