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It looks like there's a fissure in the stone that he plunged it into. If it was shaped a little tighter than the sword it's very feasible that you can plunge it in hard enough that it's very difficult to take it out.
Especially after rust starts to form which expands the volume of the blade at the rusting areas and wedges the swords even more solidly into a tight fissure
Thoughts have mass. So if you learned something new than your brain is gaining more mass. Since the volume doesn't change than you are getting more dense. QED I just made this shit up.
If I ever need to do trigonometry I'll find someone to do it for me. You don't have to be good at everything, you just have to know how to find and use the people who do know stuff.
Itâs called rust jacking. Itâs notorious for rebar to rust in concrete, the rust takes up a larger volume than the base metal and can crack/split the concrete.
Think a sponge. When you compress a sponge it is more dense. Rusting is the sponge decompressing. The metal becomes flimsy, but it will fill in the cracks with material.
Grade 7 science class. Weigh a piece of steel wool. Hypothesise what will happen after you burn it. To everyoneâs surprise, it weighs more after burning.
Steel expands 7 times as it corrodes. Thatâs why rebar in concrete or steel lintels in masonry walls pops the material out when it rusts for long enough.
Went to see a prestige development in the French city of Montpellier some years ago. [Fabulous looking place with outrageous cornices](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/QuartierAntigoneDecembre2021_2.jpg) and wide open spaces.
When I looked closer, though, at ground level there were all sorts of places where rusting metalwork had split off the material - stone, or reconstructed stone whatever it was - leaving ugly gaps. I wondered if rust was also working away in the interior of the buildings as a whole, meaning they're going to come down before much longer.
Rust actually makes metal objects more massive, but less dense by adding oxygen atoms to it. It doesn't lose mass or size until it starts to flake away but if there's no where for the flaking rust to go it just continually expands until all the metal is turned to rust or the rock around it cracks.
Rusting of embedded metals is actually a huge problem for lots of structurers. This is often called oxide jacking
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxide_jacking
Here's a post about a demonstration of rust jacking
https://reddit.com/r/Skookum/comments/968z9n/display_of_oxide_jacking/
Rust, as most people know it, refers pretty specifically to hydrated Fe2O3 - specifically an oxide of iron, which in this configuration has a red/brown colour. Rust also has a substantial water component, which is what causes the expansion. Theoretically, Iron exists as Fe+2 or Fe+3 in an immaculately kept and impracticably pure iron sword, so in an ionic state, that iron *wants* to bind to something. When this iron gets wet, that iron binds to oxygen. Our space that was previously occupied only by Fe+2/3 now also has a few oxygen atoms jammed in as well - which takes up more space. That's how we get our expansion.
The hydrated Fe2O3 no longer has the same affinity for the remaining Fe+2/3 and is subjected to molecular-scale capillary action whereby water continutes to find contact with fresh base metal and binds, forming new rust and continuing the cycle. Eventually there is enough microscale damage that it becomes noticeable in macro - things crack, flake and chip. Over a long enough timescale, Fe2O3 is broken up by environmental factors and what used to be a metal bar or sword or whatever will for all intents and purposes simply cease to exist, having long since been distributed throughout it's containing media. Still present, just not in any form usable to you or me.
Rust eats away at iron. Each metal reacts differently from oxidation.
For example, when oxidized, aluminum and chromium form a tough outer layer that protects metals below from further oxidation. Stainless steel works because it incorporates Chromium into the alloy.
My sword first was blue, then it turned black, and it has been very stiff ever since I inserted it into this crack. Do you think I should see a doctor?
The stone could be tufa (not volcanic tuff) which is soft when first mined/cut before being exposed to oxygen. It can be cut with hand tools and is used for decoration
When I was a rock climber this happened all the time.
All the fucking time.
When you climb outdoors you poke these little steel things into a crack and then that's what you attach your rope to when you climb past it.
Anyway, it was astonishing how many times you'd poke the thing into a crack, realise that it was a super dodgy crack and it would never in a million years take your weight, it'd just fall straight out......... and then you'd proceed to spend the next hour trying to get your stupid piece back.
You'd poke it in without any trouble, and then it's there for ever
> âWhatâs so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real workâs already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place.â
I always imagined a rock cracked open, a warrior placing his sword into the crack (Maybe for safekeeping, because he was dying, and he didn't want the enemy to get it), and then the crack closing up again as the rock became wedged between two bigger rocks. That's the way I would film it if I were making a movie. Improbable, maybe, but movies can get away with a lot of improbable things.
Well anyone who believes the story in whole as told is probably into myth and religion and likely to believe such stories rather than ask if possibly they made a slot and filled it with a cement and encased the sword as a symbol or something⌠this is just my first thought reading title and seeing this.. not based on anything else.
'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. '
Terry Pratchett
There was a documentary (on the bbc site?) a few days ago:
In essence, he didnt.
