Question: How did the sword get in the stone in the first place?
Charles Austin Miller
5th Nov 2020
The Sword in the Stone (1963)
Answer: While not explicitly stated, the film's prologue implies that the sword appears via divine intervention. The opening song mentions that only a miracle could save war-torn England and then "that miracle appeared in London Town; the sword in the stone."
Answer: Disney pursued the image of a finely-finished longsword imbedded point-first into a boulder, which would be an impossible scenario outside of magical or divine intervention. However, there may be a grain of truth to the original Arthurian legend. Most ancient swords were not crafted by master swordsmiths, and military swords were quickly mass-produced in ancient times. The mass-produced swords were not conscientiously hammered and folded and shaped and tempered by a smith, but were simply smelted metal poured into open-faced molds. The metal casts were then extracted and finished with grinding and abrasives. Sometimes such a fast-food blade hardened and became stuck in the mold (in which case, in a primitive mass-production setting, they discarded the mold along with the sword, as they couldn't extract it without breaking the mold and/or the brittle sword. Both the sword and the mold were equally useless). Those discarded molds with blades locked in situ, recovered long decades or even centuries afterward, are likely the origin of Sword in the Stone legend.
Answer: This particular depiction of the Arthurian legend doesn't address it. Other tellings have various theories such as Merlin placing it there intentionally, Uther driving it into the stone as he was dying, or it simply appearing magically. As this is a children's movie, it isn't considered important to the plot.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Answer: It's never revealed, it just appeared after the death of King Uther and forgotten about. In some stories it's suggested that Merlin placed it there to help convince people of Arthur being the rightful heir to the kingdom as he has knowledge of Arthur's destiny.
Bishop73