The Cambridge Manuals of Science and
Literature
KING ARTHUR
IN HISTORY AND LEGEND
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
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Edinburgh: 100 PRINCES STREET
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KING ARTHUR
IN HISTORY AND LEGEND
BY
W. LEWIS JONES, M.A.
Professor of the English Language and
Literature, University College of
North Wales, Bangor
Cambridge:
at the University Press
1914
_First Edition_, 1911
_Second Edition_, 1914
_With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on
the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known
Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
This little book is an attempt to trace, in as clear and summary a
form as possible, the origin and growth of King Arthur’s historical
and literary renown, and follows, largely, the lines of a chapter
contributed by me to the first volume of _The Cambridge History of
English Literature_. Although I have had, necessarily, to refer to
much literary matter which is purely mythological, I have not sought
to give any account of the speculations of those who in our own time
have endeavoured to reconstruct and interpret the myths and beliefs of
pre-historic Celtic heathendom. Nor have I made more than the briefest
allusion to the subsidiary legends which, mainly through the agency of
French romantic scribes, came to be associated with Arthur’s name, and
to be included in “the matter of Britain” as it emerged out of the age
of high romance. The book deals, all but exclusively, with King Arthur
himself, as he is known to chroniclers, romancers and poets.
My obligations to particular writers will be found recorded in the
paginal notes. I must, however, express here my special indebtedness to
the writings of Sir John Rhys and the late Mr Alfred Nutt. To Mr Nutt,
in particular, whose tragic and untimely death last year was a grievous
loss to Celtic scholarship, I owe much private help and suggestion.
In one or two chapters of the book--the second and the third, more
especially--I have reproduced, almost _verbatim_, a few short passages
from articles of mine which have appeared in _The Quarterly Review_,
and in the Transactions of the London Cymmrodorion Society.
W. LEWIS JONES.
BANGOR,
_July 1911_.
PREFATORY NOTE TO SECOND EDITION
In this edition a few slight changes and corrections have been made in
the text. The “Additional Notes” at the end of the book (pp. 138-140)
supply a few omissions apparent in the first edition, some of which
were pointed out to the author by his reviewers.
W. L. J.
_July 1914._
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 1
CHAP.
I. THE EARLIEST ARTHURIAN RECORDS 11
II. ARTHUR IN WELSH LEGEND AND LITERATURE 37
III. GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH AND THE CHRONICLERS 60
IV. ROMANCE 95
V. ARTHUR IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 116
ADDITIONAL NOTES 138
BIBLIOGRAPHY 141
INDEX 143
KING ARTHUR IN HISTORY AND LEGEND
INTRODUCTORY
“It is notoriously known through the universal world,” writes Caxton
in his preface to Malory’s _Morte Darthur_, “that there be nine
worthy” kings “and the best that ever were,” and that the “first and
chief of the three best Christian and worthy” is King Arthur. Caxton,
however, finds it a matter of reproach that so little had been done
in his own country to perpetuate and honour the memory of one who
“ought most to be remembered amongst us Englishmen tofore all other
Christian kings.” Thanks mainly to Caxton’s own enterprise, and to the
poets who have drawn their inspiration from Malory’s book, there is
no longer any cause to accuse Englishmen of indifference to Arthur’s
name and fame. No literary matter is more familiar to them than “what
resounds in fable or romance of Uther’s son.” And yet nothing is
more “notoriously known” than that authentic historical records of
the career of this “most renowned Christian king” are distressingly
scanty and indeterminate. An old Welsh bard, who sings of the graves
of departed British warriors, and has no difficulty in locating
most of them,[1] tells us that “unknown is the grave of Arthur.”[2]
Would that this were indeed the sum of our ignorance! To-day, as of
old, Arthur remains but a shadowy apparition, clothed in the mists
of legend and stalking athwart the path of history to distract and
mystify the sober chronicler. A Melchisedec of profane history, he
has “neither beginning of days nor end of life.” Neither date nor
place of birth can be assigned to him any more than a place of burial,
while undiscovered yet is the seat of that court where knights, only
less famous than himself, sought his benison and behest. It is only
romantic story-tellers, like the authors of the Welsh _Mabinogion_,
who venture upon such positive statements as that “Arthur used to hold
his court at Caerlleon upon Usk.”[3] Geoffrey of Monmouth is, indeed,
even more precise and circumstantial than the professed retailers of
legend, for he actually gives the reasons why Arthur settled his court
at Caerlleon, or the City of Legions--a “passing pleasant place.”[4]
That, of course, is only Geoffrey’s way, and illustrates the genius
for invention which makes his so-called _History_ a work unique of
its kind. The “matter of Britain” is, much more than the “matter of
France,” or even the heterogeneous “matter of Rome the great,” the
despair of the historian.[5] But it is, for that very reason, the
paradise of the makers and students of romance; and, as a result, the
mass of Arthurian literature of all kinds which exists to-day,--prose
and verse romances, critical studies of “origins,” scholarly quests
along perilous paths of mythology and folk-lore,--is ponderous enough
to appal the most omnivorous reader. The Arthurian legend has indeed
been of late, both in Europe and in America, the subject of so much
mythological, ethnological and philological speculation as to tempt the
unsophisticated lover of mere literature to say, when he contemplates
the mounting pile of printed critical matter, that Arthur’s sepulchre,
wherever his mortal remains may lie, is at last well on the way to be
built in our libraries.
