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Title: The Lost Land of King Arthur

Author: John Cuming Walters

Release date: August 1, 2015 [eBook #49563]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Elisa and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST LAND OF KING ARTHUR ***




Produced by Chris Curnow, Elisa and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)









THE LOST LAND OF KING ARTHUR

[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]

KING ARTHUR’S CASTLE AND EXECUTION ROCK, TINTAGEL

  [_Frontispiece_]




  THE LOST LAND
  OF KING ARTHUR

  BY
  J. CUMING WALTERS

  “On the one hand we have the man Arthur, ... on the other is a
  greater Arthur, a more colossal figure, of which we have, so
  to speak, but a torso, rescued from the wreck of the Celtic
  Pantheon.”--PROFESSOR RHYS.

  “There is truth enough to make him famous besides
  that which is fabulous.”--BACON.

  _WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS_

  LONDON
  CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD.
  1909




  RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
  BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
  BUNGAY, SUFFOLK




FOREWORD


Within a small area in the West Country may be found the principal
places mentioned in the written chronicles of King Arthur--places
with strange long histories and of natural charm. In these pages an
impressionist view is given of the region once called Cameliard and
Lyonnesse. We have ventured into by-ways seldom entered, and we trust
to have gathered a few details which may not be wholly without interest
in their place. Facts are meagre about King Arthur, and romance has
so overlaid reality that his realm seems now to be veritably a part
of fairy-land. In this respect the journey is profitless, save that,
by taking Malory as a guide, we are led to a few delightful and
half-forgotten localities out of the ordinary route, from which romance
has not been wholly dislodged and where tradition survives and is
strong.




CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                            PAGE

     I. OF THE KING AND HIS CHRONICLERS               1

    II. OF LYONNESSE AND CAMELIARD                   32

   III. OF ARTHUR THE KING AND MERLIN
          THE ENCHANTER                              61

    IV. OF TINTAGEL                                  86

     V. OF CAERLEON-UPON-USK                        113

    VI. OF THE ROUND TABLE AND KING
          ARTHUR’S BATTLES                          130

   VII. OF CAMELOT AND ALMESBURY                    159

  VIII. OF ST. KNIGHTON’S KIEVE AND THE
          HOLY GRAIL                                183

    IX. OF CAMELFORD AND THE LAST BATTLE            194

     X. OF GLASTONBURY AND THE PASSING OF
          ARTHUR                                    216




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                           _Facing page_

  King Arthur’s Castle and Execution Rock,
  Tintagel                                _Frontispiece_

  The Rocky Valley, Tintagel                          40

  Merlin’s Cave, Tintagel                             70

  King Arthur’s Castle, Tintagel                      96

  The Elephant Rock, Bossiney Cove                   102

  Barras Head, Tintagel                              110

  The Rocky Valley, Tintagel                         150

  St. Knighton’s Kieve, Tintagel                     184

  St. Knighton’s Glen                                192

  Mouth of Rocky Valley and Long Island, Tintagel    202

  St. Michael’s Tower, Glastonbury                   218

  The Olde Pilgrim’s Inn, Glastonbury                222

  St. Joseph’s Chapel, Glastonbury Abbey             224

  Wells Cathedral                                    236

  The Abbey Barn, Glastonbury                        248

  Ruins of St. Joseph’s Chapel, Glastonbury          254




THE LOST LAND OF KING ARTHUR




CHAPTER I

OF THE KING AND HIS CHRONICLERS

 “What an enormous camera-obscura magnifier is Tradition! How a thing
 grows in the human Memory, in the human Imagination, when love,
 worship, and all that lies in the human Heart, are there to encourage
 it!”--_Carlyle._


No pretence can be made that a complete or exhaustive history of King
Arthur is given in this and the following chapters. Only parts of his
story and parts of the story of his most illustrious knights are woven
into this mosaic of fact and fiction. Sometimes only a few threads of
the romance are to be discovered; at other times many are gathered into
the fabric.

I have taken those portions only of the Arthurian fable, built upon a
small substratum of historic fact, which suited the immediate purpose
in view; the rest, a huge mass, which it would have been unprofitable
to introduce, has perforce been omitted. The primary object has been
simply to call attention to the reputed relics of the great hero, to
mark some of the floating traditions of his power, and to speak of a
few of the localities which bear his name or are associated with his
deeds; and I have striven to add a little to the living interest in
the mouldering monuments, to brush away a little of the dust of ages
from existing evidences, to lift a little the veil of mystery which
darkens, disguises, or shrouds the lineaments of the king. As we find
him in history, and as he is represented in romance, he is so noble a
figure that we should dread to lose him or the conjuring influence of
his name. The proud and triumphing Roman reeled for a time under the
shock of Arthur’s hosts. The Saxon felt his almost invincible power.
Christendom hailed his noble order and rejoiced in his imperial sway.
Now, where he ruled and made his kingdom, are submerged cities, fallen
towers, the wash of waters, the “trackless realm of Lyonnesse.” The sea
has swept over his territory, and the deep shadows of centuries have
fallen upon his deeds. His fame has been made imperishable by mighty
pens, and many a mountain fastness holds his name and gives it forth
to the world; many a towering rock preserves his story; many a frowning
height perpetuates his deeds; many a wild torrent proclaims his name.
So by a hundred contrivances does the memory of King Arthur endure, and
he looms, a giant, behind the mist of ages. Six hundred localities in
the British Isles alone, it has been computed, cherish traditions of
King Arthur, and his praise is sung by a multitude of voices, and in
every region where Celtic influence has been felt. Such an influence as
this cannot proceed wholly from the dry bones of fiction, or from the
golden toys of romance. Legends gather about a great name, just as ivy
covers the ruined column of old time; but the underlying base is there.
Those who contend that King Arthur never lived are open to the charge
of allowing the leaves of fable to hide from their eyes the ruined but
giant pillar beneath.

In the early unwritten history of this island the invading Brythonic
race mastered the inhabitants, the Goidels or Gauls, who had
amalgamated with the Neolithic race, and gave the country the name of
Britannia. To them is attributed the building of Stonehenge and the
round barrows in which the dead were interred. The Cambrians, the
Welsh, and the people of Brittany are their linguistic descendants. So
hardy, stalwart, and venturesome were the Brythons that they gradually
spread themselves over the greater part of the country and penetrated
far to the north. They offered determined defiance to the Romans three
centuries before the Christian era, and successively resisted Norsemen
and Saxons until five centuries of the Christian era had passed. Driven
first to the west, they took up their abode in the wilds of Wales, and
in Cornwall and Devon, and only succumbed at last to the exterminating
campaign of the Saxons, who first cut off the Britons of the north
and the south, and then defeated the two divisions of the race, first
at Chester and then at Bath. The crucial battle between Briton and
Saxon was under the leadership of the last of the British chiefs, the
Arthur of history and romance, and Cerdic the victorious leader of
the “Pagans.” Cerdic, sailing across the channel in his chiules, or
long ships, had landed at the Isle of Wight, fought King Natanleod
of Hampshire, with whom he maintained a five years’ campaign, and,
triumphant at last, and reinforced by the followers of his son and his
nephews, had established the West Seaxe, or Wessex Kingdom.

But, if defeated by the British at Mount Badon, the Saxons were not
long in reversing the issue, and Cerdic’s son Cymric, and his nephews
Stuffa and Whitgar, lived to see their rivals well-nigh exterminated.
At Wodensbury in Wiltshire the remnants of the British race joined with
the Angles in driving the hated Saxon from the sovereignty of Wessex,
but this, too, was without permanent result; for Cerdic’s next of
descent, Cadwalla, restored the supremacy of his house and race.

Cerdic is said to have died in 534, a date of some importance as
helping us to fix the true Arthurian era. The history of many of his
contemporaries is almost as vague as Arthur’s own, but Cerdic stands
out as a man of no uncertain history, and he serves the purpose of
allowing us to test the probabilities of Arthur’s reputed career. That
Cerdic’s record should be more definite, though extremely brief, is
due to the fact that he was a conqueror; that Arthur’s record should
be less definite, though extremely long, is due to the fact that he
was vanquished, and that his story became mixed with the fables of a
generation which did not know him. In the one case we have concrete
facts duly preserved; in the other we have merely a name which fires
the imagination, and a few events which in the course of time are
magnified by romance. Allegory is but truth’s shadow, and the very
songs we deem idle, even the loosely-strung nursery rhymes, may have
inner significance, as Carlyle has told us; men never believed in
songs that were meaningless, and “never risked their soul’s life on
allegories.” Real history and precious lore are bound up in these
shrunken shrouds of withered myths, and it is safe to assume that the
name that is enshrined in a folk-song is the name of a transcendent
hero, a truly great man deemed more than human, merged into the
preternatural, the ideal, or the divine. And, like the student at the
Wayside Inn of Sudbury Town, we can--

  “Love the twilight that surrounds
  The border-land of old romance,
     *    *    *    *
  Where mighty warriors sweep along,
  Magnified by the purple mist,
  The dust of centuries and of song.”

Here it is that--

  “The chronicles of Charlemagne,
  Of Merlin and the Mort d’Arthure
  Mingle together.”

But how the romance of King Arthur originated, how it came to be
written, how it was developed and elaborated, how from a simple history
it came to be invested with special significance and to be impregnated
with spiritual meanings--to explain this, it is necessary in some
measure to trace the course of early English literature and to mark the
advance of the English race. The story leads us back to dim times and
small beginnings. It recalls the semi-barbarism of the first centuries,
the fierce conflicts of contending tribes, the domination of Rome, the
last supreme encounters between Briton and Saxon, and the making of
that race which we believe inherits the hardy and heroic qualities of
both. No doubt the substratum of fact is overlaid with superstitions,
and fantasy has reared her airy edifices upon the frailest of history’s
foundations. The narrow track leading backward to the times of Arthur
is often undefined and irretraceable, and the traveller finds that
unstable bridges have been cast across the gulfs which have broken up
the way. Very seldom, therefore, can a strong foothold be obtained,
and one is often disposed to abandon the pursuit of truth as hopeless.
The tendency has ever been to strain facts to uncertain conclusions in
order to fit the exigencies of romance.

As discoverable error ever leads to general doubt, there are not
lacking those who deny that King Arthur ever existed. He is declared to
be a myth, a type, a symbol, an allegorical figure. Even Caxton, in
printing Malory’s history, was obliged to confute the sceptics by the
mention of what he deemed unassailable facts. It was “most execrable
infidelity,” said he, to doubt the existence of Joshua, David, Judas
Maccabæus, or Alexander; all the world knew there was a Julius Cæsar
and a Hector; “and,” he demanded to know with just indignation, “shall
the Jewes and the heathen be honoured in the memory and magnificent
prowesse of their worthies? Shall the French and German nations
glorifie their triumphs with their Godfrey and Charles [Charlemagne],
and shall we of this island be so possesst with incredulities,
diffidence, stupiditie, and ingratitude, to deny, make doubt, or
expresse in speech and history, the immortal name and fame of our
victorious Arthur? All the honour we can doe him is to honour ourselves
in remembrance of him.”

Having thus made it a point of national pride and honour with us to
accept and believe in King Arthur, Caxton proceeded to advance the
proofs of his existence, which were that his life was written in “many
noble volumes,” while his “sepulture” might be seen at Glastyngburye
[Glastonbury], that the print of his seal was preserved in Westminster
Abbey, and that “in the castel of Dover ye may see Gawayn’s skulle and
Cradok’s mantel; at Wynchester, the rounde table; in other places,
Lancelotte’s sworde, and many other thynges.” These irrefutable facts
admitted, to his thinking, of but one conclusion. “All these thynges
consydered, there can no man reasonably gaynsaye but there was a King
of thys lande named Arthur.” The quaint prologue to Malory’s romance
abundantly testifies that serious arguments must have been already
advanced against Arthur’s existence in order to call for so spirited a
rebuke and so complete an answer. But, as a matter of fact, the truth
of the histories referring to his exploits had been challenged from
the first, and in spite of the immense popularity they enjoyed and the
influence they possessed, they seem never to have been implicitly and
unanimously accepted as veracious records.

Three Welsh poets are supposed to have been the first to celebrate the
deeds of Arthur--the full-throated Taliesin, Aneurin, and Llywarch Hên.
The two latter bards commemorated the heroes who fell at the battle of
Cattraeth, in the year 603. Aneurin’s poem, “Gododin,” about a thousand
lines in length, is preserved in a manuscript of the thirteenth
century. The writer, who was present at the battle he describes, is
supposed by some to have been Gildas, the first historian; others say
he was the son of Gildas.[1] The poem is of a most obscure character,
and doubt has actually arisen as to the particular battle to which it
refers, a theory having been advanced that it celebrated a disaster
which befell the Britons at Stonehenge in 472. But Cattraeth is
supposed to have been Degstan, or Dawstane, in Liddlesdale, at which
the Saxons were defeated; and when such divergencies as these are
possible in regard to locality, persons, and dates, the value of
Aneurin’s poem as history may easily be estimated. The principal fact
which Aneurin tells us is that of “three warriors and threescore and
three hundred, wearing the golden torques,” only four escaped “from
the conflict of gashing weapons,” one being himself. Another of those
who escaped from Cattraeth was Kynon, known as “the dauntless,” whose
love for the daughter of Urien supplied the bards with a theme. Urien
himself fell in this great battle, and it was the poet Llywarch Hên
(buried, it is said, in the Church of Llanever, near Bala Lake) who
wrote his elegy. Llywarch Hên passed his younger days at King Arthur’s
Court as a free guest and a counselling warrior. His career is well
summarised by George Borrow in _Wild Wales_, Chapter LXXIII.

Of the third and most important prophet and bard, Taliesin, Prince
of Song, we are told that he was the son of Saint Henwg; that he had
a miraculous birth; that he spake in wonderful verse at his nativity
and sang riddling tales; that he was invited by King Arthur to his
Court at Caerleon; and that, having presided over the Round Table as
a “golden-tongued knight,” he became chief of the Bards of the West.
A cairn near Aberystwyth marks the site of his grave. The story of
the bard of the radiant brow, of his wonderful delivery from pirates,
and of his poems, which excelled those of all others, has always
been a popular one, but the sifting of truth from fiction is no easy
task. His allusions to Arthur probably have no superior value to the
references of Aneurin and Llywarch Hên, and we are forced therefore to
dismiss them from account. Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to one
of his poetic romances, justly reminded his readers that the Bards,
or Scalds, were the first historians of all nations, and that their
intention was to relate events they had witnessed or traditions that
had reached them. “But,” he added, “as the poetical historian improves
in the art of conveying information, the authenticity of his narrative
invariably declines. He is tempted to dilate and dwell upon events that
are interesting to his imagination, and, conscious how indifferent
his audience is to the naked truth of his poem, his history gradually
becomes a romance.” Such were the early historians, as well as bards,
upon whose records the English chroniclers relied.

These chroniclers were Gildas and Nennius, of whom no very certain
biographical facts can be discovered, though the latter is said to have
been a monk at Bangor. Gildas is the reputed author of a treatise, _De
Excidio Britanniæ_, blindly copied by Bede, which supplied a history
of Britain from the time of the Incarnation to the year 560 A.D. But
darkness enshrouds the historian, of whose country, parentage, and
period much is surmised and little is discoverable. The erudite author
of _Culture in Early Scotland_, Dr. Mackinnon, believes that the writer
of the gloomy and pessimistic work on the destruction of Britain was
a Romanised Briton, who migrated to Brittany to escape the pitiless
severity of the Saxons, and there founded the monastery of Ruys. It
has even been claimed that Gildas was a native of Clydesdale, and if
this were so another link would exist to connect Arthur himself with
Scotland, for the historian was so closely identified with the race
and the cause championed by that king that his surname was taken from
Arthur’s famous battle of Badon, which, again, is said by some to have
been fought in the Lowlands.[2] Gildas was the wisest of the Britons
according to Alcuin, and Dr. Mackinnon thinks that his chronicle
should be accepted as authentic, in spite of its occasional errors
and its undoubted bias. The stern character of the writer is evinced
by his denunciations not only of Saxon excesses, but of the clerical
vices of his age. In short, Gildas was a religious devotee, an austere
and uncompromising critic of the demoralising customs of the time; a
species of prophet, also, who saw in corruption and degeneration the
signs of coming destruction for the race to which he belonged. Roman
influence had undermined the morals of the people and enervated public
and social life. The story Gildas tells is one of unrelieved gloom, but
it stands out in contrast to other narratives by its rugged simplicity
and its freedom from the more romantic elements. Murder, sacrilege, and
immorality were bringing about wholesale desolation, and the patriotic
Gildas saw no future before his country but absolute ruin and racial
extinction. His allusions to Arthur are scanty, incidental, and none
too complimentary, and they have assumed importance only as bases for
the construction of bold theories by subsequent writers.

In Somerset, near the ancient British settlement of Brean, is a rocky
islet known as Steep Holm, 400 feet high and about a mile and a half in
circumference. In this desolate place it is said that Gildas Badonicus
took refuge during the time of conflict between Britons and Saxons,
and that here he composed the greater part of _De Excidio Britanniæ_.
Leland records that the hermit “preached every Sunday in a church by
the seashore, which stands in the country of Pebidiane, in the time
of King Trifunus; an innumerable multitude hearing him. He always
wished to be a faithful subject to King Arthur. His brothers, however,
rebelled against that king, unwilling to endure a master. Hueil
(Howel), the eldest, was a perpetual warrior and most famous soldier,
who obeyed no king, not even Arthur himself.” Steep Holm was invaded
by pirates, and Gildas was compelled to seek another asylum. He chose
Glastonbury, and there he died. His attitude was pessimistic in the
extreme. “The poor remnant of our nation,” he said, “being strengthened
that they might not be brought to utter destruction, took arms under
Ambrosius, a modest man, who, of all the Roman nation, was then alone
in the confusion of this troubled period by chance left alive. His
parents, who, for their merit, were adorned with the purple, had been
slain in the same broils, and now his progeny, in these our days,
although shamefully degenerated from the worthiness of their ancestors,
provoked to battle their conquerors, and, by the goodness of God,
obtained the victory.” In this dismal strain did he write of triumphs,
and the power with which he described defeat may therefore easily be
guessed.

The answer that has been given to the question, oft repeated: Why is
history so silent on King Arthur? is a strange one. It is said that
Gildas, on hearing that Arthur had slain his brother Howel, was
so deeply offended that he determined that the hero should not be
celebrated by him. In revenge, he cast into the sea “many excellent
books which he had written concerning the acts of Arthur, and in the
praise of his nation, by reason of which thing you can find nothing
of so great a prince expressed in authentic writings.” Gildas himself
supplies another explanation, for he bewailed the loss of national
records “which have been consumed in the fires of the enemy, or have
accompanied my exiled countrymen into distant lands.” His own sources
of information were those which he found in Armorica and other portions
of the Continent.

Nennius is supposed to have compiled another comprehensive history
comparable with that of Gildas--_Historia Britonum_--the period
embraced being from the days of Brute the Trojan to the year 680 A.D.
But so much doubt prevails as to his work, that the history, despite
the later date, has been ascribed to Gildas himself. Both may have been
forgeries of the tenth or eleventh century. For five or six centuries
the story of Arthur was “folk-lore,” and was preserved in snatches
of song, a few fragments of which still exist. Such a legend, as
Longfellow says, can only--

          “Spring at first
  Out of the hunger and the thirst
  In all men for the marvellous.
  And thus it filled and satisfied
  The imagination of mankind,
  And this ideal to the mind
  Was truer than historic fact.”

Songs in praise of heroes, real or mythical, always exist among rude
peoples--the sagas which nations unwillingly let die. They are the
repository of national history, the inspiration of an aspiring and
progressive race, the embodiment of its hopes, the treasury of its
traditions. Mythology, “the dark shadow which language throws on
thought,” is the first outcome of mental activity and percipience--the
struggle for human expression of all that is marvellous and memorable.
All the early history of races is mixed and engloomed with dim
allegories. Intense reverence for divinities, or the awe of them, leads
to the making of fables and the reciting of marvels, in which the gods
speak and act as men, or men speak and act as gods. The thoughts of
primitive peoples are concentrated upon the hero, the commanding figure
who typifies their desires, and about whose name cluster legends of
victory. Not infrequently, divine qualities are attributed to that
hero who thus looms majestically upon the horizon of history, and
ultimately becomes a religion. “The gods of fable are the shining
moments of great men,” Emerson said, and whether the Arthurs and Odins
of mythology were men worshipped as deities, or deities divested of
divinity and transformed into historic heroes, the after-ages must
always have some difficulty in deciding. What we know is that the
interval between language and literature is crowded with shadowy
mythological lore, and little of the light flashed back from to-day can
illumine the haunted, mystic, twilight time of phantom and superstition.

Yet Geoffrey, Archdeacon of Monmouth, and afterwards Bishop of St.
Asaph (1100-1154), in giving shape and substance to the Arthurian
legends and traditions, had no better material to work with than that
supplied by the British folk-songs, the tainted records of Gildas and
Nennius, and the so-called Armoric collections of Walter, Archdeacon
of Oxford, who flourished in the eleventh century, and connected the
Arthur of Brittany with the Arthur of Siluria. Geoffrey’s famous
_Chronicon sive Historia Britonum_, dedicated to Robert, Earl of
Gloucester, and given to the world in the Latin tongue in the year
1115, was professedly a translation of the _Brut y Brenhined_, a
“history of the Kings of Britain, found in Brittany,” best described in
Wordsworth’s phrase: “A British record long concealed in old Armorica,
whose secret springs no Gothic conqueror e’er drank.”

In reality his imagination had been fired by the bardic celebrations of
Arthur’s triumphs, the songs still sung vauntingly by an unconquered
race. The old monkish chronicler manifested a marvellous ingenuity in
imparting circumstantiality of the most convincing character to his
narrative. He connected place-names of great repute with eponymous
heroes; he linked the truths of the Roman occupation with the
half-truths or fables of the British resistance; he wove some of the
most striking Scriptural facts into the fabric of the romance; he so
leavened falsehood with reality that the imposture was hard to detect,
especially in an uncritical age, and the effect was most impressive
upon the minds of an unreasoning generation. His inventions did not
extend to incidents; these he took from the chronicles to hand, and he
can only be charged with a free amplification of the records, and a
readjustment of the events which had been described. Notwithstanding
all the craft and devices of the chronicler, however, his history was
almost immediately challenged, William of Newburgh, a Yorkshire monk,
declaring that Geoffrey had “lied saucily and shamelessly,” with many
other hard terms. He charged the supposed chronicler with making use
of, and wholly depending upon, the old Breton tales, and with adding
to these contestable compilations “increase of his own.” Nor was
William of Newburgh alone in his protests and denunciation. Giraldus
Cambriensis, by a parable, implied that Geoffrey’s work was a deceit.
There was a man at Caerleon, he said, who could always tell a liar
because he saw the devil and his imps leaping upon the man’s tongue.
The Gospel of St. John was given him; he placed it in his bosom; and
the evil spirits vanished. Then the _History of the Britons_, by
“Geoffrey Arthur” (“Arthur” was a by-name of Geoffrey’s), was handed
to him, and the imps immediately reappeared in greater numbers, and
remained a longer time than usual on his body and on his book. _Cœdit
quæstio_. But all this did not prevent Geoffrey’s masterpiece in nine
books from attaining a remarkable popularity both in its original form
and when translated, as it rapidly was, into the Anglo-Saxon and the
Norman-French languages, where it could be fully understanded of the
people. It covered the history of the Britons from the time of Brut,
great-grandson of Æneas of Troy, to Cadwallader’s death in 688.

The first translators were Geoffrey Gaisnar or Gaimar, in 1154 (the
original history had been published only seven years previously),
who turned the story into Norman-French verse, and Wace, a native of
Jersey, who obtained the favour of the Norman kings, and was the author
of two long romances in Norman-French--the famed _Brut_, or _Geste des
Bretons_, and the almost equally famous _Roman de Rou_. The former
work was a free metrical rendering, published in Henry II.’s reign, of
Geoffrey’s _Chronicle_, with some new matter. Wace, according to Hallam
the historian, was a prolific versifier who has a “claim to indulgence,
and even to esteem, as having far excelled his contemporaries without
any superior advantages of knowledge.” It was in emulation of him that
several Norman writers composed metrical histories.

Then came Layamon, a Midland priest living at a noble church at Emly,
or Arley, who at the close of the twelfth century produced the first
long poem written in the English language. He did not go to Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s work direct, but wrote an amplified imitation of Wace’s
version of the _Chronicle_. Layamon’s paraphrase contained just over
double the number of lines in Wace’s poem, the additions consisting
chiefly of interpolated dramatic speeches. There were already Cymric,
Armoric, Saxon, and Norman ingredients in the medley of history and
romance, and to these Layamon added a slight Teutonic element, for the
chansons of the Trouvères had carried the fame of Arthur into Germany,
and already new legends with new meanings were germinating from the
loosely-scattered seed. With Artus for the central figure and with
courtly chivalry for the theme, these variations and expansions of
the story of the British chief exercised as powerful and enduring an
influence upon the people of France and Germany as they had done, and
continued to do, upon the people of Britain. The good priest seems
to have had no other object in writing in good plain Saxon the story
of King Arthur than to make widely known among his countrymen the
noble deeds in which he evidently had an abounding faith. In fact,
his purpose was purely patriotic. The only guile he employed was in
supplying the names of many persons and places, in addition to the
speeches, all of which circumstances served to magnify the literary
imposture. Walter Map, or Mapes, a man of the Welsh Marches, with a
reputation for exceeding frankness and honour, followed Layamon and
introduced other and more striking details of permanent value. Map
was the friend of Becket, and is believed to have been for some time
the king’s chaplain. For the love of the king his work was done. His
Latin satirical poems display his chief characteristics, and it is
as a wit rather than a writer that he was famous at the Court. Yet
it was this man who is held to have conceived the character of the
pure and stainless knight Sir Galahad, assigning to him what is in
some respects the chief, or at all events the worthiest, position in
the Arthurian list of knights. If Sir Galahad, stainless, chivalrous,
alone capable of achieving the Quest of the Grail, were the creation of
Walter Map, to him we owe that spiritual and religious element which
refines and enriches King Arthur’s history. Map wrote the story of the
Grail, a Christianised rendering of Celtic myth, and to him probably
we owe the moving and impressive _Mort_, with those notable outbursts
which rank among the treasures of our literature. He, however, had
the originals to work upon. The Welsh had taken their legends to
Brittany, the troubadours were singing them, and the German and the
French chroniclers were at work. And though there is no doubt that
Map contributed in a considerable degree to the romances, it must be
faithfully recorded that questions have arisen whether he was really
capable of doing all that has been attributed to him, and whether, if
he had the capacity, he would also have had the inclination. “Spotless
spirituality,” such as he is supposed to have infused into the story,
is scarcely consistent with the character of the man whose Anacreontics
are often lacking in refinement.[3]

So far, it will be easily conceded, very little has been advanced in
the way of proof of the existence of the British prince and hero, of
the Cymric “Dux Bellorum,” of the Chief of the Siluri or Dumnonii,
the name given to the remnant of the British races driven westward
by the Saxons. We can understand Milton questioning who Arthur was,
and doubting “whether any such reigned in Britain.” “It had been
doubted heretofore, and may be again with good reason,” he wrote,
notwithstanding the fascination possessed by--

            “What resounds
  In fable or romance of Uther’s son
  Begirt with British and Armoric knights.”

Geoffrey’s “monument of stupendous delusion” had not deceived him, and
Sir Thomas Malory’s laborious compilation, while winning unstinted
admiration for its beauty, richness, and delectation, would be as
unconvincing historically as were Caxton’s quaintly-argued evidences.
All the tributaries which now combined to make the full broad current
of Arthurian literature were infected at their sources, numerous and
widely separated as those sources were. If Malory depended, as we have
the authority of the best scholars for believing, upon the several
ancient romances of Merlin, the inventions and adaptations of Walter
Map, the mysterious compilations of pseudonymous “Helie de Bouri” and
“Luces de Gast,” with other manuscripts--some of which are untraced--of
like character, it was obvious that he was only presenting us with an
aggregation of the impostures, inventions, fables, and falsities of
the centuries preceding. That Malory had a conscientious belief in the
romance is extremely probable, though in the absence of all information
concerning him--for he is a name, a great name, and little more--we can
only infer this from the scrupulous manner in which he has performed
his task and from the commendatory form in which it was issued in the
year 1485.

Judged purely as literature, and with every allowance made for want
of uniformity in level as well as for the tediousness of numberless
digressions, Malory’s romance only admits of one opinion; and to
him and to Caxton (who, despite the humility of his prologues and
epilogues, and his professions of “simpleness and ignorance,” was a
scholar and a master of middle-class English) the race is under a
perpetual debt.[4] The compiler does not seem to be open to the charge
levelled against him by Sir Walter Scott, that he “exhausted at hazard,
and without much art or combination, from the various French prose
folios”; on the contrary it is easy to conceive that he exercised
that “painful industry” with which he is credited by the writer of
the Preface to the edition of 1634. In addition to this, he stamped
his own individuality upon the work, and manifested a singular purity
of taste by removing the grosser elements which stained many of the
earlier versions, and by preserving all that was best as literature and
in keeping with the finest and truest spirit of romance. We know from
the scholarly investigations of Dr. Sommer and Sir Edmund Strachey
how judicious Malory was in translating from his “French books,” or in
making abstracts, or in amending and enlarging. With true insight he
chose the material that was of good report and of genuine worth; the
dross he cast aside. Malory may have belonged to a Yorkshire family,
judging from the fact that Leland recorded that a Malory possessed a
lordship in that county, but there is no slight authority for believing
that he was a Welshman and a priest--“a servant of Jesu both day and
night,” as he himself said. That he was a good and earnest Christian
his own work proves beyond all question, for he imparted all the
religious ardour to the romance that he could, and accentuated that
element when it had already been introduced.

The romance of Arthur was enriched, to use Gibbon’s words, with
the various though incoherent ornaments which were familiar to the
experience, the learning, or the fancy of the twelfth century. Every
nation enhanced and adorned the popular romance, until “at length the
light of science and reason was re-kindled, the talisman was broken,
the visionary fabric melted into air, and by a natural though unjust
reverse of public opinion the severity of the present age became
inclined to question the existence of Arthur.” That Arthur’s name
should stream like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak is the fault
of the mediæval writers who, in taking the British king for their hero,
could represent no age but their own, and had no consciousness of
anachronism. It came natural to them in speaking of the sixth-century
knights to endow them with the attributes of the thirteenth and
fourteenth century, and to describe Arthur’s Britain much as they
would have described the Britain of a Henry or an Edward. The Arthur
of Geoffrey, of Walter Map, and of Malory is as impossible as the
Arthur of Wagner, Lytton, Swinburne, and Tennyson. Most of the writers
on chivalry have either viewed and treated the Knights of the Round
Table as contemporary heroes, or have altogether idealised them. We
are forced to the conclusion that Geoffrey and all the other mediæval
chroniclers had no real conception of the character of the age of
which they wrote; if they discovered real names and real persons they
transported them to an imaginary world and invested them with fabulous
attributes. They made reality itself unreal, transformed heroes into
myths, and buried history beneath romance; they had no power to
recognise truth even when it appeared to them.

King Arthur was a traditional and historic chieftain of rude times,
the man of an epoch, a hero to be sung and remembered. His life must
have been a tumult; his seventy odd battles were the events of his era.
Whether he represents a nascent civilisation, or whether, following the
Romans, he simply maintained a barbaric splendour in the cities they
had made or by means of some enlightened laws they had instituted, is a
matter of dispute. But he is the “gray king,” the elemental hero, not
the advanced type. It is a remarkable fact that English scholars have
until quite recently done so little to popularise Arthurian literature.
Malory’s version remained almost inaccessible until Southey issued his
edition, and the best work of all was undertaken for us in latter years
by Dr. Sommer, a German. Considering the hold on the imagination which
the romance possessed, little was done to elucidate the obscurities
and to solve the mysteries concerning not only the authors but the
heroes themselves and the land to which they belonged. Much has been
conjectured, but we feel that we are dealing more with phantoms and
fancies than with realities and facts. Yet what an inspiration King
Arthur has been! His name has lingered, his memory has been treasured
in national ballads. Poets have in all ages hovered round the subject,
and some have alighted upon it, only perhaps to leave it again as
beyond their scope.

  “The mightiest chiefs of British song
  Scorned not such legends to prolong.”

Milton, Spenser, Dryden, Warton, Collins, Scott and Gray, together
with derided and half-forgotten Blackmore; Lytton, with his ambitious
epic, doomed to unmerited neglect; Rossetti, James Russell Lowell, and
lastly, Arnold, Morris, Swinburne, and Tennyson--these have lifted
the romance into the highest and purest realm of poetry, and have
impregnated the story with new meanings and illuminated it with rich
interpretation.

All have felt the influence of Arthur’s history, “its dim enchantments,
its fury of helpless battle, its almost feminine tenderness of
friendship, its fainting passion, its religious ardours, all at length
vanishing in defeat and being found no more.” We have seen how the
Arthurian history, real or fabulous, arose from early traditions and
grew as each chronicler handled it and combined with it the traditions
and the fictions of other races. It lost nothing by its transfusion
into new tongues, but was enriched by the imaginations of the adapters
and combined with the stories already current in other lands. The
hero that Celtic boastfulness had created became the representative
hero of at least three peoples in these early times, and the songs of
the Trouvères speedily spread his fame over Western Europe. We find
Arthur represented as the master of a vast kingdom, and his power
extending to Rome itself; and we find him claimed as the natural hero
of nearly every race which heard his praise and was kindled to valour
by the example of his exploits. Each country seemed bent upon supplying
at least one representative of the Table Round, and eagerly competed
for the pre-eminence and perfection of the knight of its choice. The
kingdom allotted to him was without limit, and as the elder Disraeli
would put it, “fancy bent her iris of many-softened hues over a
delightful land of fiction.”

Lost though King Arthur’s realm is, the land of the ancient British
chieftain must have been real, and it is most possible that we tread
the dust which covers it in journeying from Caerleon to Glastonbury,
from Glastonbury to Camelford, from Camelford to Tintagel. To these
places is our pilgrimage directed.




CHAPTER II

OF LYONNESSE AND CAMELIARD

  “In olde dayes of the King Artour,
  Of which that Bretons speken gret honour,
  All was this lond fulfilled of faerie.”--_Chaucer._

 “I betook me among those lofty fables and romances which recount in
 solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings,
 and from hence had in renown over all Christendom.... Even these books
 proved to me so many incitements to the love and steadfast observation
 of virtue.”--_Milton._

  “Time upon my waste committed hath such theft,
  That it of Arthur here scarce memory hath left.”

  _Drayton._


No matter how far the chroniclers of old departed from fact in the
details of their narratives, they grouped the incidents around a
central figure, a magnificent ancient hero; and, more than that, they
specified the actual locality in which that hero had won his renown.
But just as they magnified the hero out of all proportion, so they
extended the area of his realm beyond all possibility: hence the
difficulties that meet us in the search for truth.

Of the Celts, Ralph Waldo Emerson has perhaps left us, in brief, the
best record. He sums up the greatness and the importance of the race
by saying that of their beginning there is no memory, and that their
end is likely to be still more remote in the future; that they had
endurance and productiveness and culture and a sublime creed; that
they had a hidden and precarious genius; and that they “made the best
popular literature of the Middle Ages in the songs of Merlin and the
tender and delicious anthology of Arthur.” This race was not likely to
take a narrow view of its possessions, or to assign a small territory
to its greatest monarch. Its claim may be preposterous, but that comes
of the consciousness of superior strength and of daring imagination.
Britain was not large enough for the Celts; they required not a country
but a continent. And when their songs were sung, their stories told,
and their great Arthur’s name celebrated throughout the west, they
boldly affirmed that the west was his, and that he had subdued and
ruled the whole civilised world. Arthur’s England became in their eyes
the perfect realm, the ideal place; and the survival of this idea may
be discovered in the works of the poets, old and new.

