Famous heroes who are specially connected with England are Alfred the Great, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Guy of Warwick, Sir Bevis of Hampton (or Southampton), Robin Hood and his companions.
The Celtic heroic saga in the British islands may be divided into the two principal groups of Gaelic (Irish) and Brython (Welsh), the first, excluding the purely mythological, into the Ultonian (connected with Ulster) and the Ossianic. The Ultonianis grouped round the names of King Conchobar and the hero Cuchulainn, "the Irish Achilles," the defender of Ulster against all Ireland, regarded by some as a solar hero. The second cycle contains the epics of Finn (Fionn, Fingal) mac Cumhail, and his son Oisin (Ossian), the bard and warrior, chiefly known from the supposed Ossianic poems of Macpherson. (See CELT, sec. _Celtic Literature_.)
Of Brython origin is the cycle of King Arthur (Artus), the adopted national hero of the mixed nationalities of whom the "English" people was composed. Here he appears as a chiefly mythical personality, who slays monsters, such as the giant of St Michel, the boar Troit, the demon cat, and goes down to the underworld. The original Welsh legend was spread by British refugees in Brittany, and was thus celebrated by both English and French Celts. From a literary point of view, however, it is chiefly French and forms "the matter of Brittany." Arthur, the leader (_comes Britanniae, dux bellorum_) of the Siluri or Dumnonii against the Saxons, flourished at the beginning of the 6th century. He is first spoken of in Nennius's _History of the Britons_ (9th century), and at greater length in Geoffrey of Monmouth's _History of the Kings of Britain_ (12th century), at the end of which the French Breton cycle attained its fullest development in the poems of Chrétien de Troyes and others.
Speaking generally, the Celtic heroes are differentiated from the Teutonic by the extreme exaggeration of their superhuman, or rather extra-human, qualities. Teutonic legend does not lightly exaggerate, and what to us seems incredible in it may be easily conceived as credible to those by whom and for whom the tales were told; that Sigmund and his son Sinfiotli turned themselves into wolves would be but a sign of exceptional powers to those who believed in werewolves; Fafnir assuming the form of a serpent would be no more incredible to the barbarous Teuton than the similar transformation of Proteus to the Greek. But in the characterization of their heroes the Celtic imagination runs riot, and the quality of their persons and their acts becomes exaggerated beyond the bounds of any conceivable probability. Take, for instance, the description of some of Arthur's knights in the Welsh tale of _Kilhwch and Olwen_ (in the _Mabinogion_). Along with Kai and Bedwyr (Bedivere), Peredur (Perceval), Gwalchmai (Gawain), and many others, we have such figures as Sgilti Yscandroed, whose way through the wood lay along the tops of the trees, and whose tread was so light that no blade of grass bent beneath his weight; Sol, who could stand all day upon one leg; Sugyn the son of Sugnedydd, who was "broad-chested" to such a degree that he could suck up the sea on which were three hundred ships and leave nothing but dry land; Gweyyl, the son of Gwestad, who when he was sad would let one of his lips drop beneath his waist and turn up the other like a cap over his head; and Uchtry Varyf Draws, who spread his red untrimmed beard over the eight-and-forty rafters of Arthur's hall. Such figures as these make no human impression, and criticism has busied itself in tracing them to one or other of the shadowy divinities of the Celtic pantheon. However this may be, remnants of their primitive superhuman qualities cling to the Celtic heroes long after they have been transfigured, under the influence of Christianity and chivalry, into the heroes of the medieval Arthurian romance, types--for the most part--of the knightly virtues as these were conceived by the middle ages; while shadowy memories of early myths live on, strangely disguised, in certain of the episodes repeated uncritically by the medieval poets. So Merlin preserves his diabolic origin; Arthur his mystic coming and his mystic passing; while Gawain, and after him Lancelot, journey across the river, as the Irish hero Bran had done before them to the island of fair women--the Celtic vision of the realm of death.