There is nothing in literary history quite like the fascination which
Arthurian romance has had for so many diverse types of mind. Poets,
musicians, painters, religious mystics, folk-lorists, philologists--all
have yielded to it. For some people the study of Arthurian nomenclature
is as engrossing a pursuit as the interpretation of ‘The Idylls of the
King’ is for others, while there are those who derive as much pleasure
from investigating the symbolic meanings of the story of the Grail as
lovers of music do from listening to the mighty harmonies of _Parzival_
or _Tristan und Isolde_. All this only makes us wonder the more why so
obscure and elusive a figure as the historical British Arthur should
have become the centre of a romantic cycle which presents so many
varied and persistent features of interest. Even in Caxton’s time, as
in our own, there were sceptics “who held opinion that there was no
such Arthur, and that all books as been made of him be but feigned
and fables.” This is not surprising, when it is remembered that even
when Geoffrey of Monmouth, some three centuries before, gave to the
world his astonishing record of Arthur’s achievements, a few obstinate
critics had their doubts about the whole matter, and one of them--the
chronicler, William of Newburgh--roundly denounced Geoffrey for having,
by his “saucy and shameless lies,” made “the little finger of his
Arthur bigger than the back of Alexander the Great.”[6] Caxton’s way
with the sceptics is ingenuous and short, but it is curious to note
how his preface to the _Morte Darthur_ succeeds, in its own quaint
and crude fashion, in suggesting what are still the main problems of
constructive Arthurian criticism. It will not do, he says in effect,
to dismiss summarily all Arthurian traditions as so many old wives’
tales. They are too widespread and persistent not to have some basis
of solid fact underlying them: besides, the people who believe them,
love them, and write of them, cannot all be credulous fools. Caxton,
in particular, cites the case of the “noble gentlemen” who “required
him to imprint the history of the noble king and conqueror, king
Arthur,”--one of whom “in special said, that in him that should say
or think that there was never such a king called Arthur might well be
aretted great folly and blindness.” This gentleman--of whom one would
gladly know more--was evidently both an antiquary and a student of
letters, and could give weighty reasons for the faith that was in
him. First of all, Arthur’s grave, so far from being unknown, might
be seen “in the monastery of Glastingbury.” Again, reputable authors
like Higden, Boccaccio, and “Galfridus in his British book,” tell
of his death and recount his life; “and in divers places of England
many remembrances be yet of him, and shall remain perpetually, and
also of his knights.” His seal, for example, “in red wax closed in
beryl,” could be seen in the Abbey of Westminster; Gawaine’s skull and
Cradock’s mantle were enshrined in Dover Castle; the Round Table was
at Winchester, and “in other places Launcelot’s sword and many other
things.” Caxton appears to speak in his own person when he goes on to
re-inforce all this by mentioning the records of Arthur that remained
in Wales, and “in Camelot, the great stones and the marvellous works
of iron lying under the ground, and royal vaults, which divers now
living have seen.” Moreover, Arthur’s renown was well established in
all places, Christian and heathen, so much so that he was “more spoken
of beyond the sea,” and “more books made of his noble acts,” than
in England. “Then all these things alleged,” he concludes, “I could
not well deny but that there was such a noble king named Arthur, and
reputed one of the nine worthy, and first and chief of the Christian
men.” Hence he decided in all good faith, “under the favour and
correction of all noble lords and gentlemen, to enprise to imprint” the
Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table. And,
in view of Ascham’s famous denunciation of the book as containing but
“open manslaughter and bold bawdrie,” and of Tennyson’s sensitiveness
to the touch of
“the adulterous finger of a time
That hover’d between war and wantonness,”
it is well to remember that Caxton held that all that was in it was
“written for our doctrine.” “For herein may be seen noble chivalry,
courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship,
cowardice, murder, hate, virtue and sin. Do after the good and leave
the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renommee.”