  “Foemen feet to dust have trod
  The blue-robed messengers of God,”

was Llywarch Hên’s allusion to the slaughter of bards, evincing his
belief in their sacred character. Song was to the Cymry at once
education, a vent for national feeling, and a memorial of great events.
The bard ranked beside the artisan as one of the pillars of social
life. He had only one theme, his country’s hope, misfortune, and
destiny; and, as M. Thierry has aptly said, the nation, poetical in its
turn, extended the bounds of fiction by ascribing fantastic meaning to
the words. “The wishes of the bards were received as promises, their
expectations as prophecies; even their silence was made expressive. If
they sang not of Arthur’s death, it was a proof that Arthur yet lived;
if the harper undesignedly sounded some melancholy air, the minds of
his hearers spontaneously linked with the vague melody the name of
a spot, rendered mournfully famous by the loss of a battle with the
foreign conqueror. This life of hopes and recollections gave charms,
in the eyes of the latter Cambrians, to their country of rocks and
morasses.” How much we really owe, then, to historic fact and how
much to bardic song the accounting of Camelot and Avalon, Tintagel
and Almesbury, as the famous and redoubtable spots of Arthurian
accomplishments and occupation, would be difficult to decide. Literary
genius from the first centres in the minstrel, who is both composer and
singer, who stimulates to action and records events, who is himself
“doer” and “seer.”

But for this rich and sustained Celtic influence our literature would
be poor indeed, would be less romantic, less poetic, and lacking in
the vitality of human passions, human hopes and aspirations, human
suffering and despair. For the dominant note in Celtic literature--and
this particularly applies to the Arthurian legend which, despite
its boasts, is a story of failure--is an indefinable melancholy, an
exquisite regret; the poetry may be, as Matthew Arnold said, drenched
in the dew of natural magic, and the romances may be threaded with
radiant lights, but there always remains the underlying sombreness of
texture or the overhanging cloud-darkening of the scene. Joyous music
concludes in a minor key or is broken by a sudden note of pathos.
The Celtic bards sang of war, but though the heroes always went
forth bravely to battle it has been recorded that they “always fell.”
Victories are less frequently celebrated than defeats are mourned. The
glory of the Celt was vast and transcendent, but from minstrel-times it
was a fading glory. Work as the history-weavers might with the golden
shuttles of romance their tears mingled with the gleaming strands,
and the tissue as it left the loom was a medley of broken lights and
shadows. Nevertheless, the pictures they have left us of chivalrous
times remain unsurpassed for the grandeur of their conception: they
remain the model and despair of all ages.

The description of Arthurian England, the “Logris” of the chroniclers,
comports with the suggestions of romance, but ill accords with the
facts.[5] Even if we grant the Round Table and the Quest of the Grail,
the fact remains that the times were barbarous and that the Britons of
the sixth century had only reached the outer borders of civilisation.
The exploits of the knights themselves are indicative of a prevailing
state of lawlessness verging perilously upon absolute savagery.
Appalling rites were practised in the castle strongholds, and the life
neither of man nor woman was deemed precious. The romancers themselves
do not disguise that the purpose and the methods of the knights were
little superior to the purpose and methods of those whom they warred
against; and the common practice of the knights to “reward themselves”
in their own ways for victories achieved disposes at once of the
contention that their motives were unselfish, or that their chivalry
was pure and disinterested. The England of King Arthur was therefore
by no means like to be the ideal land of peace, beauty, and content
which poets have imagined. Neither can we concede the whole claim to
Arthur’s undisputed possession of the entire kingdom. The freedom with
which the chroniclers spoke of the king’s unmolested journey north,
south, east, and west, only proves that they made an unwarrantable use
of names. Among the places loosely mentioned or referred to at random
in the romance, or perchance confused in the writers’ minds with places
within a small area, we must count all those beyond the Severn and
Trent, unless we adopt the alternative theory and accept the north as
Arthur’s realm. To these we add all the large proportion of places,
more or less fantastically named, which seem to have had no existence
out of the chroniclers’ brain. Where shall we look for Carbonek, for
the land of Petersaint, for Joyous Isle, for Waste Lands, for Lonazep,
for Goothe, for Case, for the Castles of Grail, La Beale Regard,
Pluero, Jagent, and Magouns? to say nothing of a host of others. And
are we to be deluded by the familiarity with which Jerusalem, Tuscany,
Egypt, Turkey, and Hungary are spoken of, into believing that these
distant places were really visited by Arthur and his knights? Even if
we were to concede all the localities mentioned in Malory’s work we
should be confronted by a new difficulty in the _Mabinogion_, where
quite a fresh series of towns and countries is mentioned in addition to
many of the old ones. But while in the _Mabinogion_ the west of Europe
is almost exclusively dealt with, the English, French, and German
historians would be content with nothing less than the best part of the
hemisphere. No petty view, however, must be taken of the Arthur-land of
romance. If Caerleon was his capital, we must believe that he was not
unknown north of the Humber, and that he had a castle in old Carlisle.
Calydon and Brittany, Ireland and Wales, acknowledged his power and
felt his sway. The Roman himself met Arthur face to face; knights
carried his fame to Constantinople--so the early historians asseverate,
and so they doubtless sincerely believed.

But the more cautious student will confine his attention to a group
of but half-a-dozen places in South Wales, Devonshire, and Cornwall,
and will doubt the truth of tradition even when it mingles with the
nomenclature of the romance. Of Lyonnesse whelmed beneath the waves
we have no knowledge; it is a lost and perhaps half fabulous region.
Cameliard, whose boundaries are fairly well known, is strewed with
doubtful relics, and preserves a multitude of strange stories. These
are all that remain to us when we have traversed King Arthur’s land.
Lyonnesse is reported to have been a region of extreme fertility,
uniting the Scilly Isles with Western Cornwall. The hardy Silures
were the inhabitants of this tract, and were remarkable for their
industry and piety. No fewer than one hundred and forty churches
testified to the latter quality, and the rocks called Seven Stones
mark the site of their largest city. Tradition is untrustworthy
as to any great cataclysm, but the Saxon chronicle declared that
Lyonnesse was destroyed by a “high tide” on November 11, 1099. The
assumption is that where the sea now sweeps with tremendous force,
between Land’s End and the Scillies, once lay a fair region, another
Atlantis, which formed no unimportant part of King Arthur’s realm. The
etymology of the name Scilly is more or less doubtful. The word has
been identified with Silura, or Siluria, the land of the Silures--that
is, South Wales. Malory’s Surluse, or Surluce, reminiscent of the
French Sorlingues, if it be not Scilly must remain unidentified. The
first mention of it is in the history of La Cote Male Taile, where
it is said that Sir Lancelot and the damsel Maledisant (afterwards
known as Bienpensant) “rode forth a great while until they came
to the border of the county of Surluse, and there they found a fair
village with a strong bridge like a fortress.” A later reference shows
that it was in and about Cornwall that the knights were at this time
staying and seeking adventures with the king; and the “riding forth
a great while to the border of the country of Surluse” would fit in
with the idea that Cornwall and Scilly were not then divided by the
sea, but formed part of the kingdom of Lyonnesse. Sir Tristram, who is
essentially a Lyonnesse knight, was sought in the country of Surluse
when he had vanished during the period of King Mark’s treachery; and
there seems no doubt that, though an accessible part of the kingdom,
it was a considerable distance away, and perhaps somewhat out of the
beaten track. Sir Galahalt, “the haut prince,” was its ruler, and
he was resorted to by the knights; but we are distinctly told that
“the which country was within the lands of King Arthur,” and for that
reason Sir Galahalt could not even arrange a joust without obtaining
his sovereign’s consent. Again, Sir Galahalt was known as Sir Galahalt
“of the Long Isles,” which admits of a fair deduction, and seems not
without its significance in this argument.

[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]

THE ROCKY VALLEY, TINTAGEL

  [_To face p. 40_]

The “guarded Mount,” dedicated to St. Michael, overlooks the long
Atlantic waves, the waste of waters, and “towards Namancos and Bayona’s
hold,” and this Ultima Thule is thronged with traditions of Arthur and
his lost territory. Grim, cavernous Pengwaed, or Land’s End, with its
granite rocks; the Lizard, and Penzance, the last town in England, are
all stored with these old memories; and the waves flooding the bays
tell of that younger time over which hangs perpetual shadow. This is
the Lyonnesse of Tennyson’s imagining, the

  “Land of old, upheaven from the abyss
  By fire, to sink into the abyss again,”

where long hillocks dip down to the sea-line, where the coast spreads
out into shifting treacherous sand, and where amid the dreary plains
the Silures fought their battles for life and freedom.[6] At Vellan,
Arthur slaughtered so many Danes that the mill next day was worked
with blood. Land’s End still shows its “Field of Slaughter,” and by
the coast Arthur and Mordred met during the last conflict. Lyonnesse
may have included Armorica also, still rich with its incomparable
traditions and its unsurpassed folk-songs. For once the people of
Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales, speaking practically the same tongue,
lavished all their poetic wealth upon the Arthurian cycle of legendary
history, claimed the knights in common, and each still claims to
possess the more famous shrines. Merlin’s forest thus becomes a part
of Lyonnesse; Joyous Gard (as we shall presently see) can still be
found in Brittany, instead of Northumberland; and Avalon, instead of
being a pilgrim’s resort in Somerset, is an island off the Breton
coast, seen dimly from the wild moorland country, strewn with
dolmens, and reaching down to a shore of silvery sands. Between the
orange-coloured rocks “the sea rushes up in deep blue and brilliant
green waves of indescribable transparency. On a bright summer day the
whole scene is one of unspeakable radiance. Delightful little walks
wind round the western headland, where more groups of rock appear, as
weird and fantastic as the first.”[7] And across the stretch of azure
sea lies the dim islet which Breton legend affirms is King Arthur’s
resting-place. When we consider the French sources of the history
compiled by Geoffrey, Wace, and Map, the reasonableness of believing
that Avalon was at first located in Brittany becomes at once apparent,
and the wonder is that in this and many other cases the transference
of the scenes to England should have been so complete or that English
equivalents should have been so readily accepted.

The more obscure names of places would doubtless be identified if the
search were more assiduous in Brittany than in Britain, and if the
original Breton nomenclature were used as a basis. Tristram, Iseult,
and Lancelot at least are French, and the prevailing tone of the
romances in which they figure is French; we must look to Brittany
for some part of the scenery.[8] At various times it has been stated
that Sir Lancelot’s Joyous Gard was none other than Alnwick, or else
Bamborough Castle, in Northumberland, a structure which dates from the
year 554, and may have been the site of an earlier stronghold.[9] But
why Sir Lancelot, a Breton Knight of Arthur’s Court, whose exploits are
confined to Lyonnesse, the southern portion of King Arthur’s territory,
should have had his castle located in the north cannot be determined,
unless we so far revise our opinions as to credit (as some have done)
the existence of a Scotch knight of that name. Instead of looking to
Northumberland for Sir Lancelot’s stronghold, and endeavouring to
identify Bamborough as his residence, why not turn straightway to
France, his native land, and accept such facts as are there to be
found? The chronicle of Malory itself says that Joyous Gard was “over
sea.” Beyond the forest of Landerneau may still be seen the traditional
site of a Chateau de la Joyeuse-Garde, with an ancient gateway and a
Gothic vault of the twelfth century remaining. Here at least we find
the name; the Breton regards the spot as that which Lancelot, the
Breton knight, claimed as his own; and the scene is in that Armorica
from which the original traditions sprang, or, at least, where they
took earliest root.[10] In addition to Joyous Gard, Brittany boasts of
its Tristan Island in the Bay of Douarnenez, named after the “Tristan
des Léonais” who was the rival of King Mark. King Mark, too (“Marc’h,”
in the original, signifying horse, and so named because of his pointed
ears), has his own locality, for according to Breton legend he was not
ruler of Cornwall but of Plomarc’h, which place lies a little to the
east of Douarnenez and contains the ruins of his “palace.” But Renan
justly inquired, if Armorica saw the birth of the Arthurian cycle, how
was it that we failed to find there any traces of the nativity?

Cameliard is a tract in some respects not so hard to define or
locate as Lyonnesse. The town of Brecknock, three miles from which
is Arthur’s Hill, seems to have marked one of its borders, and its
capital was a now undiscoverable city, Carohaise. Ritson believes
that Arthur’s kingdom could not have been considerable, and he is
disposed to grant him the lordship only over Devon and Cornwall,
with perhaps some territory in South Wales, the land called Gore or
Gower. Be that as it may, his name, by a series of links, extends
from Cornwall to Northumberland, from the Scillies to London, and
from London to Carlisle. The British tribe, the Silures, to which
Arthur belonged, occupied the region now divided into the counties
of Hereford, Monmouth and Glamorgan. Brecknock and Radnor may have
been added, and it is certain that Arthur had supreme dominion over
Cornwall and part of Somerset and Devon. Any “kings” of these places,
such as Erbin, father of Geraint, must have been tributary to him.
Tacitus has left us an account of the valour, the determination, and
the warrior qualities of the Silures, who had Iberian blood in their
veins. It was after the Roman and Saxon invasions that they removed
their seat of Government from London to Siluria, Arthur having his
court at Caerleon. The Britons were a Christian race, for that religion
had been introduced among the Latinised Brythonic tribes before the
end of the second century. This race prevailed over the Goidels and
Ivernians in the territory, and on the recall of the Roman legions
one of the Brythons succeeded the Dux Britanniarum and thus became
the head of the Cymry (or Cambroges, “fellow-countrymen”). Saxon
Cerdic and his son Cymric for twenty years found it impossible to
break through the forest districts west of the Avon, which formed the
outwork of the British forces; and we may almost take it for granted
that at one time the whole of the west country was in Arthur’s power,
a line from Liddlesdale in the north to the southern extremity of
Lyonnesse, taking in Cumberland, Wales (and perhaps Staffordshire and
Shropshire), Devon and Cornwall, roughly marking the boundary. But his
reported excursions north of the Trent and to the east counties would
also lead to the inference that for some time the tribe overran the
major part of the country. Hence we can account for the large number
of scattered memorials of the monarch found in all parts of the land,
though superstition may have attached his name to many places where
he was absolutely unknown. Arthur’s Seats, or Quoits, abound. They
are to be found both in North and South Wales, and the name seems
to have been given to any rock or commanding situation which in the
popular fancy was fit to bear it. In Anglesey, in the wooded grounds of
Llwyliarth a seat of the Lloyd family, a rocking stone, the famous Maen
Chwf, is called Arthur’s Quoit. Cefn Bryn ridge in Glamorganshire, an
imposing elevation, is crowned with a cromlech, together with numerous
cairns and tumuli. The cromlech, known as Arthur’s Stone, is a mass
of millstone grit fourteen feet long and seven feet two inches deep,
and rests upon a number of upright supporters each five feet high. In
the Welsh Triads this cromlech, which is near the turnpike road from
Reynoldstone to Swansea, is alluded to as “the big stone of Sketty,”
and it ranks as one of the wonders of Wales. Another such stone is to
be found in Moccas parish, Herefordshire, the cromlech in this case
being eighteen feet long, nine feet broad, and twelve feet thick, and
supported originally by eleven upright pillars. The colossal king
was to have colossal monuments. Brecknockshire has several imposing
memorials of Arthur. Five miles south of Brecon rise the twin peaks of
the mountain range, and they are designated Arthur’s Chair. A massive
British cromlech adjoining the park of Mocras Court is called Arthur’s
Table. On the edge of Gossmoor there is a large stone upon which are
impressed marks resembling four horse-shoes. Tradition asserts that
these marks were made by the horse King Arthur rode when he resided
at Castle Denis and hunted on the moors. Between Mold and Denbigh is
Moel Arthur, an ancient British fort, defended by two ditches of great
depth. At Rhuthyn (Ruthin) in the vicinity King Arthur is said to have
beheaded his enemy Huail (Howel), to whom Gildas refers. The record
might be extended indefinitely, though no valid argument can be based
upon any of the facts. The indiscriminate use of Arthur’s name often
shows an extravagance of imagination and a reckless disregard of what
is appropriate. Between Mold and Ruthin, for instance, is Maen Arthur,
a stone which popular fancy has adjudged to bear the exact impression
of the hoof of the king’s steed. There is something like substantial
reason for believing that the British hero was connected with Monmouth,
Cardiff, and even with Dover, and either the Arthur of the Silures or
another British chief seems to have reached Carlisle--that is, if the
chronicles did not confuse Cardoile with Carduel. The Cumbrian Arthur
figures in two ancient ballads, “The Marriage of Gawaine,” and “The Boy
and the Mantle,” while Scott’s poem of Arthur and his Court at Carlisle
is, of course, too well known to need more than a reference. In the
time of Baeda Carlisle was known as Lugubalia, which name by corruption
became Luel. The British prefix Caer, a stone fort, made the name
Caer-Luel, and as such it was long known. It gradually degenerated into
Carliol, and finally became Carlisle. That the ancient city should
have become confused with Caerleon is natural and explicable. Yet
Arthur’s connection with a portion of the north is strongly insisted
on. Where Wigan now stands he fought a famous battle. Pendragon Castle
in Westmoreland claims him as its founder; and passing by easy stages
we find ourselves confronted with a Northumbrian Arthur. From this
point the transition to Scotland itself is extremely easy, the lowland
part of that country being claimed as the veritable Cameliard.

According to no mean authority, we must leave England entirely and
search in the North alone for the sites, not only of King Arthur’s
battles, but for all the places connected with his exploits and his
residence. Badon is then found in Linlithgowshire at Bowden Hill, and
the great battle of Arderydd is located at Arthuret in Liddlesdale.
The Scotch Merlin and the Scotch Lancelot are the king’s companions,
and a Scotch Gildas is the historian. The resting place of Avalon is
then found in the caverns of the Eildon Hills, and the voice to rouse
him from his charmed sleep will echo through them and “peal proud
Arthur’s march from fairyland.” As a curious fact it may be mentioned
that nearly all the heroes of the “Four Ancient Books of Wales” are
traced to Scotland, and admittedly in the Arthurian legend the British
king was connected with as northern a place as the Orkneys by the
marriage of his sister to the king of those islands. Of King Arthur,
the Scotch ballad rudely tells that when he ruled that land he “ruled
it like a swine.” The story of the king was the diversion of James
V., who may have known that Drummelziar on the Tweed could boast of a
Holy Thorn like Glastonbury, that there was an Arthur’s Oven on the
Carron near Falkirk, and that Guinevere’s sepulchre was at Meigle in
Strathmore. Edinburgh, or Agnet, is positively represented as the site
where the Castle of Maidens stood, and the lion-shaped Arthur’s Hill
is supposed to confirm the tradition that here the king abode and
made his name.[11] His tomb is pointed out in Perthshire, and all the
machinery of the romances is claimed as of Scotch origin and invention.
The names of localities are traced, and by transporting Arthur boldly
to the Lowlands we account more easily for his rapid incursions into
Northumberland and of the country north of the Trent, if we cannot for
his equally rapid journeys to Dover and Almesbury and Winchester.

Are not the interchangeability of names and the duplication of persons
and places susceptible of a very simple explanation? Caerleon, or
Carduel, was confused with Carlisle, each in itself a fitting and
likely place for Arthurian exploits; the historians were grievously
misled as to Winchester and the part it occupied in the romances;
and we know now that various contradictions simply arose from the
confusion in the minds of the chroniclers, who never seemed to have
been quite certain whether Caledonia and Calydon were not one and
the same, whether Camelot was inland or by the sea, whether Joyous
Gard was a few days’ or a few months’ journey from Cornwall, whether
Camelot was in England or in Wales, whether Arthur’s “owne castell”
at Tintagel could be reached by “riding all night” from London, or
whether Lyonnesse was Cornwall or Brittany. A hundred topographical
complexities meet us wherever we look, and the sole conclusion of the
matter is that Geoffrey and his successors inextricably mixed Scotch,
Welsh, and Armoric details both in regard to the stories and the
localities. The historians made no effort to be consistent in their
allusions, to reconcile contradictory statements, or to account for
abrupt changes of scene from the South-West to the North. While they
endeavoured to concentrate Arthur’s kingdom in South Wales and Cornwall
they made occasional sweeps to Berwick and Edinburgh, and annihilated
the distance between Dover and Carlisle. To add to the confusion there
were names, especially in the Lowlands of Scotland and in the West of
England, of the same derivation, and, as Mr. Glennie has demonstrated,
it is as easy to discover a Caledonian Caerleon, Avalon, or Camelot as
it is to discover any of them in the district once called Cameliard.
The unravelling of the skein, which became more and more entangled
as new hands developed the romances, is now almost an impossibility.
Arthur’s own name was changed, and it has been affirmed that he is
still confused with Arthurius of Gwent, and with others of like name
who were distinct persons. The conclusion of the whole matter must
be that names in the romances are a source of error and confusion;
that different significances were attached to them by the chroniclers
themselves, and that if the truth be ever established totally new
meanings may be expected.

Let me here give one instance of possible confusion of names, and
broach a somewhat bold theory. The name Camelford, the scene of the
last battle, is by some said to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon
_gafol_, meaning “tribute,” the spot so called marking the ford where
of old time tribute was paid. The name Guildford is also declared to
have a similar signification, and, in fact, to be but a variation
of Camelford. If this be so, a curious point arises. Guildford is
mentioned towards the close of the Arthurian history. Sir Lancelot
and the king having parted company, it is recorded that Arthur
“departed towards Winchester with his fellowship. And so by the way
the king lodged in a towne called Astolat, which is now in English
called Gilford.” Upon this Mr. Aldis Wright observes: “Guildford in
Surrey is no doubt the place alluded to; but I am not aware that the
name of Astolat or Astolot (Caxton) is given to it in any authentic
history.” It may be argued that King Arthur would be more likely to
pass through Guildford, Surrey, than through Camelford, Cornwall. But
his starting point is not certain, and it must be specially noted that
the Winchester to which he was making his way was not Winchester in
Hampshire but “Camelot, that is, Winchester” (Book XVIII., c. 9). The
unauthorised and even absurd interpolation that Camelot was Winchester
at once changes the whole argument. Disregarding this misleading
explanation we find that Arthur was on his way to Camelot from one of
his Courts, and if Camelot was in Somersetshire it is most likely that
Camelford would be one of the intermediate stages. But the importance
of the whole contention is this: Astolat, as frequently mentioned in
connection with the “faire maide” Elaine and Sir Lancelot’s worthiest
love episode, is undiscoverable. The name is unknown outside romance;
and though we are assured that it is “now in English called Gilford,”
no authority can be found for the assertion. Besides, Guildford in
Surrey was rather beyond the borders of the British Kingdom, even
granting occasional excursions to Middlesex and Kent. But if Guildford
were synonymous with Camelford, as the derivation permits us to
believe, then Astolat was none other than Camelford, and at once there
are light and order where formerly prevailed obscurity and confusion.
Another point worth mention is that, although tradition marks Camelford
as the actual scene of important events in the Arthurian history, and
although from its situation, its proximity to Tintagel, and its steep
hill suitable to be crowned by a baron’s castle such as Sir Bernard of
Astolat possessed, we may safely surmise that it was well known to
the ever-journeying knights, yet the actual name of Camelford is never
mentioned in the chronicles. As it was of Anglo-Saxon origin, this
omission would easily be accounted for in the earliest records, while
if Astolat was the traditional name it is at once clear how it could
equally be applied to Camelford and to Guildford. We must of course
remember that where the chroniclers themselves sought to elucidate they
too often confused; the finger-posts they set up have started many
upon weary and fruitless journeys, and the guidance offered with such
confidence turns out most commonly to be the most random of guesses.
If, however, we may place the slightest credence in the “Astolat, which
is now in English called Gilford,” as much can be said for “Gilford”
being “Gafolford” or Camelford, as for its being “Gyldeford” or
Guildford. The stretch of low-lying level fields on either side of the
Camel, the sharp-peaked hills in the distance, the dark meres among the
hills, and the angry sea lashing against the rocks visible a mile or
two away, all accord with the typical scenery of King Arthur’s realm,
and make us not unwilling to believe that famous Astolat was here to be
found.

When all is told, when all the searching is ended, it is found that
some half-dozen places only stand out pre-eminent from the host of
localities in the West in each of which only a single seed seems to
have germinated; and these half-dozen places, like the last citadels of
the hero, resist every effort and assault of the invader to dislodge
the traditions of Arthur. I have not attempted to write a history of
these places, but only to say something of their aspect to-day and of
the chief events and ancient traditions linked with their names. Now
and again I mention facts of later date for the purpose of showing
that these famous spots have continued to be the centres of activity
and connected with great characters; but in the main I confine myself
to the legends of Arthur and to the episodes of chivalry. To have
attempted more would have entailed not only a far more comprehensive
work, but the treatment of the subject in a more scientific spirit than
is here displayed. The object has been to deal rather with the romantic
side than with the technical, for which the deep scholarship of a Rhys
or a Müller alone can be the qualification. It is necessary to premise
also that of the most conspicuous Arthurian localities nothing but the
bare tradition can be recorded. That tradition lives and is cherished,
but its origin is undiscoverable. The sap lingers in the branches,
but the roots are detached and lost. The legend is spread everywhere,
but there are no verities. The visitor to the Arthurian scenes finds
nothing but eponymous names and superstitions--indeed, the evidence
present leads him to other conclusions than those he seeks. He looks
for a British encampment, and he finds a _post_-Roman; he looks for a
relic of Arthur, and he finds one of Antoninus. What is persistently
ascribed to the British hero, or associated with his times, is either
intangible or is irreconcilable with existing facts. Castles he is
said to have inhabited were built centuries after his death, and there
can only remain the free speculation that they mark the site of a
former structure of which no trace remains and of which no record was
made. Spots which are called King Arthur’s grave, or his seat, or his
hunting-ground, or his camp, neither he nor his band, it often happens,
could ever have been near. We look for persons, and we find a crowd of
phantoms; we eagerly watch for demonstrations, and we find myth and
fable; we hope to see the clear page of history, and we find a page
that is undecipherable or blotted with shadows. Records are effaced,
song and story delude, the track to truth is almost closed. Everything
crumbles into dust at the touch, like Guinevere’s golden hair, and
nothing is now left but the pure romance. And some of us may be content
and almost glad to have it so.




CHAPTER III

OF ARTHUR THE KING AND MERLIN THE ENCHANTER

  “No matter whence we do derive our name,
  All Brittany shall ring of Merlin’s fame,
  And wonder at his Arts.”

  _The Birth of Merlin_, Act III. sc. iv.

  “He by wordes could call out of the sky
    Both sunne and moone, and make them him obey;
  The land to sea, and sea to maineland dry,
    And darksome night he eke could turn to day;
  That to this day, for terror of his fame
  The feendes do quake when any him to them does name.”--_Spenser._


The fact that the name Art(h)us does not occur in the Gildas manuscript
has led to the inference that the king was unknown to that chronicler;
and the assumption that he is alluded to as Ursus (the Bear) tends to
confirm the theory of those who would affirm that he is no more than
a solar myth. It must be understood that the Arthur of romance, as
we now know him, was a character ever increasing in importance and
prominence as the history was re-written and elaborated; at first a
minor actor in the drama, he at length became the leading figure and
the centre around which all the other characters were grouped. The
Arthur of the historian Nennius is the original personage to whom all
the famed attributes have been accorded by subsequent writers. With
so much doubt and confusion, involving the identity of the person
himself, it is inevitable that even more doubt and confusion should
exist when we come to detailed events. Even the name of Arthur’s father
is variously given, a circumstance which caused Milton to question the
veracity of the whole history; and the date of his birth, of his death,
the age at which he died and other smaller points, lead to nothing but
endless contradiction. The number of his battles is variously given as
twelve and seventy-six; he is said to have wedded not one but three
Guineveres (Gwenhwyvar); his age at death varies from just over thirty
years to over ninety; and the date of the last battle is 537, 542, or
630.[12] King Arthur’s actual name may have been Arthur Mab-Uther; his
genealogical line has been traced back to Helianis, nephew of Joseph;
the year 501 is now usually accepted as the date of his birth; and
St. David, son of a prince of Cardiganshire, is mentioned not only as
his contemporary but as a near relative. If the Sagas were compared
with the Arthurian romances numerous points of resemblance could be
shown. Olaf is the Arthur of the story, Gudrun the Guinevere, and Odin
is the Merlin, while the city of Drontheim serves as Caerleon. The
story recounting how Arthur magically obtained his sword Excalibur
finds an exact parallel in the story of Sigmund, Volsung’s son; and
even the emblem of the dragon is not lacking,[13] for in the story
of the Volsung we learn that Sigurd’s shield bore the image of that
monster, “and with even such-like image was adorned helm, and saddle,
and coat-armour.” But again it must be remembered that Arthur’s kingdom
is reported to have extended to Iceland itself; in fact, the bounds of
his kingdom were only set by the chroniclers where their own definite
geographical knowledge ended.

“We cannot bring within any limits of history,” Sir Edward Strachey
has properly said, “the events which here succeed each other, when
the Lords and Commons of England, after the death of King Uther at
St. Albans, assembled at the greatest church of London, guided by
the joint policy of the magician Merlin and the Christian bishop
of Canterbury, and elected Arthur to the throne; when Arthur made
Caerleon, or Camelot, or both, his headquarters in a war against
Cornwall, Wales, and the North, in which he was victorious by the help
of the King of France; when he met the demand for tribute by the Roman
Emperor Lucius with a counterclaim to the empire for himself as the
real representative of Constantine, held a parliament at York to make
the necessary arrangements, crossed the sea from Sandwich to Barflete
in Flanders, met the united forces of the Romans and Saracens in
Burgundy, slew the emperor in a great battle, together with his allies,
the Sowdan of Syria, the King of Egypt, and the King of Ethiopia, sent
their bodies to the Senate and Podesta of Rome as the only tribute he
would pay, and then followed over the mountains through Lombardy and
Tuscany to Rome, where he was crowned emperor by the Pope, ‘sojourned
there a time, established all the lands from Rome into France, and gave
lands and realms unto his servants and knights,’ and so returned home
to England, where he seems thenceforth to have devoted himself wholly
to his duties as the head of Christian knighthood.”

This is the very monstrosity of fable, the grossness of which carries
with it its own condemnation. These facts, however, are not insisted
upon by Malory, though such claims for Arthur were made by the
credulous and less scrupulous writers. Romance has entirely remodelled
his character, and has filled in all the gaps in his life-story in
that triumphant manner in which Celtic genius manifests its power.
The legendary Arthur is made to realise the sublime prophecies of
Merlin, and as those prophecies waxed more bold and arrogant in the
course of ages the proportions of the hero were magnified to suit them.
Merlin had cherished the hope of the coming of a victorious chief
under whom the Celts should be united, but the slaughter at Arderydd
when the rival tribes fought each other, almost destroyed all such
aspirations. Nevertheless the prophet foretold the continuance of
discord among the British tribes, until the chief of heroes formed a
federation on returning to the world, and his prediction concluded with
the haunting words: “Like the dawn he will arise from his mysterious
retreat.” Mr. Stuart Glennie calls Merlin a barbarian compound of
madman and poet, prophet and bard, but denies that he was a mythic
personage or a poetic creation. He was, like Arthur himself, an
actual pre-mediæval personage, and, as in the case of Arthur, we have
no means of determining his origin, his nationality, or the _locale_
of his wanderings. But if, as Wilson observes in one of his “Border
Tales,” tradition is “the fragment which history has left or lost in
its progress, and which poetry following in its wake has gathered up as
treasures, breathed upon them its influence and embalmed them in the
memories of men unto all generations,” we shall extract a residuum of
truth from the fanciful fables of which Merlin is the subject.

Myrdin Emrys, the Welsh Merlin, is claimed as a native of Bassalleg,
an obscure town in the district which lies between the river Usk and
Rhymney. The chief authority for this is Nennius; but according to
others the birthplace was Carmarthen, at the spot marked by Merlin’s
tree, regarding which the prophecy runs that when the tree tumbles
down Carmarthen will be overwhelmed with woe. What we know of Merlin
in Malory’s chronicle is that he was King Arthur’s chief adviser, an
enchanter who could bring about miraculous events, and to whom was
delivered the royal babe upon a ninth wave of the ocean; a prophet who
foretold his sovereign’s death, his own fate, and the infidelity of
Guinevere; a warrior, the founder of the Round Table, and the wise
man who “knew all things.” Wales and Scotland alike claim as their own
this most striking of the characters in the Arthurian story. Brittany
also holds to the belief that Merlin was the most famous and potent of
her sons, and that his influence is still exercised over that region.
Matthew Arnold, gazing at the ruins of Carnac, saw from the heights he
clambered the lone coast of Brittany, stretching bright and wide, weird
and still, in the sunset; and recalling the old tradition, he described
how--

  “It lay beside the Atlantic wave
  As though the wizard Merlin’s will
    Yet charmed it from his forest grave.”

The Scotch Merlin, Merlin Sylvester, or Merlin the Wild, was Merdwynn
of the haugh of Drummelziar, a delightful lowland region, where the
little sparkling Pausayl burn bickers down between the heather-clad
hills until it mixes its waters with the Tweed. He is said to have
taken to the woods of Upper Tweeddale in remorse for the death of his
nephew, though it is more likely that he lost his reason after the
decisive defeat of the Cymry by the Christians of the sixth century.
Sir Walter Scott records that in the _Scotichronicon_, to which work
however no historic importance can be ascribed, as it is notoriously a
priestly invention, is an account of an interview betwixt St. Kentigern
and Merdwynn Wyllt when he was in this distracted and miserable state.
The saint endeavoured to convert the recluse to Christianity, for he
was a nature-worshipper, as his poems show. From his mode of life he
was called Lailoken, and on the saint’s commanding him to explain his
situation, he stated that he was doing penance imposed upon him by
a voice from heaven for causing a bloody conflict between Lidel and
Carwanolow. He continued to dwell in the woods of Caledon, frequenting
a fountain on the hills, enjoying the companionship of his sister
Gwendydd (“The Dawn”), and ever musing upon his early love Hurmleian
(The Gleam), both of whom were frequently mentioned in his poems. His
fate was a singular one, and has been confused with that of the Merlin
of Arthur. He predicted that he should perish at once by wood, earth,
and water, and so it came to pass; for being pursued and stoned by the
rustics--others say by the herdsmen of the Lord of Lanark--he fell from
a rock into the river Tweed, and was transfixed by a sharp stake--

  “Sude perfossus, lapide percussus, et unda,
  Hæc tria Merlinum fertur inire necem.
  Sicque ruit, mersusque lignoque prehensus,
  Et fecit vatem per terna pericular verum.”

The grave of the Scotch Merlin is pointed out at Drummelziar, where it
is marked by an aged thorn-tree. On the east side of the churchyard the
Pausayl brook falls into the Tweed, and a prophecy ran thus:--“When
Tweed and Pausayl join at Merlin’s grave, Scotland and England shall
one monarch have.” And we learn accordingly that on the day of the
coronation of James VI the Tweed overflowed and joined the Pausayl at
the prophet’s grave. The predictions of this Merlin continued for many
centuries to impress the Scotch, and he seems to have had a reputation
equal to that of Thomas the Rhymer. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the
first to introduce a Merlin into the Arthurian romance, and whether
that Merlin had for a prototype Merdwynn Wyllt, or whether there was
in reality a Merlin of Wales, remains an open question. All that can
be said definitely is that similar deeds are ascribed to both, that
each occupies a similar place among his contemporaries, that their
rhapsodical prophecies partake of the same character, and that their
mysterious deaths have points in common. But it is contended that
the _vates_ of Vortigern and of Aurelius Ambrosius, the companion
and adviser of Uther Pendragon and of Arthur, was Myrdin Emrys, who
took his name from Dinas Emrys in the Vale of Waters, whose haunt was
the rugged heights of Snowdon, and who knew nothing of the Merlin
Caledonius who wandered about the heathery hills of Drummelziar, who
was present at the battle of Arderydd in 573, and who lamented in wild
songs the defeat of the pagans and the shattering reverse to the Cymric
cause. These poems, which bewail the fortunes of this unfortunate race,
seem to have found their way into the famous Ancient Books of Wales,
thus tending further to confuse the two Merlins, and resulting in the
old chroniclers ascribing the acts of both to the Myrdin Emrys of King
Arthur’s court. The late Professor Veitch’s poem on Merlin contains
some specimens of Merdwynn Wyllt’s verse, and sets forth his faith in
nature, tinged a little as it were by the Christianity of the era.

