ELLA, CERDRIC, AND KING ARTHUR.
"He was a shield to his country:
The courteous leader of the army;
His course was a wheel in battle,
He was a city to old age;
The head, the noblest pillar of Britain;
An eagle to his foe in his thrust,
Brave as generous;
In the angry warfare, certain of victory."
LLYWARCH HEN., SIXTH CENTURY.
The next Saxon chieftain of any note, who effected a landing in
Britain, and established himself in the country, was Ella; he came,
accompanied by his three sons and the same number of ships, the latter
being anchored beside the Isle of Thanet, where Hengist and Horsa,
twenty-eight years before, became auxiliaries under Vortigern. From the
south of Kent, a vast forest extended into Sussex and Hampshire, a huge
uncultivated wilderness, called Andreade, or Andredswold, measuring
above a hundred miles in length, and a long day's march in breadth, for
it was full thirty miles wide, and abounded with wolves, deer, and wild
boars. Near the Sussex entrance of this primeval English forest, Ella
fought his first battle, and drove the Britons into the wide wooded
waste. After a time, the Saxon chief received fresh reinforcements,
and not until then did he venture to attack the ancient British town
which was named Andredes Ceaster, and stood, strongly fortified, on
the edge of the forest. While the Saxons were attempting to scale the
walls, a body of the Britons rushed upon them from the wood, and, thus
attacked in the rear, the invaders were compelled to turn their backs
upon the town and carry the fight into the forest. Three times was
the assault renewed, for no sooner were the Saxons at the foot of the
wall than the Britons were upon their heels; each time Ella's loss was
severe; night came, and both parties rested until the morrow, encamped
within sight of each other. With sunrise, the battle was renewed, and
the Saxon chief this time drove the Britons still further into the
forest, but all was useless--they knew every turning and every thicket
that afforded a shelter, and by the time the besiegers had again
reached the town, the brave islanders were there, ready to pin the
first Saxon to the wall who attempted to scale it, with the unerring
javelins which they could hurl to an inch. The forces under Ella became
furious; they stood between two enemies; they were attacked both from
the town and the forest; whichever way they turned, the pointed spears
of the Britons were presented. At length, the Saxon chief divided his
army into two bodies: one he commanded to drive the Britons into the
forest, and to prevent them from returning; the other, at the same
time, began to break down the walls. Revenge was now the order of the
day: maddened by their losses, and irritated by the long delay, the
merciless Saxons put every soul within the walls to death--neither
man, woman, nor child, did they leave alive; such a massacre had never
before taken place. Even the walls were levelled to the earth, and, for
ages after, that town stood by the gloomy forest, silent, ruined, and
desolate; until even the time of Edward the First it was pointed out to
the stranger; and though the long grass, and the moss, and the lichen,
had grown grey upon its ruins, there were still traces of its fallen
grandeur "which," in the words of the old chronicler, "showed how noble
a city it had once been."
It is painful, even only in fancy, to picture the return of those
British warriors from the forest; how startling must have been the
very silence which reigned over those ruins, the vast dreary woodland
wilderness behind, the levelled walls and the bodies of the dead
before--here the remains of a beloved home which the destroying fire
had blackened--on the hearth a beautiful form, with her long hair
steeped in her own heart's blood, her child stretched across her arm,
over which the heavy rafter had in mercy fallen, the wolf already
prowling about the threshold. Even through the night of time, we can
almost hear their moans--each warrior reproaching himself for having
fled, and envying the unbroken sleep of the slain. How looked those
British fathers and husbands when they again met the Saxon slayers in
battle? Who marvels, after reading of such deeds as these, that they
hung the heads of their enemies at their sides--that they found music
in the gurgling of their blood--that as the foe expired they stood
calmly looking on, mocking him with a solemn death-chaunt, and telling
the dying man of the wife and home he would never see again--of the
savage laugh, "bitter and sullen as the bursting of the sea, of the
dead which in their fury they mangled--of the joy with which they
hailed the flapping of the raven's wings, as they heard them descending
upon the battle-field?" Such images would maddened revenge select to
express its triumph in, and the only marvel is, that so many beautiful
passages, expressive of grief, and sorrow, and heart-broken despair,
are scattered over the wild wailings of the early British bards. Yet
such scenes as we have here depicted it was theirs to deplore--such
revenge as they took, when the current of battle bore them on to
victory, it was theirs to exult in, and their bards, gifted with the
power of song, retired to mourn like the dove, or sallied forth to
destruction with the scream of the eagle. They were familiar with the
images of death, were called upon every day to defend their lives, and
were never certain that she, whose beautiful smile beamed love on their
departure in the morning, would in the evening stand waiting upon the
threshold to welcome their return. Neither the weeping mother, nor
the smiling child, had, in those days, power to turn aside the edge
of the Saxon sword. Thus was the second Saxon kingdom called Sussex,
established, by Ella, and his three sons.
