King Canute and the commanding of the tide

Ever hear of the story of King canute?

I personally dig the discovery of something that everybody thought they had figured out...

This comes from Reg Connolly and the NLP Institute (Neuro-Linguistic Programming Institute, http://www.pe2000.com/canute)

Well, the popular story of King Canute is that he placed his throne on the beach so that he could sit and command the tides not to come in. As the story goes, yes, the tides came in and the good King was sitting with water swirling around his ankles and his chair in the surf.

It is usually quoted as an example of trying to do things that are absolutely impossible in a real world, and the foolish people who try them.

Well, Connolly has found the bit usually cited is not the whole story…

First, the King was real. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute

Cnut the Great, also known as Canute or Knut (Old Norse: Knútr inn ríki;[1]died 12 November 1035) was a Viking king of England, Denmark and Norway.

The full story is that King Canute had a very demanding and cantankerous bunch in his Kingdom. He was always being taken to task by the people in his kingdom for not doing enough, or not accomplishing what (the people thought) should be done.

(Of course, it’s always easy to push somebody to the place of responsibility… in politics, academia, ecclesia… put them up on the pedestal… then go find your pistols…)

So, this wise King put his throne out on the beach and commanded the tide to not come in. When the tide came in, as he expected it would, he used it to teach his people that even the king was not omnipotent and all-powerful to make anything happen…

Wikipedia has more to say:
Henry of Huntingdon, the 12th-century chronicler, tells how Cnut set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes; but the tide failed to stop. According to Henry, Cnut leapt backwards and said "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws." He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again.[79]
This story may be apocryphal. While the contemporary Encomium Emmae has no mention of it, it would seem that so pious a dedication might have been recorded there, since the same source gives an "eye-witness account of his lavish gifts to the monasteries and poor of St Omer when on the way to Rome, and of the tears and breast-beating which accompanied them".[80] Goscelin, writing later in the 11th century, instead has Cnut place his crown on a crucifix at Winchester one Easter, with no mention of the sea, and 'with the explanation that the king of kings was more worthy of it than he'.[81] However there may be a "basis of fact, in a planned act of piety" behind this story, and Henry of Huntingdon cites it as an example of the king's "nobleness and greatness of mind".[82] Later historians repeated the story, most of them adjusting it to have Cnut more clearly aware that the tides would not obey him, and staging the scene to rebuke the flattery of his courtiers; and there are earlier Celtic parallels in stories of men who commanded the tides, namely Saint Illtud, Maelgwn, king of Gwynedd, and Tuirbe, of Tuirbe's Strand, in Brittany.[83]
The encounter with the waves is said to have taken place at Bosham in West Sussex, or Southampton in Hampshire.
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King Canute… may we all capture the meaning of true humility seasoned with reality!!!