[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]

MERLIN’S CAVE, TINTAGEL

  [_To face p. 70_]

The Merlin of King Arthur was reputed to be a native of Carmarthen
among other places, and at three miles’ distance from the town may be
seen “Merlin’s Cave,” one of the traditional places of his mysterious
entombment. Merlin’s birth formed the subject of one of the apocryphal
plays of Shakespeare: the weird magician and worker of enchantment
would have been worthy of the masters’ own depiction. In the romances
he comes with mystery and awe, and he departs with mystery and shame.
“Men say that Merlin was begotten of a devil,” said Sir Uwaine; and
the maid Nimuë (Vivien) on whom he was “assotted,” grew weary of him,
and fain would have been delivered of him, “for she was afraid of
him because he was a devil’s son.” In that wondrously rich drama of
1662, “The Birth of Merlin,” the popular tradition is taken up that
the arch-magician was the son of the arch-fiend. The story introduces
Aurelius and Vortiger (Vortigern), the two Kings of Britain; Ut(h)er
Pendragon, the brother of Aurelius; Ostorius, the Saxon general; and
other historic characters of the era. The chief point of the plot
is the search for and identification of Merlin’s father; and, that
matter settled, the dramatist treats of Merlin’s supernatural skill,
his prophecies, and his aid of Vortiger in building the castle which
hostile fiends broke down by night as fast as it was built by day.
Merlin is represented as born with the beard of an old man, able to
talk and walk, and within a few hours of his birth explaining to his
mother that he reads a book “to sound the depth of arts, of learning,
wisdom, knowledge.”

        “I can be but half a man at best,
  And that is your mortality; the rest
  In me is spirit. ’Tis not meat nor time
  That gives this growth and bigness. No, my years
  Shall be more strange than yet my birth appears.”

He prophesies forthwith, recognises his father, the Devil, at a glance,
gives proof of his miraculous powers in many ways; and proceeding to
Vortiger’s court baffles the native magicians, and shows the king
why his castle cannot be built by reason of the dragons in conflict.
He foretells that the victory of the white dragon means the ultimate
victory of the Saxons--“the white horror who, now knit together, have
driven and shut you up in these wild mountains,” and that the king
who won his throne by bloodshed must yield it to Prince Uter. The
prediction is verified, and after Vortiger’s death Merlin is sent for
to expound “the fiery oracle” in the form of a dragon’s head,

        “From out whose mouth
  Two flaming lakes of fire stretch east and west,
  And ... from the body of the star
  Seven smaller blazing streams directly point
  On this affrighted kingdom.”

The portent causes terror, until Merlin, as interpreter, tells of
revolutions, the rise and fall of nations, and the changes in Britain’s
state which it signifies. Aurelius has been treacherously slain at
Winchester by the Saxons, and Prince Uter is to be his avenger. The
passage in which Merlin relates what is to come is one of singular
dignity and impressiveness. Seven rays are “speaking heralds” to the
island. Uter Pendragon is to have a son and a daughter. The latter will
be Queen of Ireland, while of the son “thus Fate and Merlin tells”--

  “All after times shall fill their chronicles
  With fame of his renown, whose warlike sword
  Shall pass through fertile France and Germany,
  Nor shall his conquering foot be forced to stand,
  Till Rome’s imperial wealth hath crowned his fame
  With monarch of the west; from whose seven hills
  With conquest, and contributory kings
  He back returns to enlarge the Briton bounds,
  His heraldry adorned with thirteen crowns.
  He to the world shall add another worthy,
  And, as a loadstone, for his prowess draw
  A train of martial lovers to his court.
  It shall be then the best of knighthood’s honour
  At Winchester to fill his castle hall,
  And at his Royal table sit and feast
  In warlike orders, all their arms round hurled
  As if they meant to circumscribe the world.”

This is a noble passage, and sums up the leading points in King
Arthur’s history, as related in the Fabliaux, and at the same time
serves as evidence of the power of divination and eloquence of Merlin.
The matter of the prophecy was obviously taken from Malory, but the
dramatist introduced one strange variation in his story. Merlin,
indignant that his demoniac father should strive to harm his mother,
uses his art and magic spells to enclose the Devil in a rock--an idea
suggested, no doubt, by Merlin’s own fate. Furthermore, finding himself
called to aid Pendragon against the Saxons, Merlin conducts his mother
to a place of retirement called Merlin’s Bower, and tells her that when
she dies he will erect a monument--

  “Upon the verdant plains of Salisbury--
  (No king shall have so high a sepulchre)--
  With pendulous stones that I will hang by art,
  Where neither lime nor mortar shall be used,
  A dark enigma to the memory,
  For none shall have the power to number them.”

Here we become acquainted with the superstition that the megalithic
wonders of Stonehenge were Merlin’s workmanship, and that the
mysterious structure was his mother’s tomb. Another idea was that it
was the burial place of Uther Pendragon and Constantine. The drama, so
far as it relates to Merlin and Vortigern, closely follows the popular
tradition, though there are several variations of the story of the
castle which could not be finished, and its site, as might be expected,
is the subject of many contradictory declarations. The allegorical
meaning of the story is quite clear. To the heights of Snowdon, it
is said, Merlin led King Vortigern, whose castle could not be built
for meddlesome goblins. The wizard led the monarch to a vast cave and
showed him two dragons, white and red, in furious conflict. “Destroy
these,” he said, “and the goblins whom they rule will cease to torment
you.” Vortigern slew the dragons of Hate and Conspiracy, and his castle
was completed.[14]

The story of Merlin’s death has again led to much speculation upon the
recondite subject of the situation of the tomb in which his “quick”
body was placed by the guile of Nimuë, or Vivien, one of the damsels
of the lake. Malory distinctly avers that it was in Cornwall that the
doting wizard met his fate. He went into that country, after showing
Nimuë many wonders, and “so it happed that Merlin showed to her a rock,
whereat was a great wonder, and wrought by enchantment, that went under
a great stone.” By subtle working the maiden induced the wizard to go
under the stone to tell her of the marvels there, and then she “so
wrought him” that with all his own crafts he could not emerge again.
Some time afterwards Sir Bagdemagus, riding to an adventure, heard
Merlin’s doleful cries from under the stone, but he was unable to help
him, as the stone was so heavy that a hundred men could not move it.
Merlin told the knight that no one could rescue him but the woman who
had put him there, and, according to some traditions, he lives to this
day in the vault. Spenser, in the _Faërie Queene_, describes the tomb
as--

  “A hideous, hollow, cave-like bay
  Under a rock that has a little space
  From the swift Tyvi, tumbling down apace
  Amongst the woody hills of Dynevowr.”

The Tyvi is known to us as the Towy, and Dynevowr is Dynevor Park.

  “There the wise Merlin, whilom wont, they say,
    To make his wonne low underneath the ground,
  In a deep delve far from view of day,
    That of no living wight he might be found,
    When so he counselled with his sprights around.”

Others say that the guileful damsel led her doting lover to Snowdon,
and there put forth the charm of woven paces and of waving hands until
he lay as dead in a hollow oak. Sometimes an eldritch cry breaks upon
the ear of the climber as he nears the summit of Snowdon: it is Merlin
lamenting the subtlety of his false love, which doomed him to perpetual
shame.

There is the Carmarthen cave, and there is a “Merlin’s Grave” four
miles from Caerleon, both of which are shown as Merlin’s resting-place.
But ancient bards told another strange tale of the fate of the “boy
without a father,” whose blood had once been sought to sprinkle upon
the cement for the bricks of Vortigern’s castle. They declared that
the enchanter was sent out to sea in a vessel of glass, accompanied
by nine bards, or prophets, and neither vessel nor crew was heard of
again--which is not surprising. But Lady Charlotte Guest, in her notes
to the _Mabinogion_, boldly transports the scene of Merlin’s doom to
the Forest of Brécéliande, in Brittany, one of the favoured haunts of
romance and the delight of the Trouvères. Vivien, to whose artifices
he succumbed, is said to have been the daughter of one Vavasour, who
married a niece of the Duchess of Burgundy, and received as dowry
half the Forest of Briogne. It was when Merlin and Vivien were going
through Brécéliande hand in hand that they found a bush of white thorn
laden with flowers; there they rested, and the magician fell asleep.
Then Vivien, having been taught the art of enchantment by Merlin,
rose and made a ring nine times with her wimple round the bush; and
when the wizard woke it seemed to him that he was enclosed in the
strongest tower ever made--a tower without walls and without chains,
which he alone had known the secret of making. From this enmeshment
Merlin could never escape, and, plead as he would, the damsel would not
release him. But it is written that she often regretted what she had
done and could not undo, for she had thought the things he had taught
her could not be true. This, however, seems to be an interpolation.
Sir Gawain, travelling through the forest, saw a “kind of smoke,” and
heard Merlin’s wailing voice addressing him out of the obscurity.
The wonders of the Forest of Brécéliande were sufficiently believed
in of old time that we find the chronicler Wace actually journeying
to the spot to find the fairy fountain and Merlin’s tomb. Another
variation of the story is that Merlin made himself a sepulchre in
the Forest of Arvantes, that Vivien persuaded him to enter it, and
then closed the lid in such manner that thereafter it could never be
opened. Matthew Arnold, sparing and reticent in speech, as is his wont,
describes Merlin’s fate with subdued force and subtle charm, putting
the story in the mouth of desolate Iseult, who told her children of
the “fairy-haunted land” away the other side of Brittany, beyond the
heaths, edged by the lonely sea; and of

  “The deep forest glades of Broce-liand,
  Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps,
  Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps.”

Very cunningly and mystically has the poet told of Vivien’s guile as
she waved a wimple over the blossom’d thorn-tree and the sleeping
dotard, until within “a little plot of magic ground,” a “daisied
circle,” Merlin was made prisoner till the judgment day. Celtic
mythology, Renan tells us, is nothing more than a transparent
naturalism, the love of nature for herself, the vivid impression of
her magic, accompanied by the sorrowful feeling that man knows. When
face to face with her, he believes that he hears her commune with him
concerning his origin and destiny. “The legend of Merlin mirrors this
feeling,” he continues. “Seduced by a fairy of the woods, he flies with
her and becomes a savage. Arthur’s messengers come upon him as he is
singing by a fountain; he is led back again to court, but the charm
carries him away. He returns to his forests, and this time for ever.”

“La forêt de Brocelinde,” writes Emile Souvestre, in that fascinating
and half-pathetic work, _Les Derniers Bretons_, “se trouve située dans
le commune de Corcoret, arrondissement de Ploërmal. Elle est celebrée
dans les romans de la table ronde. C’est là que l’on rencontre _la
fontaine de Baranton, le Val sans retour, la tombe de Merlin_. On sait
que ce magicien se trouve encore dans cette forêt, où il est retenu par
les enchantements de Viviane à l’ombre d’un bois d’aubépine. Viviane
avait essayé sur Merlin le charme qu’elle avait appris de lui-même,
sans croire qu’il pût opérer; elle se desespéra quand elle vit qui
celui qu’elle adorait était à jamais perdu pour elle.” This statement
is not confirmed in the English romance, and is opposed wholly to
the sentiment of the story as conceived by Tennyson and other modern
writers. “On assure que Messire Gauvain (Gawain) et quelques chevaliers
de la table ronde cherchèrent partout Merlin, mais en vain. Gauvain
seul l’entendit dans la forêt de Brocelinde, mais ne put le voir.”
The district of Brocelinde, or Brécéliande, is rich in antiquities,
dolmens and menhirs being found together with other relics of early
times and the mysterious workers of the stone age. To add to the scenic
attractions of the locality there are ruined castles, the remains of
machicolated walls, ancient chateaux, and churches dating back many
centuries. It is fitting that here, therefore, romance should maintain
one of its strongholds and that traditions of the master-magician
should linger.

There is yet one other legend which should be noted. It represents the
magician as perpetually roaming about the wood of Calydon lamenting
the loss of the chieftains in the battle of Arderydd; while yet
another tells of a glass house built for him in Bardsey Island by his
companion, the Gleam, in which house of sixty doors and sixty windows
he studied the stars, and was attended by one hundred and twenty bards
to write down his prophecies. Never was such a confusion of traditions
and fancies, never were so many deluding will-o’-the-wisps to lead
astray whosoever would strive to investigate the truth of Merlin’s
story. That story with its abundance of suggestion makes us think of
the apt words of John Addington Symonds, who said that the examination
of these mysterious narratives was like opening a sealed jar of
precious wine. “Its fragrance spreads abroad through all the palace
of the soul, and the noble vintage upon being tasted courses through
the blood and brain with the matured elixir of stored-up summers.”
One needs some such consolation as this for the vexation of finding
seemingly inextricable confusion.

Warrior though he was, and all-powerful by reason of his supernatural
gifts, Merlin is yet represented as being a peace-maker and as paying
allegiance to a “master.” He ended the great battle between Arthur and
the eleven kings, when the horses went in blood up to the fetlocks, and
out of three-score thousand men but fifteen thousand were left alive.
Of this sanguinary battle of Bedgraine, Merlin gave an account to his
master Blaise, or Bleys, journeying to Northumberland specially to do
so and to get the master to write down the record; all Arthur’s battles
did Blaise chronicle from Merlin’s reports. Attempts have been made
to identify Blaise (the Wolf) with St. Lupus, Bishop of Troyes. The
more impressive part which Merlin plays in the Arthurian drama is as
prophet and necromancer. His sudden comings and goings, his disguises,
his solemn warnings, his potent interventions, all these combine to
strengthen the idea of unequalled influence and of awesome personality.
He figures prominently in the story of Sir Balin le Savage, and it was
his hand which wrote the fitting memorial of the two noble brothers.
Merlin it was again who counselled the king to marry, and who brought
Guinevere to London from Cameliard, darkly predicting at the same time
that through the queen Arthur should come to his doom.

An ancient Cornish song, to be found in the original dialect, but in
reality a Breton incantation which has come down to us from the far
ages out of the abundance of Armoric lore, describes Merlin the Diviner
attended by a black dog and searching at early day for

  “The red egg of the marine serpent,
  By the seaside in the hollow of the stone.”

Asked whither he is going he responds:

  “I am going to seek in the valley
  The green watercress and the golden grass,
  And the top branch of the oak,
  In the wood by the side of the fountain.”

A warning voice bids him turn back and not to seek the forbidden
knowledge. The cress, the golden grass, the oak branch, and the red
egg of the marine serpent are not for him. “Merlin! Merlin!” cries the
voice,

              “Retrace thy steps,
  There is no diviner but God.”

It is like a moral message from Goethe’s _Faust_.

There is no doubt that Merlin’s death, which is no death, but a blind
grovelling and eternal uselessness, was the mark of scorn put upon
the magician who might have been prepotent, but who prostituted his
powers--a feebleness and a degradation which were intolerable to the
sturdy race who prized courage above all other qualities, and were
incapable of realising the meaning of defeat or despair. That the
counsellor should himself turn fool, and that the man of supernatural
gifts should be prone to the weakness of nature, would be obnoxious
to the Celtic imagination, and have its sequel in ribald allusion and
endless taunts. The disaster which overtakes Merlin is one fitting
for the coward or the buffoon, and is a fate altogether foreign to
the ancient idea of that which was fitting for the hero, the bard, or
the sage. It is noticeable that all the former services of Merlin are
forgotten in judging him upon the closing despicable episode in his
career and consigning him to timeless indolence and impotence. Shorn
of his strength, a prisoner, living but “lost to use and fame,” Mage
Merlin in his cave, victim to his own folly and a woman’s wiles, awaits
the last doom.




CHAPTER IV

OF TINTAGEL

  “There is a place within
    The winding Severne sea,
  On mids of rock, about whose foote
    The tydes turn, keeping play,
  A tower-y toppèd castle here,
    Wide blazeth over all,
  Which Corineus’ ancient broode
    Tintagel Castle call.”--_Camden._

  “Thou seest dark Cornwall’s rifted shore,
    Old Arthur’s stern and rugged keep,
  There, where proud billows dash and roar,
    His haughty turret guards the deep.

  “And mark yon bird of sable wing,
    Talons and beak all red with blood,
  The spirit of the long-lost king
    Passed in that shape from Camlan’s flood.”

  _R. S. Hawker._


Cornwall, the horn-shaped land, far removed from the great centres
of progress and industry, the land of giants, of a separate people
who until the last century spoke its own language;[15] the land
of holy wells and saints, of hut circles, dolmens, and earthwork
forts, memorials of extreme antiquity; the land of many stone crosses
indicating the early influence of Christianity; the land of so-called
giants’ quoits, chairs, spoons, punch-bowls, and mounds, sometimes the
work of primitive man, sometimes the work of fantastic Nature--this is
the land in which romance lingers and in which superstition thrives,
the land upon which seems to rest unmoving the shadow of the past.
Olden customs survive, the old fashion is not departed from. The
quaintness, the simplicity, the quietude, the charm of a bygone age may
be found yet in that part which Taylor, the water poet, described as
“the compleate and repleate Home of Abundance, noted for high churlish
hills, and affable courteous People.”

A tour through the land which romance has marked out for her own, and
where the fords, bridges, hills, and rocks are called after Arthur
or associated by tradition with his exploits, becomes easier every
year by the development of railways, little known in the wilder parts
until a decade or so ago. It must be sorrowfully confessed that the
visit to Tintagel, despite its charm, results in a certain amount
of disillusion. It contains no relic, nothing that can verily be
imagined a relic, of the old, old times when the flower of chivalry
ruled. As one walks down the solitary street and glances around he
sees that Tintagel is an antique, picturesque little place with its
quaint post-office of yore--battered by time, the roof fallen, and the
stonework disjointed--with its stunted cottages, its typical village
shop and hostelry, and its lonely church on the cliffs. Tintagel, as
it is, is unique, but it is not Arthurian unless we go direct to those
parts where Nature is not and never has been molested. The Pentargon
heights, the great gorges, the weird bays and caves, the rock-strewn
valleys, the imposing waterfalls--from these may be constructed the
scenery for the drama of the warlike king and his adventurous knights.
The huge bank of earth enclosing an oblong space, with its remnant of
stone-lining found near St. Breavard, is fitly called King Arthur’s
Hall. Such relics as are found in and near Tintagel are posterior to
King Arthur’s era. There is a Saxon cross to be seen, erected to the
memory of one Ælnat, a Saxon. A sybstel, or family pillar, with Saxon
inscription, found in Lanteglos Church, near Camelford, and a Roman
stone discovered in Tintagel churchyard, are ancient memorials of the
highest interest. Relics of the bronze age have been discovered also,
though the influence of the Phœnician tin-traders did not seemingly
extend to this mid part of Cornwall.

Tintagel, as the first locality mentioned in the romance, has a
special claim to attention: “It befell in the days of the noble Uther
Pendragon, when he was King of all England, and so reigned, that there
was a mighty and a noble Duke in Cornwalle that held long time wars
against him; and the Duke was named the Duke of Tintagil.” So run
the opening lines, introducing us at once to the western territory
and to the rocky stronghold indissolubly linked with Arthur’s fame.
Strange to say, however, the place is absolutely ignored in the later
half of the history, despite the fact that Cornwall was the scene of
some of the most important concluding events. Tintagel was apparently
forgotten by the chroniclers after the story of Tristram was related,
and the last mention of it as King Mark’s Castle, where treachery was
followed by bloodshed, where the allegiance of the knights began to
decline, and where folly, wantonness, and shame served as omens of
coming disaster and of the impending shock to the realm which Arthur
had made. The history of Tintagel begins in a tale of shame, though
King Uther’s deceit of Igraine appears to have been regarded less as
dishonour to himself than as a sign of his own and Merlin’s strategy
and venturesomeness.[16] Uther, having compassed the death of Gorlois,
had no further difficulty in persuading Igraine to become his wife, and
their son was Arthur, who at his birth was delivered to Sir Ector, “a
lord of faire livelyhood,” to be nourished as one of his own family.
The death of Uther while his son was yet an infant left the succession
in some doubt, and in order to prove Arthur’s right to the crown the
familiar device was adopted of drawing a sword from a stone. The
scene of the contest in which Arthur, now assumed by the chroniclers
to be a goodly youth, and Sir Ector’s son took part, is vaguely
described as being “the churchyard of the greatest church in London”;
and it is needless to say that only Arthur proved equal to the feat
of pulling the sword from the marble and the steel anvil in which it
stood. The letters of gold on the sword declared that “whoso pulleth
out this sword of this stone and anvile, is rightwise king borne of
England,” and Sir Ector and Sir Kay, his defeated son and Arthur’s
foster-brother, were the first to kneel to Arthur as their lord when
they saw Excalibur in his hand. Before the lords and commons Arthur
again proved his right and royalty at the feast of Pentecost, and with
the help of Merlin he proceeded immediately to establish his kingdom,
which, during Uther’s illness and after his death, had stood “in great
jeopardie.”

Gorlois, the husband of Igraine, had been the possessor of two castles,
Tintagel and Terabyl (or Damaliock), which may be judged to have been
at no great distance from one another. Terabyl is untraceable, though
it has been suggested that while Tintagel Castle was solely upon the
peninsula (Barras Head) which juts into the sea, Terabyl was the
castle upon the mainland. This theory is untenable. It is only in
comparatively recent times, with the widening of the chasm between the
peninsula and the mainland, that a division of any importance can be
noticed; and it is safe to assume that there was never more than one
castle at Tintagel. The rent in the rocks was spanned by a huge bridge,
as the crenellated walls now reaching to the edge on either side and
in a direct line with each other plainly attest. Terabyl, in which the
Duke entrenched himself when Uther Pendragon brought his hosts against
him, was evidently further inland than Tintagel, and the latter,
distinctly avowed to be “ten miles hence,” was selected as the refuge
for Igraine. Uther, marching southward from Camelot, reached Terabyl
first and laid siege to it; to reach Igraine at Tintagel he had still
to ride some distance. “The Duke of Tintagil espied how the king rode
from the siege of Terrabil, and, therefore, that night he issued out
of the castle at a posterne”--(Terabyl was noted for its “many issues
and pasternes out”)--“for to have distressed the king’s host. And so,
through his own issue, the Duke himself was slain or ever the king
came at the castle of Tintagil.” Geoffrey of Monmouth calls Terabyl
“castellum Dimilioc,” but under this name it is no less a mystery.
As it receives incidental mention only twice afterwards we may well
be content to rank Terabyl among the cities of romance, the names of
which alone existed. It may have been as unsubstantial as the enchanted
cities created by mysterious maidens for their courteous and faithful
lovers, which cities vanished in a night if vows were broken or false
words uttered.

It is said in some of the romances that twice a year the Castle of
Tintagel became invisible to the eyes of the common people. To-day it
is only in imagination that we can perceive the real castle of Arthur,
for whatever British fortress may ever have risen on these heights has
long since vanished--crumbled away into dust which is as nothingness.
Authentic history takes us back only to the time of the Norman
Conquest, when Tintagel was entered in Domesday Book as Dunchine, or
Chain Castle. It is the firm opinion of archæologists that the Romans
entrenched themselves here and left signs of their occupation, and
there are the strongest reasons for believing that Tintagel was a
British place of defence before the Roman invasion. Nature had marked
out the rocky height as a stronghold, and a race like the Britons
could scarcely have failed to avail themselves of all the advantages
it offered. But when we first read of Tintagel Castle apart from the
romances we find it in the occupation of English princes, notably of
Richard, Earl of Cornwall, otherwise known as the King of the Romans,
who in 1245 gave noble entertainment to his nephew, Prince of Wales,
then carrying on a desperate war for freedom against the English king.
The use of Tintagel as a prison from which escape was almost impossible
was recognised from early times until the reign of Elizabeth, at which
era it began to fall into decay; and it was within the loneliest and
most exposed portion of the island that John Northampton, Lord Mayor
of London, who had abused his office, was immured for life by order of
Richard II. A sculptured moorstone, now moss-covered and illegible,
commonly called the altar-stone of King Arthur’s Chapel, is believed in
reality to be a monument of John Northampton’s own carving, wrought to
pass away the dreary days in his dungeon, and now marking the place of
his tomb. What is known as King Arthur’s Chapel is a spacious chamber
fifty-four feet long and twelve feet wide, the outline of which is
barely traceable. It is supposed to have been dedicated to Saint Uliane.

In Leland’s time Tintagel Castle was “sore wether-beten an yn ruine,”
and whether it was ever the stronghold of Arthur history does not
determine. The name was formerly Dundagil, meaning “the impregnable
fortress,” and Geoffrey of Monmouth did not exaggerate when he wrote
of it: “It is situated upon the sea, and on every side surrounded by
it, and there is but one entrance into it, and that through a straight
rock, which three men shall be able to defend against the whole of
the kingdom.” Leland, less interested in the matter, testified that
“the castelle hath bene a marvelus strong and notable forteres, and a
large thinge.... Without the isle rennith alonly a gate-house, a walle,
and a fals braye dyged and walled. In this isle remayne old walles,
and in the est part of the same, the ground beying lower, remaynith a
walle embateled, and men abyve saw thereyn a postern dore of yren.”
The chronicler and antiquary Carew supplies further evidence of the
strength of the structure. “The cyment,” he says, “wherewith the stones
were laid, resisteth the fretting furie of the weather better than
the stones themselves,” a fact which is strongly commented on also by
Norden, who thought that “neither time nor force of hands could sever
one from the other.” “Half the buildings,” continues Carew, “were
raised on the continent (the mainland) and the other halfe on an
island, continued together by a drawbridge, but now divorced by the
downfalne steepe cliffes on the further side.” There is a consensus
of opinion as to this drawbridge, Camden and other trustworthy
historians all confirming the report as to its existence, and this
further proves that there were not two castles at Tintagel.[17] The
gigantic impression of a foot is pointed out to credulous pilgrims;
it is the print left by King Arthur’s foot when he strode across
the chasm--backwards. This is as much to be relied upon as the fact
that the basins worn by the winds and waves in the rocks were King
Arthur’s cups and saucers, and that a dizzy dip of the heights over
the sea constituted his chair. It is surprising that the immense and
awe-inspiring caverns have escaped the fate of being called King
Arthur’s drinking-bowls. Yet all these conceits have their value as
proof of the deep-rooted belief in the king’s might as a monarch and
his stupendous stature as a man. The hero is rapidly passing into the
myth when such attributes are ascribed to him.

[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]

KING ARTHUR’S CASTLE, TINTAGEL

  [_To face p. 96_]

Tintagel must have been even more impressive a scene a few centuries
ago than it is to-day, despite its wild sublimity in ruin. One more
witness of old time may be called forth to give his evidence of what it
was before the walls had been so buffeted and brought so low.

“A statelye and impregnable seate,” is Norden’s testimony, “now rent
and rugged by force of time and tempests; her ruines testifye her
pristine worth, the view whereof, and due observation of her situation,
shape, and condition in all partes, may move commiseration that such
a statelye pile should perish for want of honourable presence. Nature
hath fortified, and art dyd once beautifie it, in such sorte as it
leaveth unto this age wonder and imitation.” Tintagel is to be visited
rather than described, though our most luxuriant poets have painted
it with lavish richness of words, and artists have depicted some of
its natural beauties in the most radiant of colours. From many a rocky
verge can be seen the dark remnants of Arthur’s fortress, inaccessible
on all sides but one; from the deep base the ocean spreads out without
bound, surging and boiling and casting up steam-like fountains of
hissing foam. Only a few arches and rude flights of steps, surmounted
by a frail-looking wooden door, now remain, with some fallen walls
which imperfectly outline the shape of what were once spacious royal
chambers. On a carpet of turf wander the small mountain sheep, and
pick their way about the narrow precipitous paths which wind around
the jagged sides of the cliffs. The fortifications are in ruin, and
the battlemented walls which encompassed the massive steeps are now
nothing but disconnected strips over which the curious traveller
looks into the angry waters grinding and regurgitating far below. The
noble bridge which once stretched across the yawning chasm dividing
the two promontories must alone be imagined, though its beginnings on
each side may be traced by the line of low stone arches reaching, and
stopping abruptly at, the edge. The hills “that first see bared the
morning’s breast,” the heights “the sun last yearns to from the west,”
as Swinburne has sung, are eternal, but Arthur’s castle has gone, and
Tintagel, “half in sea and high on land, a crown of towers,” is even
called by the dwellers no more by its old inspiring name.

The very mention of Cornish seas has an alluring sound, and one already
feels in the realm of romance when he descries in the mellow light of
an afternoon in late summer that smallest of villages perched upon
a rock overlooking the bluest of seas with its perpetual fringe of
powdery foam. Here at the edge of the Atlantic is a most beguiling
stretch of water, filling innumerable bays--water so clear and calm and
deep-hued far away that it is hard to realise that it makes a cruel and
treacherous sea in which only on the gentlest of days dare a swimmer
plunge and feel his way among the underlying rocks, or upon the roaring
waves of which dare a hardy sailor venture his boat. In storm this sea
is terrible. The waves upheave themselves like solid hillocks of water,
black at the base, and hurl themselves with appalling force against
the huge rocks, which have already been worn and broken by them into a
thousand fantastic shapes. Here and there the propelling force of the
incoming tide, working like a gigantic engine, sends with torrent-force
along narrow open passages a seething stream which beats its way
upward and dashes headlong over the barriers of wood and stone; and the
great smoke-coloured waves beyond rear themselves heavily, topple, and
crash down into the abyss with thunderous roaring. On they come, nearer
and nearer, louder and louder, those hard, rising, climbing, dissolving
bodies of incalculable strength, dashing themselves furiously over
every obstacle, sweeping with a hiss across the tracts of sand, and
obliterating the tall rocks which can be toilsomely climbed when the
waters retreat. Beneath this raging, battering sea lies a fabled
domain with all its fair cities and towers, and every watcher of those
stupendous, merciless billows can realise their potentiality to tear
away the land and drag it into the unseen deeps. Storm at Tintagel or
Trebarwith is both revelation and conviction: it is a manifestation
of remorselessness, a suggestion of irreparable ruin, desolation, and
loss. Easy indeed is it to imagine that the treacherous and cruel waves
driving rapaciously landward have already had their victory and are
savagely seeking to extend their conquest, and that hereabout lie “the
sad sea-sounding wastes of Lyonnesse.”

No one has described this wildly beautiful sea with greater charm and
realism than Swinburne, who has watched it in all moods, seen it in
the blueness of calm, seen it strive and shiver “like spread wings of
angels blown by the sun’s breath,” seen it when the glad exhilarated
swimmer feels

  “The sharp sweet minute’s kiss
  Given of the wave’s lip, for a breath’s space curled
  And pure as at the daytime of the world,”

--seen it again when the east wind made the water thrill, and the
soft light went out of all its face, and the green hardened into iron
blue. A walk from Camelford to Tintagel, passing Trebarwith, and on
from Tintagel to Boscastle, passing Bossiney and many a smaller cove
on the way, reveals the most wonderful and alluring of all changeful
sea-pictures, and displays most vividly the marvel and magic of the
rugged coast. The towering rocks have been wrought by time and carved
by wind and wave into grotesque images, broken at the base into sunless
caves, worn at the heights into sharp and gleaming pinnacles, fretted
and cut, rounded and cracked, sundered and cast down, the massive
blocks made veritably the sport of the elements, so that the beholder
may easily believe himself in the realm of enchantment. All the
sounding shores of Bude and Boss are legend-haunted. The mariner hears
the chime and toll of the lost bells of Bottreaux when he comes within
sight of the “silent tower,” which stands white and grim upon the
headland. The wail of lured voyagers and the despairing lament of the
smugglers who brought them with false lights to their doom are listened
to in awe on stormy nights, and there are visions of good ships that
went down among the rocks in the tragic desperate days of which so many
ghastly tales are told. The last of the Cornish wreckers, for whom,
when he lay dying, a ship with red sails came in a tremendous sea and
bore him shrieking away, looms as an apparition on the darkest nights,
and the cries of tormented spirits mingle with the blast. Merlin, with
flowing beard, is said to pace the shore, and Arthur and his knights
to revisit the scenes of their exploits. The spirit of the king hovers
about sea and land in the form of the almost sacred chough, reverenced
and preserved by the inhabitants that they may not unwittingly injure
their hero. Further north at Bude Haven the long Atlantic breakers
roll, and perhaps there is no more imposing spectacle than the coil
of waves coming in upon the far-extending and rock-strewn sands. The
undulations, miles long, seem to rise and curl far out at sea at short
regular distances from each other, and mass upon mass they break
with thunder-sound and cataract upon the shore. The most brilliant of
sunsets glow in the perfect summer weather when day dies slowly over
these “far-rolling, westward-smiling seas,” and they leave the night
still radiant. The whole land is sweet and bright with flowers: on
one side lies the glittering surf lacing itself in white foam about
the boulders, and on the other side rises the circle of hills topped
by the massy brown summits of Row Tor and Brown Willy. Sometimes the
deserted quarries give a spectral look to the landscape, and when
the rain spatters and darkens the piles of rough slate the aspect is
weird and gloomy indeed. But given a day of sunshine when the sea is
a sparkling emerald or the deepest of blues, when the sky is clear or
only softened with diaphanous rings of cirrus-cloud, when the moss
glistens on the rocks and the expanse of meadowland is a vivid carpet
of green, when the winding hilly lanes flanked by tall hedges are white
and shadowless, and the little tinkling runlets are silver gleams, and
then this tract of Arthur’s Cornwall is almost the land of faerie which
poets have sung.

[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]

THE ELEPHANT ROCK, BOSSINEY COVE

  [_To face p. 102_]

What more fitting than that the grave of Tristram and Iseult should
have been at Tintagel, where the sea they loved came with its strong
and awful tides, and now

            “Sweeps above their coffined bones
  In the wrecked chancel by the shivered shrine”?

The deep sea guards them and engirds them, and no man shall say where
the lovers lie in their last sleep. King Mark buried the two in one
grave, and planted over it a rose-bush and vine, the branches of which
so intermingled that they became inseparable. Arnold, Swinburne, and
Tennyson have best told the whole story in our language in modern
times. But it is no slight task to trace the literary history and
development of the beautiful theme. A German minnesänger of the twelfth
century, Gotfrit of Strasburg, is the first to whom the romance is
ascribed, though Scott and others have claimed for Thomas of Ercildoune
(Thomas the Rhymer) the best poetic version, only one copy of which
is extant. A thirteenth-century manuscript, which contains a French
metrical version of the romance, has been noted by Lockhart as citing
the authority of Thomas the Rhymer for the story of Tristram and
Iseult; but Thomas’s version was totally different from the prose
romances. Great efforts have been made at one time and another to prove
the story to be of English, French, and German origin, but at least
this much is assured--the principal scenes are English, and the leading
events in the history of Tristram, the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall,
occur at Tintagel. He journeyed to Ireland to bring back the daughter
of the queen of that country, and he journeyed to Brittany to bring
back his own wife, that Iseult of the White Hand who failed to win his
love. His adventures as a Knight of the Round Table took him, as was
usual, over much territory and to foreign lands; but it is to Cornwall
that the interest always returns, and in which it is concentrated.
Among the “wind-hollowed heights and gusty bays” of Tintagel, and
within the “towers washed round with rolling foam,” the knight and
the damsel wedded to King Mark, who had saved him from torture and
death, lived their lives of forbidden love. The Minstrel-knight
suited his voice to the mellow chords of his harp, and wandered about
the woods and beside the sea in the May-time of his happiness with
Iseult the Queen. And when the knight had wedded another Iseult, it
was at Tintagel that Mark’s wife, with her passionate thoughts, her
sorrow, and her despair, sat alone in a casement and heard the night
speak and thunder on the sea “ravening aloud for ruin of lives.” Such
words can be easily comprehended by those who have seen Tintagel in
storm, the wind roaring, the seas flashing white, a blinding mist of
rain between the heavy sky and the weltering waves. The rage of the
elements, the vehemence of the warring tide, the dash and the recoil at
the castle-base, have only their parallel in the human passion which
was too strong for life itself to withstand, when deserted Iseult saw
before her the corpse of her lover. Tristram, ill-fated from birth, was
doomed to die by treachery. He was wounded, and learnt that he could
only be healed by the magic art of the woman he loved, of her who had
cured him before. He sent for Iseult to cross the sea in order to save
him, and commanded the messenger to hoist a white sail if she consented
and was on her way. The white sail was hoisted, but the other Iseult,
the faithful but neglected wife, could not resist saying what jealousy
prompted--that the sail was black. Sir Tristram immediately expired.
Malory’s romance declares that the knight met his death at the hands
of King Mark, who slew him “as he sat harping afore his lady La Beale
Isoud, with a trenchant glaive, for whose death was much bewailing of
every knight that ever were in King Arthur’s days.”

