I went to Meteor Crater in Arizona few years back.
In the museum, there is a big hunk of iron meteorite on a plinth, right out in the open. Part of the tour guide’s spiel is that it’s just sitting there, not fastened down, and that if anyone can pick it up and carry it off, they can keep it.
I thought Greenpeace was working on that?
“What’s so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work’s already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place, eh?”
Trying to remember if the relevant Oglaf is NSFW… Probably.
Arthur had two swords. The first was the one that he pulled out of the stone/anvil. It was broken in combat. Excalibur was then given to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake as a replacement.
I don’t recall it being actual metal, but then I haven’t been there since 1993. For what that’s worth.
But if you watch the video that sword comes out whether the kids got a hand on it or not, so it’s clearly mounted on some sort of piston or riser in the pedestal. So given it was apparently old and kinda rickety it probably just failed wherever it was joined in the bottom.
It is made of real metal, though it obviously doesn’t have sharpened edge.
Luckily Disney had the skill of the elves at their disposal to reforge the shards of the king’s sword.
You can’t save what you can’t spell.
And that’s why there aren’t any Fflothelwosurphersells* in the world any more.
*Something like that; but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, poor Phloddalwurpurfferseths.
Actually, it’s “The sword that was broken, but was taped up so no-one cuts themselves on the sharp bits” in Elvish. In Disneyland it dwells.
Depends which version of the story you read. Malory has two swords like you describe, but confusingly calls them both Excalibur.
“some watery bint”
Waiting for the day when some good ol’ boy backs their 4x4 up, wraps a chain around it, and drags it off. The thing weighs several hundred pounds; it is, after all, mostly iron, just like an engine block.
Trying to haul off a chunk of metal that fell from space is exactly how Stan Lee wrecked his truck.
Some have been reported in the mountains of north Wales, but experts have pointed out that in Welsh, the same word can mean “mice”.
And there’s the version where the sword in the anvil/stone is Excalibur, it breaks, and Arthur is given a new sword by the Lady in the Lake which is… also Excalibur, but, like, the “real” one? Or the sword in the stone is Clarent (or unnamed), and doesn’t break, but isn’t actually used, either. Or where Excalibur isn’t even Arthur’s sword, or…
Arthurian legend has been around long enough - and in different cultures - to get pretty nuts with all the contradictory versions. Although the Arthur stories were largely presented as fictions, this makes me think about the nature of consistency in oral traditions, and what religions get like when there isn’t someone in authority saying, “No, my version is the correct one, so that’s the version we’re all going to use.”
More or less…
https://www.oglaf.com/noblesse/
Geoff. The new sword is Geoff.
am i missing something. the link promises images of the sword pulled out but i only see pics of the new one put back in place… is my browser just not loading something?
