Tintagel - Arthurian Myth

Arthurian Myth

In Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), Gorlois Duke of Cornwall puts his wife Igraine in Tintagol while he's at war (posuit eam in oppido Tintagol in littore maris: "he put her in the oppidum Tintagol on the shore of the sea"). Merlin disguised Uther Pendragon as Gorlois so that Uther could enter Tintagol and know Igraine, who thought him her husband. Thus Uther fathered King Arthur on her.

Tintagel is also used as a locus for the Arthurian mythos by the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson in the poem Idylls of the King.

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