Caxton’s preface to the _Morte Darthur_ has here been taken as a
sort of preliminary text, not only because that famous work is, by
general consent, the fullest and the most fascinating presentment in
English of the great congeries of tales that make up the so-called
Arthurian “cycle,” but also because Caxton’s own words, as already
hinted, serve to raise, in a peculiarly suggestive way, most of the
questions with which the critical student of the Arthurian legends and
their origin has to deal to-day. The _Morte Darthur_ itself, it has
become a commonplace to say, remains unchallenged, in spite of its
inconsequences and inconsistencies, the supreme Arthurian “prose epic”
in English. The work is not, of course, “epic” in any strict sense,
but it was issued by Caxton to the readers of his day as pre-eminently
an English _Arthuriad_. Arthur alone of “the Nine Worthies” had not
had justice done to him in his own country. The two other Christian
“worthies,” Charlemagne and Godfrey of Boulogne, had been adequately
celebrated abroad, and Caxton himself had contributed to spread the
latter’s fame in England. Why should the great English “Christian
king” remain unhonoured in his own land? It was, therefore, with the
patriotic object of blazoning the fame of the greatest of _English_
heroes that Caxton undertook the publication of Malory’s book. Now,
the historical Arthur, so far as we know him, is not English at all,
but a “British” hero, who fought against the Saxons, and whose prowess
is one of the jealously treasured memories of the Celtic peoples, and
particularly of the Welsh. By what process of transformation had this
British warrior become, by Caxton’s time, the ideal “Christian king”
of England? And why, again, should he be singled out as pre-eminently
one of the three _Christian_ kings of the world, and his name linked
with “the noble history of the Saint Greal”? Here we come at once upon
one of the disturbing influences in what ought to be a straightforward
record of the doings of a fighting chieftain of early Britain. The
quest of the Holy Grail had, originally, nothing to do with Arthur.[7]
But, by Caxton’s time, the mystic, or religious, element in Arthurian
romance had become so prominent as to make it impossible to think of
Arthur except in association with the “high history” of the Grail. A
further complication meets us when we are told that Malory took his
material for his narrative of the deeds of the paramount English, or
British, hero “out of certain books of French.” Why should Malory so
constantly refer to “the French book” as his authority, and have so
little to go upon that had been written in English, or in Welsh? Why
is it that to-day, after four centuries of diligent search in both
private and public libraries, the amount of extant British literature
of an indubitably ancient date dealing with Arthur’s exploits is so
scanty? For Caxton’s statement still remains substantially true that,
down to the fifteenth century, “the books that had been made about
Arthur over sea,” and in foreign tongues, far outnumbered those that
had been made in Britain. How are we to account for the popularity
which the Arthurian stories thus enjoyed on the European continent, and
for the way in which they became, during the Middle Ages, practically
international literary property?
These are the main questions which have to be answered to-day by
those who attempt to trace the origin and growth of the Arthurian
legends, and they are all suggested in Caxton’s preface. This little
book does not pretend to furnish a final answer to any one of them.
It simply essays to present in a summary and, it is hoped, a clear
form the substance of what is told about King Arthur in history and
legend, together with a brief notice of the development of Arthurian
literature mainly in England. No attempt will be made to trace the many
ramifications of the subsidiary stories which have been grafted upon
the original Arthurian stock. Characters like Perceval, or Lancelot,
or Tristram, who figure so largely in the full-orbed Arthurian cycle,
could each easily be made the subject of a separate volume far
exceeding the dimensions of the present one. Here, attention will be
concentrated, as far as possible, upon the figure and the fortunes of
Arthur himself.
CHAPTER I
THE EARLIEST ARTHURIAN RECORDS
If, in Caxton’s words, “such a king called Arthur” ever lived in these
islands, he must have flourished during the period between the first
coming of the Saxons and the middle of the sixth century. So much, at
any rate, is clearly attested by the meagre historical records which
profess to recount his deeds. Nothing, however, can be found in these
records to warrant the belief that he ever became “king” of any part
of Britain. His achievements as a warrior alone are mentioned, and
all that we can gather besides from Welsh tradition only serves to
emphasise the fact that his renown among the British people rested
mainly upon his warlike prowess. His admission to the so-called “Celtic
pantheon,” and his gradual evolution in Celtic tradition as a great
mythological figure, are matters of purely speculative interest,
and cannot be taken into account in an attempt to answer our first
question--Who, and what, was the historical Arthur? In Welsh we read
of an “emperor” Arthur,[8] but this title, as we shall see, implies
nothing more than that he was a war-leader, or a commander-in-chief
of a group of more or less celebrated generals. His kingship, and his
state as the head of a great court, are entirely the creations of later
romance.[9]
Little, if anything, of historical significance is to be deduced
from the form of Arthur’s name. It appears in the Latin chronicles
as _Arturus_, and is probably of Roman origin, derived from the form
_Artorius_.[10] This is much more likely than that, as Rhys suggests,
it was “a Celtic name belonging in the first instance to a god Arthur.”
