Welcome back to this commentary on The Kolbrin. The narrative, at this point, is becoming increasingly Arthurian. Herthew (sounds a bit like ‘Arthur’, doesn’t it?), if we recall from the last installment, has become undisputed king of Krowkasis; but there appears to be a gap of several years in his reign from the time he defeated the invasion from the North, because the story suddenly switches to the travels of Maeva (once the wife of Dadam). During her wanderings she had a daughter Gwineva (‘The Cuckoochild’), a rare red-head, and they eventually ended up living by a reedy pool on the borders of Krowkasis, where Maeva was killed by a wild beast. Gwineva, now alone, learned from ‘familiars’ who visited her and she grew into a sorceress, attracting the worship of the local semi-civilised Yoslings who treated her as a goddess. So, here we have shades of a hybrid Morgana/Guinevere, and the Arthurian parallels deepen further because Herthew (who, we remember, has a band of knights very much along the lines of the Round Table) comes across her and falls in love, takes her along with him to the great Gathering, and she encounters the sorcerer Gwidon, who has apparently ‘foreseen’ this flame-haired beauty in his ‘darkened waters’ and is impressed with her ‘wisdom and skill at sorcery’. Well, well; we are getting all very Merlin/Morgana/Lady of Shalott-ish, aren’t we?
Gwidon prophesies that a son of Herthew will lead the people – destined for world domination – out of Krowkasis to a glorious future and their ultimate destiny in Hesperis, a land meaning ‘Land of Spirits’, far away to the West. Unfortunately, this is one of those times where The Kolbrin lets itself down, as Hesperis is simply a Latin word which means ‘the West’. It is linked to the word for ‘evening’ (that is, the direction in which the Sun sets). The Greeks and Romans were always banging on about finding destiny in the West; indeed, for Virgil’s Aeneas, his Hesperis was Italy, a land to the West of Troy. So, unless the translators of The Kolbrin want to claim some other etymological root for the word, we just have to read into this the general ‘idea’ that the grass was always greener to the West, and to many ancient races, West (with its highly symbolic sun-setting feature) was the direction in which the spirits of the departed traveled. Once there, Gwidon continued, the whole societal structure would fragment into civil war.
Eventually Herthew married Gwineva (who appears to have been Herthew’s half-sister) although the people were initially against the whole thing because Gwineva had – to them – no known pedigree or status. By this time, some of Idalvar’s (the previous king’s) nephews had come of age and they resented a new lineage starting so they fermented dissent and, in a close parallel with the Arthur/Mordred engagement and aftermath, Herthew is wounded badly by one of Idalvar’s nephews, his power usurped, and he is carried off to be healed within the protective bower of Gwineva.
Herthew’s sword (which we are now told is enchanted) comes back into the tale, and everything, now, is a parallel with the story of the dying King Arthur. The place where he is being treated is even near a lake which contains an island called Inskris, or ‘Isle of the Dead’ (Avalon?), the last point of departure for the dying and the already passed before they were committed to the waters (the Greek and Roman version of an underworld that must be reached by crossing the water of the Styx with Charon the ferryman also springs to mind here). Herthew’s companions (Arthur’s knights) accompanied him by boat, along with Gwineva, across the lake to the island on which lived priests and ‘nine holy maidens’.
But Herthew did not die. He slowly recovered while Idalvar’s nephews turned Krowkasis into a cauldron of civil war during which even Gwidon, the sorcerer, was slain. Finally Herthew married Gwineva, headed westwards and settled down to have children. But the new land was stricken with drought, as was Krowkasis, so Herthew sent for the war leader Ithilis from Krowkasis, who, along with many people from Herthew’s old kingdom, joined his former king and they all headed further West and settled down in a pleasant, well-watered land.
The new land appears to have been called Arania because in it, Ithilis became king and Herthew was revered as a wise man. And at this point Arthurian legend meets the fables that are epitomised by stories such as Romulus and Remus and the Founding of Rome. The problem was that Ithilis, despite having three wives, had no son and heir; but Herthew’s twin sons had married two of Ithilis’ daughters and become his heirs. Which of the two was to reign? This is such a common trope in ancient legends and fairy tales: Who is the rightful king? Who is the true princess? In this case, Herthew tells Ithilis to let Fate decide by burying his famous sword, Dislana the Bitterbiter (Excalibur?), hilt first into a boulder made from sand, clay, and other things. Once hardened, it was put in a public place and a bisected circle drawn around it. First go was awarded to the brother who could toss a bracelet over the exposed blade, and each attempt was given only the time it took for a feather to fall from the hand of Ithilis. The son who won the right to go first failed because he tried to drag the sword out by its blade, which was too sharp. The one who went second also failed because he tried lifting with a palm either side of the blade, but got nowhere. The first tried again, copying the method of the second, but only succeeded in lifting the entire thing – sword and boulder – off the floor a little way. Then the second, seeing what the first had achieved, hefted the stone itself up into the air and then smashed it open on a nearby rock, thereby retrieving the sword and winning the contest and the kingdom to boot.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘This is all just a fanciful rehash of the Arthurian legends with a few other myths and fables mixed in. Even the names are thinly veiled.’ And you may well be right; but, as I have mentioned before, who is to say where the source of all these legends and fables lies? So many myths and legends in so many different times and cultures have parallels, but are they not simply products of their own times? After all, human nature is pretty much a constant wherever you go. We all know, nowadays, that when we watch a Clint Eastwood movie, for instance, it’s going to end up in a gunfight with the Goody coming out on top and getting the girl; that the story line will involve greed, injustice, and the need for revenge; that the Baddy will get what’s coming. It was probably the same for the story-tellers of ancient times except with a different set of ‘quest tools’ and possibly different cultural expectations. That being said, though, this is a highly suspect section of The Kolbrin, but I’m going to ask you to bear with me and carry on with this series, because, if nothing else, it can get highly entertaining. Moreover, this is a site dedicated to Ancient Self-Help, and we are about to enter a phase of the work where the story line veers away from genealogies and deeds and drills down into the why things are done and how they can be done better.
We are done now with The Book of Creation and will move on, in the next section, to The Book of Gleanings which, as its name suggests, purports to be a collection of writings from ‘various Culdee books’ (that’s books of the Culdean Trust who published The Kolbrin). As such, it can be a tad disjointed, but it’s well worth persevering with as it gives some deeper insights into the self-betterment doctrine of the so-called Good Religion. It also gets a bit more Egyptian-ish. I’ll see you there.