The literary history and the variations of the extremely ancient and
supremely sorrowful story can only be adequately treated in such a
volume as that of M. Losseth, who has given an account of twenty-four
manuscripts containing Tristram’s history, of six works in the French
National Library, of Malory’s version, and of one Italian, two Danish,
and one German translation or original rendering. Some have attributed
the authorship to Cormac of Ireland in the third century; others
believe the Welsh bards first sang it; the French claimed it for
their _trovères_, but have now admitted its British origin. Yet it is
remarkable how French, Cornish, and Irish histories intermingle in the
romance, and how the magic element occasionally enters, spoiling it as
history but enriching it as a legend. The story is one of such pathos
that the predominating influence of the Celt in suggesting and shaping
it must instantly be recognised. But so many have worked on the theme,
early and late--none perhaps with such superb effect as Wagner--that
the primitive conception is apt to be forgotten or ignored; it has been
overlaid with details gathered from many lands, and embellished by the
poetic fancies of many races. The story has become European; Beroul,
Christian of Troyes, Thomas of Brittany, Robert the northern monk,
Eilhard of Oberge, Gottfrid and the other early Germans, the Provençal
minstrels--all these have altered and added to the tale of the knight
who slew the sea-monster, the Morhout, saved the Cornish maidens from
shame and death, was wounded by a poisoned arrow, healed by Iseult the
Beautiful, and both of whom, drinking of a magic love-potion intended
for Iseult’s destined husband, afterwards experienced all the joys and
pangs of an unhallowed love which Dante himself could not refrain from
celebrating and condoning. The story abounds in mystic symbolism, or,
rather, that symbolism has been found in it; and the inevitable Sun-god
myth has been perceived in its details.

Tintagel, a picture in the waters, is at its best when the sky becomes
a rose above it, and the sun dipping into a golden bath leaves a track
gleaming like pearl across the shoaling sea. The waves as they rise
and fall make emerald and purple lines in moments of magic change, and
their crests of foam sparkle jewel-like with a thousand instantaneous
lights. Then “all the rippling green grows royal gold” as the sun,
like a splendid bubble, floats on the water’s edge. Round the pointed
brown rocks are fringes of white foam ever widening and contracting;
the oncoming waters with an exultant bound sometimes spring high in
fountains and then sink slowly and gently as if fairy spires were
dissolving in thinnest powder. Again, with a roar and an access of
strength, the waves return impetuously, raging and grinding, churned
as by some mighty hidden wheel into yeasty foam. Vista-like the long
bright track, now a deep red band, leads back to the inner chambers of
the sun, and the sea draws the orb into its dark, mysterious depths.
The waves lace themselves around the pinky-green islets, and the
verdant headlands, succeeding each other in almost interminable series
till the eye catches the gleam of the Lizard lights, begin to soften
mistily away behind the twilight veil. A little ship, far off, skims
over the sea-rim and disappears; a tiny cloud floats up like a loose
silken sail, silvery white. The seagulls and the choughs flit about the
broken arches of the castle, and shadows fall long and deep across the
deep ravinous path leading inland from the precipitous heights.

At such time Tintagel is telling its own story, weaving its own
romance; and words seem vain when those shattered columns, those
fallen walls, that unbridged chasm, are there to make the tale. Of the
after-history of the place what matters it? We would fain have the
story end, as it began, with Arthur and Guinevere, King Mark, Mage
Merlin, and Tristram and Iseult. Every roll of the breakers is a voice
from the past, and every crumbling chamber a chapter in that history
which only the true poet transcribes. Yet even while such thoughts are
forcing themselves upon the mind of the beholder of a typical August
sunset over Tintagel, the end of the day will be near. The arc of the
sun blazes upon the sea-line, an edge of fiery carmine, and a fleecy
train of cirrus-cloud crimsons with the last rays. Slowly and yet
perceptibly the light dies away and leaves the heaving sea mystically
dusk and the world full of shadows. Darkness looms over Tintagel. The
overhanging crags look as if they might crack, break off, and thunder
down into the open-mouthed sea below. The black chough wheels about
the ruins--the spirit of Arthur, say the people, revisiting the scene
of his glory. Arcturus, the star of Arthur, glistens in the blue sky
right over the castle height, and Arthur’s Harp shapes itself more
dimly further east--for the constellations themselves were named after
the puissant king. The tide is at its height and has flooded the little
stony beach to which a steep path leads; the caves are full; on the
horizon the night-clouds come up and shape themselves into fantastic
forms of towers, and the real which are near, and the imagined which
are far, scarce can be distinguished.

[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]

BARRAS HEAD, TINTAGEL

  [_To face p. 110_]

Lytton seems to have had Tintagel, or a very similar place in the
north, in his mind when he described the arrival of the Cymrian
King, pursued by the Saxons, at a beach of far resounding seas where
wave-hollowed caves arched, and

  “Column and vault, and seaweed-dripping domes
    Long vistas opening through the streets of dark,
  Seem’d like a city’s skeleton, the homes
    Of giant races vanish’d.”

This tract of land around Tintagel is crowded with memorials and
with relics about which superstition has cast its web. The caer-camp
at Trenail Bury, and the huge stone monuments which lie embedded
in the earth, take us back to British times. The pools, looking
black and weird among the hills, all have their legends, and the
wells commemorate a multitude of saints known only to Cornwall.
Castle-an-Dinas looms majestically at a height of nearly eight hundred
feet against the horizon: here was King Arthur’s hunting ground, and
the remains of the structure cresting the summit was his palace. The
scenes of some of his hard-fought battles are the wide valleys closed
in by the shadowy hills, and the crags dashed by the tumultuous sea.
You may wander at will for miles in any direction still keeping in
sight the sturdy granite church standing exposed on the highest bit of
the coast; you will hear no sound but the whimpering cry of the gulls;
and you will be free to reconstruct here in imagination the vanished
realm of King Arthur, while the words of the old priest, Joseph Iscarus
of Exeter, ring in your ears--

  “From this blest place immortal Arthur sprung
  Whose wondrous deeds shall be for ever sung,
  Sweet music to the ear, sweet honey to the tongue.
  The only prince that hears the just applause,
  Greatest that e’er shall be, and best that ever was.”




CHAPTER V

OF CAERLEON-UPON-USK

  “Caerleon, now step in with stately style,
  No feeble phrase may serve to set thee forth;
  Thy famous town was spoke of many a myle,
  Thou hast been great, though now but little worth:
  Thy noble bounds hath reacht beyond them all,
  In thee hath been King Arthur’s golden hall,
  In thee the wise and worthies did repose.”--_Old Poet._

  “Slow sets the summer sun,
  Slow fall the mists, and, closing, droop the flowers,
  Faint in the gloaming dies the vesper bell,
  And dreamland sleeps round golden Carduel.”--_Lytton._

  “When Arthur first in court began,
  And was approvèd King,
  By force of armes great victoreys wanne,
  And conquest home did bring.”--_Percy Reliques._


“Old Caerleon-upon-Usk” is the enchanted capital of the kingdom called
Romance. Its domes of fretted gold, its countless pinnacles, its
seventy churches, its gorgeous palace, and its giant tower--

  “From whose high crest, they say,
  Men saw the goodly hills of Somerset,
  And white sails flying on the yellow sea,”

by the wonder-working art of poets and old-time chroniclers have a
reality for us to-day, though they may never have been visible. But the
city of the Hero-King is a city seen through a veil. The glittering
spires show through the mists of time; in a half-shadow we discern
the lofty turrets, and mark the lanceolate windows with their shining
diamond-panes; a dreamy brightness reveals the gilded roofs and the
“magic casements” where Guinevere and her maidens stood and watched
the tourneying knights, and glanced their loves and hopes upon the
combatants. The name of Arthur conjures up the scene, and fancy
releases the city from its spell of slumber and ruin and fashions it
again in splendour. It is said that this city of Legions was once the
rival of Rome in grandeur. When the all-conquering king had subdued
thirty kingdoms, he could find no more suitable place than Caerleon for
holding a magnificent court to place the crown upon his head, and to
invite the kings and dukes under his subjection to the ceremony. When
he had communicated his designs to the familiar friends, he pitched
upon Caerleon as a proper place for his purpose; for, besides its
great wealth above the other cities, its situation was most pleasant
and fit for so great a solemnity. For on one side it was washed by
that noble river (the Usk), so that the kings and princes from the
countries beyond the seas might have the convenience of sailing up to
it. On the other side was the beauty of meadows and groves, and the
magnificence of the royal palaces. Besides, there was a college of two
hundred philosophers, who, being learned in astronomy and the other
arts, were diligent in observing the courses of the arts, and gave
King Arthur the predictions of the events that would happen at that
time. So runs Geoffrey’s chronicle, and he reports that at the festival
there were present numerous kings, princes, prelates, and consuls, all
named; and no prince of any consideration on this side Spain forbore
attending. The ceremony of the coronation, as described by Geoffrey,
was a stupendous event. The archbishops, headed by Dubritius, were
conducted to the royal palace to place the crown upon the monarch’s
head. Arthur was invested with his imperial habiliments, and conducted
in great pomp to the Metropolitan Church, supported by the bishops and
four kings, who bore golden swords before him. The queen, “dressed out
in her richest ornaments,” and attended by bishops and four queens,
bearing before her four white doves, joined the procession; and the
people of Caerleon in their tens of thousands “made all imaginable
demonstrations of joy.” Then transporting music was played, both in
the churches and the streets all day, and was so beautiful that the
knights knew not which of the many orchestras to prefer. After the
service the king and queen retired to their separate palaces, “for the
Britons still observed the ancient custom of Troy, by which men and
women used to celebrate their festivals apart.” One thousand young
noblemen, clothed in ermine, served the banquet at the king’s table;
and in the queen’s palace innumerable servitors, dressed with a variety
of ornaments, performed their offices. The knights, in best apparel,
were in full attendance, and the ladies, celebrated for their wit,
encouraged them in their tourneys. No man, says Geoffrey, was worthy
of a woman’s love until he had given proof of his valour in three
separate battles; “thus was the valour of the men an encouragement for
the women’s chastity, and the love of the women a spur to the soldiers’
bravery.” The victors in the jousts at Caerleon that day were rewarded
by Arthur in person, and the capital was a blaze of splendour and a
scene of unequalled exploits.[18]

We get further pictures of Caerleon from other of the early historians.
Giraldus Cambriensis recorded in the twelfth century that at Caerleon
might be seen many vestiges of its former glory, “immense palaces
ornamented with gilded roofs, in imitation of Roman magnificence, a
tower of prodigious size, and relics of temples.” Three centuries
before Cæsar’s invasion, Belin Mawr laid the city’s foundations; and in
the sixth century--

  “Cymri’s dragon, from the Roman’s hold,
  Spread with calm wing o’er Carduel’s domes of gold.”

In the “Mabinogion” we also get a casual glimpse of King Arthur’s
royal state at Caerleon: “Arthur was accustomed to hold his court
at Caerleon-upon-Usk. And there he held it seven Easters and
five Christmases. And once upon a time he held his court there at
Whitsuntide. For Caerleon was the place most easy of access in his
dominions, both by sea and land. And there were assembled nine crowned
kings, who were his tributaries, and likewise earls and barons. For
they were his invited guests at all the high festivals, unless they
were prevented by any great hindrance. And when he was at Caerleon
holding his court, thirteen churches were set apart for mass.” But
the scene at the coronation of Arthur was never excelled; and if
Geoffrey of Monmouth could be believed, such a noble assembly, such
a display of magnificence, such prodigality of sport and hospitality
were never before or afterward seen in Britain; and the historian
adds that at that time King Arthur’s country had arrived at “such a
pitch of grandeur, that in abundance of riches, luxury, ornaments, and
politeness of inhabitants it far surpassed all other countries.”

But what is Caerleon now? Late on an August afternoon, when the sky
was stricken with the first shadowy pallor of evening, a white, sandy,
deserted lane led me past a few scattered houses and a small church
to the riverside. The tide was out and the waters had shrunk almost
into silence. An old tower, thickly overgrown with trailing weeds,
stands on the bank, and tells of other times. The fields stretching
away from the right bank of the Usk are irregularly divided by the
remnant of an old Roman wall, rising about twelve feet, and supposed
to have been originally four miles long, connecting Caerleon with
the outposts. Antiquaries differ in opinion as to whence the stone
was obtained; those marvel-working Romans who came over with Julius
Frontinus in the first century, and made Caerleon the head-quarters of
the second Augustan Legion, left the secret buried in the monument they
raised. The wall passes by, and beyond, the Priory and the Round Table
Field, where a deep indentation probably marks the site of a Roman
amphitheatre. This supposition derives circumstantial confirmation from
the fact that a contiguous field has borne from time out of record the
name of the Bearhouse Field--the site of the house in which wild beasts
were kept for gladiatorial contests. But legend floats about the scene
and fantastically shapes itself into a marvellous tale, that here King
Arthur with his knights sits entranced in a subterranean chamber, and
there will remain until Britain in her hour of peril calls him forth to
new and greater conquests. The Welsh bards have sung how--

      “He first ordained the circled board;
  The knights whose martial deeds far-famed that Table Round,
  Which truest in their loves, which most in arms renowned,
  The laws which long upheld that Order, they report:
  The Pentecosts prepar’d at Caerleon in her Court,
  That Table’s ancient seat.”

While we wander about the green hillocks which compose that mysterious
circle our minds can feel the inspiration of the scene and sport with
the phantoms of the unreal world. It is on such occasions that we feel
the touch of other times and seem to hear the echo of voices stilled.
The flame of romance kindles a thousand images; half the present fades
away, and in its place appears what has vanished or has never been.
The long procession of the dead troops by, and the tale of bygone
days is recalled. Here, once, were the sounds of tumult; the king’s
pavilion was set, and the tourney was “let cry.” Then were heard
the clatter of the steeds, the rush to arms, the clang of sword and
spear, the shattering of hauberk and shield; then through the streets
resounded the trumpet-call to arms and the proclamation of the king;
then gathered and dispersed the noble order of knights and the flower
of chivalry, setting forth upon noble quests or returning to relate
their deeds to Arthur and to lay their spoils at the feet of Guinevere.
Along these lanes rode Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad, Sir Gawain, and
Sir Kaye. Here came kings from north, south, and west to do homage to
Arthur. Here,

      “Among the myriad-room’d
  And many-corridor’d perplexities
  Of Arthur’s palace,”

the drama of pain and shame was acted by the queen and Arthur’s
greatest knight, a man “not after Arthur’s heart.” Here, where the bee
hums and the moth alights, were knightly jousts and stubborn contests.
Steel grappled with steel, and the hard ground trembled under the shock
of mounted warriors. Here, where the grass grows long and the daisy and
primrose brighten out among the green, were mailed men and mirthful
maidens; here they feasted and sang and dedicated their days to love
and chivalry. But the wind roves over the open plain; and scarcely a
stone, a tottering arch, or a fallen tower, has escaped the iconoclasm
of time’s remorseless hand. The massive walls which defied the siege of
the all-conquering Roman have been thrown down, and the regal palaces
which never yielded to the pagan have sunk and disappeared in the
dust. Their very foundations cannot be traced. But beneath the ruins
sleeps romance, and in the pervading silence is closed the last song of
ancient chivalry. The dust of the heroes is scattered, and

  “The attributes of those high days
  Now only live in minstrel-lays.”

Everything is past but the names of men and places--names that we have
and ideals that we make. A ford with Arthur’s name, a stone associated
with his deeds, a city where his temples were reared! Tranquilly flows
the river and washes the unfrequented banks; and Caerleon-upon-Usk,
like a wave that has been spent and dies upon the shore, has ebbed into
the quietude of tideless time and has been lost. Yet, to him who goes
with open mind and simple faith, Caerleon is even now a wonderland, and
fragments of its marvellous story are scattered on the roadside, in
the undulating meadows, and along the banks of the wide brown river.
Everywhere we find remnants of a remarkable past; and though the city
has dwindled to a hamlet and is sequestered from the busy toiling
world, it seems like the city of fable which slept until the promised
prince came and released it from the fetters of enchantment. So may
Caerleon one day be awakened.

The healing sun-god, Belenus (from whose name our modern Billingsgate
is derived), was the Celtic Apollo, and to him is ascribed the
foundation of Caerleon. Others, with better reason, ascribe it to
Lleon, an ancient British king. The Romans, about the year 70 A.D.,
made it one of their chief stations in Britannia Secunda, and the
city in their time is reputed to have been nine miles in area. Akeman
Street went from it to Cirencester, and the maritime Julian Way passed
through it from Bath to Neath, while the mountain Julian Way connected
it with Abergavenny. Fragments of a Roman fortress 12 feet thick and
1,800 yards in circuit have been found, and the Roman amphitheatre, 16
feet high and 222 feet by 192 feet in extent, is popularly known as
the festival scene of King Arthur and his knights. Some of the Roman
bricks and tiles are to be found in the modern structures, and part of
the old Roman wall twelve feet high is still visible. In the days of
Hadrian the best part of the city was Caerleon _ultra pontem_--that
part lying beyond the wooden movable bridge, which is now replaced
by one of stone.[19] The local museum is crowded with memorials
of antiquity--tesselated pavements, Roman stones and inscriptions,
baths, altars, sculpture, Roman lamps (found in a road cutting), glass
vessels, bronze ornaments, harness buckles, keys, coins, and stone
facings of the rooms in the Castle Villa. Most curious and valuable
of all, perhaps, is a boundary stone showing that the sea-walls were
the work of the third-century Romans and made by their soldiery. But
the sea has receded from Caerleon and is now quite two miles away, and
Newport has arisen where once the ships of Caerleon sailed. All the
Roman temples which King Arthur found in the city he is said to have
converted into Christian churches, St. Dubric, the most famous of the
ecclesiastics of antiquity, being appointed the archbishop. On the
other hand, the archbishopric is said to date from 182, and to have
lasted until 521. But the remarkable and significant fact is that while
relics in abundance of the early Romans can be found, nothing has been
preserved of the later British or Saxon times, and not a trace can be
discovered of the surpassing glory of the Arthurian capital. Tradition
avers that for four hundred years before the Christian era Caerleon was
a royal residence and the burial place of British kings; but tradition
dispenses with proofs.

King Arthur’s ninth great battle against the Saxons took place at
Caerleon, and he had previously encountered them at the most celebrated
of the city’s outposts, Caerwent. The latter place has a history
little inferior to that of Caerleon itself, and has strong claims to
consideration both as a Roman settlement and as a reputed Arthurian
stronghold. It is uninviting in aspect to-day, but the fragments of
stately piles and the innumerable coins and medals that have been
unearthed attest its former consequence. Caerwent is situated on the
Via Julia, or military road, and Leland bore witness to the many
evidences of its ancient importance, with its massive walls and gates.
It is even affirmed that Caerwent was originally the capital of the
Silures, but that afterwards it was a “dependence” on Caerleon, with
which it communicated by a subterranean passage. The entrance to that
passage was from a lane which still retains the name of Arthur.

Some fifty years ago a stranger went to Caerleon, and without giving
his name or stating his errand, took up his abode at the Hanbury Arms,
one of the oldest hostelries in the kingdom. The Hanbury Arms is a
white, quaintly-built house, facing the Usk, and originally stood at
a point in the road commanding three approaches to the city. But the
change of time has given a new entrance to Caerleon, and travellers
will now find the Hanbury Arms on the remote side. Its low-browed
windows, with the stone mullions of unusual thickness, and the square
hooded dripstones above, indicate that the house dates from the
fourteenth or fifteenth century. To this place the stranger made his
way, his advent being almost unnoticed and his purpose unknown. A
local chronicler wrote: “Quiet and unobtrusive to a degree, he soon
attracted attention from his very reserved and seclusive habits. Day
after day passed, and his figure was seldom seen. Frequently he would
leave the house early in the morning, and go no one knew whither,
and on his return retire to his room until next morning. It was soon
recognised that the stranger was fond of long walks, and there was not
a hill in the neighbourhood up whose sides he did not climb. For a
time no companion or friend seemed to notice him, but occasionally a
letter arriving at the post office was delivered to him. At first the
name attracted no attention, but at length ‘Alfred Tennyson,’ inscribed
on successive missives, seemed to have a special interest for the
local postmaster. He repeated the name until its familiarity led him
to suspect that the stranger was no other than the Poet Laureate, and
this ultimately proved correct. On the fact becoming generally known
that Tennyson was staying at Caerleon, visitors frequently called upon
him, but he endeavoured to maintain his seclusion to the last.... In
1859 the result of Tennyson’s sojourn at ‘Caerwysg’ was seen, when
he produced to the world his _Idylls of the King_. Some few of the
inhabitants still remember the poet.” Tennyson’s half-dozen allusions
to Caerleon are slight, but they do not lack distinctness; the most
striking are those semi-descriptive references in _Geraint and Enid_,
and in _Balin and Balan_, neither of which could have been so written
had not the poet visited the spot.

The Caerleon of fancy, not of reality, is described at much greater
length and with much higher charm by Lytton. If Tennyson was content
with a sweeping reference to the palace and its chambers, Lytton could
only be satisfied with a detailed account of the High Council Hall
in which was set the king’s ivory throne, and around which gathered
“the Deathless Twelve of the Heroic King,” the Knights of the Round
Table. He tells how the dragon of the Cymri “spread with calm wing o’er
Carduel’s domes of gold,” and how the city lay in a vale, sheltered by
the dark forests which mantled the environing hills, while his picture
of the daily customs of the people of the city was revealed in the
words:--

  “Some plied in lusty race the glist’ning oar;
    Some noiseless snared the silver-scaléd prey;
  Some wreathed the dance along the level shore;
    And each was happy in his chosen way.”

But this was purely the city of vision. The faint light which history
throws upon the dark period of the British occupation shows us
that Caerleon was continually given over to warfare of the wildest
character. It is associated also in the Fabliaux with the darkest
event in Arthur’s personal history--an event in which Mordred
eventually acted as Nemesis.

Were all the romances written which have Caerleon as their background
of scenery, the long stories of the ill-fated brethren Balin and
Balan, of Geraint and Enid, of many a knightly quest and adventure,
and of many a great undertaking by the “fair beginners of a nobler
time,” would have to be related anew. The half-historic, half-fabulous
histories of Dubritius the archbishop, of Taliesin the chief of bards,
of Talhairan, the father of poetry--all men of Caerleon--would likewise
have to be recounted, but the complete narratives must be sought in
the chronicles, the triads, and the “Mabinogion.” Yet some of the
dust under which lies the golden-domed city, and some of the ruins
beneath which sleeps slain romance, mingle with the dust and ruins of
history; and a little of that history may be deciphered still in the
Isca Silurum of the Romans, where Caractacus held his court, where the
Præter deposited the eagles, where justice was dealt out in the name
of Cæsar, where Saxons and Britons met in one of their last deadly
struggles, and where the dragon of the Cymry ultimately prevailed, and
Arthur Pendragon rose and had his name set “high on all the hills and
in the signs of heaven.”




CHAPTER VI

OF THE ROUND TABLE AND KING ARTHUR’S BATTLES

  “Ah, Minstrels! when the Table Round
  Arose, with all its warriors crown’d,
  There was a theme for bards to sound
      In triumph to their string!”--_Scott._

  “A Knight of Arthur, working out his will
  To cleanse the world.”--_Tennyson._

  “Full fifteen years, and more, were sped;
  Each brought new wreaths to Arthur’s head.
  Twelve bloody fields, with glory fought,
  The Saxons to subjection brought;
  Rython, the mighty giant slain
  By his good brand, relieved Bretagne:
  The Pictish Gillamore in fight,
  And Roman Lucius, own’d his might;
  And wide were through the world renown’d
  The glories of his Table Round.”--_Scott._


Lovers of the Arthurian legend might feel a sense of disappointment if
they were told that King Arthur never founded a Round Table, and that
all tradition on that subject was belied. But the closest students
of the ancient story are compelled to come to the conclusion that,
even granting King Arthur “made a realm and reign’d,” his Round Table
existed only in the imagination of later chroniclers and the weavers
of the romances. The evidence in favour of the Round Table is of no
substantial character, despite the veritable relic which exists at
Winchester and is proudly pointed to as the original and genuine
article. When Geoffrey of Monmouth pieced together the fragments of
history, the fables, and the traditions of the last of the British
heroes, and produced that wonderful narrative which has served as
a basis upon which to rear the elaborate and complicated structure
called by Malory the “noble hystorye of King Arthur,” he found nothing
whatever in those sources of information either of the Round Table
or of the Holy Grail. It was in 1155, when the “flower of Kings” had
five centuries of dust upon his tomb, that Wace in the _Brut_ gave
the first intimation of the existence of the idea.--“Fist Artus la
ronde table, dont Breton dient mainte fable;” from which we are led
to infer that the tradition was of Breton origin. Others have assumed
that the story of the Round Table established by King Arthur for the
accommodation of twelve favourite knights who met in perfect equality
was but a variation of that told of Charlemagne and his peers, though
the foremost scholars now assure us that the two ideas were separate
and distinct. The outstanding fact remains, however, that the earliest
histories of Arthur are silent on the subject which is so impressive
and memorable a feature of the later histories. Whence the idea was
derived, and how it came to be imported into this narration, none can
tell; but of its fitness of character there is no question. It is in
thorough keeping with the Arthurian story, supplies an appropriate
illustration of his character and methods, and enforces the leading
doctrine of knightly fellowship and the unity of the chivalrous band
whose primary object was “deeds of worship.”

It is absolutely impossible to reconcile the many conflicting accounts
of how King Arthur’s Round Table was obtained. One report is that
it was made by Merlin for Uther Pendragon; that Uther gave it to
King Leodegraunce of Cameliard; and that Leodegraunce gave it as
a wedding gift to Arthur when he married his daughter, Guinevere.
Malory confirmed this in his _Book of the Round Table and the Three
Quests_, when he put these words into the mouth of the king--“I love
Guinevere, the King’s daughter, Leodegraunce, of the land of Cameliard,
which holdeth in his house the Table Round, that ye told he had of
my father, Uther.” And Leodegraunce, when he heard of the projected
marriage, said: “He hath lands enough, he needeth none; but I shall
send him a gift that shall please him much more, for I shall give
him the Table Round, the which Uther Pendragon gave me; and, when it
is full complete, there is a hundred knights and fifty; and as for a
hundred good knights, I have myself, but I lack fifty, for so many have
been slain in my days.” King Arthur received the Table Round and the
hundred knights, “which,” he said, “please me more than right great
wishes.”

In the _Book of Sir Galahad_ we find that King Arthur “would wit how
many had taken the quest of the Sancgreal, and to account them he
prayed them all. Then found they by tale an hundred and fifty, and all
were knights of the Round Table.” But obviously this Round Table which
seated a hundred and fifty knights and left a space for the Holy Grail,
was not the special Round Table for King Arthur and the favoured twelve
knights of his selection; though it may have been the Round Table which
in the _Book of Sir Percivale_ we are told Merlin made “in token of the
roundness of the world: for by the Round Table is the world signified
by right. For all the world, Christian and heathen, resort unto the
Round Table, and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the
Round Table, they think them more blessed, and more in worship, than if
they had gotten half the world.” So said the Queen of the Waste Lands
to Sir Percivale. Yet in regard to this great institution there exists
the bolder idea of its astronomical derivation, and considering to what
extent astrology has entered into the Arthurian story the theory that
the Round Table was suggested by the movement round the Pole of the
Great Bear--“the seven clear stars of Arthur’s Table Round”--must not
be overlooked. Each age of chivalry has had some such institution, and
the Round Table continued to exist in this country until the time of
the Third Edward. Yet the actual era remains unverified

    “When first the question rose
  About the founding of a Table Round,
  That was to be, for love of God and men
  And noble deeds, the flower of all the world.”

Nor were the repeated efforts of English monarchs to keep alive the
institution conspicuously successful. The original standard could not
be maintained, and the tendency of these later times when the romances
were being enriched and elaborated, when Arthur and his knights were
regarded as models, and when tournaments were held in imitation of the
ancient jousts, was in reality a downward tendency. The ideal which men
strove to realise did not correspond with the spirit of the former age.
“People had become more worldly,” writes Ten Brink, “and were generally
anxious to protect the real interest of life from the unwarrantable
interference of romantic aspirations. The spirit of chivalry no
longer formed a fundamental element, but only an ornament of life--an
ornament, indeed, which was made much of, and was looked upon with a
sentiment partaking of enthusiasm. But now chivalry was no longer the
simple outflow of a dominant idea, but rather the product of a pleasant
self-conscious reflection. Minds ideally constituted strove to fill the
traditional moulds and formulas with a really ethical substance, and by
trying in their own way to transpose these ancient poems into action,
developed a really tender and humane disposition. The majority of
people rejoiced merely in the splendour, and in the festive, dignified
existence that raised them above the commonplace and distinguished them
from the vulgar crowd. But in every case there was the intermixture
of an incongruous element.” The lapse to Quixotism was inevitable,
and with the lashings of the follies of the undiscriminating imitator
of the knights of chivalry, the old custom passed away in derision.
Cervantes did well and did evil by his destructive satire: in cutting
away the parasite, the false and foolish chivalry which had fastened
itself upon the wise and the true, he cut also to the roots of the
goodly tree which deserved to fall more nobly, if fall it must. Renan
reminds us that it was not Arthur the King who has been adopted by all
peoples, but Arthur who charmed the world as the head of an order of
equality in which all sat at the same table, and in which a man’s worth
depended upon his valour and his natural gifts. The fate of an unknown
peninsula mattered nothing to the world--“what enchanted it was the
ideal court presided over by Guinevere, where around the monarchical
unity the flower of heroes was gathered together, where ladies, as
chaste as they were beautiful, loved according to the laws of chivalry,
and where the time was passed in listening to stories, and learning
civility and beautiful manners.”

The fashion set by Cervantes was followed in later times by John
Hookham Frere, whose projected _National Work_ comprising the “most
interesting particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table”
is a brilliant _jeu d’esprit_; and by Mr. Clemens (“Mark Twain”)
whose _Yankee at the Court of King Arthur_ scarcely ranks either
among his witty or his memorable productions. The greater number of
modern writers, having neither the provocation nor the excuse of
Cervantes, have selected for treatment the worthier and purer side of
chivalry,[20] but their idealisation had led to confusion also. Such
sober history as exists proves conclusively that the knights of the
most chivalrous age lacked those attributes upon which so much stress
has been laid, to the glory of poetry but to the obscuring of fact. It
is not within my scope, however, to dwell longer upon this subject, but
to call attention to the Round Table either as its reputed existence or
as the use of its name may be regarded as an indication of the extent
of King Arthur’s realm. But here, perhaps, we reach the most doubtful
ground of all. Wherever we step we touch a crumbling footway or find
ourselves utterly lost in a region of superstitions. The advance
along this illusive track would therefore be unprofitable, but that
it enables us to perceive how Arthurian traditions permeate the land,
how tenaciously the supposititious links with him and his age are
cherished, and how the crudest facts are turned to account in order
that some claim may be popularly justified to association with his fame.

Of the multitude of places in Britain claiming to possess King Arthur’s
Round Table, the ancient capital of Winchester ranks first. Caxton
in his famous Prologue provides a list of proofs of Arthur’s actual
existence--“In the castel of Dover ye may see Gauwayne’s skulle, and
Cradok’s mantel; at Wynchester, the rounde table; in other places,
Launcelottes sworde, and many other thynges.” Tradition ascribes the
foundation of Winchester Castle to King Arthur in the year 523, and the
large oaken table there hanging in the Chapel of St. Stephen, carved
with the figure of the king and the names of the knights, is affirmed
to be the identical board at which he and his knights assembled. King
Henry VIII exhibited it as such to the Emperor Charles, but alas for
romance! the researches of modern antiquaries have caused it to be
ascribed to the time of Stephen, thus disposing once and for all of
Drayton’s proud contention--

  “And so great Arthur’s seat ould Winchester prefers,
  Whose ould round table yet she vaunteth to be hers,”

and equally falsifying Warton’s declaration--

  “High hung remains, the pride of former years,
  Old Arthur’s board: on the capacious round
  Some British pen has sketched the names renown’d,
  In marks obscure of his immortal peers.”

The great antiquity of Winchester would make its possession of such a
relic, if genuine, quite possible. The ancient capital of England was
possessed by the Romans, who erected the massive walls and temples
of which it justly boasts. Some authorities declare that the first
Christian church was erected in Winchester about the year 169, three
centuries or more before King Arthur’s time, and that it was converted
into a temple of Dagon, or Woden, by the Saxons late in the fifth
century. Portion of Winchester was called by the Romans “Gwent,” or the
Hollow, and this name being confused with the Gwent in Monmouthshire
probably led to the transference of the scenes of the Arthurian legend
to the famous capital. This class of error, as has been already pointed
out, has not been infrequently met with in old chronicles. It was owing
to some such confusion of ideas in the mind of King Henry VII that he
named his son, born in Winchester Castle, after the Arthur of romance.
Winchester, in fact, plays no mean part in the Arthurian drama. It
was at times confused with Camelot, and given as the alternative name
of that place. But there is no substance in the claim that the Round
Table now to be seen in Winchester is really Arthurian. Even Defoe in
his eighteenth-century chronicle of a journey from London to Land’s
End talks contemptuously of the pretence to pass off the relic as “a
piece of antiquity to the tune of twelve hundred years,” and he threw
absolute discredit upon the whole story.

Caerleon-on-Usk, the historic capital of King Arthur’s realm, claims
(as we have related) also to possess the Round Table, but in this
instance the visitor is taken to a field, still bearing the name of
the Round Table Field, in which a circular cavity probably marks the
site of a Roman encampment. The local legend is that beneath this field
King Arthur and his knights sleep entranced, and await the summons to
come forth and save England from peril. On the top of Cadbury Hill,
Somerset, at a spot known as Cadbury Camp, a vast artificial circle,
which is doubtless also of Roman origin, is designated the Round Table;
and about half a mile from Penrith in Scotland a circular intrenchment,
eighty-seven feet in diameter, is popularly known by the same name.
Scott mentions “Penrith’s Table Round” in his _Bridal of Triermain_,
and one of Lockhart’s notes explains that the circle within the ditch
is about one hundred and sixty paces in circumference, with openings,
or approaches, directly opposite each other. “As the ditch is on the
inner side it could not be intended for the purpose of defence, and it
has been reasonably conjectured that the enclosure was designed for the
solemn exercise of feats of chivalry, and the embankment around for the
convenience of spectators.” This Scotch reference has a significance of
its own, but, standing alone, and combated by other claims, it cannot
be deemed of very high importance.

Sir Walter Scott quotes the lines of the poet David Lindsay--

  “Adew, fair Snawdon, with thy towris hie,
  Thy chapell-royall, park, and Tabyll Round,”

which removes the relic, natural or artificial, to North Wales; but
Anglesey also claims that what others call a Roman camp overlooking
Redwharf Bay is the “Burdd Arthur,” or Arthur’s Round Table. Leland’s
Itinerary contains the announcement that near Denbigh “there is, in
the Paroch of Llansannen in the Side of a Stony Hille, a Place wher
there be twenty-four Holes or Places in a Roundel for Men to sitte
in, but sum lesse, and some bigger, cutte out of the mayne Rock
by Mannes Hand; and there Children and Young Men cumming to seke
their Catelle use to sitte and play. Sum caulle it the Rounde Table.
Kiddes use their communely to play and skip from Sete to Sete.” No
conclusion can be drawn, and no satisfaction can be gained, from this
medley of conflicting claims: we learn only that the tradition was
widely diffused and that either in a spirit of contention to claim
possession of the relic, or with the desire to ensure the survival
of the recollection by symbols, the name came to be indiscriminately
bestowed upon artificial imitations or natural resemblances of the
original. George Borrow, however, favoured the Welsh localities as
truly Arthurian.