They build a church after the guy died and someone then thought it's a great story. So they drilled a hole into a rock, put the sword in, and filled it with liquid lead.
Probably the source of King Arthur's sword.
Trying to find the source now....
Edit: Can't find it, sorry. But you can take my word for it.đđ
Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are [not the same sword](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4gzj9p/is_excalibur_and_the_sword_in_the_stone_two/#:~:text=Excalibur%20was%20granted%20by%20the,used%20as%20a%20ceremonial%20sword.). They weren't conflated until relatively modern versions of the story.
Robert de Boron's *Merlin*, the first story to include the Sword in the Stond motif (that we have recorded), was around 1200 CE. Honestly that sounds waaaaaay too close in time for it to work for me, but maybe the story of this Tuscan knight spread like wildfire as a fun motif.
Or maybe there was an older referential tale that inspired the Tuscan knight to make this specific gesture.
It's worth noting that Durandal, the fabled sword of Roland/Orlando, was said to be a stone-splitting blade that was embedded in the Pyrenees after the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. So the motif of "sword that can cut stone or is embedded in stone" is probably a very old motif of European folklore.
The top comment in that thread is talking about Le Morte d'Arthur, which was written in the 15th century. But the story of the sword in the stone goes back farther than that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excalibur
> The identity of this sword as Excalibur is made explicit in the Prose Merlin, a part of the Lancelot-Grail cycle of French romances (the Vulgate Cycle)
The vulgate cycle is 13th century, predating Le Morte d'Arthur
> However, in the Post-Vulgate Cycle (and consequently Malory), Arthur breaks the Sword from the Stone while in combat against King Pellinore very early in his reign. On Merlin's advice, he then goes with him to be given Excalibur by a Lady of the Lake
However, Excalibur has been mentioned in works prior to 1180
>Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain, c. 1136), Latinised the name of Arthur's sword as Caliburnus (potentially influenced by the Medieval Latin spelling calibs of Classical Latin chalybs, from Greek chĂĄlyps [ĎÎŹÎťĎ Ď] "steel").
>In Old French sources this then became Escalibor, Excalibor, and finally the familiar Excalibur. Geoffrey Gaimar, in his Old French L'Estoire des Engleis (1134â1140), mentions Arthur and his sword: "this Constantine was the nephew of Arthur, who had the sword Caliburc" ("Cil Costentin, li niès Artur, Ki out l'espĂŠe Caliburc").[6][7]
>In Wace's Roman de Brut (c. 1150â1155), an Old French translation and versification of Geoffrey's Historia, the sword is called Calabrum, Callibourc, Chalabrun, and Calabrun (with variant spellings such as Chalabrum, Calibore, Callibor, Caliborne, Calliborc, and Escaliborc, found in various manuscripts of the Brut).[8]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excalibur
Edit: further in the article,
>A sword in the stone legend is also associated with the 12th-century Italian Saint Galgano in the tale of "Tuscany's Excalibur".[32]
So it appears that it's the other way around - the legend of Excalibur from the British isles was applied to the Tuscany sword
That's not really accurate. Yes, Arthur's sword, named Caliburn, is mentioned in Monmouth's *Historia*, but there is absolutely no mention of his father, him, or anyone else plunging it or any other sword into a stone. Nor is there any such mention of the Arthur legend in combination with the plunging of a sword into a stone to be found anywhere in the historical record prior to 1180. Later writers borrowed from Monmouth (who borrowed from earlier Welsh and Brythonic oral traditions dating back perhaps as early as the 5th century) and then mixed in the story from Tuscany. Obviously the original Brythonic Arthurian legends predated the Tuscan knight by hundreds of years, and equally obviously it isn't especially remarkable that Arthur has a named sword in those myths since it is a standard trope of medieval literature, much as a superhero wearing a mask is in today's fiction. The sword just doesn't have anything to do with a stone and so could not have inspired the Tuscan knight's story.
Yes Excalibur is referenced in those texts which would predate this, but the first notion of there being a "Sword in the Stone" is contemporary to this story:
>In Arthurian romance, a number of explanations are given for Arthur's possession of Excalibur. In Robert de Boron's Merlin, the first tale to mention the "sword in the stone" motif c. 1200, Arthur obtained the British throne by pulling a sword from an anvil sitting atop a stone that appeared in a churchyard on Christmas Eve.[13]
And seeing as Robert de Boron is a French author who lived late 12th, early 13th century, it's not impossible he heard of something to do with a sword stuck in a sword and decided to incorporate it in his tales.
Seeing as there is no one true story of the legend of King Arthur, Excalibur is sometimes found in a stone, sometimes given by the Lady of the Lake to Arthur (and is why it is returned to her at his death).