Eighteen years after, another of Woden's descendants, named Cerdric,
came with his followers in five ships. Where they landed is uncertain,
though it does not appear that we should be much in error if we fixed
upon Yarmouth, which for centuries after was called Cerdricksand, and
known by that name even in Camden's day. At the time of his landing,
the Britons were in possession of the whole island, with the exception
of Kent and Sussex, and the Saxons who inhabited these kingdoms appear
to have aided the new-comers. Battle followed upon battle as usual,
and we are thankful that only so few scanty records exist, for it
would be wearisome to go over such successive bead-rolls of slaughter.
Nor was Cerdric allowed to land peaceably, for, like Julius Cæsar
above five centuries before, he had to fight his way from the first
moment of leaving the deck of his vessel. One great battle, however,
was fought, in which the British king Natanleod was slain; the two
armies met at Churdfrid, and in the onset the islanders appear to have
had the advantage. Natanleod commenced the attack on the right wing
of the Saxons, broke through the line, bore down the standards, and
compelled Cerdric to retreat. Years had passed away since the Britons
had before mustered such a force; they pursued the routed foe across
the field with terrible slaughter. The victory, however, was far from
being complete, for while the Britons plunged forward, hot and eager in
the pursuit, the forces under the command of the son of Cerdric closed
upon the flank of the pursuing army and compelled them to wheel round
and defend themselves. The Saxon chief also recovered from the panic,
and attacked them in front; thus the Britons were hemmed in on both
sides, and their centre was soon broken. All was now hurry, retreat,
confusion, and slaughter; quarter was neither craved nor given, those
who could not escape fought and fell, and when the battle was ended,
the body of the British king lay surrounded by five thousand of his
lifeless warriors. It will be readily imagined that Cerdric must have
received great assistance from Kent and Sussex to have won such a
victory, and it is evident that the leagued forces did not separate
without extending their ravages--many a fair province was desolated,
the inhabitants slaughtered, their houses burnt to the ground, and
their priests mercilessly butchered; for wherever the Christian
religion abounded, there the sword of the Saxon was found unsheathed.
Stuf and Wihtgar next came, both of them Cerdric's kinsmen, and it
seems as if scarcely a favourable wind now blew, without wafting a
fresh fleet of Saxon chiefs to the British coast. They evidently
began to look upon Britain as their own; so many relations came one
after the other and settled down, and never returned, that we can
imagine the only topic of conversation now in Jutland was about
Britain--that houses and lands were at a discount--that everybody was
either purchasing or building ships--that the old crones reaped quite
a harvest in standing upon the headlands and sending prayers after the
vessels, for Jutes, Angles, and Saxons were now all astir; rumours
had flown over the ocean that there were kingdoms for those who dare
venture for them, and that, no matter how distant the descent might
be, so long as the voyager had a drop of Woden's blood in his veins,
there was a crown for him if he could but find followers to fight
for it. Nor had the poor Britons any hope left, for as one died off
there was always another ready to succeed. Cynric followed Cerdric; he
passed away, and Cealwin came--killed two or three British kings, of
whom we know nothing, excepting that one was called Conmail, another
Condidan, and the third Farinmail--added the cities of Gloucester,
Cirencester, and Bristol to his dominions--and finally established the
kingdom of Wessex, which included several counties, beside the Isle
of Wight. But we must not thus hurry over this stirring period, for a
new champion had sprung up amongst the Britons, the king Arthur of old
romance, the hero of poetry and fable, the warrior whose very existence
has, to many, become a matter of doubt. What little we know of any of
the British kings who existed at this period, is almost limited to
the bare mention of their names. A new language had sprung up, and,
excepting among the conquered, there was no one left to record the
deeds of the British heroes, but the Welsh bards; for what sympathy
could the worshippers of Woden have with the warriors who spoke another
language, and followed a creed so different to their own? What should
we have known of the earlier Britons but for Julius Cæsar? Who can
