[HPforGrownups] Re: Lily Potter's Name/Evans is Welsh

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 44050

At 22:52 15/09/02 +0000, karenoc1 wrote:
>Hi!  I'm sure this must have been mentioned before, but "Evans" is a
>Welsh name.  Do most of us connect Wales with King Arthur?  And if
>so, what are the implications?  Or am I just reading too far into the
>name?

Well, calling Arthur "Welsh" is perhaps a bit much, but he was definitely a 
Celt, as was Merlin. The Celts were the majority "native" population in 
Britain after the Romans moved out; the Saxons were invited in the 5th 
century to help the local Celtic rulers fend of attacks from the Picts and 
Scots but ended up taking over, and pushing the Celts over into what we now 
know as Wales. Arthur's main  achievement is to have kept the Saxons at bay 
and at peace.

BTW I just thought I'd throw into the mix that Merlin's primary "magical 
skill" was foretelling the future... This may or may not have relevance to 
conversations about Trelawney...

(of course, the above assumes that both Arthur and Merlin were real 
historical characters, which is a matter of some dispute and has been for 
over a thousand years.) :-)

Yes, Evans is a Welsh name, but making a direct connection between that and 
the Arthurian legends is a major leap of the imagination. For instance, 
"riddle" is an Old English word, so is "dumbledore" - I've not seen anyone 
jump to conclusions linking those families. :-)

Incidentally (and changing the subject for a moment), one of the reasons 
I've become interested (and a lot more knowledgeable) about Arthurian 
legends lately is that I've been reading up to disprove a net-based rumour 
which has recently resurfaced that "Voldemort" has a connection with an 
Arthurian character purportedly called "Voldemortist". Of course, it's all 
pure drivel - there is no such character. ;-) (there was someone in British 
history, about 100 years before Arthur's time, called Vortimer, latinized 
as Vortamorix, but he was a "goodie"; not to mention that he's only 
peripherally connected to the legends and there's no indication that he and 
Merlin ever met).

>I've always been torn between a) connecting Lily's heritage to
>ancient magic, and b) believing that Lily is simply the first witch
>from a long, long line of Muggles.  In many ways, I like better the
>idea that Lily was deeply magical and Muggle-born.  Like Hermione,
>Lily proves the point that it just does not matter who your parents
>were or from where you came.

Lily's being 100% Muggle-born is an important part of my own reading of the 
canon, for those reasons and more. Lots of fans picture her family as 
"Squibbish", with Petunia's attitude towards Lily as jealousy about picking 
up the "magical gene", whereas she did not. My own reading is that Lily is 
the "different" one in that family, NOT Petuinia.

>But Lily invoked ancient magic to protect Harry,

As I read things, and as we know the situation at present, Lily didn't 
"invoke" any kind of magic. What overcame Voldermort's attack was her 
Mother love per se, which didn't need to be invoked in the way that spells 
and charms are. If anything, it was her act of sacrifice which "invoked" 
the ancient magic, not some kind of deliberate strictly magical action or 
incantation on her part.

Again, as I read the canon (and the moral it tries to impart), it's not the 
fact that Lily was a witch which saved Harry, but the fact that she 
sacrificed herself for him: "love" is in itself magical.

>as apparently did Dumbledore when he placed Harry with
>the Dursleys, with his family.  I believe she could do this because
>she was powerfully magical; would she necessarily need to be
>descended from ancient magical people to do this?

A running theme in canon is that magical ancestry has little or nothing to 
do with one's own magical prowess, and further to my point above, I 
certainly don't see the need for her to have *any* magical blood at all to 
be an indicator of her powers. In some ways, Voldemort's and the DEs' 
bigotry on this is seen as one of their major faults.

>  Are Harry's connections to ancient wizards only through James?  (For
>example, if Lily were descended from King Arthur, she could be
>connected to ancient magic and still come from a line of Muggles.)

Arthur has no magical prowess. If you're looking for any magical ancestry 
in those legends, Merlin is where you should be looking.

>Maybe I'm just way too far out there!  But what would a King
>Arthur/Merlin connection add to or detract from Lily's (and
>consequently, Harry's) storyline?

IMO, yes. Most definitely.

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, who hasn't posted for *ages* and is desperately trying 
to catch up with HPFGU!