If we turn to the question of the number of the knights supposed to
range themselves at the Table Round we find similar diversity both
of record and opinion, and equal preposterousness in rival claims.
The Table at Winchester had “sieges” for twenty-five, including the
king. The Table mentioned by Malory had “sieges” for one hundred and
fifty: one hundred were sent by Leodegraunce, Merlin found twenty-eight
more, King Arthur chose Sir Gawaine and Sir Tor, and the remaining
twenty were left for those who proved themselves worthy. Yet the old
frontispiece to Malory’s History showed only thirty knights seated at
the Table; Scott, in his _Triermain_, mentions only sixteen; and the
old ballad on Arthur specifies the number of “good and able knights” as
fifty. To leave such details, let it suffice to learn from Malory that
“by the noble fellowship of the Table Round was King Arthur borne up”;
or let us agree with Drayton, for the sake of poetical justice, that
Arthur’s and Charlemagne’s knights were of exactly the same number--

  “Who bear the bow were knights in Arthur’s reign,
  Twelve they, and twelve the knights of Charlemagne.”

Among the many remarkable traditions concerning the Round Table is
that which survives in Wales that Arthur assembled his followers on
the heights of the Brecknockshire Beacons, and there made known his
design to establish a knighthood and to found a Table Round. On the
summit of Pen-y-Van may yet be seen huge stones and rock fragments
which the superstitious regard as the broken relics of the Table, to
the real existence of which far more attention has been given than
to its allegorical significance. The Round Table is, in fact, purely
symbolical throughout the romance, an idea conveyed by the customary
means of a simple figure, a parable. It is illustrative of the equality
and the unity of the order of chivalry, and of the singleness of
purpose and ambition of the Arthurian warriors and adventure-seekers.
The breaking up of the Table Round is the sign of the falling away in
allegiance of the knights and of the approaching disintegration of
Arthur’s kingdom. When the fellowship of the knights is strongest and
the complement is complete, the king is at the height of his power;
when there are vacant seats at the Table, there are indications of a
decline; when only a remnant of the knights meets once more at the
monarch’s call, the kingdom is half-lost; when the fellowship is broken
and the Round Table has disappeared, the end of Arthur’s reign is
come, and his power is shattered for ever. “We all understand,” said
Sir Lancelot, “in this realm will be now no quiet, but ever strife and
debate, now the fellowship of the Round Table is broken; for by the
noble fellowship of the Round Table was King Arthur upborne, and by
their nobleness the King and all his realm was in quiet and in rest.”

By the deftness of the chroniclers the symbolism of the Round Table
becomes slightly intermixed with the symbolism of the Grail quest,
Sir Galahad, the perfect knight who could sit in the Siege Perilous,
being the only knight who could be blessed with the vision of the
Holy Grail. It was those alone of the fellowship of the Round Table
who entered upon the quest, and it was the one pure hero, the man of
most worship, who achieved that quest. Two seats in the Round Table
were left vacant by Merlin. One was filled by King Pellinore when he
had proved his worthiness; “but in the Siege Perilous,” said Merlin,
“there shall no man sit therein but one, and if there be any so hardy
to do it he shall be destroyed, and he that shall sit there shall have
no fellow.” The double prophecy was fulfilled. The unworthy knight who
attempted to occupy the siege was carried away in a flame that burst
forth instantaneously, and Merlin’s own fate is by some ascribed to his
inadvertence in sitting in that mysterious chair, strangely carven and
lettered. But for Galahad there was no such fear. Long did the Siege
Perilous remain vacant, for while Arthur and his knights were building
up the kingdom Lancelot’s son was unborn. But at the assembling of the
fellowship one Whitsuntide a hermit predicted to the king that that
same year one should be born who would sit in the Siege Perilous and
win the Sangreal. Henceforth the two ideas are found constantly united.
At Camelot all the seats at the Table were found newly written with
gold letters, and upon the Siege Perilous were the mystic words: “Four
hundred winters and fifty-four accomplished after the passion of our
Lord Jesu Christ ought this Siege to be fulfilled.” The knights were
filled with wonderment, and they awaited the coming of the worshipful
man who could sit there and not be harmed. Only miracles were wrought
that day; the air and sky were full of omens, and Lancelot said: “I
will that ye wit that this same day will the adventures of the Sangreal
begin.” “A good old man, and an ancient,” clothed in white, entered
the palace, bringing with him a young knight without arms. No one knew
whence they came, but they listened in awe to the reverend stranger,
who declared that the youth by his side was the long-expected knight,
of the king’s lineage, of the kindred of Saint Joseph, destined to sit
in the Siege Perilous and to achieve the Grail quest. It was Galahad,
Sir Lancelot’s own son, having for his mother Elaine, the daughter of
King Pelles, who was “cousin nigh unto Joseph of Arimathie,” and the
possessor of the Holy Vessel. In the mysterious seat the young knight
sat unfearing, and the knights beholding this whispered to each other,
“This is he by whom the Sangreal shall be achieved.” It was the virgin
knight who could alone draw out the sword from the stone, and who again
proved himself the greatest, after which he began with religious ardour
his appointed task.

Galahad’s story was a late addendum to the Arthurian legend, and it
is very difficult to suppose that he was an historic figure. Yet his
prototype is said to have existed in the person of Catwg the wise
(Cadog), the second principal of Llancarfan College, where he was the
successor of the renowned Bishop Dubois. In his youth Catwg had been
a soldier, later he joined the Christian Church, and the neophyte had
the advantage of receiving personal instruction from the aged master,
the foremost divine of Arthur’s time. But the suggestion that Cadog was
Galahad is scarcely open to serious consideration, and Walter Map, the
first to relate the history of the virgin knight, was not likely to
have had any such prototype in his mind. His conception seems to have
been mainly poetic. The story is crowded with mysteries, superstitions,
and idealisms. Galahad is scarcely human in any of his attributes, and
he is so invested with marvels that we may safely set him down as an
imaginary type or the most shadowy of traditional figures.

In discussing the real Arthur, as distinct from the Arthur of romance,
we have to bear in mind that he was primarily the warrior, the
representative of a cause which necessitated the constant display of
his power in battle. As such he was first celebrated by the bards, and
it was around the warrior and chief that the romance grew. From being
simply a military leader, he became a type of hero about whom gathered
many legends, and in course of time he was made the central figure in
all the stories of marvellous adventure current in the early days. That
there was an Arthur leading a forlorn hope, chief of a people slow
to yield and hard to subdue, need scarcely be questioned. He is the
original hero, the last and greatest of a conquered race; he is the
giant-figure standing behind the mythical Arthur of fable and romance.
Born when his land was attacked by the invader and his people were
fearing extinction, he valorously met the foe, and for a while stemmed
the victorious current of the Saxon and the Roman arms. Defeated at
last, he became, as was inevitable, a type of hero--a later Odin, a
demi-god--and in the romances and songs we read rather of aims than
accomplishments, of desires than of deeds. More and more as time cast
its glamour about him, King Arthur became the embodiment of a national
aspiration, and the vanquished race revenged its defeat in songs of
defiance, songs which vaunted of victory and were matched to triumphant
strains, songs which relieved the thought of present disaster and
recalled only the olden triumphs or prompted dreams of future glory.
These songs took their rise in prophecies and sprang forth into golden
promise of power and success. Speedily the ideal replaced the real.
Poet after poet, chronicler after chronicler, added attributes to the
hero; and ultimately from one strong man waging desperate war against
outnumbering foes, the Arthur of romance was evolved, the Arthur whose
conquests were an unbroken series and whose territory was limitless,
the Arthur with his invincible knighthood, the Arthur who could never
die, but who, in Merlin’s words, “like the dawn will arise from his
mysterious retreat.” The legends supply one more proof that a nation
with a voice, with the power of utterance, is invincible in spirit;
captive and conquered though it may be, it remains unsubdued and free
in impulse and thought. We can conceive how bold and defiant the spirit
of the Cymri remained when in the eyes of the race the defeated king
was still visible as the master of all kings, and the vanquished people
could boast that he who fell under the Roman yoke--

          “Swept the dust of ruin’d Rome
  From off the threshold of the realm, and crushed
  The Idolaters, and made the people free.”

[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]

THE ROCKY VALLEY, TINTAGEL

  [_To face p. 150_]

To this race Caerleon and Camelot became cities of magic splendour
and magnificence, and the courts and camps of Arthur surpassed in
strength and riches the luxurious home of Cæsar. The land was strewn
with relics of Arthur’s power; the downs and plains were the scenes
of his momentous victories; the hills were his chairs and footstools;
the old encampments were the scenes of famous tourneys; the dark woods
suggested the scenes of strange adventures for the knights; the holy
wells, the rivers, and the places where Nature was brightest and most
beautiful, were all associated with leading events and enterprises in
the history of the king and his noble retinue. Particularly did the
Cymri insist upon the successive and overwhelming defeats by Arthur
of the Saxons, their traditional and most hated foe. And in their
vauntings they gave Arthur the mastery of half Europe, claimed that
the Roman Emperor became his vassal, and that upon his head the Pope
himself placed a crown.

Arthur fought twelve great battles against the Saxons, the dates
varying from 457 to 604.[21] Either names have been mixed, or the
chroniclers have monstrously departed from fact, or else we must
conclude that the British warrior was actually king of the greater part
of England, Wales, and Scotland, for his victories extend from Cornwall
to Lincoln, and from Caerleon in Wales to the Scotch Lowlands. The
twelfth and greatest of his victories was at Mount Badon, where “in one
bout,” we are told, “Arthur vanquished eight hundred and forty-one,”
and “no man overthrew them but himself alone.” The identity of Mount
Badon, where “our good Arthur broke once more the Pagan” has long been
a matter of dispute. It has been contended that Bath was none other
than Mons Badonicus, and that the actual battlefield was a spot known
as Banner Down; but the claim has almost entirely been abandoned now
that so much evidence is forthcoming in favour of another site. Bath
seems to have been fixed upon as a likely place not only on account
of its veritable antiquity and its early occupation by the Romans,
but because it appeared to be a sort of translation or corruption
of the word Badon. But this is an etymological blunder, for, as has
been pointed out, a sixth century word cannot be elucidated in this
free manner with the help of a word which had no existence until
the tenth century. The authorities are now fairly well agreed that
Badon must be identified with Badbury Rings, but again a difficulty
arises, for there are two places called Badbury, not very far from
each other, one in Wiltshire and the other in Dorset. There is also a
Caer Badon in Berkshire which at least two historians have favoured as
the scene of Arthur’s crucial contest with Cerdic. Our knowledge of
the battle comes from the Welsh bards who celebrated it in vaunting
songs, and from Gildas and Bede, but none of them assists us to
establish where Badon was, or, for the matter of that, at what date
the battle was fought. Lady Charlotte Guest reminds us that Gildas,
who bore the name of Badonicus from being born in the year in which
the battle was fought,[22] described Badon as being at the mouth of
the Severn, but this passage has been declared an interpolation. Mr.
Freeman, Mr. Stokes, and other modern historians give their vote for
Badbury in Dorset, but without mentioning their reasons. The Badbury
in Wiltshire seems to me to be the more likely place if for no other
reason than that King Arthur is often mentioned as travelling through
that county, and as being in the vicinity of Salisbury and Stonehenge,
whereas Dorset seems to have been outside the sphere of his visits and
operations. The Wiltshire Badbury is only a few miles from the gigantic
and mysterious megalithic structure which had actually been attributed
by Geoffrey of Monmouth and others to Aurelius Ambrosius, or Arthur.
One tradition ran that it was a monument erected by the Britons on
the spot where the massacre of the British nobles took place by order
of Hengist. But in the light of science we learn that Stonehenge was
an antiquity in the time of the Celts, and that its origin must have
been as much a mystery to the contemporaries of King Arthur as it is
to us of to-day. Stonehenge is not mentioned by the old chroniclers,
but, remarkable to say, neither is Badon; but Salisbury is the subject
of Merlin’s fateful prophecy of Arthur’s doom in the battle with
Mordred. Mr. Joseph Ritson went exhaustively into the subject of Mons
Badonicus, and after citing all that was recorded of it by Archbishop
Usher, Matthew of Westminster, Gildas, Geoffrey, Sir John Prise, and
many others, he still left the issue uncertain. What alone seems to be
established is that the battle was a decisive triumph for the British
against the Saxons under Cerdic, and that Arthur personally performed
prodigies of valour. Tennyson has represented him charging at the head
of his knights, and standing high on a heap of the slain watching the
flying foe; and Drayton has sung--

      “How he himself at Badon bore that day,
  When at the glorious gole his British scepter lay;
  Two daies together how the battel tronglie tood:
  Pendragon’s worthie son, who waded there in blood,
  Three hundred Saxons slew with his own valiant hand.”

It is a truly marvellous account which is given of Arthur’s valorous
conduct at the battle of Badon. Wearing his breastplate, his gold
helmet with the dragon device upon it, and taking his sword Excalibur,
his spear Ron, and his shield Pridwen, he first received a blessing
from the Bishop Dubritius and then headed his force against the Saxons,
who received the attack in a wedge-formation, as was their custom.
The issue of the battle long remained in doubt. The fighting was of
the most desperate character on both sides, and at the close of day
the Saxons had the advantage. Next morning the contest was resumed,
Arthur storming the mount and being at a disadvantage by having the
lower position. His personal example, however, fired his troops with
courage. Drawing his sword and uttering the name of St. Mary he rushed
among the enemy and dealt such strokes that a man fell each time. In
all 470 Saxons lay dead as the result of that terrific onslaught, and
the Britons rushing in at the right moment completed the Saxon rout.
This was the end of a long campaign which had taken Arthur through
Lincolnshire, Staffordshire, and Somerset. The date of the battle,
as is usual with Arthurian dates, cannot be fixed. It is given by
different chroniclers as 493, 511, as 516 in the _Annales Cambriæ_, and
as 520.

It is surprising that Badon[23] should remain vague and undefined,
when the sites of some of the other and less important battles are
in most cases not dubious and are easily ascertained. We know, for
example, that Barham Down, or Barendowne, the scene of one of the
last encounters with Mordred, was near Canterbury; and the fact that
thereabouts was an Anglo-Saxon cemetery may either be testimony to the
fact, or may have suggested to the chroniclers the likelihood of its
being an ancient battlefield. Mr. Ritson traced the localities of the
other Arthurian struggles to the banks of the Glen in Lincolnshire
and of the Duglas in Lancashire; he thought Bassas might be Bashford
in Staffordshire, though others favour Boston in Lincolnshire;
Cathbregion was in Somersetshire, and so forth. Of these battles we
have no details in Malory. On the other hand, we have a long account
of the expedition to Italy undertaken by Arthur against the Emperor
of Rome after the latter had presumed to demand tribute from him. His
complete humiliation of the Emperor’s subjects is, of course, insisted
upon. Prisoners were taken in large numbers and compelled to become
Christians; a duchess besought him to spare the women and children, and
Arthur thereupon issued magnanimous orders; the keys of cities were
brought to him by young men, and his march through northern Italy was
one continuous triumph. “Then he rideth into Tuscany,” says Malory in
his most laconic style, “and winneth towns and castles, and wasted all
in his way that to him will not obey.” Finally the senators offered
him allegiance, and the noblest cardinals in Rome came voluntarily to
him and “prayed him peace.” Arthur accepted their gifts, and decided
to hold his Table Round, “with my knights as we liketh,” in Rome at
Christmas. Then, having been crowned by the Pope “with all the royalty
that could be made,” he apportioned the realms among his knights and
servants, and returned to England, landing at Sandwich,[24] where the
queen and a large company were waiting to receive him. King Arthur, his
knighthood, his undefeated warriors, and his almost miraculous battles,
are perhaps more a theme for the poet than for the historian. Such
lines as Lytton’s accord with the romance, and realise the aspirations
of the unsubjugated tribe and of those who sang its fame and prophesied
its future triumph.

  “Rings Owaine’s shout,--rings Geraint’s thunder-cry,
    The Saxon’s death knell in a hundred wars;
  And Cador’s laugh of triumph:--through the sky
    Rush tossing banderolls swift as shooting stars,
  Trystan’s white lion--Lancelot’s cross of red,
  And Tudor’s standard with the Saxon’s head.
  And high o’er all, its sealèd splendour rears
    The vengeful emblem of the Dragon Kings.
  Full on the Saxon bursts the storm of spears;
    Far down the vale the charging whirlwind rings,
  While through the ranks its barbèd knighthood clave,
  All Carduel follows with its roaring wave.”




CHAPTER VII

OF CAMELOT AND ALMESBURY

  “With tabor blithe and bugle sound,
  Unto King Arthur’s Table Round,
        Right valiant hearts I wot,
  Drink, in thy spirit’s lusty glee,
  And pledge with fullest jollity
        These knights of Camelot.”--_Richard Hengist Horne._

  “King Arthur at Camelot kept his Court Royall
      With his faire Queene, Dame Guiniver the gay:
  And many bold barons sitting in hall,
  With ladies attired in purple and pall:
      And heraults with hewkes hooting on high,
      Cryed ‘Largesse! Largesse! Chevaliers très-hardies!’”
                                  --_Percy Reliques._

  “God’s holy name was on his tongue,
      Thine in his heart--Queen Guinevere.”--_Paton._


Those who press the question, where is many-tower’d Camelot, where is
the royal mount rising between the forest and the field, where is the
flashing city of the marvellous gate, may be referred by the veracious
historian to a village in France, or by the unromantic antiquary to a
hamlet in Scotland. Time has razed the real city, wherever it was, and
the poet can invest it with charms and environ it with wonders which
it never possessed. The simple lover of the legend will be content
to find King Arthur’s favourite haunt in the fair domain of England,
amid the sleepy vales and the undisturbed hills of restful Somerset.
On the Mendips, within sight of a long range of wooded verdant hills,
many a tower and steeple dotting the vale which sweeps away until lost
in the bluish haze of distance, here and there a bright homestead
twinkling on the heights or nestling in the bowery hollows, there is a
deserted place called Cadbury Camp. A stone wall winds round an ancient
encampment and marks its bounds, and just across the open land looking
towards Portishead lie the widening waters of the Bristol Channel.
The hills around show every variety of green as they stretch further
and further from the shore, and one would think that the region had
been unvisited for a thousand years. And if tradition be true, this
was Camelot, Camelot where King Arthur sought repose; Camelot where
Sir Lancelot brought the daughter of King Leodegraunce of the land of
Cameliard, “the gentilest and fairest lady”; Camelot where the king was
wedded “unto dame Guenever in the church of St. Stevens with great
solemnitie.” It was at Camelot, on the occasion of this ceremony, that
Merlin bade the knights of the Round Table (the gift of Leodegraunce
to King Arthur) to sit still while he showed them “a strange and
marvellous adventure.” As they sat waiting and expectant, a white hart
ran into the hall, followed by a white brachet (or scenting hound) and
by thirty couple of black running hounds “with a great crie”; and the
hart, wounded by the brachet, overthrew one of the knights, and led Sir
Gawaine, accompanied by Sir Gaheris, upon a wonderful quest, in which
he fought against great odds, slew a lady in a castle by misadventure,
learnt that “a knight without mercy is without worshippe,” and
returning to Camelot, saddened and disgraced, was bidden by the king
and queen henceforth to “be with al ladyes and to fight for their
quarrels.”

It is worthy of note that Gawaine not only plays a most important part
in the romance, but that, like Sir Kay, his character is variously
described and at times unnecessarily assailed by the chroniclers. By
laborious efforts his intentions are perverted and contempt thrown upon
his actions, and the episode of the “foule and shameful” slaying of the
lady enabled the chroniclers to dwell upon his “vilanous” deed and his
mercilessness, while at the same time they were able to explain his
subsequent acts of courtesy as the result of the duty put upon him by
the king. Gawaine was Arthur’s nephew, the son of Morgan le Fay, and
Malory presents him to us alternately as the soul of chivalry and the
type of faithlessness. This accounts for Tennyson’s query, “Art thou
not he whom men call light-of-love?” and for the poet’s assertion that
his courtesy had “a touch of traitor in it.” Gawaine is frequently
made the subject of reproof in the romance, though he came out nobly
in the end when he vowed to be revenged on sinful Lancelot, fought him
valorously, and died like a great hero. According to the original Welsh
story, it must be remembered, Gawaine was called the Golden-Tongued,
owing to his powers of persuasion, none being able to resist him what
he asked. In the Triads he is addressed by Arthur as “Gwalchmai, of
faultless answers,” and revolting Tristram, who dared the king to nine
hundred combats, listened to Gawaine and yielded to his solicitation.
The tomb of Gawaine, according to William of Malmesbury, was discovered
in the time of William the Conqueror in Wales, county Pembroke, where
Lady Charlotte Guest tells us there is a district called Castell
Gwalchmai. Gawaine’s courtesy was proverbial in Chaucer’s time, and
the Welsh historians impute to him great scientific learning--“there
was nothing of which he did not know the elements and the material
essence.” Hence Scott’s reference to “the gentle Gawain’s courteous
lore.”[25] All this is inconsistent with the levity and harshness
attributed to him by Malory, though his wanton betrayal of Sir Pelleas
and his guilty relations with Ettarde exposed him to the charge of
infamy and caused him to lose grace in the sight of those chroniclers
who had begun to give a spiritual significance to the tales of Arthur’s
Court, and to find in the recital opportunities for preaching purity.

Pelleas’s hopeless love for the scornful maiden is one of the saddest
stories which form part of the Arthurian records. In his despair at
being rejected by the “sovereign lady” for whom he had fought and
prevailed, he sought the help of Sir Gawaine--“And, Sir Knight, sith
ye are so nigh a cousin unto King Arthur, and a king’s son, therefore
I pray thee, betray me not, but help me, for I may never come by her
but by the help of some good knight; for she is in a strong castle
here fast by, within this four miles, and over all this country she
is lady of.” Gawaine vowed to serve him, and declared that he would
ride to the castle, taking with him Pelleas’s horse and armour, and
tell her that he had slain her lover: “and so shall I come within to
her, and then shall I do my true part, and ye shall not fail to have
her love.” But instead of winning Ettarde for Pelleas, he won her for
himself, declaring that he had slain Pelleas and had come for her love.
They went out of the castle and dwelt with each other for two days in
a pavilion. The rest of the pitiful story is best told in Malory’s own
words. “And on the third day, in the morning early, Sir Pelleas armed
him, for he had not slept sith that Sir Gawaine departed from him; for
Sir Gawaine had promised him by the faith of his body to come unto him
to his pavilion by the priory within the space of a day and a night.
Then Sir Pelleas mounted on horsebacke, and came to the pavilion that
stood without the castle.... Then hee went to the third pavilion and
found Sir Gawaine with his lady Ettarde; and when he saw that, his
heart almost brast with sorrow, and he said: ‘Alas, that ever a knight
should bee found so false.’ And then he tooke his horse and might no
longer abide for sorrow. And when hee had ridden nigh halfe a mile, he
turned againe and thought to sley them both, and when he saw them lye
so fast sleeping, unneth (scarcely) hee might hold him on horseback
for sorrow, and said thus to himselfe, ‘Though this knight be never so
false, I will not sley him sleeping, for I will never destroy the high
order of knighthood.’ ... And when he came to the pavilions (a third
time) he tied his horse to a tree, and pulled out his sword naked in
his hand, and went straight to them where as they lay together, and
yet he thought that it were great shame for him to sley them sleeping,
and laid the naked sword overthwart both their throats, and then hee
tooke his horse, and rod foorth his way, making great and wofull
lamentation.” Such is the story of Sir Gawaine and Sir Pelleas, knights
of Camelot.

At Camelot, at the vigil of Pentecost, the knights gathered, Sir
Gawaine among them, and his falseness began to bring upon him
retribution. All the seats at the Round Table were filled, save the
Siege Perilous, though the time had now come, “four hundred winters,
and four and fifty being accomplished, after the passion of our Lord
Jesus Christ,” that the place should be no longer vacant. The king
wished, according to custom, to see an adventure before sitting down to
meat, and tidings were brought him of a marvellous stone floating in
the river, and a sword sticking in it. Lancelot warned the knights not
to touch the sword: “Who assayeth for to take that sword, and faileth
of it, he shall receive a wound by that sword.” Nevertheless, Gawaine,
obeying the command of the king, took the sword by the handle, but
failed to move it; and Gawaine next day vowed to set forth upon the
quest of the Grail, the vision of which had appeared unto the assembly
when they returned from “Camelot’s minster.” His quest was unavailing.
Through the streets of Camelot the knights sallied forth, “and there
was weeping of the rich and poor, and the king returned away, and
might not speak for weeping.” Of all who failed, Gawaine failed most
signally. The monk of the abbey where he sought refuge condemned
his wickedness, and the good men at the hermitage of whom he asked
harbour for charity, reproached him with his mischievous life of many
winters, and sternly bade him do penance. If Sir Gawaine redeemed his
reputation as the champion of the injured king, it scarcely sufficed to
atone for the evil he wrought when the days were fair at Camelot.

In the _Prologue_ by Caxton we are told that record of King Arthur was
to be found in “the toune of Camelot, the grete stones and mervayllous
werkys of yron lying under the grounde, and ryal vautes, which dyvers
now lyving hath seen.” These relics have vanished, and Camelot is
nothing but a waste. But there is just a chance that Caxton had some
other Camelot than South Cadbury in his mind, for he speaks of it as in
Wales, while in the story of the burial of Balin and Balan by Merlin we
read that “Balin’s sword was put in marble stone, standing upright as
great as a milstone, and the stone hoved alwayes above the water, and
did many yeares, and so by adventure it swam downe the streame to the
citie of Camelot, that is in English, Winchester.”[26] This confusion
is easily explained. Putting aside the fact that there is little
coherence or consistency in the geography of the romance, we have
already suggested a reason for the chronicler’s statement that Camelot
was Winchester. In Monmouthshire is Caer-went, a resort of King Arthur,
and Winchester was known as Caer-wynt, a sufficiently close resemblance
to lead the old chroniclers astray. Obviously there must have been more
than one Camelot, if we are to pay any heed to the situation, distance,
and characteristics mentioned in Malory’s chapters. Caer-went has a
history dating back to the fifth century, when a school or college was
founded there by Ynyr Gwent, king of the district called Gwent, and
the husband of Vortimer’s daughter, Madrun. At Caer-went was fought
one of the last British battles with the Saxons just as they were
reaching the gates of Caerleon itself. The town is situated on the
Via Julia, or military road, made by Julius Frontius in the year 80,
and traces of it remained at the beginning of last century. Leland
speaks of its four great gates which “yet appear,” and an enthusiastic
pilgrim in 1802 wrote that the place, despite its present uninviting
and desolate aspect, deserved “every attention that can be bestowed by
the antiquarian or lover of those scites memorable for having been the
scenes of magnificence, genius, and heroism. Roman greatness has at
this place shone with a splendour little inferior to any other part of
the kingdom.” By some Caer-went is supposed to have been the capital
of the Silures, before Caerleon, and to have had a population of ten
thousand. Leland describes it as “a sumtyme fair and large cyte.” As a
British camp it may figure under various names in the romances.

We associate Camelot with the more peaceful part of Arthur’s life, and
with the brighter and more hopeful history of his followers, though
sad and tragic episodes in that history are by no means lacking. Up
the soft velvety sward came the knights in armour ready to tourney for
the prize of ladies’ smiles, and where the bee buzzes and the pheasant
runs was heard the clash of arms or the caracolling of many steeds.
Here, too, and we tell now a more certain truth, came the Roman with
his legions; here met contending forces, and the repose of the land was
broken with the tumult of war. Time has swept away every vestige of the
power and glory of old, and left the open field, the trench, and the
broken gray wall, as the sole mementoes of Camelot, but about all has
retained the glamour of one heroic name. The rabbit and the mole burrow
to the foundations of Arthur’s royal town, and the centuries have laid
moss and leaf upon the unfrequented paths and the vanishing signs of
former occupation. Yet no one can spend an hour at Cadbury Camp without
feeling that “the dust we tread once breathed.” The Severn sparkles in
the distance, and was probably the “river of Camelot,” where Merlin set
the “peron” or tombstone, and where Sir Tristram appointed his meeting
with Palamides.

No description of Camelot, with its courts and towers, its knights
and people, could be more entrancing than Tennyson’s. He told of the
mighty hall built by Merlin, with its mystic symbols in sculpture and
statuary; and he said that it was reached by the “sacred mount”--

  “And all the dim, rich city, roof by roof,
  Tower after tower, spire by spire,
  By grove and garden-lawn, and rushing brook.”

Arthur’s statue had been moulded with a crown, and “peaked wings
pointing to the Northern Star,” and this representation again calls
attention to the astronomical significance of the history of the king
whose name is preserved in Arcturus, the star of first magnitude, above
which is set “Arthur’s chair,” Ursa Major.

There may not be much to warrant the various traditions of Camelot,
and there remains nothing to verify them. South Cadbury, or Cadbury
Camp, silent and deserted as it now is, undoubtedly has a curious
history. It was anciently known as Camallate and Camellek, and was
early associated with King Arthur; it was a hill-fort of that strange,
strong race of warriors, the Belgæ, who overran the southern counties
and were dislodged from their strongholds with the greatest difficulty
by the Romans. This camp was as the rallying-point in the British and
Christian dominion of Gladerhaf, or Somerset. Some have supposed it
was the Cathbrigion where Arthur routed the Saxons in a great battle,
and so linked his name indissolubly with the locality. Leland in his
Itinerary described it as “sometime a famous town or castle, upon
a very torre or hill, wonderfully enstrengthened of nature”; and
John Selden, in his notes to the _Polyolbion_ of Drayton, definitely
described it as “a hill of a mile compass at the top, four trenches
encircling it, and twixt every one of them an earthen wall; the
contents of it, within about twenty acres, full of ruins and relics
of old buildings.” It has yielded various ancient weapons, Roman
coins, a silver horseshoe, and articles of camp equipage. The four
concentric deep ditches and the ramparts, forty-five feet apart, can
still be traced, and the camp seems to have been originally connected
with an extensive intrenchment on the opposite summit of the hill to
the north-west. From its position Cadbury must have been an important
station commanding the military road which ran from Bower Walls on the
Avon to the neighbouring heights of Clevedon--the little town which
gave birth to Arthur Henry Hallam, whose ancestral abode, Clevedon
Court, is sheltered by the fir-trees which are seen grouped in gloom
from Cadbury’s height. At Clevedon also dwelt Coleridge for a time,
as several of his poems, written in celebration of the surrounding
scenes, will for ever remind us. From Cadbury can be discerned the
pretty village of Wrington, where is cherished the memory of the Rev.
W. Leeves, who fashioned for “Auld Robin Gray” a fitting melody. It is
easy to perceive that the possessor of a stronghold on Cadbury would
be able to hold in subjection the entire district, and the name of the
place appears to bear witness that a decisive battle once raged there,
for _cad_ is the Cornish and Cymrian word for battle, and _bury_ for
hill or brow.

But it is Arthur, and Arthur only, who is commemorated at Cadbury Camp
to-day. There may be seen his Round Table, and the local superstition
runs that within the charmed circle the king may be seen sitting with
his knights behind barred golden gates. The great intrenchment is
called the site of King Arthur’s Palace; in the field below is King
Arthur’s Hunting Causeway; and it is King Arthur’s Well which springs
from the hillside and bubbles up in the fourth ditch. These recall the
wondrous past, the golden days, when the fame and splendour of Arthur’s
Court were on all tongues, and the poet could long afterwards ask--

  “Like Camelot what place was ever yet renown’d,
  Where, as at Caerleon, oft he kept the Table Round,
  Most famous for the sports at Pentecost so long,
  From whence all knightly deeds and brave achievements sprong.”

It was at Camelot that, when Arthur “let make a crie” the lords,
knights, and gentlemen of arms gathered, and “there the King would let
make a counsoile generall, and a great justes.” It was to Camelot that
Sir Pellinore came “passing sore” and told his saddest of stories; and
it was to Camelot that King Arthur turned after wearying combat and
hot adventure, certain there to enjoy rest and to find his queen and
the barons “right glad of his comming.” “What tidings at Camelot?”
asked one knight of another whom he encountered. “By my head,” said
the other, “there have I beene, and espied the court of King Arthur,
and there is such a fellowship that they may never be brok, and wel
nigh al the world holdeth with King Arthur, for there is the flower of
chivalry.” Such was the renown of Camelot.

To Camelot the knights sent their prisoners to do homage to King Arthur
and confess his greatness. The church of St. Stephen’s, often called
the Minster, was the place where the king and his followers assembled
to hear the Archbishop’s blessing upon their enterprises, and in the
adjoining grounds the principal men slain in battle were buried with
all honour. The twelve kings who fell in war with King Lot “were
buried in the church of Saint Stephen’s, in Camelot, and the remnant
of knights and of other were buried in a great rock,” so one of the
records runs. By the side of Lanceor’s tomb, made by Merlin, Tristram
and Lancelot encountered each other and “fought together unknown,”
and “either wounded other wonderly sore, that the blood ran out upon
the grass”; then, discovering that they were friends, they yielded up
their swords, “either kissed other an hundred times,” and rode back to
Camelot. Elaine, the mother of Galahad, came to Camelot richly attired,
and put Lancelot to shame, and it was at Camelot that the last sad
scenes in their tragic drama were enacted. The quest for the Sancgreal
began there, and King Arthur, full of forebodings, took a last review
of his knights and caused them to assemble for a last tournament in
Camelot’s meadows, “that after your death men may speak of it, that
such good knights were wholly together such a day.” The queen and
her ladies beheld the noble gathering from her tower, and saw Sir
Galahad, the perfect knight, break the spears of all who came against
him save that of his father, Sir Lancelot, and that of his compeer Sir
Percivale. When next we read of Camelot, Arthur is regretting the loss
of half his noble company; and when the worst had come to pass, and the
king discovered the wrong done to him by Lancelot and Guinevere, it
was of lonely Camelot he thought with tenderest regret. Tennyson has
seized upon this idea, and put into the mouth of the king the mournful
soliloquy as he muses on his faithless wife--

            “How sad it were to live
  And sit once more within the lonely hall,
  And miss the wonted number of my knights,
      *    *    *    *    *
  And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk
  Thy shadow still would glide from room to room,
  And I should evermore be vexed with thee
  In hanging robe or vacant ornament
  Or ghostly footfall echoing on the stair.”

This was when the time was come that Arthur should see Camelot no
more--when he had gone forth to his last fight, and Guinevere had taken
the nun’s habit and immured herself in Almesbury.

Renan has very finely remarked that in Celtic literature woman is
more tenderly and delicately portrayed than in the writings and
songs of any other race. Love is “a mystery, a kind of intoxication,
a madness, a giddiness,” and woman is superbly idealised until she
seems in our eyes an ethereal, radiant, half-spiritual or even angelic
creature. The romances are “dewy with feminine sentiment,” and the
chivalric conception of the heroine is so pure and beautiful that
Percivale’s sister, or Geraint’s wife, appears “as a sort of vague
vision intermediate between man and the supernatural world.” Even
faithless Guinevere--is she not so rarely beautiful, are not her spell
and witchery so strong, that, while hating her sin, we hesitate to
join in her condemnation, and have no heart to approve such passionate
denunciation as was spoken by the king in his hour of gloom?[27] The
vision of Guinevere flashes upon us as she was when Lancelot led her
from Cameliard to the king’s court at Camelot, when she went a-Maying
with her maidens, and when she was the cynosure of all eyes among the
spectators of the tournament. There was something daring on the part
of the old chroniclers in making King Arthur’s danger issue from the
best of knights and the most lovely of women--the two nearest to him,
and bound to him by the most sacred ties of love and honour. Still
more strange is it that, deep as their sinning was, we have so little
blame--or rather, let us say, resentment--for Lancelot and Guinevere.
This is not because Arthur has not the strongest claim upon our
sympathy, or because for one moment he fails to win our admiration; it
is only because Lancelot and Guinevere also have strong human claims
upon us, and so far have won our regard that we cannot withhold our
compassion also. Were not the knights themselves reluctant to condemn?
The romance brings out the fact conspicuously that it was not the
noblest, but the meanest, of the knights who revealed the wrong to
the king; nor was it the gallant men who willed that Guinevere should
die at the stake for her infidelity. And in the end do we not pity
mournful and repentant Lancelot in his lonely castle, or when paying
that noblest of tributes to his dead master? And does not even a deeper
feeling extend to the desolate woman who wore out her life in the
Almesbury convent?

