Murray Pittock has an interesting chapter on this in his "Celtic Identity and the British Image", something like 'they fought in the war, but all fell'. I think the important thing to remember is that this whole "failed hero" malarkey is mainly a product of the Romantics, and in its modern incarnation is pretty much the fault of Macpherson's Ossian, who writes the paradigmatic failed/feminine hero. (It also occurs to me that it probably also is extrapolated from the fact that most of our earliest poetry is elegiac, which in a warrior society isn't actually all that weird).
Welsh heroes tend mostly to be stabbed in the back by their own side, usually power-hungry brothers (cf. Llywelyn ein Llyw Olaf - and actually, on your side, also Hereward, interestingly). If that's not happened, then they disappear a la Arthur to come again when the nation is in peril &c. (and there's a legend about Hereward to that effect, too!)
I'm still really surprised that Hereward didn't make it into the pantheon, though - for all your argument above does indeed hold water, in the 17th and 18th Centuries there was a great vogue for all things Saxon and non-Norman - all interesting info is in Rosemary Sweet's "Antiquaries : the discovery of the past in eighteenth century Britain."
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-04-12 07:47 am (UTC)Welsh heroes tend mostly to be stabbed in the back by their own side, usually power-hungry brothers (cf. Llywelyn ein Llyw Olaf - and actually, on your side, also Hereward, interestingly). If that's not happened, then they disappear a la Arthur to come again when the nation is in peril &c. (and there's a legend about Hereward to that effect, too!)
I'm still really surprised that Hereward didn't make it into the pantheon, though - for all your argument above does indeed hold water, in the 17th and 18th Centuries there was a great vogue for all things Saxon and non-Norman - all interesting info is in Rosemary Sweet's "Antiquaries : the discovery of the past in eighteenth century Britain."