From what I remember from a children's book on King Arthur, the scabbard was even more important in combat than Excalibur as it protected you from bleeding from cuts sustained in combat. Morgan the Fee threw the scabbard into a lake when she was about to be caught up with on horseback after she stole Excalibur.
@@thetyrantofsyracuse "important " a strange way to parse the question? But it more clearly explains the merging of the two belief systems in the earlier stories. As the Roman church replaced the Celtic church more distance was created from the Pre-Christian parts of the legends.
The trilogy of Arthur by Bernard Cornwell is an interesting historical fiction that is definitely the pagan interpretation with the grail being a cauldron.