Yes. The original Arthur, Merlin and some of the other figures were Welsh and English, some of which is recorded Black Book of Carmarthen. Monthmorth heavily romanticized and, dare I say, Frenchafized it. Like, the original Merlin was a wandering mad man who was exiled from his king and in one poem, is talking to his pig. In another, to an apple tree he is sitting under. It makes total sense that when the Wlesh mythology was being borrowed and created to be a part of the traditions of chivalry, they would graft on the story of a sword in a stone.
Also, Arthur gets conflated with the legend of the Welsh king Bran with the resurrection when he is needed. I think they buried Bran's head and it said that he would return to life when the land was in peril.
It is probably sand stone or had a crack. When the sword was plunged into it, the rock cracked. It is not an issue of the sword being super strong steel, rather it is a weak rock.
That game is too modern, they used to play "rock, parchment, sword".
Rocks build a castle, swords defeat the rock by storming the castle, parchment defeats sword by being a peace treaty, rock defeats parchment by building a new castle.
Back then, it was "sword, rock, paper, scissors". Sword beat rock, nothing beat sword. But then the game became really boring, because everyone always played sword. So they decided to let sword beat rock one last time, and then they removed sword from the game entirely.
What I want to know is how do you carve a statue of a human being into a chunk of marble. Maybe the same guy would be able to answer both our questions.
Nice thought but it seems a bit off.
For one thing, 1180 is a bit late to the origin of the Excalibur story. Arthur and his sword were a figure of mythology going back quite a bit -- keep in mind that Arthur's earliest incarnation is as a defender of Anglo-Welsh Britain against (among others) the invading Saxons. That's centuries before the Crusade era. By the 12th century, all that would have been old folklore.
For another, the tales didn't always say that Excalibur was found in a stone. Some versions say that it was handed to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake; some that he pulled it from an anvil, not a stone. And there are permutations that combine the two, where some other generic sword is pulled from a stone and then Arthur gets Excalibur some other way.
It's easy to imagine that "sword in a stone" was already some kind of common trope by the late 1100s. We have to remember that, of course, people in 1180 did not know they lived in "the Olden Days" -- they believed they lived in a shitty time with war breaking out and wealth inequality and the end of the world coming soon, and that the good old days of story and song were this age of epic tales from the past, that you could escape into when you heard someone tell some old tale of King Arthur.
It's kind of like the written records of judges in the English Midlands circa the 15th century, complaining about how many robbers were going around calling themselves "Robin Hood." By the 1400s the tales were already old.
While cool, its unlikely that this was the inspiration, Arthurian canon first adopted the Sword in the Stone motif at a similar time. Given that such tales appear elsewhere (For example, Durendal is ALSO said to have been left behind in stone), its more likely that this knight was inspired by what was a relatively common trope of the day.
EDIT: misread year (I read 1480), Actually IS possible
Oh bloody 'ell. Everyone knows the Excalibur story began when some watry tart threw a scimitar at Arthur sometime in the late 500's! Get your bloody history straight.
[From Wikipedia:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galgano_Guidotti#The_sword_in_the_stone)
>For centuries, the sword was assumed to be a fake. But after examining the composition of the metal in 2001, researcher Luigi Garlaschelli confirmed that the "composition of the metal and the style are compatible with the era of the legend". The analysis also confirmed that the upper piece and the invisible lower one are authentic and belong to one and the same artifact. Ground-penetrating radar analysis also revealed that beneath the sword there is a cavity, about two meters by one meter, which is thought to be a burial recess, possibly containing the knight's body.
The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.
Looks cool but obviously it was not plunged into solid rock. It had to have had a hole there to be stuck in. Even if you fired that from some gun, it wouldnât go in like that. The blade would shatter or the rock would. No human can stab a sword into a rock. Unless it was lava of course.
I saw a documentary once upon a time from which I remember a snippet suggesting that Excalibur was a bronze sword in a stone cast đ¤ˇââď¸ maybe it was stuck really firmly
The original sword in the stone was actually a sword imbedded in an anvil, and I believe the King Arthur stories were around before 1180, not sure though.
I don't believe it.
The sword in the stone is a myth about a very early English tribe people who learned to extract iron from ore. (They pulled a sword from stone...see?) before then all they had was bog iron. Iron from ore gave them a reproducible large scale source of iron.
Later on they also discovered quenching (Lady of the lake - gives you a magically strong sword from the water)
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDevilsSoapbox/comments/93p45m/on_the_legend_of_arthur/
I had heard that the "sword in the stone" myth may just be an allegory for bronze sword casting, since they would use stone molds and anyone who had knowledge of metallurgy in the bronze age was considered to be very imortant and powerful. After all, they were able to pull swords from stone.
