Le Morte D'Arthur

This is an excerpt from Thomas Malory's significantly longer Le Morte d'Arthur, plublished as a Penguin 60s Classic.

I struggled to take this book seriously, given a mild obsession with Monty Python and the Holy Grail in my formative years.

For example, read this quotation and tell me it is not pure python: (P22) Then Sir Bedevere departed, and went to the sword, and lightly took it up, and went to the water side; and there he bound the girdle about the hilts, and then he threw the sword as far into the water as he might; and there came an arm and an hand above the water and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water. So Sir Bedevere came again to the king, and told him what he saw.

And loads of this sort of comedy ye olde English: Then when Sir Mordred wist and understood how he was beguiled, he was passing wroth out of measure, and Thus they kept Sir Launcelot's corpse loft for fifteen days, and then the buried it with great devotion.

Really they run hand in hand with such classics from Python as:
King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

and
Sir Bedevere: ...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped.King Arthur: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.

ok one more
French Soldier: You don't frighten us, English pig dogs. Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called “Arthur King,” you and all your silly English K-nig-hts.