Legend has it that King Arthur ordered a faithful servant to throw his sword, Excalibur, into a lake after he was mortally wounded in battle. A British 7-year-old has just pulled a sword from that very spot. While on holiday in Cornwall on Aug. 29, Matilda Jones asked her dad if she could go for a swim to beat the heat, reports the Sheffield Star. He agreed and, on their way to Dozmary Pool, told his daughter how King Arthur's legendary sword was said to rest there. Shortly after wading into the lake, Matilda told her dad she'd found a sword. "I told her not to be silly and it was probably a bit of fencing," Paul Jones tells the Star. "But when I looked down I realized it was a sword. It was just there lying flat on the bottom of the lake."
Jones isn't holding out hope that the 4-foot-long sword is the one that inspired the Arthurian legend. It's "about 20 or 30 years old" and "probably an old film prop," he says. But its discovery is still a neat coincidence. According to legend, the Lady of the Lake gave Excalibur to Arthur at Dozmary Pool, where it was returned after his death. It is said that a hand rose from the waters to receive the sword and brandished it three times before both disappeared. Despite the legend, however, treasure hunters would be foolhardy to search Dozmary Pool for the fabled sword. Droughts have twice dried out the shallow lake, revealing no ancient sword at the bottom, per Cornwall Live. (A medieval knight's sword was recently found in a bog.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