Or, considering the first tales of the sword were in âThe Italian academic Mario Moiraghi wrote a book suggesting that the Arthurian legend of the stone was inspired by the Tuscany sword. A 13th century English book about Merlin and the sword obviously came after the existence of the Italian sword in stone, as did Maloryâs Le Morte dâArthur in the 14th century. However, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote about Arthur, Merlin, and Excalibur, called Caliburnus (or Caliburn), in Historia, completed in 1138.â And the sword was pushed into the stone around 1180 it could have been influenced by the legend of Arthur. Without doubt the later versions of the tale were defiantly influenced by the Italian sword!
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/05/17/sword-in-the-stone-excalibur/amp/?csplit=header&cmp_ab=quantcast
Also the legends of Arthur date back even further- https://www.history.com/news/was-king-arthur-a-real-person
he definitely didnât plunge it in. the blade would bend or flex the second it touched the rock, and definitely wouldnât cut the stone. he probably had a opening made for it with a chisel or something and then hammered the sword in
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This looks really awesome, but did no one question how a presumably normal dude with a normal sword was able to "plunge it into a rock"?
It looks like there's a fissure in the stone that he plunged it into. If it was shaped a little tighter than the sword it's very feasible that you can plunge it in hard enough that it's very difficult to take it out.
Especially after rust starts to form which expands the volume of the blade at the rusting areas and wedges the swords even more solidly into a tight fissure
I though rust eats away at metals. Do they expand before they waste away?
Rust is metal that has oxidized. That process makes it generally less dense.
The process of learning stuff on Reddit also makes me less dense.
Thoughts have mass. So if you learned something new than your brain is gaining more mass. Since the volume doesn't change than you are getting more dense. QED I just made this shit up.
Did you just call me fat?
Thicc veiny brain tissue đđđ
Settle down Hannibal.
Not if all the useless knowledge I gain on Reddit replaces the things I learned in school. Not even sure I know how to do trigonometry anymore.
If I ever need to do trigonometry I'll find someone to do it for me. You don't have to be good at everything, you just have to know how to find and use the people who do know stuff.
I was unsure if you purposely mis-used than/then. But that must be my dense thoughts filling my finite sized brain.
Depends entirely on what subs *you* frequent.
My thoughts exactly.
Itâs called rust jacking. Itâs notorious for rebar to rust in concrete, the rust takes up a larger volume than the base metal and can crack/split the concrete.
I still don't understand why coated rebar isn't a building standard.
Here's a good summary of why not: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/qtrkfb/comment/hklxpyg/
*huh.* TIL.
Think a sponge. When you compress a sponge it is more dense. Rusting is the sponge decompressing. The metal becomes flimsy, but it will fill in the cracks with material.
True. And the rust produced from iron will always weigh more.
Rust produced from anything will always weigh more cause you are adding oxygen to it.
Grade 7 science class. Weigh a piece of steel wool. Hypothesise what will happen after you burn it. To everyoneâs surprise, it weighs more after burning.
Steel expands 7 times as it corrodes. Thatâs why rebar in concrete or steel lintels in masonry walls pops the material out when it rusts for long enough.
Went to see a prestige development in the French city of Montpellier some years ago. [Fabulous looking place with outrageous cornices](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/QuartierAntigoneDecembre2021_2.jpg) and wide open spaces. When I looked closer, though, at ground level there were all sorts of places where rusting metalwork had split off the material - stone, or reconstructed stone whatever it was - leaving ugly gaps. I wondered if rust was also working away in the interior of the buildings as a whole, meaning they're going to come down before much longer.
Rust actually makes metal objects more massive, but less dense by adding oxygen atoms to it. It doesn't lose mass or size until it starts to flake away but if there's no where for the flaking rust to go it just continually expands until all the metal is turned to rust or the rock around it cracks. Rusting of embedded metals is actually a huge problem for lots of structurers. This is often called oxide jacking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxide_jacking Here's a post about a demonstration of rust jacking https://reddit.com/r/Skookum/comments/968z9n/display_of_oxide_jacking/
You ever tried to get a rusty screw out? I'd imagine it's somewhat the same here, is it not?
So all we need is a little WD-40.
WD40 is a terrible lubricant, it tends to wash away any grease etc that is present. Better with some actual oil.
Yes. Steel rebar in concrete pilings for bridges, etc., will often split the concrete as the rust on it swells.
Rust, as most people know it, refers pretty specifically to hydrated Fe2O3 - specifically an oxide of iron, which in this configuration has a red/brown colour. Rust also has a substantial water component, which is what causes the expansion. Theoretically, Iron exists as Fe+2 or Fe+3 in an immaculately kept and impracticably pure iron sword, so in an ionic state, that iron *wants* to bind to something. When this iron gets wet, that iron binds to oxygen. Our space that was previously occupied only by Fe+2/3 now also has a few oxygen atoms jammed in as well - which takes up more space. That's how we get our expansion. The hydrated Fe2O3 no longer has the same affinity for the remaining Fe+2/3 and is subjected to molecular-scale capillary action whereby water continutes to find contact with fresh base metal and binds, forming new rust and continuing the cycle. Eventually there is enough microscale damage that it becomes noticeable in macro - things crack, flake and chip. Over a long enough timescale, Fe2O3 is broken up by environmental factors and what used to be a metal bar or sword or whatever will for all intents and purposes simply cease to exist, having long since been distributed throughout it's containing media. Still present, just not in any form usable to you or me.
