In reply to:

Yes, I've heard this debunking as well. Doesn't really affect the image for me, though - it's still that of a man getting his feet wetted by a greater force (whatever his apparent motivation!)


Rhubarb, I know this is not your period - but can you help?

Yes, sure - I'll jump back a thousand years from the time I virtually live in to help a friend.

The story is well documented, of KC using the implacability of the incoming tide to show his courtiers that he was but a man - if a dam' good one - and a Dane. He was not a God, but a servant of the God (or Gods - there was still afair amount of pantheism floating around in those days.) Just where it is documented, I'm not sure. Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, perhaps?

However, shanks may well be right about the apocryphal nature of the story.