doubt but that the Saxons cared only to chronicle the deeds of their
own countrymen, or who can tell how many records were destroyed by
the misbelieving Danes on a later day? We have more than tradition to
prove the existence of Arthur: he is alluded to by the ancient bards,
and mentioned by them in succession, for as one caught up and carried
forward the Cymric lay of another, so did he allude to warriors of
other days. The Saxons had enough to do to record their own conquests,
and left the Britons to mourn over their own disasters, for what they
remembered with feelings of pride would to the new-comers be a source
of regret; a British victory would but afford them a theme for a dirge,
and the very memory of a hero who had occasionally triumphed over them
would be a source of pain. Those who furnished Gildas and Nennius with
the subjects for their histories would not be such as kept a record of
the bravery of the Britons, yet Arthur is mentioned by them both. These
venerable chroniclers could but tell what they heard; many of the Welsh
bards fought in the battles of which they sang, and even defeat, as
well as victory, was alike woven into their lays. No such remains are
found amongst the Saxon historians, yet they both mention the battles
in which Arthur fought: he was a British king; and, though Gildas was
living within twenty years after the death of Arthur, he had but little
sympathy for him--nevertheless he praises his valour.
Arthur is the last British king in whose fortunes we strongly
sympathize. We see his native land about to be wrested from him. In
every corner of the island are strangers landing, and taking possession
of the soil. In almost every battle the Britons are defeated; they
who, from the first dawning of history, had been the possessors of the
island, are about to be driven from it, and that, too, at a period
when they were just becoming familiar to us. As we feel for and with
them at this time, so do the Saxons at last interest us, and there
our sympathy ends; the Normans never become so endeared to us as they
have been. From their first landing we seem to dislike them, even more
than we do the Saxons, whom we begin to see darkening every point of
the land, for as yet they are Pagans, and just as they gather upon our
favour, the Danes approach; and then we feel as much interested on
the side of the Saxons as we do now on that of the Britons. For there
are currents in history which bear us forward against our will--we
struggle against them in vain--we are swept onward through new scenes,
and whirled so rapidly amongst past events, that we no longer cling to
passing objects to retard our courses; but as the wide ocean opens out
before us, we gaze upon its vastness in wonderment, and are lost in
the contemplation of the shifting scenes which are ever chasing each
other over its surface. The forms that fall upon the pages of history,
are like the sunshine and shadow pursuing each other over the face
of the ocean, where the golden fades into the grey; and as each wave
washes nearer to the shore, it is ever changing its hue, from gloom
to brightness, until it breaks upon the beach, and is no more. Arthur
leading on the Britons, with the image of the Virgin upon his shield,
seems, in our eyes, only like some armed phantom, standing upon the
rim of the horizon at sunset, and pointing with his sword towards the
coming darkness; then he sinks behind the rounded hill, never to appear
again. His twelve battles have a glorious indistinctness,--they sink
one behind the other in the sunset, just as we can trace the bright
armour, and the drooping banners, and the moving host, in the fading
gold of the clouds,--they then melt around the dying glories of heaven.
Something great and grand seems ever shaping itself before the eye; but
ere we are able to seize upon any distinct feature, all is gone, never
to appear again.
Arthur first appears to us checking the flight of a British prince; we
see his hand on the rein, he is about to bear off the beautiful lady,
but is dissuaded from it by his companions. The cavalcade passes on,
and he rides moodily at the head of his followers,--then one of the
dark turnings of time shuts him out from the sight.
Sword in hand, we next behold him, in hot pursuit after a British
chief, who has slain some of his soldiers; the image of the Virgin is
borne rapidly through the air, his teeth are clenched, and there is a
frown upon his brow. A priest approaches--others come up--they tell him
that there are enemies enough to slay amongst the Saxons. The angry
spot fades from his forehead, and he sits calmly in his saddle--again
he vanishes.