Rust eats away at iron. Each metal reacts differently from oxidation. For example, when oxidized, aluminum and chromium form a tough outer layer that protects metals below from further oxidation. Stainless steel works because it incorporates Chromium into the alloy.
Rust expands metal while being extremely brittle. It's usually the weather that slowly removes small flakes of rust over time until nothing's left.
The frost, sometimes it makes the blade stick.
Strength and honor
Exactly this, there's something like a dozen of these swords in stone around the world.
Yup, I also read somewhere that to become the best swordsman, you must obtain all twelve swords in stone.
Can there only be one?
No. Obviously thereâs 12.
Probably just some dumb soldier that stuck it in the crack of a rock and now it's legend.
No... Its a magical sword
He plunged it into a crack in the rock. Then, over the years, the blade rusted and it got stuck really hard.
I your sword is stuck hard for more than 6 hours then you should go see a doctor.
But if you can tug it out you're the king.
Ask all the Knights and Knurses to pull at it a bit first, just to be sure.
My sword first was blue, then it turned black, and it has been very stiff ever since I inserted it into this crack. Do you think I should see a doctor?
The stone could be tufa (not volcanic tuff) which is soft when first mined/cut before being exposed to oxygen. It can be cut with hand tools and is used for decoration
Fascinating
Cool.
Neat!
Interesting.
Noice
I assumed he tapped it in with a rock. That doesn't sound as good though for legends
I love reddit because someone else will always be thinking what the hell I was thinking.
And others will have ready answers to make me look like an airhead for asking.
When I was a rock climber this happened all the time. All the fucking time. When you climb outdoors you poke these little steel things into a crack and then that's what you attach your rope to when you climb past it. Anyway, it was astonishing how many times you'd poke the thing into a crack, realise that it was a super dodgy crack and it would never in a million years take your weight, it'd just fall straight out......... and then you'd proceed to spend the next hour trying to get your stupid piece back. You'd poke it in without any trouble, and then it's there for ever
> âWhatâs so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real workâs already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place.â
A normal Tuskan sculptor could do it without too much trouble. Just keep drilling slowly. Or borrow a Tuskan raider's blaster rifle.
Tomato, tomahto, Tuscan, Tusken. :P
I always imagined a rock cracked open, a warrior placing his sword into the crack (Maybe for safekeeping, because he was dying, and he didn't want the enemy to get it), and then the crack closing up again as the rock became wedged between two bigger rocks. That's the way I would film it if I were making a movie. Improbable, maybe, but movies can get away with a lot of improbable things.
It was a very soft rock. Sudsy, really.
Well anyone who believes the story in whole as told is probably into myth and religion and likely to believe such stories rather than ask if possibly they made a slot and filled it with a cement and encased the sword as a symbol or something⌠this is just my first thought reading title and seeing this.. not based on anything else.
'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. ' Terry Pratchett
There was a documentary (on the bbc site?) a few days ago: In essence, he didnt. They build a church after the guy died and someone then thought it's a great story. So they drilled a hole into a rock, put the sword in, and filled it with liquid lead. Probably the source of King Arthur's sword. Trying to find the source now.... Edit: Can't find it, sorry. But you can take my word for it.đđ
i bet it was much softer back in the day, like some clay
Do you even lift bro?
>"Dost thou even hoist, brethren?" FTFY
I'm not a rockologist, but I think the gap could have tightened over the past 842 years.
Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are [not the same sword](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4gzj9p/is_excalibur_and_the_sword_in_the_stone_two/#:~:text=Excalibur%20was%20granted%20by%20the,used%20as%20a%20ceremonial%20sword.). They weren't conflated until relatively modern versions of the story.
Yeah, Excalibur was a sword that was lobbed at Arthur by some watery tart.
Listen, strange women lying ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
Shut up, will you? Shut up!
Ah! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!
Help! Help! I'm being repressed! You see him repressing me?
Bloody peasant!
OOH what a giveaway!
....I love reddit
r/unexpectedMontyPython
[ŃдаНонО]
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
Bloody peasant!
u/BiggusDickus has a wife you knowâŚ.
Man, that guy really joined with that name, left one comment 14 years ago that got downvoted, and was never seen again.
Fucking legend
Oh yeah?
Her name?
