Our Saturday morning email features the very best news and exclusive content from our team of reporters Sign me up! Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

A seven-year-old girl has found a 4ft sword in the same lake where King Arthur's Excalibur was said to have been hurled.

Matilda Jones was paddling waist-deep in Dozmary Pool on Bodmin Moor when she came across the blade while on a family holiday.

According to legend, the lake is believed to be the spot where King Arthur is said to have returned Excalibur after being fatally wounded in the Battle of Camlann.

The story of how the legendary Excalibur and how it started and ended with the Lady in the Lake

Ironically, dad Paul Jones, 51, had recounted the famous folklore of King Arthur to Matilda and her four-year-old sister Lois just before the recovery, the Mirror reports.

(Image: SWNS)

Paul, of Doncaster, said: "It was a blistering hot day and Matilda asked if we could go for a paddle. She was only waist deep when she said she could see a sword.

"I told her not to be silly and it was probably a bit of fencing but when I looked down I realised it was a sword. It was just there laying flat on the bottom of the lake.

(Image: SWNS)

"The sword is 4ft long - exactly Matilda's height."

Legend has it that King Arthur was first given Excalibur from the Lady of Lake in Dozmary Pool after rowing out to receive it.

After being mortally wounded in the Battle of Camlann he asked to be taken there so he could return the sword to her.

After three attempts, his loyal follower Bedivere cast it into the water and the Lady of the Lake's arm rose to receive it.

(Image: SWNS)

The pool, in the parish of Altarnun, was said to be bottomless until droughts in 1859 and 1976 dried it out completely and revealed it as a shallow pond.

And Matilda's dad reckoned the sword was probably only about 30 years old.

"I don't think it's particularly old," he said. "It's probably an old film prop."