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Bedivere
Sir Bedivere or Bediver, king Arthur's butler and a knight of the Round Table. He was the last of Arthur's knights, and was sent by the dying king to throw his sword Excalibur into the mere. Being cast in, it was caught by an arm "clothed in white samite," and drawn into the stream.
In Welsh poetry, as Bedwyr, Bedivere is a major character in the tale of Kilhwch and Olwen. Described as brave and handsome and aa a skilled wielder of the spear we are told that none equalled him in swiftness and that, though one-armed, he was a match for any three warriors on the field of battle; his lance made a wound equal to those of nine.
"Bedivere comforted the old woman as best he might, and, returning to Arthur, told him what he had heard. Now on hearing of the damsel's death great anger took hold upon the King, so that he resolved to search out the giant forthwith and slay or be slain by him. Desiring Kay and Bedivere to follow, he dismounted and commenced to climb St Michael's Mount, closely attended by his companions." Legends and Romances of Brittany by Lewis Spence
"Another traditional account which Tennyson has mainly followed in a poem, is this: The king bade Sir Bedivere take his good sword Excalibur and go with it to the water-side and throw it into the water and return to tell what he saw. Then Sir Bedivere took the sword, and it was so richly and preciously adorned that he would not throw it, and came back without it. When the king asked what had happened, Sir Bedivere said, "I saw nothing but waves and wind," and when Arthur did not believe him, and sent him again, he made the same answer, and then, when sent a third time, he threw the sword into the water, as far as he could. Then an arm and a hand rose above the water and caught it, and shook and brandished it three times and vanished." Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur is a very close and in many parts a verbal rendering of the same tale in sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur
