Galahad

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For other uses, see Galahad (disambiguation).

A portrait of Sir Galahad by George Frederick Watts.

Sir Galahad is a knight of King Arthur's Round Table and one of the three achievers of the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend. He is the son of Sir Lancelot and Elaine of Carbonek, and is renowned for his gallantry and purity. He is perhaps the knightly embodiment of Jesus in the Arthurian legends. He first appears in the Lancelot-Grail cycle, and his story is taken up in later works such as the Post-Vulgate Cycle and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

[edit] Galahad's career

Galahad's conception comes about when Elaine, daughter of the Grail King Pelles, uses magic to trick Lancelot into thinking she is Guinevere. They sleep together, but on discovering what has transpired, Lancelot abandons Elaine and returns to Arthur's court. Galahad is placed in the care of his great aunt, the abbess at a nunnery, and is raised there. "Galahad" was Lancelot's original name, but it had been changed when he was a child. Merlin prophesies that Galahad would surpass his father in valor and be successful in his achievement of the Holy Grail.

Upon reaching adulthood, Galahad is reunited with his father, who knights him. He is then brought to King Arthur's court at Camelot during Pentecost. Without realizing the danger he was putting himself in, Sir Galahad walks over to the Round Table amidst the revelry and takes his seat at the Siege Perilous. This place had been kept vacant for the sole person who would accomplish the quest of the Holy Grail; for anyone else sitting there, it would prove to be immediately fatal. Sir Galahad survives the event, witnessed by King Arthur and his knights. The king then asks the young knight to perform a test which involves pulling a sword from a stone. This he accomplishes with ease, and King Arthur swiftly proclaims Sir Galahad to be the greatest knight in the world. He is promptly invited to join the Order of the Round Table, and after an ethereal vision of the Holy Grail, the quest to find the famous object is set.

In Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Galahad's incredible prowess and fortune in the quest for the Holy Grail are traced back to his piety. According to the legend, only pure knights may achieve the Grail. While in a general sense, this "purity" refers to chastity, Galahad appears to have lived a sinless life, and so as a result, lives and thinks on a level entirely apart from the other knights of the legend.

Despite, and perhaps because of his sinless nature, Galahad as a character seems inhuman. He defeats rival knights apparently without effort, speaks little to his fellow knights, and leads his companions to the Grail with a relentless determination. So of the three who undertake the quest for the Grail (Bors, Perceval, and Galahad), Galahad is the one who actually achieves it. When he does, he is taken up into heaven like the biblical patriarch Enoch or the prophet Elijah, leaving his companions behind.

[edit] Galahad in popular culture

In 1949 Galahad was featured in his own Columbia serial, played by George Reeves, the future Superman. It was the first, and only, Arthurian film serial. However Galahad has fared less well in other cinematic retellings of the Matter of Britain. In Knights of the Round Table and Merlin he is only shown as a child, (though he is destined to find the Grail after the action of each film); and is left out of Excalibur and Camelot altogether. Galahad had a minor part in King Arthur, as an adult but not as the son of Lancelot.

Perhaps his most notable film appearance was being portrayed by Michael Palin in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when, while following a vision of the Grail, he is trapped in a castle of beautiful maidens eager to seduce him. But his chastity is saved when other knights, led by Lancelot, "rescue" him against his will. At the end of the film, he's thrown into the Gorge of Eternal Peril, for giving the wrong answer to a question about his favorite color ("Blue. No!" - he is cast off before he can complete his changed answer to "yellow"). In the 2005 Broadway Musical adaptation of the film, Spamalot, his character is combined with another Character Palin played in the film, Dennis the Politically active peasant, who in the musical, is called Sir Dennis Galahad, the Dashingly Handsome after he is made a knight by King Arthur in Act 1. He was played by Christopher Sieber in the original Broadway cast, who was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance.

Galahad remains a medieval knight, albeit in a modern setting, as "Galaad, Knight of the Table Round" in the Neil Gaiman short story "Chivalry". He shows up at the door of one Mrs. Whitaker, who had recently bought the Holy Grail for thirty pence at a junk shop, and offers her various precious items for it, eventually succeeding in obtaining it.

Galahad appeared as a villian in the Grant Morrison work The Shining Knight in his Seven Soldiers series where he is called both Galahad the Giant Killer and Galahad the Perfect Knight. He was brought under the control of the series main antagonists, the Sheeda, and fought against Sir Justin the Shining Knight.

Galahad was also the subject of certain folk songs by Rick Wakeman and Joan Baez, and is mentioned in the song Tin Man by the band America.

The Sir Galahad Manor was formed in Whitby, Ontario, Canada under the Demolay Ontario Whitby Chapter.

Galahad is also the name of a character in Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners.