I recently re-read Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon for the first time in years, in order to cite it in a paper.

Now I am reading its antithesis, Simon Young’s A.D. 500: A Journey Through the Dark Isles of Britain and Ireland.

Based on the fiction of a geographer in Constantinople writing a guide to the “Dark Isles” based on contemporary reports and present-day archaeology, Young’s sixth century agrees very little with Bradley’s except, perhaps, on the importance of Tintagel.

If Tintagel is a work of Nature’s art, then man has, however, botched its decorations. The British Celts who live there are not great builders….The king’s court is a timber shack, something approximating in size and finish to one of our royal stables.

You want all-wise Druids at the close of Pagan Ireland?

But even in their reduced state, these old men–the young with spiritual gifts turn to the Church–have a certain notoriety. Instantly recognizable for their curious cloaks and their shaved heads–each has a short tuft over the forehead–they walk from place to place officiating over oaths and sacrifices (it is better not to ask of which sort).

Young admits that the story of the last Temple of Bacchus in Britain is “necessarily speculative,” but does offer sources for it, as for all his information.

Young’s book is a useful corrective to the “matter of Britain’s” multiple re-tellings–the last time I checked, library databases listed more than 900 works under the category of “King Arthur-Fiction.”