Unit 5: Part 3 Vocabulary

“Who said that?” asked Sir Grummore.
“But the sword said it, like I tell you.”
“Talkative weapon,” remarked Sir Grummore skeptically.

“Lot of people in London,” remarked Sir Grummore, with a wild surmise. “So they say.”

The road, or track, ran most of the time along the high ridges of the hills or downs, and they could look down on either side of them upon the desolate marshes where the snowy reeds sighed, and the ice crackled, and the duck in the red sunsets quacked loud on the winter air.

The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field.

So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur;
But ere he dipped the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.

Him Sir Bedivere
Remorsefully regarded through his tears,
And would have spoken, but he found not words,
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee,
O’er both his shoulders drew the languid hands,
And rising bore him through the place of tombs.

I want you to get word to the king that I am a magician myself—and the Supreme Grand High-yu-Muckamuck and head of the tribe, at that; and I want him to be made to understand that I am just quietly arranging a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in these realms if Sir Kay’s project is carried out and any harm comes to me.

On all four sides of the court the seated multitudes rose rank above rank, forming sloping terraces that were rich with color.

The king and the queen sat in their thrones, the most conspicuous figures there, of course.

More than a code of manners in war and love, chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life. That it was about four parts in five illusion made it no less governing for all that.

It developed at the same time as the great crusades of the 12th century as a code intended to fuse the religious and martial spirits and somehow bring the fighting man into accord with Christian theory.

Prowess was not mere talk, for the function of physical violence required real stamina.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honor, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round.

The Saxon invaders were infantry, fighting with sword and spear, and having little armor. Against such an enemy a small force of ordinary Roman cavalry might well prove invincible.

I had expected to share my vigil on Christmas Eve with any number of other faithful (or gullible) pilgrims.

Today, that “fleeting wisp of glory called Camelot” stirs an overwhelming sense of loss—a nostalgic yearning for a better-ordered and more-spiritual age that we long to believe once existed.

In 1191, the grave of Arthur and his queen was “discovered” in Glastonbury Abbey—a find that launched a lucrative pilgrimage industry and enabled the canny monks to rebuild their abbey, which had burned to the ground in 1184.