What ingredient of historic fact there may be in the record that the
Ambresbyrig of the Saxons, and the Caer Emrys of the “Mabinogion” was
the queen’s retreat, the faithful alone must decide. All that impartial
and not too credulous historians can do is to pronounce the place as
not unlikely, not impossible, and not unfitting as her abode and as
the scene of her last acts of restitution and repentance. Almesbury
is a British earthwork of forty acres, the stronghold of Ambrosius
Aurelianus, Dux Britanniarum, of Roman lineage, but the champion of
the Britons against the Saxon horde. Religious associations both early
and late cling to this ancient place, and long after Guinevere was
dust a Benedictine monastery, founded by Queen Elfrida, continued the
religious traditions of the earlier era; and the fact that Almesbury
was the customary retreat of royal ladies who wished to withdraw from
the world confirms the character of the place as depicted in Malory’s
chronicle. Guinevere gave herself up to lamentation among the nuns,
“and never creature could make her merry”; Sir Lancelot’s visit only
strengthened her resolution to make amends for the past, and prompted
him also to seek, too late, perfection in righteous living. While in
a hermitage himself there came to him the vision of the queen’s end,
and taking her corpse to Glastonbury, he performed for it the last
rites, and then delivered himself over to death. His resting-place
was Joyous Gard, which, in his grief he had called Dolorous Gard;
the queen was laid by her husband’s side in the island-valley. But
at Llanilterne, near Cardiff, a huge quoin stone may be seen with an
almost undecipherable _Hic jacet_, and popular tradition declares that
this is Guinevere’s monument. “Through this knight and me,” said the
queen, when Sir Lancelot and she met in the Almesbury convent, “all
the wars were wrought, and the death of the most noble knights of the
world: for through our love that we have loved together is my most
noble lord slain; therefore, wit thou well, Sir Lancelot, I am in such
a plight to get my soul’s health; and yet I trust, through God’s grace,
that after my death for to have the sight of the blessed face of Jesu
Christ, and at the dreadful day of doom to sit on his right side: for
as sinful creatures as ever was I are saints in heaven.” When next the
“falsely true” knight saw the queen he was in his monk’s habit and she
was “wrapped in seared cloths of reins, from the top to the toe, in
thirty fold”; then, on foot, he followed her to her tomb, recalling
“her beauty, her bounty, and her nobleness.” The next scene is at
Joyous Gard itself, with Sir Lancelot smiling as he lies dead, and a
hundred torches burning about him; while Sir Ector de Maris delivers
the noblest of tributes to the courtliest knight, the truest friend,
the meekest man, the sternest foe, and “the truest lover of a sinful
man that ever loved woman.”

From Camelot to Almesbury is a far journey, and that journey marks the
two extremes of Arthurian history from the happiest to the saddest,
from the height of power and the plenitude of peace to the final
desolation and unavailing regret. The bridge which connects Camelot
with Almesbury is made up of the greatest achievements and the deepest
tragedies of Arthur’s reign. It is a bridge of ascent and descent, its
highest point marked by the puissance of the Table Round and Galahad’s
achievement of the quest of the Grail, its lowest part dipping into the
eternal gloom which followed the last battle in the west--a gloom from
which the Britons were destined never to emerge. That gloom falls over
Almesbury, but Camelot is still left in the light.

Never was, and never can be, such a fairyland as “many-tower’d
Camelot.” Its crystal dykes, its slope street, its weird white gate,
and its spires and turrets without number, are a poet’s dream. It
was the city of enchanters, built by fairy kings, a city which had no
beginning, was raised by no human hands, and can have no end--

        “A city of shadowy palaces,
  And stately, rich in emblem and the work
  Of ancient Kings who did their days in stone,”

a city of pure delights, of calm and innocence, of splendour and
contentment.

  “Out of bower and casement shyly glanced
  Eyes of pure women, wholesome stars of love;
  And all about a healthful people stept
  As in the presence of a gracious king.”

Where, indeed, could be this new Eden save in the imagination of the
romancer who conceived a fitting scene for King Arthur’s Court? It
is like the fairy gold which vanishes whenever a hand reaches out to
touch it. The “Camaletic Mount” is one of Nature’s hallowed places, a
place of wondrous stillness and magic charm, a place to regard as the
stronghold of romance, and yet not the place that poets have sung. One
can easily imagine the Lady of Shalott prisoned here in her bower, and
seeing all the moving world as shadows in a mirror; and one can deem
the scene appropriate for the meeting of Lancelot and the Lily-maid who
lifted up her eyes and lov’d him with that love which was her doom. It
is not well to inquire more deeply and more closely into the past of
Camelot, but to heed the poet’s warning--

                    “Never seek to behold
  Where the crystal streams ran in the City of Gold.”

Better to people it with the phantoms of Arthur’s Court than to
discover that the cavemen of the Mendips made it an abode. “The people
can telle nothing ther, but that they have hard say that Arture much
resorted to Camalot,” wrote Leland, and that suffices. Camelot is
purely ideal, and it is enough to find a real Camelot which faintly
recalls the place which Arthur’s eulogists deemed fitting for his
Court. Such cities, which had no beginning, have no end, and Camelot
will last as long, and prove as indestructible, as Fairyland itself.

  “The thrushes sang in the lone garden there--
  Clanging of arms about pavilion fair,
    Mixed with the knights’ laughs; there, as I well know,
  Rode Lancelot, the king of all the band,
    And scowling Gawaine, like the night in day,
  And handsome Gareth, with his great white hand
    Curl’d round the helm-crest, ere he join’d the fray.”




CHAPTER VIII

OF ST. KNIGHTON’S KIEVE AND THE HOLY GRAIL

  “The war-worn champion quits the world--to hide
  His thin autumnal locks where monks abide
  In cloistered privacy.”--_Wordsworth._

  “Hither came Joseph of Arimathy,
  Who brought with him the Holy Grayle (they say),
  And preacht the truth: but since it greatly did decay.”

  _Spenser._


About a mile from Tintagel, along the hilly road leading to Boscastle,
and passing the wonderful little Bossiney cove with its elephant-shaped
rock, there is a small rapid stream which winds through the Rocky
Valley and falls like a torrent at low tide into the sea. The Rocky
Valley, with its three huge boulders, its narrow walk now leading to
the side of the stream and now mounting far above it, and ending only
where the iron cliffs beetle above the roughest of bays, is one of the
most sublime spectacles that Nature has to display in that enchanted
region. The scenery is a mixture of dark and frowning heights standing
out with precipitous sides, and of green and gentle undulations, amidst
which sparkles ever and anon the tinkling sinuous brooklet. But it is
not so much the valley, despite its manifold charms, as the little
stream, which has a special interest for the pilgrim. By devious ways
its course may be traced back through a rushy channel which lies
deep and almost hidden between two sets of well-wooded hills until
suddenly the traveller hears the sound of a sharp splashing from an
unseen cataract. The walk now leads upward to a small gate; passing
through the opening we descend once more a steep embankment and find
ourselves at the water-edge. It is a haunted, sequestered spot, shut
in by the hills, overcast by shadows, the one sound the sound of the
leaping stream. This is St. Knighton’s Kieve, once regarded with a
species of holy awe in Cornwall and believed, like most natural wells
or “basins,” to be under the special protection and influence of a
saint. The superstition is an old one, and slowly dying out, though the
belief in holy wells, fairy wells, and wishing wells is one of the most
pleasing and least harmful of all ancient fancies. Every spring was of
yore regarded more or less as a miracle; every torrent had its tutelary
genius.

[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]

ST. KNIGHTON’S KIEVE, TINTAGEL

  [_To face p. 184_]

The Kieve is a natural bowl into which the flashing cascade plunges
from the rocks above. The water has worn its way through a narrow rocky
crevice and drops through a natural bridge thickly overgrown with fern
and moss. The dark Kieve receives the torrent, and the water spreads
out again and dimples in the shallow bed, gliding smoothly and almost
silently through the luxurious plantation. Now and then we catch its
gleam among the lush foliage, and a mile or more beyond may be seen
the deep blue of the sea into which it pours its tiny tribute. Below
the edge of the Kieve is a flat slab, and the stream is broken as it
shoots down; on one side is a bulging black rock which looks darker by
contrast with the shining waters. The trees form a screen through which
the light passes more dimly, and this secluded half-hidden spot is
perceived to be a fitting scene for the stories it has inspired.

The Kieve as a place for complete retirement would, with many
disadvantages, possess the one strong and desirable advantage of being
difficult to discover without those written instructions as to the
winding path which are now placed in the visitor’s hands. For, lying
a mile or more beyond the beaten track, it can be found only after
a confusing journey through the thick brush and weeds of the valley,
over rudely constructed bridges, up steep and slippery embankments, and
finally through the doorway which is kept closed and locked against all
comers save those who have begun the search from the right and legal
road.

If we were to adhere strictly to Malory’s narrative we should say
that the quest for the Holy Grail began at Camelot. Local tradition,
however, is privileged to depart from written records, and it happens
that in this case the scene is transferred to this spot near King
Arthur’s birthplace. We are asked to believe that the knights, standing
with bowed heads in the Kieve, undertook the search for the Holy Vessel
of the Last Supper, brought by Joseph of Arimathæa to this land, the
Cup that had been hidden and lost, and was destined to be discovered
only by the pure and perfect knight. The king, standing on the bridge
of rock above the torrent, watched his reverent followers in the stream
below laving their brows in its waters, listening to the music of the
fall, and, full of the inspiration of the scene, making their solemn
vows, and with a firm desire after righteousness setting forth upon
the quest. Lancelot and Bors, Perceval and Galahad, when in the wild
woods far distant or among the ruined chapelries, when tormented by
doubts and wrestling with foes, might be expected to recall that cool
and shady gathering-place, to see in a vision the flashing cascade, to
dream of the crystalline brightness of the plunging water, and with
renewed hope and courage to continue their hard task.

Some such sequestered place the poet of “Sir Galahad, a Christmas
Mystery,” may have had in mind when he pictured the lonely knight
struck with awe by hearing a voice which said that the great Quest
would be achieved by him alone--

                      “Following
  That holy Vision, Galahad, go on.”

To this very spot, too, if legend be true, the knights who had failed
returned.

The story of the Holy Grail is too profound and complex a study to be
treated in these pages save in the most superficial and limited manner.
Volumes have been and still can be devoted to the subject, and yet not
exhaust all that is to be told of this world-legend with its infinite
variations and its numberless phases and meanings. Like a river of
many obscure sources, most of which are now partly known, thanks to
the perseverance of the most devoted and painstaking of exploring
scholars, it gathers in volume upon the way, and to trace it backward
or onward involves an equally long and tortuous journey. The primary
form of the legend, the actual beginning of the Grail romance cycle,
remains a mystery and seemingly undiscoverable. The oldest poems on
the subject, those of Christien de Troyes and Robert de Borron, were
founded upon a model, or models, absolutely untraced. That it was a
primitive Celtic tradition admits of no doubt, but when Walter Map
incorporated the legend into the Arthurian story in the thirteenth
century there were Latin, German, and French originals for him to work
upon. In one chief version of the narrative Perceval is the supreme
figure; in the other Galahad, Perceval, and Bors all achieve a measure
of success, the first named being the absolute victor and the others
being admitted to partial triumph. The Christian element in the cycle
is distinct almost throughout, and the many versions have one point in
common--the sanctity of the Grail, its connection with the Saviour, or
with John the Baptist, and its continued miraculous power proceeding
from this connection. But the Celtic originals would be free from
traces of Christian symbolism. In Malory we find the Holy Vessel in
the possession of King Pelleas, nigh cousin to Joseph. When the king
and Sir Lancelot went to take their repast a dove entered the window
of the castle, and she bore in her bill a little censer of gold from
which proceeded a savour as if all the spicery of the world had been
there. The table was forthwith filled with good meats and drinks by
means of the Grail, “the richest thing that any man hath living,” as
King Pelleas declared. Whether the Grail was a chalice which received
the blood of the crucified Lord; whether, as others have affirmed, it
was the dish on which the head of John the Baptist had lain; or whether
it was a miraculous stone which fell from the crown of the revolting
angels made for Lucifer, the belief in its reality in early times must
have been sincere and ineradicable. It was said to have sustained
Joseph during an imprisonment of forty-two years; the fisherman king,
Pelleas, needed no food while it was in his keeping. This is set forth
in Wolfram’s “Parzival”--

  “Whate’er one’s wishes did command,
  That found he ready to his hand.”

Wolfram von Eschenbach, to whom both Germans and English owe so much,
found a collection of badly joined fables which he turned into an epic,
making Parzival (Perceval) the hero and the Grail quest the central
incident. Wolfram knew nothing of Joseph of Arimathæa; but Mr. Alfred
Nutt has pointed out that the Joseph form of the Grail story and the
Perceval form may really form one organic whole, or the one part may
be an explanatory after-thought. Whether the Christian element was
influenced by Celtic tradition, or whether the Christian legend was
superimposed upon the Celtic basis, is the subtle point which few care
to say is decided. The suggestion has been thrown out that the Grail
legend may even be of Jewish origin, and that in singing of their Holy
City whose walls should be called “salvation,” whose gates “praise,”
and whose “stones should be laid in fair colours,” they supplied the
germ from which in mediæval ages the Grail-myth sprang. The Grail was
an article of strong belief with the Templars who worshipped the head
of John the Baptist, which was reported to have been found in the
fourth century, to have kept an Emperor from dying at Constantinople,
and to have provided nourishment for all who were engaged upon
religious crusades. The idea of the Holy City seems again to recall the
aspiration of the Templars, and the Sarras of romance may have been
none other than Jerusalem. Mr. Nutt has been able to adduce Celtic
parallels for all the leading incidents in the romance of the Grail,
while the many inconsistencies in the versions are explained by the
fusion of two originally distinct groups of stories. It is, as Mr.
Nutt aptly says, the Christian transformation of the old Celtic myths
and folk-tales which “gave them their wide vogue in the Middle Ages,
which endowed the theme with such fascination for the preachers and
philosophers who use it as a vehicle for their teaching, and which has
endeared it to all lovers of mystic symbolism.”

Four of Malory’s “Books” treat of the quest of the Holy Grail and of
the adventures of the knights who undertook it. These “Books” supply
the spiritual and religious leaven of the romance. Only by stainless
and honourable lives, not by prowess and courage, so the knights were
taught, could the final goal be reached. Success in the tournament and
in war was achieved by inferior means. Hardihood and skill were of no
avail where the Grail was the prize. “I let you to wit,” said King
Pelleas, “here shall no knight win worship but if he be of worship
himself and good living, and that loveth God; and else he getteth no
worship here, be he ever so hardy.” Sinful Lancelot was fated to test
this truth. Struggle manfully as he would, victory was not for him,
though, as the old hermit told Sir Bors, “had not his sin been, he
had passed all the knights that ever were in his days”; but “sin is
so foul in him that he may not achieve such holy deeds.” The devoted
knights might speak of Lancelot’s nobleness and courtesy, his beauty
and gentleness, but the quest was not for him. His expiation was
severe. Of the hundred and fifty knights--“the fairest fellowship and
the truest of knighthood that ever were seen together in any realm of
the world--whom King Arthur reluctantly allowed to seek for the Grail,
only one, the virgin Galahad, could enter the Castle of Maidens and
deliver the prisoners, could hear the voices of angels foretelling his
triumph, could find the Grail, and could be crowned in the holy city
of Sarras, the ‘spiritual place.’” It was in this city that Joseph had
been succoured; it was here that Perceval’s sister was entombed; it
was here by general assent that the pure Galahad was proclaimed king;
and it was here that the Grail remained. “And when he was come for to
behold the land, he let make about the table of silver a chest of gold
and of precious stones, that covered the holy vessel; and every day in
the morning the three fellows (Perceval and Bors with Galahad) would
come before it, and say their devotions.” At the year’s end Galahad
saw a man kneeling before the Grail; he was in the likeness of
the bishop: it was Joseph. The saint told the virgin knight that his
victory had been complete and his life perfect. “And therewith,” runs
the beautiful chronicle, “he kneeled down before the table and made his
prayers; and then suddenly his soul departed unto Jesus Christ, and
a great multitude of angels bare his soul up to heaven that his two
fellows might behold it; also, his two fellows saw come from heaven a
hand, but they saw not the body, and then it came right to the vessel
and took it, and the spear, and so bare it up to heaven. Since then was
there never a man so hardy for to say that he had seen the Sancgreal.”

[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]

ST. KNIGHTON’S GLEN

  [_To face p. 192_]

We turn instinctively to Tennyson for the poetisation of this incident.
No one has worked on the legends so wondrously as he, no one has
added more to their moral significance or to their mysticism. His
paraphrase of the prose of Malory, his additions to the details, and
his glorification of the vision, rank among the greatest triumphs of
his peculiar art.

With what feelings is one likely to read his _Holy Grail_, and,
standing near the broken and gleaming torrent of St. Knighton’s Kieve,
try to imagine that the marvellous quest which ended in Sarras began at
this spot?




CHAPTER IX

OF CAMELFORD AND THE LAST BATTLE

  “O’er Cornwall’s cliffs the tempest roar’d,
  High the screaming sea-mew soar’d;
  On Tintagel’s topmost tower
  Darksome fell the sheeting shower;
  Round the rough Castle shrilly sung
  The whirling blast, and wildly flung
  On each tall rampart’s thundering side
  The surges of the tumbling tide:
  When Arthur ranged his red cross ranks
  On conscious Camlan’s crimson banks.”

  WHARTON, _The Grave of King Arthur_.

  “On Trinitye Mondaye in the morne
    This sore battayle was doomed to be;
  Where many a knight cry’d ‘Well-a-waye!’
    Alacke, it was the more pittie.”

  _Percy Reliques._


Sheer over the bleak Cornish hills, fifteen miles from Launceston,
lies a small white-looking town with a precipitous highway along which
the principal houses and one or two poor-looking public buildings
are ranged. It is a town without a church, and, except on market
day, without the signs of stirring life and business; a remote and
isolated little place which nevertheless once had its own Parliamentary
representative and not unfittingly chose “Ossian” Macpherson as its
member. This is Camelford, and the ride by coach from Launceston is not
uninteresting or uninstructive. The desolate aspect of the land, the
poverty-stricken appearance of the few tiny villages passed on the way,
the barrenness of the hills, the scantness of the population, all serve
to reveal the history, past and present, of this portion of England
where only the hardiest of the race could live, and live somewhat
precariously. The land itself yields little; there are no rivers upon
which a boat could be used, and the line of rough hills which form
the spine of the county pent the people as within a prison. Even now,
Camelford and half a score of like places seem shut out of the world.
The stream of life is sluggish, luxuries are scarcely known, the habits
of the villagers are primitive, and yet the Cornishmen retain that
rugged independence for which they have at all times been noted. In old
times the county produced a race of heroes and giants who preserved
their liberties and were among the last to be subdued by English
rulers. Both modern and ancient history, legends and facts, bear
testimony to the constant struggle which prevailed in this part, and
had there been no “giants” in Cornwall, neither its traditions nor its
history would be what they are. Queen Elizabeth said that the further
she travelled west in her dominions the more convinced she was that
the wise men came from the east. In a sense this was grossly unjust,
for the Cornishmen, though they may have seemed a little uncouth,
were by no means an uncultured race, and their literature proves how
early they had their thinkers and their scholars, their bards and
their chroniclers. Taciturnity on the part of this people need not be
taken as a sign of unintelligence; rather is it proof to the contrary,
for the Cornishman thinks for himself; he has his own opinions, and
sturdily maintains them. A certain aloofness is discernible, and this
is characteristic of a race which has so many claims to a distinct
record of its own. In the character, bearing, and habits of the men
of to-day may be found considerable corroboration of the truth which
underlies the myths and legends of antiquity. If Camelford is now
commonplace, with its market, its commercial inn, its linen-drapers’,
ironmongers’, and greengrocers’ shops, there may yet be found within
and around it much to charm and much to kindle the enthusiasm of
the lover of romance. Here and there are the relics over which the
antiquary gloats, and now and then a name is heard or seen which at
once revives olden memories, or suggests with more or less distinctness
a real connection with the last of the British race. It is not a little
remarkable that while not a trace of the fourteenth century Charity
Chapel remains, the sites of camps and the scenes of battles of much
remoter date are still to be found. Signs of British occupation are not
lacking, and one entrenchment known as Arthur’s Hill takes us right
back to the time of the great king. Mere names may, however, in most
cases count for nought, and the fact that hills, tarns, and fords bear
the classic designation and are reputed to have had connection with
Arthurian deeds is not equivalent to tangible proof of the truth of
the stories. Camelford is chiefly noted to-day for being the principal
town within access of the slate quarries, and of being within easy and
convenient distance of some of the most imposing and enchanting scenery
of the north Cornwall coast. From a few points of vantage a glimpse of
the sea may be caught, and the lanes branch off to famed Pentargon Bay,
Trebarwith Strand, Black Pit, St. Knighton’s Kieve, and Tintagel--all
Arthurian haunts.

At the bottom of the hilly highway, beyond which stretch the meadows,
one catches the first glimpse of the shallow little river, more
properly called a brook, which, small and insignificant as it is, has
become so prominently identified with the concluding scenes in King
Arthur’s history. This is the river which gives its name to the town,
the Alan Camel, or Camlan (from _Crum hayle_, meaning “crooked river”),
by the side of which the last battle is said to have been fought. It is
a shallow stream and it has to find its way to the sea by a tortuous
course between the hills which extend to the coast, a fact which the
poet has not failed to turn to account, for Drayton wrote--

  “Let Camel of her course and curious windings boast,
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  .    .    .    Her proper course that loosely doth neglect,
  As frantic, ever since her British Arthur’s blood,
  By Mordred’s murtherous hand was mingled with her flood.”

No one can look upon the Camel, and trace its rippling course between
low banks until it passes beneath the dark stone arch of Slaughter
Bridge, a mile or so distant, and feel that it is quite worthy of its
fame. It is scarcely picturesque, and it needed a very daring and
imaginative poet to speak of it as “frantic” or to make reference to
its “flood.” At its deepest one could wade across it and not be wet
above the ankles, but in most places there is no need to get wet at
all, for a single stride would suffice to carry one from bank to bank.
Nor does the little stream in its course pass through that part of the
land which appeals most strongly to the imagination of the pilgrim.
It runs sluggishly and muddily beneath the heavy-looking bridge, much
too large for it, bearing an almost grotesquely terrible name in
commemoration of the fearful battle which took place thereabout between
King Arthur and his rebellious nephew. Where Slaughter Bridge--not by
any means an ancient structure, by the way--crosses the Camlan Arthur
is said to have received his death-wound, and to have given a fatal
blow to Mordred. If we could only believe one-half that is told of
Slaughter Bridge it would be veritably one of the most fascinating
spots in all England, a Mecca for pilgrims and students, poets and
romancists. But alas! Slaughter Bridge, despite its awe-inspiring name,
is the greatest of illusions, and the most striking of proofs that the
real land of King Arthur is lost or changed beyond all recognition.
Never can we believe that this most insipid scene in all north Cornwall
was the portion of Lyonnesse where the last great battle in the west
was fought, where Arthur met his doom, where the knights perished,
and of all the great and noble company on either side only two knights
survived to carry out their master’s last behests.

But the tradition remains. Mordred had set his heart on the kingdom,
and Arthur foresaw the end. “Never,” says the chronicler, “was there
seen a more dolefuller battle in no Christian land: for there was but
rushing and riding, foining and striking, and many a grim word was
there spoken either to other, and many a deadly stroke. But alway King
Arthur rode throughout the battle of Sir Mordred many times, and did
there right nobly as a noble King should do; and at all times he never
fainted. And Sir Mordred that day ... put him in great peril, and thus
they fought all the long day, and never stinted till the noble knights
were laid to the cold ground. And ever they fought still till it was
nigh night, and by that time was there a hundred thousand laid dead
upon the down.... ‘Jesu mercy,’ said King Arthur, ‘where are all my
noble knights become? Alas, that ever I should see this doleful day;
for now,’ said King Arthur, ‘I am come unto mine end.’ Then was King
Arthur aware where Sir Mordred leaned upon his sword among a great heap
of dead men. ‘Now give me my spear,’ said King Arthur, ‘for yonder I
have spied the traitor which hath wrought all this woe.... Betide me
death, betide me life,’ said the King, ‘now I see him yonder alone, he
shall never escape my hands.’ Then King Arthur gat his spear in both
his hands, and ran towards Sir Mordred, crying, ‘Traitor, now is thy
death-day come!’ And when Sir Mordred heard King Arthur he ran unto
him with his sword drawn in his hand, and there King Arthur smote Sir
Mordred under the shield, with a foin of his spear, throughout the
body more than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he had his
death-wound, he thrust himself with all the might that he had, up to
the end of King Arthur’s spear with his sword, that he held in both
his hands, on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet
and the brain. And therewith Sir Mordred fell down stark dead to the
earth, and the noble King Arthur fell down in a swoon to the earth. And
Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere often-times heaved him up, and so weakly
they laid him between them both, unto a little chapel, not far from the
seaside.” Historians differ widely as to the date of this event, but
most are agreed that the time was winter--some say Christmas Day.

Mordred, Arthur’s great opponent and eventual vanquisher, is the dark
and sinister character, the man of mysterious origin and of blighting
influence, moving gloomily through the drama. By some said to be
Arthur’s own son, a child of sin and crime, and by others said to be
the son of King Lot and Arthur’s sister, his life was miraculously
preserved when the king ordered the slaying of all children born
on May-day, in the hope of removing the infant who, as Merlin had
prophesied to him, “shall destroy you and all the knights of your
realm”; and thereafter he played a malignant part in the drama. If
ill-news were to be borne to the king, Mordred bore it; were trust to
be violated, Mordred violated it; were knights to be betrayed, Mordred
was the spy and informer. Left to rule the land in Arthur’s absence,
he usurped the throne; left to guard Guinevere, he carried her away
and attempted to force her in marriage; an outcast, he became Arthur’s
deadliest rival and fulfilled Merlin’s prediction. It was he, and not
the racial antagonist, who was destined to give the final blow to the
Order that the king had established. Tennyson, following the suggestion
of the chroniclers, has sharply contrasted Mordred with Lancelot, whose
enemy he was, not so much because Lancelot was sinful, as because
his sin gave him the opportunity of striking a blow against Arthur’s
favourite knight. He was Lancelot’s rival, too, his secret and
cunning rival, for the love of Guinevere. All the pictures we have of
Mordred are adverse; he is the “passing envious” man who hates all more
successful than himself, the man who “laid his ear beside the doors,”
who was “always sullen”; the tale-bearer, whose narrow face and thin
lips pictured the petty, spiteful spirit within; the man whose shield
was blank and unblazoned, but who

                      “Like a subtle beast
  Lay couchant with his eyes upon the throne,
  Ready to spring, waiting a chance: for this
  He chill’d the popular praises of the King
  With silent smiles of slow disparagement;
  And tampered with the Lords of the White Horse,
  Heathen, the brood by Hengist left; and sought
  To make disruption in the Table Round
  Of Arthur, and to splinter it into feuds
  Serving his traitorous end; and all his aims
  Were sharpen’d by strong hate for Lancelot.”

[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]

MOUTH OF ROCKY VALLEY AND LONG ISLAND, TINTAGEL

  [_To face p. 202_]

Such is Tennyson’s portraiture of Mordred, and the depiction is
justified by all that the chroniclers relate of the false knight who
by fraud gathered the knights around him, caused himself to be crowned
at Canterbury, and at Winchester declared that Guinevere should be his
wife. The chronicle explicitly declares that the queen repelled his
advances, and flying to London, took refuge in the Tower, which she
garnished with her army. Sir Mordred, “wroth out of measure,” laid
siege to the Tower, defied the Archbishop, and at length, by spreading
evil reports of King Arthur, drew “much people” to his side. This
defection supplied Malory with a fine opportunity for moralising on
the defaults of Englishmen, who are seldom satisfied--“for there may
no thing please us no term.” When King Arthur arrived off Dover with a
great navy of ships, galleys, and carracks, he found Mordred and his
host awaiting him. Here the first encounter took place, and Mordred,
being worsted, removed to Barham Down, where he again suffered defeat.
But these skirmishes, desperate as they were, were but preliminaries to
the real battle for which both sides were preparing. Mordred’s force
was drawn from those “that loved not Lancelot,” and from the people “of
London, Kent, Southsex, Surrey, Estsex, Southfolk, and Northfolk”; and
Arthur, with his faithful band, moved westward past Salisbury, and on
to the shore. Despite the warning of Sir Gawaine’s ghost “in no wise
to do battle,” but to make a month’s treaty in order to profit by the
presence of Lancelot, King Arthur found himself compelled to engage
in the contest. A fair and generous offer had been made to Mordred:
Cornwall and Kent were to be his during King Arthur’s lifetime, and
on the king’s death he was to have “all England.” But when the treaty
was made an adder stung a knight’s foot, and his cry of pain was like
a clarion call to battle. In a moment the swords flashed, the trumpets
were blown, the horns sounded; and at sunset Mordred was dead, and
Arthur had received his death-wound.[28]

Undeniably the most picturesque and romantic portion of the river
Camlan is about half a mile away from Slaughter Bridge, towards
Tintagel, where it has worn a way between the grassy hills and lies
half-hidden far below, crossed and re-crossed scores of times by
fallen and inclining trees. The waters here hurry and chatter about
the stones, and find their way about the rank weeds and undergrowth
which here and there impede their journey. It is with some difficulty
that the river is found at all, and with greater difficulty that it
is approached. But those who persevere will find, where the banks are
steepest and the herbage and weeds thickest, that the brook washes a
huge engraved stone lying flat and half embedded in the earth. This is
King Arthur’s grave, a secret place, and so near Tintagel that the poet
did not strain facts greatly when he pointed out that

  “No other place on Britain’s spacious earth
  Were worthy of his end but where he had his birth.”

Pilgrims find their way to that lonely spot, and resting near the huge
stone, they may reflect at will upon the wondrous possibility of there
being, after all, by the side of this stream, a tangible link with King
Arthur. The stone lies in a nook between two rocks, and three graceful
and luxurious trees watch over it as if they were the metamorphosed
three Queens who received the wounded king in the magic boat which
glided to Avalon. All around is a profound calm; not a sound but the
occasional buzz of an insect comes from the long grasses of the meadows
above, or from the ferns and ivy which spring from the shady channel
below. At sunset the scene is delightful. The high meadows are kindled
with brilliant light, but not a ray comes to that hollow where, it is
said, Arthur was laid. His grave is in perpetual shadow, and when I
last saw it a long, gaunt, withered branch stretched over it like a
spectral arm. The edacious tooth of time has bitten away the letters,
and moss has overgrown a portion of the stone, so that the inscription
is barely decipherable, but the words are known to be--

  “_Cotin hic jacit filius Magari._”

The actual history is best given in the words of the local antiquary
Borlase, who in his noted 1769 volume gave an illustration of the
relics and said--

“This inscribed stone, nine feet nine inches long, and two feet three
inches wide, was formerly a foot-bridge near the late Lord Falmouth’s
seat of Worthyvale, about a mile and a half from Camelford. It was
called Slaughter Bridge, and as Tradition says, from a bloody battle
fought on this ground, fatal to the great King Arthur. A few years
since, the late Lady Dowager Falmouth, shaping a rough kind of hill,
about 100 yards off, into spiral walks, removed this stone from the
place where it served as a bridge, and, building a low piece of
masonry for its support, placed it at the foot of her improvements,
where it still lies in one of the natural grots of the hill. This
stone is taken notice of by Mr. Carew in the following words: ‘For
testimony of the last battle in which Arthur was killed, the old folks
thereabouts (viz., round Camelford) show you a stone bearing Arthur’s
name, though now departed to “Atry.” This inscription has been lately
published; but so incorrectly that it may still be reckoned among the
nondescripts. It is said there, “that this stone lay at the very place
where Arthur received his mortal wound.” All this about King Arthur
takes its rise from the last five letters of this Inscription, which
are by some thought to be _Maguri_ (_quasi magni Arthuri_), and from
thence others will have it, that a son of Arthur was buried here; but
though history, as well as tradition, affirms that Arthur fought his
last battle, in which he was mortally wounded, near this place, yet
that this Inscription retains anything of his name is all a mistake.
The letters are Roman, and as follow: _Cotin hic jacit filius magari_.
By the _i_ in _hic_ being joined to the _h_, by the _h_ wanting its
cross link, the bad line of the writing, the distorted leaning of the
letters, I conclude, that the monument cannot be so ancient as the
time of Arthur.’” It seems quite clear that what is now called King
Arthur’s tombstone was originally called, when in position, Slaughter
Bridge, a name which has been transferred to the modern structure. That
the stone once served actually as a funeral monument is also pretty
obvious, but whom it commemorates is a mystery. The engraved letters
belong to an era posterior to Arthur, and there are, as a fact, relics
indubitably of an earlier date in the locality.

“Graves” of King Arthur are so numerous as to make all claims more or
less ridiculous. Even Camelford, as if fearing that the evidence in
one case may not be strong enough, provides an alternative, and points
out that near at hand is Warbelow Barrow, an ancient fortification of
considerable extent, in the centre of which is a large mound reputed
also to be King Arthur’s burying-place. It would be easy to reduce
the whole subject to absurdity by saying that if there were a doubt
that King Arthur ever lived, his numerous “graves” conclusively prove
that he died many times, despite the tradition, too, that he did
not die at all. The jumble of foolishness and contradictions does
not of course affect the real story; it is the resultant of popular
superstitions and confusing traditions. Upon the smallest basis of
ancient fact superstition rears a stupendous edifice, and these many
claims to possess King Arthur’s “grave” arise from the eagerness of
a people to support the idea of their direct connection with a lost
hero, and from their readiness to attach his name to those places which
naturally suggest a possible or a poetic connection. That a very strong
and sincere belief exists that Arthur was buried near Camelford is,
however, not to be questioned, and there is perhaps a better reason for
conceding the point in this case than in all the others. All traditions
agree that the last battle was fought in the vicinity and that it was
fatal to Arthur, and his burial close at hand is the most natural of
conclusions. Mr. King, an antiquary, declared that on the bank of the
Camlan could be seen “a fallen maen of the later British era, having
the name of Arthur inscribed on its lower side,” but this seems to have
been conjecture rather than established proof. Yet it is flying in
the face of the most cherished of beliefs to admit that any grave of
Arthur exists--to say nothing of a multitude of them. If he passed into
the land of Faerie, if he did not die but only awaits a call to “come
again,” why do we expect to find the place of his sepulture?--why are
tombs discovered?--why are lovely spots called King Arthur’s graves?
What said the ancient triad?--

  “The grave of March is this, and this is the grave of Gwyther,
  Here is the grave of Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd,
  But unknown is the grave of Arthur.”

The more popular and more befitting tradition deviates entirely from
any commonplace termination of King Arthur’s career, and gives a
magical end to his miraculous history. The king’s brand, Excalibur or
Calibur, the emblem of his kingship and the symbol of his power, the
sword which he alone could wield, and by winning which he had gained
his crown, was given to Sir Bedivere by the dying chief to return unto
the Lady of the Lake. “My time hieth fast,” said the king; “therefore
take thou Excalibur, my good sword, and go with it unto yonder
waterside, and when thou comest there I charge thee, throw my sword
into that water, and come again and tell me what thou shalt see.” Twice
did Sir Bedivere falteringly go to dark Dozmare Pool, a melancholy
sheet of water overshadowed by high and dreary hills which seem to keep
gloomy watch over Camelford. Twice did Sir Bedivere’s heart fail him,
and instead of flinging the wondrous sword into the depths, supposed to
be unfathomable, of the black lake, he hid it among the many-knotted
waterflags that whistled stiff and dry about the marge. “Authority
forgets a dying King,” said Arthur to the faithless knight; but for the
last time asserting his power, he threateningly bade him to fulfil his
task; and the knight ran, leapt down the ridges, and threw the splendid
brand into mid-water.

  “But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
  Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
  And caught him by the hilt, and brandish’d him
  Three times, and drew him under in the mere.”[29]

Poets, in describing this scene, have found it scarcely possible to
do other than follow closely the words of Malory, which relate the
incident with directness and yet with a charm of picturesqueness
scarcely to be surpassed except by much elaboration--and elaboration
would be out of place in such a case, and would destroy the subtle
effect of the narrative. After telling of the hiding of the sword by
the reluctant knight, and of Arthur’s indignation at his evasive words
and long tarrying, the chronicler says:--“Then Sir Bedivere departed,
and went to the sword, and lightly took it up, and went to the water
side, and there he bound the girdle about the hilts, and then he threw
the sword as far into the water as he might, and there came an arm
and a hand above the water, and met it, and caught it, and so shook
it thrice and brandished it, and then vanished away the hand with the
sword in the water.” “The hand that arose from the mere,” says Renan,
“is the hope of the Celtic heroes. It is thus that weak people, dowered
with imagination, revenge themselves on their conquerors. Feeling
themselves to be strong inwardly and weak outwardly, they protest, they
exult, and such a strife unloosing their might renders them capable of
miracles.”