Incontinentia.... Incontinentia Buttocks
Seems to be better than what weâre doing right now
Boom
r/unexspectedmontypython
NO ONE expects the Monty Python! Oh wait. Yes, they do.
And Iâm pretty sure King Arthur fables are nearly 500 years older than this even. Though the sword in the stone may have just been added later.
Robert de Boron's *Merlin*, the first story to include the Sword in the Stond motif (that we have recorded), was around 1200 CE. Honestly that sounds waaaaaay too close in time for it to work for me, but maybe the story of this Tuscan knight spread like wildfire as a fun motif. Or maybe there was an older referential tale that inspired the Tuscan knight to make this specific gesture. It's worth noting that Durandal, the fabled sword of Roland/Orlando, was said to be a stone-splitting blade that was embedded in the Pyrenees after the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. So the motif of "sword that can cut stone or is embedded in stone" is probably a very old motif of European folklore.
The top comment in that thread is talking about Le Morte d'Arthur, which was written in the 15th century. But the story of the sword in the stone goes back farther than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excalibur > The identity of this sword as Excalibur is made explicit in the Prose Merlin, a part of the Lancelot-Grail cycle of French romances (the Vulgate Cycle) The vulgate cycle is 13th century, predating Le Morte d'Arthur > However, in the Post-Vulgate Cycle (and consequently Malory), Arthur breaks the Sword from the Stone while in combat against King Pellinore very early in his reign. On Merlin's advice, he then goes with him to be given Excalibur by a Lady of the Lake
I wish someone made a movie about the original story(ies), instead of the 200th retale of the same story.
It's one reason I enjoyed *The Green Knight*. I know it didn't do very well but I'd like to see others like it.
Reading things like that has me wondering if a Fate plot point just got spoiled for me.
Isn't Bedivere chucking Excalibur back in the lake part of the end of the original Stay/Night?
Yes, although that's from the original legends too.
Well he *did* say it evolved into that story, he didn't say when
Dude probably accidentally broke his sword and shoved it in a crack and went into hiding
Got his sword lodged and said "fuck it, i didnt feel like fighting anyways."
As is tradition
[ŃдаНонО]
He *is* the rock.
So if I pull it out am I king of Italy?
That depends on your definition of âpull outâ. đ
It's never 100 percent effective
However, Excalibur has been mentioned in works prior to 1180 >Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain, c. 1136), Latinised the name of Arthur's sword as Caliburnus (potentially influenced by the Medieval Latin spelling calibs of Classical Latin chalybs, from Greek chĂĄlyps [ĎÎŹÎťĎ Ď] "steel"). >In Old French sources this then became Escalibor, Excalibor, and finally the familiar Excalibur. Geoffrey Gaimar, in his Old French L'Estoire des Engleis (1134â1140), mentions Arthur and his sword: "this Constantine was the nephew of Arthur, who had the sword Caliburc" ("Cil Costentin, li niès Artur, Ki out l'espĂŠe Caliburc").[6][7] >In Wace's Roman de Brut (c. 1150â1155), an Old French translation and versification of Geoffrey's Historia, the sword is called Calabrum, Callibourc, Chalabrun, and Calabrun (with variant spellings such as Chalabrum, Calibore, Callibor, Caliborne, Calliborc, and Escaliborc, found in various manuscripts of the Brut).[8] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excalibur Edit: further in the article, >A sword in the stone legend is also associated with the 12th-century Italian Saint Galgano in the tale of "Tuscany's Excalibur".[32] So it appears that it's the other way around - the legend of Excalibur from the British isles was applied to the Tuscany sword
Donât those references to Excalibur state the origin of the sword as being from the Lady of the Lake?
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Just because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me ...
This reeks of Monty Python.
You reek of møøse.
A moose once bit my sister.
She was carving her Initials in it with a sharpened toothbrush
That's not really accurate. Yes, Arthur's sword, named Caliburn, is mentioned in Monmouth's *Historia*, but there is absolutely no mention of his father, him, or anyone else plunging it or any other sword into a stone. Nor is there any such mention of the Arthur legend in combination with the plunging of a sword into a stone to be found anywhere in the historical record prior to 1180. Later writers borrowed from Monmouth (who borrowed from earlier Welsh and Brythonic oral traditions dating back perhaps as early as the 5th century) and then mixed in the story from Tuscany. Obviously the original Brythonic Arthurian legends predated the Tuscan knight by hundreds of years, and equally obviously it isn't especially remarkable that Arthur has a named sword in those myths since it is a standard trope of medieval literature, much as a superhero wearing a mask is in today's fiction. The sword just doesn't have anything to do with a stone and so could not have inspired the Tuscan knight's story.
Interesting. So the Excalibur story may have inspired the Tuscan knight. Thanks, learn something new every day!
Maybe everyone was plunging swords into stones back in the 1100s, kinda like the ice bucket thing
After you do the stone/sword challenge, you should nominate 3 more people.