His wife is then borne away, and we meet him breathing vengeance
against the king of Somersetshire, vowing that he will, ere night,
leave Melva to sleep shorter by the head--he slackens his rein for
a few moments beside the gate of a monastery: good and holy men are
there, the hand of a venerable man is placed upon his bridle, the image
of the Virgin he bears upon his shield is appealed to; he muses for a
time with his eyes bent upon the ground, he allows his war-horse to be
led under the grey gateway of the monastery--his wife is restored, and
Melva forgiven, and the curtain again falls.
Huel, another king of the Britons, has been tampering with the enemies
of his country; he is upbraided by Arthur for his treachery, then slain
by his own hand. We see him ever in the van, at the battles of Glen,
Douglas, Bassas, the Wood of Caledon, Castle Gunnion, on the banks of
the Rebroit, on the mountain of Cathregonian, and the battle in which
the Saxons were routed on the Badon Hills, and we no longer wonder at
the slow progress made by Cerdric, or that he died before the kingdom
of Wessex was established. The armed troops, headed by king Arthur,
stood between his advance into Wales; they remembered the hills of
Bath, and the number of slain they had left upon those summits. Saving
the feud with Medrawd, in which the British king received the blow by
which he died, these few facts are about all that we can gather of the
renowned deeds of the mighty King Arthur.
Excepting the slight mention made of him in the works of Gildas and
Nennius, the former of whom, as we have before stated, was living about
the period ascribed to Arthur, we find, no other record of his deeds,
beyond those tradition has preserved in the lays of the Welsh bards.
After the battle of Camlan, where Arthur received his death-blow, he
was carried from the field, and conveyed to Glastonbury Abbey, and
consigned to the care of a noble lady, named Morgan, who appears to
have been a kinswoman of king Arthur's; in her charge he was left to
be cured of his wounds. He, however, died, though his death was long
kept a secret, and rumours were sent abroad that he had been removed
into another world, but would one day again appear, and reign sole king
of Britain. Ages after, this was believed in; it was a thought that
often cheered the fading eyes of the dying Celt; he believed that he
but left his children behind him for a time; and that Arthur, with the
Virgin upon his shield, and his sword, "Caliburne," in his hand, would
assuredly one day come and lead the remnant of the ancient Cymry on
to victory. No historian, who has looked carefully into the few facts
which we possess relating to this British king, has ever doubted the
existence of such a belief; it was a coming devoutly looked for--the
dreamy solace of a fallen nation, their only comfort when all beside
had perished. No marvel that round his memory so many fables are
woven--that miracle upon miracle was ascribed to him, and deed upon
deed piled together, until even the lofty summit of high romance at
last toppled down with all its giants, and monsters, and improbable
accumulation of enemies slain, which in the days of Gildas amounted
to hundreds, and that down with it tumbled nearly all the few facts
which had swelled into such an inordinate bulk from his fair fame.
How it would have astonished the true Arthur, could he but have been
restored to life, and by the light of the few embers which glimmered
in the British huts in the evening twilight, have heard some bard, the
descendant of Llywarch the aged, who knew him well, and had looked on
him, face to face, recounting his deeds at the battle of Llongberth!
Yet, through the traditions of these very bards, by whom his deeds were
so magnified, is his memory preserved, though above thirteen centuries
have glided away. All belief in his return must, ages before this, have
perished; yet his memory was not forgotten, and it is on record, that a
secret had been entrusted to one who had probably descended from a long
line of ancient minstrels; for the druids, who numbered bards amongst
their order, had mysteries which they only confided to each other, and
these were seldom revealed until the approach of death. Nor can we tell
how much they were interested in keeping the death of Arthur a secret,
for we must not forget that the fires upon their altars were not wholly
extinguished when the British king fell beneath the fatal blow, which
he received from the hand of his nephew in the field of Camlan, for
that his death was kept a secret has never been disputed.