Four miles to the east of Camelford is Row Tor, 1,296 feet high, its
sharp spine, broken and projecting in parts, no doubt suggesting the
name it popularly bears of the Rough Mountain. On the left is Rame
Head, another typical hill, bare and brown, and it is between these
two that Dozmare Pool, the reputed scene of the incident with the
sword and the magic hand, may be seen dimly glittering. It is a weird
legend-haunted spot. The traveller finds himself shut in between the
frowning hills and beside a dark tarn of most dismal aspect. It has
been supposed that the waters of Dozmare Pool were once tidal, and
from this supposition the name is derived, _dos_ meaning a drop, and
_mari_ the sea. Instead of being unfathomable, however, the pool
is now only a few feet deep, though its black appearance certainly
suggests a great depth. This and all other superstitions have probably
been suggested by its gloom and desolation, by its situation among
the dreariest of hills, and by tragic events for which there is some
historic foundation and which occurred in the vicinity. The wraith of
the place is one Tregeagle, an unjust and tyrannical man of yore, who
in expiation of his many sins is doomed to visit Dozmare Pool, where
amid the terrific storms on the hills and moors during winter his
piteous howling can be distinctly heard. His punishment is to empty the
pool with a limpet shell, and it may be due to his labours that the
waters have so considerably diminished in bulk since the time that they
were “unfathomable.” But Tregeagle loudly mourns because he considers
his task a hopeless one, and then the Evil Power comes in person and
pursues him round and round the dismal tarn until at last Tregeagle
flies shrieking to the sanctuary at Roche Rocks, fifteen miles distant.
This is the tale told of the “middle meer” in which Excalibur was flung
and lost to mortal sight for ever.

Such is Camelford; such are some of the traditions which make it
alluring to the pilgrim. Leland was convinced that here the “British
Hector” was slain, and Stow in his _Chronicle_ affirmed that “after
many encounters in which Arthur had always the advantage, the two
parties came to a decisive action at Camblan, on the River Camalan, in
Cornwall, near the place of Arthur’s birth.” These specific details
leave no doubt as to the place meant. But Stow did not believe the last
battle occurred in the winter season. He declares that Arthur survived
his wounds “a few days,” and died on May 25th, in the year 542, at
Glastonbury, to which shrine the pilgrims should last repair. From
Camelford in Cornwall, therefore, we pass to the most mysterious region
of all, the legendary and haunted Vale of Avalon.




CHAPTER X

OF GLASTONBURY AND THE PASSING OF ARTHUR

 “And so they rowed from the land; and Sir Bedivere beheld all the
 ladies go with him. Then Sir Bedivere cried, Ah my Lord Arthur, what
 shall become of me now ye go from me, and leave me here alone among
 mine enemies? Comfort thyself, said the King. For I will go into the
 vale of Avilon, to heal me of my grievous wound. And if thou never
 more hear of me, pray for my soul.”--_Malory._

  “Whether the Kinge were there or not,
  Hee never knewe, nor ever colde,
  For from that sad and direful daye
  Hee never more was seene on molde.”

  _Percy Reliques._

  “O, three times favoured isle, where’s the place that might
  Be with thyself compared for glory or delight
  Whilst Glastonbury stood?...
  Not great Arthur’s tomb, nor holy Joseph’s grave,
  From sacrilege had power their sacred bones to save,
  He, who that God in man to his sepulchre brought,
  Or he, which for the faith twelve famous battles fought.”--_Drayton._


A quaint old-world look is upon the face of the city of many legends,
King Arthur’s “isle of rest.” It lies deep in a green well-watered
valley, and its steep sudden hill, the Tor, rising abruptly to
a height of over five hundred feet and crowned with a lonely
square tower, seems to shelter and keep watch upon the traditional
apple-island. The orchard lawns are seen everywhere with their
deep-green carpet and the crooked branches of innumerable fruit-laden
trees casting grotesque shadows upon it. The whole year round the
western airs are balmy, though in spite of hoary legend and poetic
eulogy Glastonbury has felt the effects of terrific storms, whirlwinds,
and earthquakes. Its history--a history of marvel and wonder,
inextricably mingled for many centuries with superstition--takes us far
back into the misty past when the ancient Britons named the marshland,
often flooded by the water of the Bristol Channel, Ynyswytryn, or Inis
vitrea, the Glassy Island; either, it has been surmised, on account
of the “glasten” or blue-green colour of its surface, or from the
abundance of “glass” (or woad) to be found in the vicinity.[30] On
the other hand Professor Freeman believed that Glastonbury was the
abode and perhaps the possession of one Glæsting, who, on discovering
that his cattle strayed to the rich pastures, settled in that part,
which in the natural order of things became Glæstingaburgh. That it
was veritably an island admits of no doubt; the circuit of the water
can still be traced; and when the Romans in turn made discovery of
the fruitfulness of the region enclosed by the waters of the western
sea, they denominated it Insula Avalonia, or Isle of Apples. This was
the “fortunate isle,” celebrated in the ancient ode of which Camden
has given us a version, “where unforced fruits and willing comforts
meet,” where the fields require “no rustic hand” but only Nature’s
cultivation, where

  “The fertile plains with corn and herds are proud,
  And golden apples shine in every wood.”

[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL’S TOWER, GLASTONBURY

  [_To face p. 218_]

The inflowing of the sea made islands not only of Glastonbury, but
of Athelney, Beckery, and Meare; and not many centuries ago, when a
tempest raged, the sea-wall was broken down and the Channel waters
swept up the low-lying land almost as far as Glastonbury Church. The
simple record of this event reads: “The breach of the sea-flood was
January 20th, 1606.” Again in 1703 was Glastonbury threatened with
a deluge, and the water was five feet deep in its streets; but as
geologists are able to affirm that the sea is receding from the western
coast it is unlikely that such catastrophes will recur. A little lazy
stream, the Brue, almost engirdles the city, and thus permits the
inhabitants with seeming reasonableness to retain for Glastonbury the
name loved best--the Isle of Avalon. That Roman name has been full
of dreamy suggestiveness to the poet’s mind; and though the poet’s
Avalon may often have been an enchanted city, the “baseless fabric of a
vision,” the Avalon of Somerset, with its two streets forming a perfect
cross, its Abbey ruins, its antiquities, and its slumbrous aspect, is
assuredly not unworthy of the legends clustering about it.

Only by devious paths can Glastonbury, once the remote shrine for
devout pilgrims from all parts of the land, be reached, for it is
still somewhat out of the common track. But to wander awhile in
the apple-country is delightful alike to the mind and the physical
sense--to drink in its associations, to inhale its warm, sweet air,
to see the gleam of white blossoms and the crimson softening upon
the round ripened cheeks of the pendent fruit, these are the sources
of enjoyment and the elements of the charm. Countless gardens send
forth a rare perfume, and the quiet of the whole city in the midst
of orchards and streams and showing the relics of by-gone splendour
has a lulling effect upon the traveller who comes from the roaring
town and the busy mart. When the twin dark towers of Wells Cathedral
are fading shadow-like in the distance the new strange picture of the
island-valley is revealed. There stretch the long level meadows of deep
emerald, there glooms a forest of trees whose twisted branches are
bright with apple-blossoms. The high Tor hill looks stern and bare, but
cosy and inviting is the town below with its rows of irregular houses,
many of which date back to long past days, while others, constituted
of stone with which the architects of Dunstan’s and of Becket’s time
wrought, seem to bear mute tribute to the famous era when the Abbey was
in its glory and reverend pilgrims from afar came to bring oblations
to that hallowed shrine. To-day the visitor finds a welcome at the
“Inne” built in 1475 for the devout travellers whom the Abbot could not
accommodate within the walls of the Abbey; and so few are the changes
of time that the lofty façade, the parapet and turrets, the wide
archway, the ecclesiastical windows, and the long corridors, remain
almost as they were first designed and made. Side by side stand “Ye
Olde Pilgrim’s Inne” and the Tribunal, or Court House, built by Abbot
Beere, for the trial of petty offenders against the law. Unexplored
dungeons are reported to exist underground, together with subterranean
passages communicating with the Abbey from the “Inne” and the Tribunal.
In the neighbourhood is a conspicuous building once used for collecting
the tithes, called the Abbey Barn, dating from 1420, in some respects
the best preserved of all the ancient memorials. But the pride and
glory of Glastonbury centre in the wondrously beautiful remains of
the oldest, richest, and stateliest of English Abbeys--an Abbey whose
reputed founder was Joseph of Arimathæa, that Joseph who had seen the
face and heard the voice of the Saviour of mankind. It was the only
church of first rank in England standing as a monument of British days
which escaped the scath and wreck which followed the storm of Norman
conquest.

[Illustration: THE OLDE PILGRIM’S INN, GLASTONBURY

  [_To face p. 222_]

To what dim epoch the earliest history of Glastonbury belongs is more
or less conjectural, though the discovery of some sixty low mounds
by archæologists led to the discovery that a prehistoric lake-village
in remote times occupied the site. Excavations revealed the remains
of human habitations and of successive occupation by the same race--a
race which hunted the boar, the roebuck, and the deer, and whose sole
accomplishment was the making of coarse, rude pottery. But this people
has passed away and not even a tradition of its existence is extant.
It was at a much later period, though, looking backward, the time
seems far distant, that the first legend of Glastonbury took root and
flowered. So pure, fragrant, and beautiful is that treasured blossom
that it would seem ruthless to attempt to pluck it by the roots from
the ground, and to cast it aside as a worthless weed of ignorance and
superstition. It brings to us the memory of that time when the Son of
Man was on earth; it is a seed blown from that land which His presence
sanctified. Nearly two thousand years ago the crucified Nazarene was
watched by agonised crowds upon Calvary. Joseph of Arimathæa, “a
good man and a just,” begged the dead body from Pilate and buried it
in his own garden, thereby incurring the fierce resentment of the
Jews. He fled from Palestine, fearing for his life, and so enraged
were his enemies at his escape that they expelled his friends
also--Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and Philip among others--putting them
out to sea without oars or sail. “After tossing about many days,” says
one writer, “they were driven in God’s providence to Marseilles, and
from Marseilles St. Joseph came to Britain, where he died at a good
old age, after having preached the Gospel of Christ with power and
earnestness for many years.” This was about A.D. 63. “The happy news of
the Saviour’s resurrection, and the offer of the only assured means of
salvation to all who would embrace it” were welcomed by King Arviragus,
who assigned to St. Joseph the Isle of Avalon as a retreat. When Joseph
and his little Christian band, passing over Stone Down where stand the
two notable Avalon Oaks, came to the place, weary with long travelling,
they rested on the ridge of a hill, which in its name of Weary-all Hill
(really Worall) is supposed to commemorate this incident; and where the
saint’s staff touched the sod, a thorn tree miraculously sprang up, and
every Christmas Day it buds and blossoms as a memorial of our Lord,
and of the first Christian festival.[31] Another story says that the
saint was met by a boisterous mob of the heathen, and that, planting
his pilgrim’s staff in the earth, he knelt down to pray; and as he
prayed, the hard, dry staff began to bud and give forth fragrance, and
became a living tree. Then said Joseph, “Our God is with us,” and the
heathen, transfixed by the miracle, were convinced and pacified. So
runs the earliest Christian legend in England, and as a fitting sequel
we learn that not long after Joseph’s mission had begun the first
Christian chapel was built, and occupied part of the site on which the
most beautiful of holy houses was afterwards reared--Glastonbury Abbey.
St. Joseph’s Chapel, magnificent in ruin, is one of those hallowed
places in which one might spend hours in silent contemplation. Through
many centuries the legend of the Holy Thorn has been preserved, and
Glastonbury has remained distinguished by the fact that there the
“winter thorn” has blossomed every Christmas “mindful of our Lord,” or,
as a pupil of Caxton’s wrote in 1520--

  “The hawthornes also that groweth in Werall
  Do burge and bere green leaves at Christmas
  As fresh as other in May.”

The tree was regarded with great awe and superstition by the
inhabitants, and when the change in the calendar was made they looked
to the “sacra spina” for confirmation of the righteousness of what had
been done. Many people refused to celebrate the new-style Christmas
Day because the Thorn showed no blossoms, and when the white flowers
appeared on January 5th, the old-style Christmas was held to have been
divinely sanctioned. A trunk of the tree was cut down by a Puritan
soldier, though his sacrilege caused him to be severely wounded by a
piece of the dismembered tree striking him; but when the Thorn was cast
into the river as dead and worthless it miraculously took root again.
The spot where it grew is marked by a monumental stone bearing the
inscription:--I. A. A.D. XXXI.

[Illustration: ST. JOSEPH’S CHAPEL, GLASTONBURY ABBEY

  [_To face p. 224_]

A Somerset historian likewise records that in addition to the Holy
Thorn there grew in the Abbey churchyard a miraculous walnut tree,
which never budded forth before the feast of St. Barnabas, namely, the
11th of June, and “on that day shot forth leaves and flourished like
its usual species.” This tree is gone, but another “of the commonplace
sort” stands in its place. “It is strange,” we read, “to say how much
this tree was sought after by the credulous; and though not an uncommon
walnut, Queen Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of the realm,
even when the times of monkish superstition had ceased, gave large
sums of money for small cuttings from the original.” The walnut tree,
however, never vied with the Holy Thorn in popularity. The “Athenian
Oracle” (1690) wriggled out of the difficulties attending a belief
in the budding of the hawthorn tree with characteristic ingenuity,
and supplied an example that most of us would gladly imitate. To
an inquirer who asked for information and an opinion, the “Oracle”
replied (none too grammatically), “All that Mr. Camden says of it is,
that if any one may be believed in matters of this nature, this has
been affirmed to him to be true by several credible persons; it was
not in Glastonbury itself, but in Wirral Park, hard by it; however,
this superstitious tree, true or false, was cut down in the last
reforming age, though it seems they did not make such root and branch
work with it but that some stumps remained, at least some branches or
grafts out of it were saved, and still growing in the same country;
though whether they have the same virtue with the former, or that
had any more than any other hawthorn, we don’t pretend to determine
any more than the forementioned historian.” The belief in the tree
and the knowledge of its peculiar properties were so wide-spread
that Sedley’s verse on Cornelia, who “bloomed in the winter of her
days like Glastonbury Thorn” was easily understood. Bishop Goodman,
writing to the Lord General Oliver Cromwell in 1652, said he could
“find no naturall cause” either in the soil or other circumstances
for the extraordinary character of the tree. “This I know,” said the
prelate, “that God first appeared to Moses in a bramble bush; and that
Aaron’s rod, being dried and withered, did budde; and these were God’s
actions, and His first actions; and, truly, Glastonbury was a place
noted for holiness, and the first religious foundation in England, and,
in effect, was the first dissolved; and therein, was such a barbarous
inhumanity as Egypt never heard the like. It may well be that this
White Thorne did then spring up, and began to blossome on Christmas
day, to give a testimony to religion, and that it doth flourish in
persecution,” and so forth. Infinite meanings and significances could
be extracted from the legend, that fantastic casket of man’s art and
devising which is made to enshrine the small pure pearl of truth.
If this were the place for sermons it might be pointed out that the
vitality of the Thorn is an emblem of the vitality of the religion it
commemorates; but our duty is to trace its connection with history.
The legend has been somewhat altered in form in order to bring it into
direct association with the building of the Abbey. This new version
of the miracle is that Joseph of Arimathæa was commanded to build a
church in honour of the Virgin Mary, but finding that the natives
were distrustful of him and his mission he prayed, like Gideon,
for a miracle. Forthwith his staff began to shoot forth leaves and
blossoms, and the unwithered Thorn took root. Be that as it may, the
first Christians built a chapel of twisted alder, in the form of a
parallelogram, 60 feet long and 26 feet broad (to come to details),
and having “a window at the west end and one at the east; on each side
were three windows, and near the western angle was a door each side.”
A representation of the first building for Christian worship erected
in this country is found on an old document now in the British Museum,
and it is said to have been copied from a plate of brass which had been
affixed to an adjoining pillar. The chapel is variously referred to
in ancient records as “Lignea Basilica,” “Vetusta Ecclesia,” and the
“Ealdechirche,” and with its walls of wattles and its roof of rushes it
must long have been an object of revered contemplation. Joseph built
and preached in “the little lonely church,” “built with wattles from
the marsh,” journeying from thence across the plain to the Mendips,
where he found other half barbarous Britons to listen to the story of
the Redemption. He laid the foundations of a bishopric at Wells, which
was afterwards to be the rival of Glastonbury Abbey itself, and to the
end of a long and fruitful life continued his ministry to the people.

Chalice Hill revives by its name and associations another reminiscence
of our Lord even more amazing. St. Joseph was the bringer to this
country of two precious relics--one--

  “The Cup itself from which our Lord
  Drank at the last sad supper with His own,”

the other, some of the blood which oozed from the crucified Saviour’s
body. The chalice, or sacred cup, was buried by Joseph at the spot
where a perpetual spring of water bubbles--the “Blood Spring,” which
supplies the Holy Well, scene of many miraculous cures in times past.
That the waters are medicinal admits of no doubt; that it issues from
the Cup is a matter of faith, especially as the Holy Grail is claimed
to be now in safe keeping by more than one far-distant Abbey.[32] As
for the second relic, it is said that St. Joseph confided the memorial
to his nephew Isaac, who sealed up the blood in two vials and secreted
them from the invading Roman pagans. When danger menaced him, he hid
the phials in an ancient fig-tree, which he then cast into the sea.
Carried by the waves to Gaul, the fig-tree was cast up at the spot
which now forms Fécamp harbour; and there a few centuries later it was
found with the two phials secure. Fearless Duke Richard of Normandy
was so impressed by the discovery that he built an Abbey in which
fitly to enshrine the Precious Blood, and Fécamp Abbey bears witness
alike to his faith and his devotion. It was upon the story of the
Grail that chroniclers seized with avidity after Borron had once shown
its capabilities--a story now believed by many to be almost wholly of
Celtic origin, the Sancgreal being none other than Fionn’s healing
cup. Mr. Nutt, to whose exhaustive work on the subject reference
has previously been made, has told us of every form, rudimentary
and developed, in which the Grail legend has appeared, and of every
explanation advanced as to its meaning. Whether the legend is based
upon Christian canonical or uncanonical writings, or whether it is an
ancient saga into which a Christian element was imported, whether it
was extant in any definite form before the time of Robert de Borron,
or whether it was a fabrication of the era to which many monkish
fables have been traced, are points which to discuss in detail would
require, and have had, volumes devoted to them. Within fifty years
(1180-1225) there were eight versions of the story in which the idea of
the Grail was elaborated, and we know how the idea has been developed
and enriched and idealised until our own time. “The vanished Vase of
Heaven that held like Christ’s own Heart an Hin of Blood,” has been a
marvellously fecund seed of inspiration to romancist and poet. Percival
and Galahad are the highest human conceptions of purity, and their
quest is the most exalting and ennobling upon which heroes can set
forth. Yet, as we have already seen, the conclusion cannot be resisted
that the story had its root in paganism, and that the history of the
Grail is nothing but the history of the gradual transformation of old
Celtic folk-tales into a poem charged with Christian symbolism and
mysticism. “This transformation, at first the inevitable outcome of its
pre-Christian development, was hastened later by the perception that it
was a fitting vehicle for certain moral and spiritual ideas.” Avalon,
lying not far from the western sea beyond which tradition said were
the happy isles of the blessed dead, was the Cymric equivalent for the
Celtic paradise, and thus did Glastonbury become associated with the
glorious legends which have made it in the eyes of the romancists the
most sacred and wondrous city of earth. So may Glastonbury truly be
said to gather round it “all the noblest memories alike of the older
and the newer dwellers in the land.” Nor is it surprising that in a
place of so much reputation modern marvels should be reported to occur
or wonderful discoveries be made. An elixir was found in the ruins of
the Abbey in 1586, one grain of which, being dropped upon an ounce and
a quarter of mercury, was found to transmute the mercury into an ounce
of pure gold. Another grain of it, dropped upon a piece of metal cut
out of a warming-pan, turned the metal into silver, and this with the
warming-pan was sent to Queen Elizabeth that she might “fit the piece
with the place where it was cut out.”

Such facts are worthy of being related at some length not only on
account of any curious interest they possess in themselves, but because
they enable us to understand a number of allusions in the Arthurian
story, and help to account for the selection of Glastonbury as the
scene of the most solemn episodes in the career of the British king and
his knights. The poet Spenser, in recording that Sir Lucius was the
first to receive “the sacred pledge of Christ’s evangely,” hastens to
recall the Glastonbury legend, and to explain that--

                        “Long before that day
  Hither came Joseph of Arithmathy,
  Who brought with him the Holy Grayle, they say,
  And preacht the truth.”

All the chief points in the old beliefs and the myths and traditions
are caught up in Malory’s history. The account of Joseph and his coming
to England may be read in the Book of Sir Galahad, for the story was
told by the stainless knight who bore the marvellous shield--

 “Sir,” said Sir Galahad, “by this shield beene full many mervailes.”
 “Sir,” said the knight, “it befell after the passion of our Lord Jesu
 Christ thirtie yeare, that Joseph of Aramathy, the gentle knight,
 that tooke downe our Lord from the crosse, and at that time hee
 departed from Jerusalem with a great part of the kindred with him,
 and so they laboured till they came to a citie that hight Sarras. And
 at that same houre that Joseph came unto Sarras there was a king
 that hight Evelake, that had great warre against the Sarasins, and
 in especial against one Sarasin, the which was King Evelake’s cosin,
 a rich king and a mighty, the which marched nigh this land, and his
 name was called Tollome le Feintes. So, upon a day these two met to
 doe battaile. Then Joseph, the son of Joseph of Aramathy, went unto
 King Evelake, and told him that he would be discomfited and slaine
 but if he left his beleeve of the ould law and beleeve upon the new
 law. And then he shewed him the right beleeve of the Holy Trinity,
 the which he agreed with al his hart, and ther this shield was made
 for King Evelake, in the name of him that died upon the crosse; and
 then through his good beleeve hee had the better of King Tollome. For
 when King Evelake was in the battaile, there was a cloath set afore
 the shield, and when hee was in the greatest perill hee let put away
 the cloath, and then anon his enemies saw a figure of a man upon the
 crosse, where through they were discomforted. And so it befell that
 a man of King Evelake’s had his hand smitten off, and beare his hand
 in his other hand, and Joseph called that man unto him, and bad him
 goe with good devotion and touch the crosse; and as soon as that man
 had touched the crosse with his hand, it was as whole as ever it was
 before. Then soone after there fell a great mervaile, that the crosse
 of the shield at one time vanished away that no man wist where it
 became. And there was King Evelake baptised, and for the most part
 all the people of that cittie. So soone after Joseph would depart,
 and King Evelake would go with him whether he would go or not; and so
 by fortune they came into this land, which at that time was called
 Great Brittaine, and there they found a great felon panim that put
 Joseph in prison. And so by fortune tidings came unto a worthy man
 that hight Mondrames, and hee assembled all his people, for the great
 renown that he had hard of Joseph; and so he came into the land of
 Great Brittaine, and disherited the felon panim and consumed him,
 and therewith delivered Joseph out of prison. And after that, all the
 people were turned to the Christian faith.”

According to Malory it was “Not long after that,” that Joseph was
“laid in his death bed,” his last act being to make “a crosse of his
owne blood” upon the shield before giving it to King Evelake. “Now
may yee see a remembrance that I love you,” he said, “for yee shall
never see this shield but that yee shall thinke on mee, and it shall
be alwayes as fresh as it is now. And never shall no man beare this
shielde about his necke but hee shall repent it, unto the time that
Sir Galahad the good knight beare it.” It is the general opinion that
Joseph of Arimathæa was buried in the ground surrounding the church of
his foundation, for a burial ground to contain a thousand graves had
been prepared in his time. William of Malmesbury wrote that there were
preserved in that consecrated place “the remains of many saints, nor is
there any space in the building that is free of their ashes. So much
so that the stone pavement, and indeed the sides of the altar itself,
above and below, is crammed with the multitude of the relics. Rightly,
therefore, it is called the heavenly sanctuary on earth, of so large a
number of saints it is the repository.” There is no clear record of who
immediately succeeded Joseph, but his ministry was carried on by St.
Patrick, who was a native of Glastonbury,[33] by St. David, by Gildas,
and by Dunstan. It was St. Patrick who, returning from his labours
in Ireland in 461, found that the church built with wattles from the
marsh was in a state of decay, and erected a substantial edifice on
Tor Hill, dedicated to St. Mary and St. Michael. He was Glastonbury’s
first abbot, though this fact is traditionary rather than historical,
and his grave was near the altar of the original church. An oratory had
previously existed on the site, having been founded a century after
Joseph’s arrival by two saints, Phaganus and Duruvianus. The Abbey
itself now began to take definite shape, the eyes of all Christians
being drawn to Glastonbury by reason of its sacred record. In the sixth
century, in King Arthur’s time, it was approaching its fulness of power
and nearing that zenith of fame and splendour which did not decline for
nearly a thousand years.

[Illustration: WELLS CATHEDRAL

  [_To face p. 236_]

According to Professor Freeman, Glastonbury became, in the year 601,
the great sanctuary of the British in the place of Ambresbury, which
had but lately fallen. How it grew, how it was ruled by great leaders
in the church, how it became the largest, the most beautiful, the most
wealthy of all abbeys, how its fall was compassed, and how the last of
its abbots, an aged man, was dragged to the hill-top and hanged, are
historic facts which belong to a date far later than that with which
we are concerned. We cannot even dwell upon St. Patrick’s sojourn at
Glastonbury, or upon Dunstan’s retirement to its cloisters in order to
devote himself to study and music. Here it was that he wrestled with
the Evil One in person while labouring at his forge; here it was that
heavenly visions were vouchsafed to him; here it was that he began
his work of reformation in the Church and made the Abbey the centre
of religious influence in the kingdom. After the lapse of centuries
we gaze only upon the ruins of the fabric, and from them learn how
majestic the temple in its prime must have been, comprehending a little
of the truth half revealed and half concealed in the silent storied
places with their shattered walls, their crumbling archways, their
unroofed chambers, their windows darkened with trailing weeds, and
their floors overgrown with lank grasses and moss.

King Arthur’s connection with Glastonbury cannot be deemed wholly
mythical, though the mysteriously beautiful narrative which tells of
his last days in Avalon seems too poetical for reality. There are,
however, other links, not so generally recognised, connecting him with
this consecrated place. Glastonbury was not only his “isle of rest;”
nor was the Abbey known only to him as a shrine. He claimed, or it
was claimed for him, that he was descended on his mother’s side from
Joseph of Arimathæa, the genealogy being thus given:--“Helianis, the
nephew of Joseph, begat Joshua; Joshua begat Aminadab; Aminadab begat
Castellos; Castellos begat Mavael; Mavael begat Lambord, who begat
Igerna of whom Uther Pendragon begat the famous and noble Arthur.”
Glastonbury, in addition to its celebrity as a Christian sanctuary,
would therefore have a claim upon King Arthur’s attention for the sake
of his venerated ancestor, though there seems little reason to doubt
that in his day it was the cynosure of the eyes of all who claimed
to be within the religious fold. Lady Charlotte Guest, in one of the
valuable notes to her translation of the _Mabinogion_, calls attention
to a record of William of Malmesbury, which proves how much Glastonbury
was in King Arthur’s mind on all occasions. “It is written in the Acts
of the illustrious King Arthur,” we read, “that at a certain festival
of the Nativity, at Caerleon, that monarch having conferred military
distinction upon a valiant youth of the name of Ider, the son of King
Nuth, in order to prove him, conducted him to the hill of Brentenol,
for the purpose of fighting three most atrocious giants. And Ider,
going before the rest of the company, attacked the giants valorously,
and slew them. And when Arthur came up he found him apparently dead,
having fainted with the immense toil he had undergone, whereupon he
reproached himself with having been the cause of his death, through
his tardiness in coming to his aid; and _arriving at Glastonbury_, he
appointed there four-and-twenty monks to say mass for his soul, and
endowed them most amply with lands, and with gold and silver, chalices,
and other ecclesiastical ornaments.” From this we might well infer
that King Arthur was in the habit of paying periodical visits to the
island-valley. “The great Lady Lyle of Avelyon,” girt with a sword
which only Balin could draw from its scabbard, with results afterwards
disastrous to himself, is a link in the associations of Arthur and his
court with the island-valley.

His war with King Melvas, of Somersetshire (strongly reminiscent of
the last war with Mordred, as related by Malory), reads like veritable
history. While engaged in subduing the savage hordes in Wales and
Cornwall, and in beating back the advancing Saxons, he found that
the “Rex Rebellus” Melvas had stolen away his wife Guinevere, and
carried her to Ynyswytryn. King Arthur gathered a large force, and
set out with his knights to take summary vengeance on the ravisher,
whom he forthwith besieged. A well-known antiquary has found reason to
believe that Arthur’s force was “a numberless multitude;” but at all
events there is little doubt that Melvas, who was only an “underlord,”
would have been heavily defeated had a battle ensued. But conflict
was avoided by the intervention of Gildas, the Abbot, who commanded
Melvas to restore Guinevere to her rightful lord, and then succeeded in
reconciling the two foes. They both ended by swearing friendship and
fidelity to the Abbot, and the facts go far to show the potentiality
of that dignitary at this period. Thus, by establishing King Arthur’s
connection with Glastonbury, we increase the likelihood of his choosing
the holy place at Avalon for his last resting-place. He knew the shrine
well and had visited the fruitful, balmy island-valley in which his
ancestor’s name was deeply revered; and when his time drew nigh he
could think of no sweeter, better spot in which to seek for peace.
“Comfort thy selfe,” said the king to weeping Sir Bedivere after the
last battle, “and do as well as thou maiest, for in mee is no trust for
to trust in; for I wil into the vale of Avilion for to heale me of my
grievous wound; and if thou never heere more of me, pray for my soule.”
And with the three mourning queens he passed from the bloody field of
Camlan up the waters of the Bristol Channel to the isle

  “Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
  Nor ever wind blows loudly.”

“King Arthur, being wounded in battle, was brought to Glastonbury
to be healed of his wounds by the healing waters of that place,” an
old record runs. But his wound was too grievous; and though Merlin
prophesied that he “cannot die,” the current tradition is that when
he reached the sacred isle he “came unto his end.” In the time of the
first Plantagenet, when the fame of King Arthur was revived, search
was made at Glastonbury for the bones of the great British chief.
Henry II. was then on his way to Ireland, and Henry of Bloys, then
Abbot of Glastonbury, undertook the task, fully intending, no doubt,
that it should be successful. Between two pillars at a depth of nine
feet a stone was found with a leaden cross inscribed on its under side
in Latin, “Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur, in the isle of
Avalon”; and seven feet lower down his body was found in an oaken
coffin. The historian Selden gives us an instructive report of how King
Henry was induced to set about the strange enterprise of discovering
the remains of King Arthur. He tells us that the king in his expedition
towards Ireland was “entertained by the way in Wales with bardish
songs, wherein he heard it affirmed that in Glastonbury (made almost
an isle by the river’s embracements) Arthur was buried betwixt two
pillars. He therefore gave commandment to Henri of Blois, then Abbot,
to make search for the corps, which was found in a wooden coffin
(Girald saith oaken, Leland thinks alder), some sixteen foot deep; but
after they had digged nine foot they found a stone on whose lower side
was fixt a leaden cross (crosses fixt upon the tombs of old Christians
were in all places ordinary) with his name inscribed, and the letter
side of it turned to the stone. He (King Arthur) was then honoured with
a sumptuous monument, and afterwards the sculls of him and his wife
Guinevere were taken out (to remain as separate relics and spectacles)
by Edward Longshanks and Eleanor.” But notwithstanding the useful
and apposite inscription on the leaden cross, “Hic jacet sepultus
inclytus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia”; or as it is otherwise more
epigrammatically given, “Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque
futurus”--

  “His Epitaph recordeth so certaine
  Here lieth King Arthur that shall raigne againe;”--

it is hardly necessary to add that there is almost every reason to
believe that this extraordinary “find” could have been nothing but
a pious fraud, _in majorem monasterii gloriam_. If the truth be not
established, however, it has been incorporated into many chronicles
as genuine history. Bale, in his _Actes of English Votaries_, bears
testimony in these words: “In Avallon, annus 1191, there found they
the fleshe bothe of Arthur and of hys wyfe Guenever turned all into
duste, wythin theyr coffins of strong oke, the bones only remaynge. A
monke of the same Abbeye, standing and beholding the fine broydinges
of the womman’s heare as yellow as golde there still to remayne: as a
man ravyshed, or more than halfe from hys wyttes, he leaped into the
graffe, XV fete depe, to have caughte them sodenlye. But he fayled
of hys purpose. For so soon as they were touched they fell all to
powder.” The reference to the depth of the grave reminds us that Stow,
in his _Chronicle_, declares that King Arthur was buried sixteen
feet underground to prevent the Saxons offering any indignity to his
corpse, “which Almighty God, for the sins of the Britons, afterwards
permitted,” he disappointingly concludes.

Camden’s account of the discovery is in these words: “When Henry II,
King of England, had learned from the songs of the British bards, that
Arthur, the most noble hero of the Britons, whose courage had so often
shattered the Saxons, was buried at Glessenbury between two pyramids,
he order’d search to be made for the body; and they had scarce digg’d
seven feet deep, but they light upon a cross’d stone (cippus) or a
stone in the back part whereof was fastened a rude leaden cross,
something broad. This being pulled out, appeared to have an inscription
upon it, and under it, almost nine foot deep, deposited the bones of
the famous Arthur. The letters have a sort of barbarous and Gothic
appearance, and are a plain evidence of the barbarity of the age,
which was involved in a fatal sort of mist, that no one was found to
celebrate the name of King Arthur.” The most detailed account of all is
given in Joseph Ritson’s scholarly work on King Arthur, and the famous
antiquary’s outspoken comments on the records “and other legendary
rhodomontades” of the monks of Glastonbury can be read with amusement
as well as with profit. It is a sufficiently remarkable fact that none
of the chroniclers agree in their details, and Matthew Paris distinctly
declares that the letters inscribed upon the tomb could “in no wise
be read on account of too much barbarism and deformity.” Antiquary
Leland was sceptical as to the coffin, and William of Malmesbury
(1143) said “The sepulchre of Arthur was never seen”; but, despite all
contradictions and doubts, the discovery seems to have been generally
accepted as genuine, while for many reasons it was gratifying to the
people of that and subsequent ages. Caxton would have regarded it as
“most execrable infidelity” to have had a doubt upon the subject. At
Glastonbury we indubitably seem to get nearer the real Arthur than we
are able to do in any of the other localities mentioned by Geoffrey
and the later chroniclers. Whether he was the monarch described in the
romances or a semi-barbarous chieftain leading the Britons to a final,
though only temporary, victory against the Saxons, there remains the
same likelihood of his connection with the first Abbey raised in the
land.

On the authority of Gildas, we learn that when the Abbot brought about
peace between Arthur and Melvas, both kings made oath never to violate
the holy place, and both kings gave the Abbot much territory in token
of their gratitude. If, however, it is hard to reconcile the death of
King Arthur with Merlin’s prophecy, it is harder still to account for
the discovery of his bones and his grave in face of the ancient triad
which declared his grave to be unknown, and remembering which Tennyson
related--

  “His grave should be a mystery
  From all men, like his birth;”

while the older poet tells how he “raygnes in faerie.” There was,
however, a substantial reason for the finding of King Arthur’s tomb by
Henry of Blois, for at that time the revenues brought by pilgrims to
the shrine were not sufficient to provide funds for the building. The
contest between Wells and Glastonbury had also begun, and the discovery
of the bones of a saint was one of the surest methods of obtaining an
advantage. According to Stow’s _Chronicle_, the body was found “not
enclosed within a tomb of stone, but within a great tree made hollow
like a trough, the which being digged upon and opened, therein were
found the bones of Arthur, which were of a marvellous bigness.” This
circumstantial evidence seems almost irresistible, and no doubt there
was a conscientious belief in the discovery at the time it was reported
to have been made. Stow has further details to give on the authority
of Giraldus Cambriensis, “a learned man that then lived, who reporteth
to have heard of the Abbot of Glastonbury that the shin-bone of Arthur
being set up by the leg of a very tall man, came above his knee by
three fingers. The skull of his head was of a wonderful bigness; in
which head there appeared the points of ten wounds, or more, all which
were grown in one seam, except only that whereof he died, which being
greater than the other, appeared very plain.” Such, then, are the
records of this wondrous discovery.