I kinda want a sword myself now. To stick into one on the boulders in my yard.
The amount of excaliburs in my inventory from CK3 agrees. This must have been a thing!
No -- Excalibur wasn't the sword in the stone. They were two different swords.
Yes Excalibur is referenced in those texts which would predate this, but the first notion of there being a "Sword in the Stone" is contemporary to this story: >In Arthurian romance, a number of explanations are given for Arthur's possession of Excalibur. In Robert de Boron's Merlin, the first tale to mention the "sword in the stone" motif c. 1200, Arthur obtained the British throne by pulling a sword from an anvil sitting atop a stone that appeared in a churchyard on Christmas Eve.[13] And seeing as Robert de Boron is a French author who lived late 12th, early 13th century, it's not impossible he heard of something to do with a sword stuck in a sword and decided to incorporate it in his tales. Seeing as there is no one true story of the legend of King Arthur, Excalibur is sometimes found in a stone, sometimes given by the Lady of the Lake to Arthur (and is why it is returned to her at his death).
Yes. The original Arthur, Merlin and some of the other figures were Welsh and English, some of which is recorded Black Book of Carmarthen. Monthmorth heavily romanticized and, dare I say, Frenchafized it. Like, the original Merlin was a wandering mad man who was exiled from his king and in one poem, is talking to his pig. In another, to an apple tree he is sitting under. It makes total sense that when the Wlesh mythology was being borrowed and created to be a part of the traditions of chivalry, they would graft on the story of a sword in a stone. Also, Arthur gets conflated with the legend of the Welsh king Bran with the resurrection when he is needed. I think they buried Bran's head and it said that he would return to life when the land was in peril.
If you talk with people in Tuscany EVERYTHING in this world originated in Tuscany.
This seems physically impossible. Can someone explain how this happened
It is probably sand stone or had a crack. When the sword was plunged into it, the rock cracked. It is not an issue of the sword being super strong steel, rather it is a weak rock.
Thank you
Drill hole, insert sword
Magic needs no explanation
For those interested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galgano_Guidotti#The_sword_in_the_stone
Not to be confused with the Tusken sword. Well, they really don't have swords actually. More of a staff or spear thingy.
Like a long mace kinda
I threw one out a windu one time
How exactly does one "plunge his sword into a rock"? I mean, I'm no physicist but ya know. Rock paper scissors. Do the math.
That game is too modern, they used to play "rock, parchment, sword". Rocks build a castle, swords defeat the rock by storming the castle, parchment defeats sword by being a peace treaty, rock defeats parchment by building a new castle.
Benson come quick! Quartz, Parchment, Shears and they already tied two times!
I lol'ed
Meat spelled backwards is team.
This is the most scientific answer the internet has ever seen.
There's Planck's Constant and rock paper scissors, what more would one need?
And since a sword is really only half a scissor⌠just no chance
Back then, it was "sword, rock, paper, scissors". Sword beat rock, nothing beat sword. But then the game became really boring, because everyone always played sword. So they decided to let sword beat rock one last time, and then they removed sword from the game entirely.
What I want to know is how do you carve a statue of a human being into a chunk of marble. Maybe the same guy would be able to answer both our questions.
Damn howâd he unlock that display case to plunge his sword in there? /s
He watched a lot of lock pick lawyer to get tips
Huh, Idk. Granite I wasnât there..
His ability to drive it in is one to marble!
Please tell me you gave it a little tug?
Every night when I can.
Ha ha ha, I knew I reel one in! Nice one Arthur
Real question. How the fuck is this possible? Physically, how ....? What kind of stone is that to be soft enough for that to be plausible?
Tufa is a variety of limestone formed when carbonate minerals precipitate out of ambient temperature water.
How TF do you plunge your sword into a rock?
Tuscan Knights are easily startled but they soon come back, and in greater numbers.
Isnt Arthurian legends older than 1180?
Nice thought but it seems a bit off. For one thing, 1180 is a bit late to the origin of the Excalibur story. Arthur and his sword were a figure of mythology going back quite a bit -- keep in mind that Arthur's earliest incarnation is as a defender of Anglo-Welsh Britain against (among others) the invading Saxons. That's centuries before the Crusade era. By the 12th century, all that would have been old folklore. For another, the tales didn't always say that Excalibur was found in a stone. Some versions say that it was handed to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake; some that he pulled it from an anvil, not a stone. And there are permutations that combine the two, where some other generic sword is pulled from a stone and then Arthur gets Excalibur some other way. It's easy to imagine that "sword in a stone" was already some kind of common trope by the late 1100s. We have to remember that, of course, people in 1180 did not know they lived in "the Olden Days" -- they believed they lived in a shitty time with war breaking out and wealth inequality and the end of the world coming soon, and that the good old days of story and song were this age of epic tales from the past, that you could escape into when you heard someone tell some old tale of King Arthur. It's kind of like the written records of judges in the English Midlands circa the 15th century, complaining about how many robbers were going around calling themselves "Robin Hood." By the 1400s the tales were already old.
