The Knights Who Say “Bleed”
The stealth vampire buried in the King Arthur legend
After Disney and Mark Twain and Monty Python, most of us are comfortable that we know the highlights of the King Arthur story.
But — and I know this blog asks this way too often — are there vampires?
Kinda. Sorta. In a way. Maybe.
The story of the ill-lucked Sir Balin is one of the more dramatic tales codified in Morte d’Arthur, the Marvel Cinematic Universe of medieval England/France. Balin — this poor bastard — tries to do right and keeps shitting the bed; whether it’s partaking in a noble battle, honorably winning a sword, or beheading the Lady of the Lake. Oh, you didn’t know that part of the story? Neither did I; it kinda changes things doesn’t it?
But also buried in the story of Sir Balin is a short vignette in which he escorts a young damsel through rough lands. They come to an unnamed castle wherein the lady of the castle — named the Leprous Lady by really shitty parents — drinks the blood of virgins to maintain her health.
This Castle Crone asks for blood from the damsel Balin is escorting. The damsel — a true black swan — gives her blood freely. But it fails to restore vitality to the Leprous Lady, so her health continues to fail. Sir Sad Sack and the damsel shrug and continue on their journey.
I’ve searched, but found precious little critical analysis on this curious mini-map hidden in the Arthurian books. So let’s free-wheel a bit.
First of all, to anyone familiar with Elizabeth Bathory, this lady of the castle will ring some bells. Bathory, of course, was alleged to drink the blood of young girls in order to maintain her beauty. There’s speculation that much of the Elizabeth Bathory tale was made up or wildly exaggerated — perhaps Bathory’s accusers were inspired by the tale of Sir Balin and the Leprous Lady?
Second of all, vampire aficionados will note that it’s unusual for a vampire to require the blood to be virginal, with some notable exceptions, like Andy Warhol’s Blood of Dracula. In that film, Dracula wretches whenever he accidentally ingests non-virgin blood. What inference can we draw from that? Given that the damsel’s blood failed to help the lady, maybe Tries-So-Hard Sir Balin wasn’t escorting a damsel at all, but a deflowered woman. And in Malory’s eyes, that pretty much makes her a porn star in Slutville.
Third, both of the key players in this story — the damsel or the Leprous Lady— utterly fail Bechdel by not getting so much as a name. So maybe this tale tells us more about Sir Balin than anything. Perhaps he is a cuckhold for thinking his lady is a virgin or a fool for believing that drinking blood can have any kind of medicinal purpose. Maybe, right in the middle of these tales of sword and sorcery, the author was slapping us in the face with a fat reality dick: “hey, no one is pure and no magic will keep you from getting old, you cornpones”
I’d like to believe all that, but the Arthurian legend eventually cures the Leprous Lady using vampiric techniques, when Amide, sister of Sir Percival, freely gives blood to the old woman. However, Amide dies from the blood letting and the vengeance of God befalls the Leprous Lady and her castle. And if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of the vengeance of God, it can get downright vampiric.
Arthurian legends were constantly retold and reinterpreted, some starting as free-standing myths before being incorporated into the Arthurian canon. So it seems plausible, in my non-scholar estimation, that this tale is a fragment from a larger, more filled-out legend.
And wouldn’t you love to know what it is? I contacted a handful of Arthurian scholars for this piece, but they were too busy pulling swords out of stones to respond to my parchment.
What of Sir Balin? He died in what he thought was an honorable fight with a masked knight, who was also his beloved brother, who he also killed in the fight before dying from wounds.
Some guys have all the luck. And some guys are Sir Balin.
Toothpickings is a blog that you can read. It is generally about vampires.
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Image sources: Shutterstock, Claxton, this guy I met who had some screen grabs