Modern Glastonbury has its museum in which may be seen some pottery
from “King Arthur’s Palace at Wedmore,” and a thirteenth or fourteenth
century representation on the side of a mirror case of Queen Guinevere
deserting with Sir Lancelot, the only two relics, I believe, which in
any way recall the connection of King Arthur with the place. There are
evidences of the antiquity of the Abbey in abundance; though pilgrims’
staffs, leather bottles, palls, grace cups, roods, “counters” made by
the monks to serve as coin, and even the reliquary containing a small
piece of bone supposed to be of St. Paulinus, sent or left by St.
Augustine himself for the purpose of establishing the modified form of
the Benedictine rule, do not quite take us back to the sixth century.
Though the actual date of King Arthur’s death is not known, and though
his age is variously given from just over fifty to passing ninety, and
though there is no consensus of opinion as to the length of his reign,
we never hear of him at a later date than 604; and unfortunately all
the Glastonbury relics take us back at most to the tenth century. Yet
enthusiastic Drayton might well be carried away with the theme with
which Glastonbury supplied him; and remembering the marvels of its past
and the splendour of its aspect in his own day, he asked what place was
comparable with the “three times famous isle?”

  “To whom didst thou commit that monument to keep,
  When not great Arthur’s tomb, nor holy Joseph’s grave
  From sacrilege had power their holy bones to save?”

[Illustration: THE ABBEY BARN, GLASTONBURY

  [_To face p. 248_]

This is one of the insoluble mysteries. The remains of Arthur and
Guinevere are stated to have had noble burial by King Henry’s command
in “a fair tomb of marble,” and the cross of lead bearing the
original inscription was placed in the church treasury. At the
suppression of the monasteries it is assumed that all the tombs and
monuments shared one fate. Edward I and his queen visited Glastonbury
in 1278, and after seeing the shrine, fixed their signets upon the
separate “chests” in which the dust was deposited. Within the sepulchre
they placed a solemn written record of what they had seen, together
with the names of the principal witnesses. King Edward is also said to
have had Arthur’s crowns and jewels rendered to him. He and his queen
were satisfied that they had gazed upon “the bones of the most noble
Arthur”; and theirs were the last eyes to see the remains, false or
true. The historian Speed, in indignant strain, tells of the doom that
befell the Abbey in Henry VIII.’s days, when “this noble monument,
among the fatal overthrows of infinite more, was altogether razed by
those whose over-hasty actions and too forward zeal in these behalfs
hath left us the want of many truths, and cause to wish that some
of their employments had been better spent.” Whatever sign of King
Arthur’s tomb, real or pretended, had existed, thus vanished for ever,
and the prophesied mystery of his grave became fulfilled.

All that now remains in association with his name, and his final acts,
and his uncomprehended fate, is the Abbey, surpassingly beautiful in
ruin, founded in times faded almost from the recollections of a race;
it is itself half mystery and half monument. The stateliest of its
chambers still bears the name of St. Joseph’s Chapel, and itself with
its delicate tracery, its exquisitely designed windows, its carved
pillars, is like a fairy tale in stone. The little church built with
wattles from the marsh became the church triumphant and the church
supremely beautiful in after-time. When the second Henry visited it
the already venerable Abbey was a pile of architectural wonders and
magnificence, thanks to the labours of Abbot Harlewinus. It was he who
designed and erected that veritable gem of architecture, gorgeously
ornamented and finished in classic grace, which serves as memorial to
the first Christian saint in England. “Imagination cannot realise,”
says one chronicler, “how grand and beautiful must have been the
view from St. Joseph’s Chapel through its long-drawn fretted aisles
up to the high altar with its four corners, symbolising the Gospel
to be spread through the four quarters of the world.” The matchless
temple was over a hundred feet longer than Westminster Abbey; and its
spaciousness was only equalled by its riches. Lofty mullioned windows
rose nearly to the vaulting, richly dight and casting a dim religious
light; and the profuse decorations of the walls took the form of
running patterns of foliage, while vivid paintings of the sun and stars
gave colour and animation to the cold stone. Little wonder that the
gorgeous Abbey in all its loveliness and noble proportions was deemed a
fitting resting-place for kings and saints. Claiming St. Joseph as its
founder, it was almost in natural sequence that it should make claim
to be the shrine of the last and greatest of the Christian kings, the
Arthur whom Geoffrey of Monmouth had made renowned--“the most king and
knight of the world, and most loved of the fellowship of noble knights,
and by turn they were all upholden.” It was to Glastonbury that the
“Bishop of Canterbury” fled, and took his goods, and “lived in poverty
and in holy prayers” when the war with Mordred broke out. To this
hermit came Sir Bedivere, and found him by a tomb new-graven. “Sir,”
said Sir Bedivere, “what man is there interred that ye pray so fast
for?” “Fair son,” said the hermit, “I wot not verily, but by deeming.
But this night, at midnight, here came a number of ladies, and brought
hither a dead corpse, and prayed me to bury him; and here they offered
an hundred tapers, and gave me an hundred besants.” “Alas,” said Sir
Bedivere, “that was my lord King Arthur, that here lieth buried in this
chapel!” Then Sir Bedivere swooned, and when he awoke prayed that he
might abide there henceforth and live with fasting and prayers. “Far
from hence will I never go,” said he, “by my will, but all the days of
my life to pray for my lord Arthur.”

Glastonbury to-day, amid all its ruin, spoliation and change, hints
everywhere of the glory of its past. The charm of it lingers though
the excellence of it has vanished. In its stillness and seclusion it
retains an old-world air of beauty and of simplicity; time which has
overthrown so much has tainted nought. Tower, wall, and roof mingle
their grey and brown and red in the peaceful valley which the sparkling
rivulets water and entwine as with silver threads. The sheltered
gardens upon which the sunlight falls luxurious are bounteous as
ever they were, and one might almost expect to see in the shadowy
consecrated places cowled and hooded monks pacing noiselessly, their
eyes intent upon black-letter missals, or uplifted to behold the magic
and splendour of hill and dale. The winding road has felt the pressure
of many pilgrims’ feet; at the vesper hour the weary fervent throng
gathered about the Abbey doors; and through the spacious aisles, cool
and shadowy, or stained with the rich colours carried by slanting beams
through the painted windows, the holy brothers moved in slow and solemn
procession, their voices subdued in chant, the air they breathed sweet
with incense. Easily imagined is the hallowed aspect of the lofty fane
when the last rays of the sun shot redly within, suffused the altar
in a crimson haze, and glowed upon the burnished ornaments and the
carvings of veined marble and whitest stone; when the darkness gathered
hauntingly, and one by one the tapers were lit, while the people were
hushed and expectant, and the monks bowed themselves in adoration.
Holy relics would show dimly in their places, rod and crucifix stand
out dark against the walls, the royal tombs be covered as with a pall,
and a mysterious awe descend upon the worshippers in the temple.
Outside the world would be hushed, even as it is hushed to-day when
the pilgrim stands amid the broken walls of St. Joseph’s Chapel, or
treads the thick green turf between crumbling vestibule and arch. Truly
Glastonbury was an isle of rest.

King Arthur had fought against the pagan horde and “upheld the
Christ.” Glastonbury withstood the heathen, and boasted to the last
of never having fallen into sacrilegious hands. It was Christian
always--the Church of martyrs like Indractus, of saints like Cuthbert,
Patrick, David, and Dunstan, and of kings like Ina, Edmund, and Arthur.
The massive walls nobly withstood the assault of time, and the ruins
of to-day are the work of the iconoclast, due to desecration and not
decay. The remnants are pathetic in their significance; the scene
of mutilated beauty is mournful beyond expression. Yet the beauty
remains, though it is not the beauty of spirituality and life, but
of the ethereality of death. As we gaze we are with a bygone age and
generation, and that age seems to imbue our thought and tinge our
reflections. Everywhere may be seen mementoes; all sounds are like
echoes, faint and far; all sights are dim with haze. Glastonbury is for
retrospection. The air is full of traditions; its history deals with
phantoms and its opening page is of myths.

[Illustration: RUINS OF ST. JOSEPH’S CHAPEL, GLASTONBURY

  [_To face p. 254_]

Take your stand on Wearyall Hill, and brood awhile upon the
surroundings. You thrill to think that here St. Joseph might have
paused; that here, where lies a stone engraved with J. A., his withered
pilgrim’s staff might have burst into bloom. A few young trees are
bending to the wind; down below the old city stretches away in grey
lines, and there are some tumble-down houses of antique appearance
produced by the old rafters and rough stone of which they are
constructed. Bright and cheerful are many lattice windows which twinkle
out between the heavy time-scarred mullions wrought long and long ago.
Yonder is Tor Hill, and the great green valley spreads southward,
strewn with trees thickly, and ending only where the dipping horizon
meets it. The two Glastonbury towers are standing out boldly, almost as
if defiant; the red roofs of the city cluster below; and, set deeply
and immutably among aged and dark green trees, are the rent but erect
walls of the first Christian Abbey.

Or retrace your steps, and after passing the Abbey bounds, mount the
steep Tor and stand by the Tower which alone escaped the shattering
force of earthquake. From this summit the view of the landscape is far
and good. Scarcely can you realise that once the salt waves lapped
this steep eminence, but the sand and shells mixed and embedded in the
soil have graven that event more legibly than the pen of man could
have inscribed it. It is sunset--sunset over the Avalonian isle. The
day has been calm and grey, and the end is to be calm, autumnal,
subdued. There is one long quivering stretch of cardinal in the west,
but elsewhere the sky is wonderfully sombre, yet exquisitely soft and
pearly clear. The furthermost limit of the vale fast becomes invisible,
fading imperceptibly, apparently merging into the sky as it becomes
a pure deep blue. Here and there a purple peak of the range of hills
running seaward rises sharply and pierces the thin gauzy clouds which
the wind brings up. The white road gleams below, wholly deserted, yet
fancy may conjure up spectres gliding at nightfall along the once
hallowed way to the shrine. On this steep hill, alone, cloud-high, you
feel that the silence is mystical, and wonder if the sleeping city with
its ghosts and traditions is like the fabled cities of enchanters which
rise at night without foundation and dissolve like mist in the earliest
light of morning.




INDEX

(_Mainly of persons and places_)


  Aberystwyth, relics near, 11

  Akeman Street, 123

  Almesbury (Amesbury), 175-80

  Alnwick, 44

  Ambrosius, 15

  Aneurin, his testimony to Arthur, 9

  Arderydd, 66, 71, 82

  Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 30, 35, 80

  ARTHUR (Artus, Arcturus), King--
    his widespread fame, 2, 3;
    Saxon opponents of, 4;
    an allegorical figure, 6, 27, 61;
    Caxton on his identity, 9;
    bardic chroniclers, 9-18, 62;
    Geoffrey’s history of, 18;
    the elemental hero, 29, 33, 149;
    his domain, 31, 38, 39, 46-59, 64;
    Scotch references, 52, 68;
    his birth, 90;
    his coronation, 115;
    his Round Table, 130-58;
    as warrior, 149;
    as national hero, 150, 151;
    his battle at Badon, 155-6;
    in Italy, 157;
    his marriage, 160;
    at Camelot, 159 _et seq._;
    battle at Slaughter Bridge, 200;
    his death-wound, 205;
    his tomb, 207-9;
    in Avalon, 238-47;
    supposed remains, 241, 249

  Arviragus, King, 223

  Astolat, 55

  Aurelius Ambrosius, 71, 74

  Avalon (Avilion), 43, 51;
    described 216 _et seq._ _See_ “Glastonbury”


  Badbury Rings, 153

  Badon (Mons Badonicus), 4, 13, 51, 152-6

  Bagdemagus, Sir, 77

  Balin, Sir, 84, 129, 167

  Bamborough Castle, 44

  Barham Down, 156, 204

  Bath, 152

  Battles, King Arthur’s, 4, 29, 62, 125, 151;
    the last at Camelford, 198, 200-1, 204, 208;
    with Melvas, 240

  Bedivere, Sir, 205 _n._, 211, 213, 251

  Belenus, 123

  Blackmore, poet, 30

  Blaise (Bleys), 83

  Borron, Robert de, 188, 230

  Borrow, George, quoted, 90 _n._, 188, 230

  Bors, Sir, 188, 191

  Boscastle, 101

  Bossiney, 101, 183

  Brecknock, 46, 49, 144

  Brécéliande (Broceliand, Brocelinde), forest of, 79, 81

  Brittany, 43, 68

  Brue, river, 219

  Brythons, the, 3, 4, 47

  Bude, 101-2


  Cadbury Camp, Somerset, 141, 160, 171-2

  Cadwalla, 5

  Caerleon, 39, 53;
    described, 113-29

  Caerwent, 125, 126, 168

  Camden, quoted, 96, 244

  Camel, river, 198-9

  Camelford, 55-7, 101; described, 194 _et seq._

  Cameliard, 39, 46-9

  Camelot, described, 159 _et seq._

  Caractacus, 129

  Carbonek, 38

  Carew, historian, 95

  Carmarthen, Merlin’s Cave at, 67, 78

  Carobaise, 46

  Castle Denis, 49

  Castle-an-Dinas, 111

  Cattraeth, battle of, 9-10

  Caxton, his testimony to Arthur, 8, 9, 26

  Cefn Bryn, 48

  Celts, the, and their influence on history and legend, 3, 23, 31, 35,
      66, 176, 213, 230, 231

  Cerdic, 4, 5, 48, 153, 155

  Chalice Hill, 229

  Clevedon, 172

  Constantinople, 39

  Cormac, 107

  Craik, Mrs., 96


  David, St., 63, 236

  Dawstane, 10

  Dinas Emrys, 71, 76 _n._

  Douarnenez, 46

  Dozmare Pool, 211-14

  Drayton, quoted, 144, 155, 171

  Dryden, 30

  Dubric (Dubritius), 115, 125, 129, 155

  Dunchine, 93

  Dunstan, 236, 237


  Ector, Sir, 90, 180

  Edinburgh, 52

  Edward I, King, at Glastonbury, 249

  Eildon Hills, 51

  Emerson, quoted, 33

  Ettarde, 164

  Evelake, King, 235

  Excalibur, 211


  Freeman, Professor, quoted, 153, 218, 236

  Frere, J. K., quoted, 136


  Gaisnar, 21

  Galahad, 23, 41, 145, 148, 187, 191, 233

  Gawaine, 79, 81, 161;
    his character, 161-3, 166, 204

  Geoffrey of Monmouth, 18-21, 95, 115, 118, 131, 251

  Geraint, 129

  Gibbon, 27

  Gildas the historian, 10, 12, 13-16, 153, 246

  Giraldus Cambriensis, 20

  Glastonbury, Gildas at, 15;
    history and description of, 216-56

  “Gleam, The,” 69

  Glennie, Stuart, quoted, 54, 66, 76 _n._

  Goothe, 38

  Gorlois, 90, 91

  Grail, the. _See_ “Holy Grail”

  Gray, 30

  Guenevere (Guinevere, Gwenhwyvar), Queen, 62, 114, 132, 175-82, 240

  Guest, Lady Charlotte, 78, 153, 162, 238

  Guildford, 55-7


  Henry II, King, at Glastonbury, 241-4

  Henry of Bloys, 241

  Holy Grail, the, 23, 133, 145;
    the quest of, 186;
    legend of, 187-93, 230

  Holy Thorn, in Scotland, 52;
    legend of, 223-28

  Hueil (Howel), 15, 16, 50


  Iceland, 64

  Ider, 239

  Igraine, 90

  Inis vitrea (Ynyswytryn). _See_ “Glastonbury”

  Iseult (Isoud). _See_ “Tristram and Iseult”


  Jagent, 38

  Joseph of Arimathæa, 186, 188, 193;
    at Glastonbury, 221-33 _passim_

  Joyous Gard, 43, 44, 45, 53, 179

  Julian Way, the, 123, 168


  Kay (Kaye), Sir, 91, 161

  Knighton’s (Nectan’s) Kieve, St., 183-93

  Knights, the, 37; their Round Table, 131 _et seq._;
    adventures at Camelot, 161, 166;
    the last, 200

  Kynon, 11


  Lancelot, Sir, 44, 45, 55, 160, 166, 174, 178, 191

  Landerneau, 45

  Land’s End, 42

  Layamon, 21, 22

  Leland, quoted, 14, 94, 95, 126, 142, 168, 171, 182, 245

  Leodegraunce, King, 132-3

  Llanilterne, Guinevere’s tomb at, 179

  Llywarch Hên, 9, 11, 34

  Logris, 36

  Lonazep, 38

  Lot, King, 174

  Lowell, J. R., 30

  Lyonnesse, 40, 42, 43

  Lytton, Lord, quoted, 30, 111, 128, 158, 163 _n._


  “Mabinogion,” the, 117, 129

  Mackinnon, Dr., quoted, 13

  Malory, Sir Thomas, 25, 26, 27, 106, 191, 212

  Map (Mapes), Walter, 22-5, 188

  Mark (Marc’h), King, 41, 46, 104, 106

  Melvas, King, 239

  Merlin, 25, 43, 66, 132; his history, 67-71;
    drama of, 72-5;
    his doom, 75-8;
    his influence, 83;
    his prophecies, 246

  Milton, 24, 30, 62

  Moel Arthur, 49

  Mons Badonicus. _See_ “Badon”

  Mordred, 129, 200-3

  Morris, William, 30

  Mount, St. Michael’s, 42

  Myrdin Emrys, 67, 71


  Nantanleod, King, 4

  Nennius, 12, 16

  Nimuë (Vivien), 72, 77

  Norden, on Tintagel, 97

  Nutt, David, 191


  Odin, 64

  Olaf, 64

  Orkneys, 52


  Patrick, St., 236

  Pelleas, 163-5, 188-9

  Pellinore, King, 146

  Pendragon Castle, 51

  Penrith, 141

  Pen-y-Van, 144

  Percivale (Parzifal, Perceval), 134, 186, 189

  “Perilous, Siege,” 146, 165

  Petersaint, 38


  Quoits, Arthur’s, 48-9


  Renan, 46, 80, 176

  Ritson, Joseph, 46, 154, 156

  Rocky Valley, Tintagel, 183

  Rome, 65, 151, 157

  Round Table, the, 119;
    history of, 130-58;
    supposed localities, 141 _et seq._;
    its symbolism, 145

  Row Tor, 213


  Sancgreal, the. _See_ “Holy Grail”

  Sandwich, 158

  Sarras, 190, 192, 193

  Scilly, 40

  Scott, Sir Walter, quoted, 12, 26, 30, 68, 141, 142

  Shalott, 163, 181

  Silchester, 116 _n._

  Silures, the, 24, 47, 126

  Slaughter Bridge, 199, 205

  Snowdon, 71, 76

  Sommer, Dr., 26, 29

  Southey, 29

  Souvestre, Emile, 81

  Spenser, 30, 77, 233

  Steep Holm, 14

  Stephen’s, St. (Steven’s), Camelot, 160, 174

  Stonehenge, 3, 75, 154

  Stow’s _Chronicle_, 215

  Strachey, Sir E., quoted, 27, 64

  Surluse (Surluce), 40, 41

  Swinburne, quoted, 30


  Talhairan, 129

  Taliesin, 9, 11, 129

  Ten Brink, quoted, 135

  Tennyson, 30;
    at Caerleon, 126-28, 155, 162;
    description of Camelot, 170;
    on Guinevere, 175;
    the Grail legend, 193;
    on Mordred, 203

  Terabyl, 91, 92

  Thierry, 34

  Thomas the Rhymer, 104

  Tintagel, 53;
    described, 88-111 _passim_

  Tor, the Glastonbury, 220, 236, 255

  Tristram and Iseult, 44, 46, 89, 103-6, 174

  Tweed, the, 68, 69, 70


  Urien, 11

  Usk, river, 67, 115, 119

  Uther (Uter), King, 64, 71, 74, 75, 89, 90, 132

  Uwaine, Sir, 72


  Veitch, professor, 71

  Vellan, 42

  Vivien, 77, 79, 81

  Vortigern, 63 _n._, 71, 76


  Wace, 21, 80, 131

  Wagner, 107

  Warton, 30, 139

  Waste Lands, the, 38

  Weary All (Wirral, Worall) Hill, 223

  Wedmore, palace at, 247

  Wells Abbey, 229

  Wigan, battle at, 51

  William of Newburgh, 20

  Winchester, 55, 131, 143, 167, 139-41 _passim_

  Wodensbury, battle at, 5

  Wolfram von Ezchenbach, 189


  Ynyswytryn. _See_ “Glastonbury”


  RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
  BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
  BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.




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NOTES


[1] Aneurin was born about the year 500, and as “a monarch of bards”
was of much repute in Manan Gododin, a part of Cymric Scotland. The
Welsh Britons included all the Lowlands in their territory, and, as is
well known, the names familiar in Arthurian romance can be traced to
Scotland, the West of England, and France alike, as will afterwards be
shown in these pages. Aneurin’s nationality, however, is particularly
well worth recalling in view of the theory that Arthur was Scotch.

[2] A Badon in Linlithgowshire is the reputed site.

[3] Take, for instance, the song in which he expresses the wish to die
while drinking in a tavern,--“Meum est propositum in taberna mori.”

[4] William Caxton, “simple person,” as he styled himself, urged that
he undertook the work at the request of “divers gentlemen of this realm
of England.”

[5] It is interesting and somewhat amusing to note the lament of
Charles Waterton, author of _Wanderings in South America_, who thought
England as a field for knightly adventure had degenerated. “England
has long ceased to be the land of adventures,” said he. “Indeed, when
good King Arthur reappears to claim his crown he will find things
strangely altered here.... It is certain that when he reigned here
all was harmony and joy. The browsing herds passed from vale to vale,
the swains sang from the bluebell-teeming groves, and nymphs, with
eglantine and roses in their neatly braided hair, went hand in hand to
the flowery meads to weave garlands for their lambkins. If by chance
some rude uncivil fellow dared to molest them, or attempted to throw
thorns in their path, there was sure to be a knight-errant not far off
ready to rush forward in their defence. But alas, in these degenerate
days it is not so. Shall a harmless cottage-maid wander out of the
highway to pluck a primrose or two in the neighbouring field, the
haughty owner sternly bids her retire; and if a pitying swain hasten
to escort her back, he is perhaps seized by the gaunt house-dog ere he
reach her.”

[6] By some Lyonnesse is identified with Léonnois in Brittany, but as
Mr. Aldis Wright has pointed out, the continuous references in the
romance to “riding” from Lyonnesse to other parts of Cornwall shows
that Lyonnesse and Cornwall were on the same land.

[7] A. J. C. Hare’s _North-Western France_.

[8] “Il est donc constant que la chevalerie prit naissance en
Bretagne,” says Emile Souvestre, “et y brilla de tout son éclat; que
les premiers poémes chevaleresques furent écrits en langue celtique.
Les monuments, les traditions, _les noms_, les indications des plus
anciens auteurs s’accordent pour faire de la Bretagne la patrie de
tout ce monde chevaleresque et féerique dont, plus tard, le Tasse et
l’Arioste tirèrent tant de parti.”

[9] Bamborough Castle, says Professor Burrows, was the centre of the
Kingdom of Bryneck, or Bernicia. “In founding it the Angles encountered
a determined opposition at the hands of a British chief named Arthur.
Whether he is the same as the Arthur of South-Western Britain, or
whether the exploits of one have been transferred by legend to the
other, is still under dispute.”

[10] According to Villemarqué the name of Lancelot is a translation of
that of the Welsh hero Maël, who exhibits the fullest analogy with the
Lancelot of the French romances.

[11] “Arthur’s seat” may be but an adaptation of the Gaelic
Ard-na-said, or “the height of the arrows.”

[12] Arthur’s career has been thus conveniently summarised: “At the
age of fifteen he succeeded his father as King of Damnonium. He was
born in 452, had three wives, of whom Guinevere was the second, and
was betrayed by the third during his absence in Armorica. Mordred
concluded a league with Arthur’s great foe, Cedric the Saxon; and at
the age of ninety, after seven years’ continual war, the famous king
was defeated at Camelford in 543.” Fuller compares him to Hercules in
(1) his illegitimate birth, (2) his arduous life, and (3) his twelve
battles. Joseph Ritson, whose antiquarian researches are noted for
their fullness and originality, came to the conclusion that though
there were “fable and fabrication” in the hero, a real Arthur lies
behind the legendary hero. He appeared when the affairs of the Britons
were at their worst after Vortigern’s death, checked the ravages of
the Romans, and kept the pillaging Saxons at bay. Professor Montagu
Burrows, in his commentaries on the history of England, argues that
the Cymry of Arthur’s time were a band of Romano-Britons who produced
leaders like Cunedda to take command of the native forces left by the
departing Romans. They remained more British than Gaelic, but were
gradually driven, with their faces to the foe, into Wales and the Welsh
borderland. “The Arthurian legends,” he continues, “embody a whole
world of facts which have been lost to history in the lapse of time,
and form a poetry far from wholly fictitious.” Renan declares that few
heroes owe less to reality than Arthur. “Neither Gildas nor Aneurin,
his contemporaries, speaks of him; Bede did not know his name; Taliesin
and Llwarc’h Hên gave him only a secondary place. In Nennius, on the
other hand, who lived about 850, the legend has been fully unfolded.
Arthur is already the exterminator of the Saxons; he has never
experienced defeat; he is the suzerain of an army of kings. Finally, in
Geoffrey of Monmouth, the epic creation culminates.”

[13] Ashmole, in his _History of the Order of the Garter_, declares
that, in addition to the dragon, King Arthur placed the picture of St.
George on his banner.

[14] Mr. Glennie thinks the scene is in Carnarvonshire, to the south
of Snowdon, overlooking the lower end of Llyn y Dinas. Here is Dinas
Emrys, a singular isolated rock, clothed on all sides with wood,
containing on the summit some faint remains of a building defended by
ramparts. It was of this place Drayton wrote--

  “And from the top of Brith, so high and wondrous steep
  Where Dinas Emris stood, showed where the serpents fought,
  The White that tore the Red; from whence the prophet wrought
  The Briton’s sad decay then shortly to ensue.”

On the south of Carnarvon Bay is Nant Gwrtheryn, the Hollow of
Vortigern, a precipitous ravine by the sea, said to be the last
resting-place of the usurper, when he fled to escape the rage of his
subjects on finding themselves betrayed to the Saxons.

[15] The Cornish language was spoken until 1768. In that year Daines
Barrington met the old fish-wife Dolly Pentreath, whose name has become
memorable as that of the last person to speak Cornish. The last sermon
in Cornish was preached in 1678 in Landewednack Church. The slackening
of the Saxon advance at the Tamar enabled the Cornish to preserve their
tongue, closely allied to that of Wales and Brittany, and described as
“naughty Englysshe” in the reign of the eighth Henry.

[16] The following curious little item from R. Hunt’s volume ought not
to be lost sight of:--“I shall offer a conjecture, touching the name of
Tintagel, which I will not say is right but only probable. _Tin_ is the
same as _Din_, _Dinas_, and _Dixeth_, deceit; so that Tindixel, turned
for easier pronunciation to Tintagel, Dundagel, etc., signifies Castle
of Deceit, which name might be aptly given to it from the famous deceit
practised here by Uther Pendragon by the help of Merlin’s enchantment.”
George Borrow says: “Tintagel does not mean the Castle of Guile, but
the house in the gill of the hill, a term admirably descriptive” (_Wild
Wales_, cap. cvii.).

[17] It is difficult to understand how a writer like the late Mrs.
Craik could ever have fallen into this error. In her _Unsentimental
Journey through Cornwall_ she makes every effort to prove that the
building on the mainland was the castle of Terabyl, and she insists
that there were (and are) two castles at Tintagel. “One sits in the
sea, and the other is upon the opposite heights of the mainland, with
communication by a narrow causeway. This seems to confirm the legend,
how Igraine’s husband shut himself and his wife in two castles, he
being slain in the one, and she married to the victorious king Uther
in the other.” It is obvious that the writer of these lines was
unacquainted with Malory.

[18] Silchester, originally a Celtic fortress, and a city of the
size of London, is also reported to have been the scene of Arthur’s
coronation at the age of fifteen by Dubritius. Modern excavations
have proved the importance of the city as a great centre of life and
industry, in Roman and British times, with its Forum, Basilica, and
rows of shops and houses; and if the _Calleva Attrebatum_ were really
Arthur’s crowning place, its fitness and worth for so imposing an event
cannot be disputed. Although Silchester is not directly referred to in
the Romances, Arthur’s Hampshire connections are numerous. They centre
in Winchester, where his predecessor and foster-father, Ambrosius
Aurelianus, died in the year 508. It was at Silchester also that the
chief men of the provinces met after Uther Pendragon’s death and
petitioned Dubritius, Archbishop of Caerleon, to consecrate Arthur the
successor to the dead king.

[19] Of this wooden bridge G. W. Manby in his _Guide_ (published 1802)
gives an illustration, and says: “As numerous coins have been found
where the piles of the bridge are now placed, there is no doubt of its
being the original pass. To a person unaccustomed to such a bridge, the
rattling noise whenever any weight is going over naturally occasions
some apprehensions.... The accounts of the tide rising so high as to
cover the bridge are erroneous; it never has been known yet; but that
assertion has given rise to the idea of the bridge being purposely
loose to prevent its being carried away in such cases. The amazing
floods to which the river is subject would render it not surprising if
accidents did happen.” Tennyson, who obtained from the _genius loci_
both inspiration and enlightment, refers in _Geraint and Enid_ to the
rapidity of the turn of the tidal waters of the Usk:--

            “Scarce longer time
  Than at Caerleon the full-tided Usk,
  Before the time to fall seaward again,
  Pauses.”

Modern Caerleon, however, with its commonplace railway station, its
porters shouting “Car--lion,” its new bridge, its spoilt Norman
church, and its street of small dwelling-houses, is likely at first to
disappoint the pilgrim, who only by searching and waiting can hope to
find the links with the city’s historic past.

[20] Frere’s poem was caustic, but it had a certain value in showing
the unromantic side of Arthurian times. The following verses, than
which far less delicate ones could be found in the poem, may be taken
as a specimen:--

  “And certainly they say, for fine behaving
    King Arthur’s Court has never had its match;
  True point of honour, without pride or braving,
    Strict etiquette for ever on the watch;
  There manners were refined and perfect--saving
    Some modern graces which they could not catch,
  As spitting through the teeth, and driving stages,
  Accomplishments reserved for distant ages.

  They looked a manly, generous generation;
    Beards, shoulders, eyebrows, broad, and square, and thick;
  Their accents firm and loud in conversation,
    Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick,
  Showed them prepared on proper provocation,
    To give the lie, pull noses, stab, and kick;
  And for that very reason it is said,
  They were so very courteous and well bred.”

When we come to consider probabilities, aided by such unsparing lines
as these, we may even accept as truth the old folk-song which tells
that when King Arthur ruled the land he “ruled it like a swine.” The
American poet, the late Mr. Eugene Field, in his “Lay of Camelot,” has
also shown the humorous aspect of the Arthurian Court. While all this
may be legitimate enough, and provide opportunities for the wit of the
authors, it is not the aspect which we prefer to contemplate for any
length of time, or one which has any continuous pleasure for the mind.

[21] The names of, and the leading incidents in, the twelve “glorious
wars,” are enumerated with accuracy by Tennyson in _Lancelot and
Elaine_, the recital coming from Lancelot’s lips, and having for its
purpose the proof that at the time “there lived no greater leader.”
Joseph Ritson’s curious little volume on King Arthur likewise treats
this subject fully.

[22] Gildas Badonicus, as we have seen in the first chapter, is also a
reputed native of Bath.

[23] Mr. E. W. B. Nicholson, in the _Academy_ (1896), advanced a number
of very strong and learned arguments in favour of the original idea
that Mons Badonicus was Bath.

[24] Sandwich is mentioned several times in the romance, but the
references are unimportant. Ancient as the place is, there is no reason
to connect it with British occupation. At the time the chronicles were
written, however, it was too important a seaport to escape mention.

[25] Lytton, agreeing with Southey that Gawaine’s character suffered
at the caprice of the poets and that he was “shamefully calumniated,”
speaks of

                    “Frank Gawaine,
  Whom mirth for ever, like a fairy child,
  Lock’d from the cares of life.”

William Morris, in _The Defence of Guenevere_, makes Gawaine the
accuser of the queen, and he is denounced for treachery.

[26] As a matter of history it is worth noting that Winchester, in
Hampshire, passed to the Saxons in the year 515, after which time
Cardic held it. King Arthur was then only twenty-three years old, and
could not have extended his territory as far as Hampshire.

[27] “Compare Guinevere or Iseult with those Scandinavian furies Gudrun
and Chrimhilde, and you will avow that woman such as chivalry conceived
her, an ideal of sweetness and loveliness set up as the supreme end of
life, is a creation in reality Celtic.”--_Renan._

[28] The ancient ballad, discovered, annotated, and to a slight extent
supplemented, by Dr. Percy, follows very exactly the story of Arthur’s
last days as given in the romances except that it ascribes to Sir Lucan
the acts usually credited to Sir Bedivere. Not a detail is omitted,
not a point is missed. On the morning of Trinity Monday the ghost of
Sir Gawaine is said to have appeared to the king and warned him not to
fight if he prized his life, but to wait until Sir Lancelot returned
from France. The parley which followed between Arthur and Mordred is
next described, but just as a month’s league had been decided upon
the adder’s sting brought about the “woeful chance As ever was in
Christentie.” When the wounded knight drew his sword the two hosts
immediately “joined battayle,” and fought until only three men were
left alive.

[29] It is interesting to compare Tennyson’s lines with Longfellow’s
in _The Spanish Student_, the similarity of phrasing being so marked.
Victorian, the student, observes that it is in vain he throws unto
oblivion’s sea the sword [of love] that pierces him--

                      “For like Excalibur,
  With gemmed and flashing hilt it will not sink.
  There rises from below a hand that grasps it,
  And waves it in the air: and wailing voices
  Are heard along the shore.”

[30] Glastonbury occupies a former site of Druidical worship, and
Professor Rhys believes the name to be a corruption of the British
word _glasten_, an oak, the Druids cultivating both the oak and the
apple as foster parents of their sacred mistletoe. Glestenaburh, says
Canon Taylor, was assimilated by the Saxons to their gentile form
Glestinga-burh or Glæsting-burh, which being supposed by a false
etymology to mean the “shining” or “glassy” town was mistranslated by
the Welsh as Ynys-Widrin, the Island of Glass.

[31] William Morris slightly varied the story in his _King Arthur’s
Tomb_, when he represents Lancelot journeying to “where the Glastonbury
glided towers shine” and relates that

                                “Presently
    He rode on giddy still, until he reach’d
  A place of apple-trees, by the Thorn-Tree
    Wherefrom St. Joseph in the past days preach’d.”

[32] The Holy Grail is pointed out in particular at Genoa Cathedral.
“It was brought from Cæsarea in 1101, is a hexagonal dish of two palms’
width, and was long supposed to be of real emerald, which it resembles
in colour and brilliancy.”

[33] Some historians, perhaps with better reason, declare that he was
born in 405 at Kilpatrick, Dumbarton, a little town at the junction of
the Levin and Clyde. He is variously reported to have died in 493 and
507, some placing his age at 88, and others at 120.

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation remain as in the original unless
noted below.

  Page 134, single quotation mark changed to double after “the flower of
    all the world.”
  Page 159, double quotation mark changed to single before “Largesse!
    Largesse!”
  Page 159, single quotation mark added after “Chevaliers très-hardies!”
  Page 249, period added after “Henry VIII.”
  Ads section, period added after “account of the Cathedral’s history.”
  Footnote 28, “and to, a slight extent” changed to “and to a slight
    extent.”

Original images of this book can be found here:
https://archive.org/details/lostlandofkingar00waltuoft.






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