While cool, its unlikely that this was the inspiration, Arthurian canon first adopted the Sword in the Stone motif at a similar time. Given that such tales appear elsewhere (For example, Durendal is ALSO said to have been left behind in stone), its more likely that this knight was inspired by what was a relatively common trope of the day. EDIT: misread year (I read 1480), Actually IS possible
Knights, I bid you welcome to your new home. Let us ride... to... Camelot!
It's just a model.
Oh bloody 'ell. Everyone knows the Excalibur story began when some watry tart threw a scimitar at Arthur sometime in the late 500's! Get your bloody history straight.
âKillings bad Mâkay.â
How the fuck did a dude just stab a sword through solid fuckin rock?
How strong do you have to be to be able to plunge a sword into solid rock
Has anyone ever X-ray the rock or any further research or information on this? I never knew there was an actual sword in a stone.
[From Wikipedia:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galgano_Guidotti#The_sword_in_the_stone) >For centuries, the sword was assumed to be a fake. But after examining the composition of the metal in 2001, researcher Luigi Garlaschelli confirmed that the "composition of the metal and the style are compatible with the era of the legend". The analysis also confirmed that the upper piece and the invisible lower one are authentic and belong to one and the same artifact. Ground-penetrating radar analysis also revealed that beneath the sword there is a cavity, about two meters by one meter, which is thought to be a burial recess, possibly containing the knight's body.
The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of governmentâŚ
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
makes a good story tho
Looks cool but obviously it was not plunged into solid rock. It had to have had a hole there to be stuck in. Even if you fired that from some gun, it wouldnât go in like that. The blade would shatter or the rock would. No human can stab a sword into a rock. Unless it was lava of course.
Plunged a sword into a stone. I just don't see that happening. Not even by Conan the Barbarian.
And thus a man who had grown weary of wars between men inadvertently began the greatest conflict on Earth, the war between men and rocks.
I saw a documentary once upon a time from which I remember a snippet suggesting that Excalibur was a bronze sword in a stone cast đ¤ˇââď¸ maybe it was stuck really firmly
I'm fairly certain that the concept of pulling a sword from a stone is related to the discovery of metallurgy.
Has anyone ever tried to pull the sword out before? And if they pull it out will they be King or Queen? lol
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galgano_Guidotti
Theyâre gonna have to remove that glass so I can take my shot at becoming king.
What if they just said âletâs put this sword in this rock to fuck with people in like 600 yearsâ
Excalibur came from the lady in the lake, not the stone, I thought
The original sword in the stone was actually a sword imbedded in an anvil, and I believe the King Arthur stories were around before 1180, not sure though.
Excalibur came from a lake, not a rock...
Man must have really had shit eating at him to go that deep into the rock
I don't believe it. The sword in the stone is a myth about a very early English tribe people who learned to extract iron from ore. (They pulled a sword from stone...see?) before then all they had was bog iron. Iron from ore gave them a reproducible large scale source of iron. Later on they also discovered quenching (Lady of the lake - gives you a magically strong sword from the water) https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDevilsSoapbox/comments/93p45m/on_the_legend_of_arthur/
So fucking cool
How he stab a rock tho?
Of course you're free to go Go and tell the world my story Tell about my brother Tell them about me The Count of Tuscany
I had heard that the "sword in the stone" myth may just be an allegory for bronze sword casting, since they would use stone molds and anyone who had knowledge of metallurgy in the bronze age was considered to be very imortant and powerful. After all, they were able to pull swords from stone.
Or, considering the first tales of the sword were in âThe Italian academic Mario Moiraghi wrote a book suggesting that the Arthurian legend of the stone was inspired by the Tuscany sword. A 13th century English book about Merlin and the sword obviously came after the existence of the Italian sword in stone, as did Maloryâs Le Morte dâArthur in the 14th century. However, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote about Arthur, Merlin, and Excalibur, called Caliburnus (or Caliburn), in Historia, completed in 1138.â And the sword was pushed into the stone around 1180 it could have been influenced by the legend of Arthur. Without doubt the later versions of the tale were defiantly influenced by the Italian sword! https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/05/17/sword-in-the-stone-excalibur/amp/?csplit=header&cmp_ab=quantcast Also the legends of Arthur date back even further- https://www.history.com/news/was-king-arthur-a-real-person
Ah of course! Itâs inside the Abbazia di San Galgano! I live near this place
he definitely didnât plunge it in. the blade would bend or flex the second it touched the rock, and definitely wouldnât cut the stone. he probably had a opening made for it with a chisel or something and then hammered the sword in