Though the discovery of the remains of king Arthur has long been a
matter of doubt, yet while it is supported by such high authority as
Giraldus Cambrensis and William of Malmsbury, who were living at the
period it is said to have taken place, and while even Sharon Turner has
admitted it into his "History of the Anglo-Saxons," we should scarcely
be justified in rejecting it from our pages. The discovery is said to
have originated as follows:--
Henry the Second, during his visits into Wales, freely admitted the
Welsh bards into his presence; and as he numbered amongst his own
household a minstrel of some celebrity, named Pierre de Vidal, there is
every reason to conclude that he was a willing listener to the ancient
lays which were chanted in those days in the halls of the nobles. By
one of the old British bards he was told that king Arthur was interred
in Glastonbury Abbey; that the spot was marked by two pyramids, or
pillars; that the body was buried very deep, to prevent the Saxons from
discovering it; and that, instead of a stone coffin, the remains would
be found in the trunk of a hollowed oak--a form of interment, as we
have before shown, very common amongst the ancient Britons. The king
transmitted this information to the abbot of Glastonbury, commanding
him to dig between the pillars, and endeavour to discover the body
of the British king. In the cemetery of the abbey, and between the
monuments which the Welsh bard had pointed out, they commenced the
search, and dug, it is said, until they came to a stone, under which
they found a leaden cross, and the following inscription: "Hic jacet
sepultus inclytus Rex Arthurus in insula Avollonia." Though we must
confess that there is something very doubtful about the inscription
of a British king not being in Welsh, when the Cymry were said, at
this period, to have been acquainted with letters, we will pass it by,
and go on with the narrative. Sixteen feet lower, it is said, they
found the outer coffin, which, as before described, was formed out
of the solid stem of an oak, hollowed in the centre to contain the
body. The leg-bones, we are told, were of an unusual size, being the
breadth of three fingers longer than those of the tallest man present.
These bones Giraldus, it is said, took in his hand, and also read the
inscription, for he was present at the disinterment. The skull was
large, and marked with ten wounds--nine of these had healed in the
bone, the tenth was open, and probably showed where the mortal blow was
struck that terminated his life. Near at hand, were found the remains
of his wife; the long yellow hair which the ancient bards loved to
dwell upon, in their descriptions of the fair queen, appeared perfect,
until touched. The remains were removed into the abbey, and placed in
a magnificent shrine, which, by the order of Edward the First, was
placed before the high altar. In the year one thousand two hundred and
seventy-six, nearly a hundred years after the bodies were discovered,
the same king, accompanied by his queen, visited Glastonbury, and had
the shrine opened to look upon the remains of the renowned warrior and
his once fair consort. King Edward folded the bones of the reputed
Arthur in a rich shroud, while his wife did the same with those of
the yellow-haired queen; then placed them again reverentially within
the shrine. The pillars which marked the spot where the bodies were
discovered, long remained; and William of Malmsbury, who was living
at the period when they were disinterred, has left an account of the
inscription and figures upon the pillars, which were five-sided, and
twenty-six feet high.[3] Neither the meanings of the inscriptions, or
the figures, were at the period of the discovery rightly understood.
What befel them afterwards we know not, though the fate of the abbey
is well known. Whether the discovery of these remains be true or not,
there cannot be a doubt about the existence of king Arthur; for, were
there even no allusion made to him by Gildas and Nennius, who lived
near upon the period when he was waging war with Cerdric and Cealwin;
or by the British bards, who knew him personally, and even fought under
his command,--were there no such undeniable evidence as the above, the
traditions which so long preserved his remembrance would go far to
prove his existence. But these throw no light upon the achievements by
which he became so renowned; it is like discovering the casket without
the gem--there is evidence of the treasure, and the care with which it
was preserved, but what the treasure itself was, we know not. What few
facts we have thrown together, are all that can really be depended
upon as the true history of king Arthur: his knights, his round table,
and the deeds which are attributed to him, must ever stand amongst the
thousand-and-one tales which a wonder-loving people have treasured in
all ages, and some of which are found even amongst the most barbarous
nations. They appear to have been such as raised Woden into a god in
the darkest era of Saxon paganism; and as Roman civilization seems
never to have spread far amongst the ancient Cymry in Wales, we are
justified in concluding that they also loved to shed around the memory
of their bravest chieftain the same mysterious reverence, and that what
was wanting to make up the unnatural stature of the image of their
idolatry, they piled up from old legends and time-out-of-mind fables,
that "give delight, but hurt not." The discovery of king Arthur's
remains is at best but doubtful history.