For the latter explanation, as readers of Rhys’s _Arthurian Legend_
will know, carries us into the world of mythology, and is made the
foundation of an ingenious hypothesis to account for Arthur’s Celtic
fame. That hypothesis, so far as it bears upon the name, is thus
summarised by its author. “The Latin _Artôrius_ and the god’s name,
which we have treated as early Brythonic _Artor_, genitive _Artôros_,
would equally yield in Welsh the familiar form _Arthur_. In either
case, the name would have to be regarded as an important factor in the
identification or confusion of the man with the divinity. The latter,
called Arthur by the Brythons, was called Airem by the Goidels, and
he was probably the Artæan Mercury of the Allobroges of ancient Gaul.
His rôle was that of Culture Hero, and his name allows one to suppose
that he was once associated, in some special manner, with agriculture
over the entire Celtic world of antiquity. On the one hand we have the
man Arthur, whose position we have tried to define, and on the other 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.”[11] The
mythological Arthur, as he appears in Welsh literature and tradition,
will claim our attention in another chapter; here, our inquiry will be
confined mainly to the Latin records in which we find, or should expect
to find, the earliest authentic information about “the man Arthur.”
The oldest historical document in which Arthur is mentioned by name is
the famous _Historia Brittonum_ ascribed to Nennius. Parts of this work
may have been put together as early as the seventh century,[12] but the
compilation, as we now have it, was due to a Welshman named Nennius,
or (in Welsh) Nynniaw, who lived about the year 800.[13] The work may
be roughly divided into two parts,--the first, of sixty-six sections
or chapters, professing to give a cursory sketch of the history of
Britain from the earliest times down to the eighth century; the second
containing a list of the twenty-eight “cities of Britain,” together
with an account of certain “marvels” (_mirabilia_), or wonderful
natural phenomena, of Britain, which, the compiler tells us, he “wrote
as other scribes had done before him.” The quasi-historical part of the
work contains much the fullest notice of Arthur’s military exploits
to be found in any chronicle before that of Geoffrey of Monmouth,
while from sundry allusions to Arthur in the section on the ‘marvels
of Britain,’ we gather that legend was already busy with his name.
The celebrated passage in which Arthur is mentioned in the _Historia_
proper[14] runs as follows:--
“At that time, the Saxons increased and grew strong in Britain. After
the death of Hengist, Octha his son came from the northern part of the
kingdom to the men of Cantia, and from him are descended its kings.
Then Arthur fought against them in those days, together with the kings
of the Britons, but he himself was leader in the battles.[15] The first
battle was at the mouth of the river Glein; the second, third, fourth
and fifth on the river Dubglas, in the region Linnuis; the sixth on the
river Bassas; the seventh in the wood of Celidon, that is, Cat Coet
Celidon[16]; the eighth at the castle of Guinnion, when Arthur bore the
image of the holy Virgin Mary on his shoulders, and when the pagans
were put to flight and a great slaughter made of them through the might
of our Lord Jesus Christ and of Holy Mary his mother. The ninth battle
was fought at the city of Legion, the tenth on the shore of the river,
which is called Tribruit, and the eleventh on the mountain which is
called Agned. The twelfth battle was on Mount Badon, where there fell
nine hundred and sixty men before Arthur’s single onset; nor had any
one but himself alone a share in their downfall, and in all the battles
he was the victor. But the enemy, while they were overthrown in all
their battles, sought help from Germany, and continually increased in
number, and they brought kings from Germany to rule over those who were
in Britain up to the time of the reign of Ida, who was the first king
in Beornicia.”
One notes, in the very first words in which mention is here made of
Arthur, that he is not called a “king,” but that he fought “together
with the kings” of the Britons, not, seemingly, as their auxiliary, but
as their commander-in-chief--_sed ipse dux erat bellorum_. It has been
suggested,[17] with much plausibility, that the term _dux bellorum_
in this passage implies that Arthur held, after the departure of the
Romans, a military office similar to one of those established in the
island during the later years of the Roman administration. Since the
time of Severus Britain had been divided, for defensive purposes, into
two districts. At first, most pressure came from the Picts and the
Scots in the North, and the defence of Upper Britain was entrusted to
a commander called _dux Britanniarum_. Later, when the Saxons began to
threaten the eastern and southern shores, a second officer--_comes
littoris Saxonici_--was appointed to command the armies of Lower
Britain. Finally, a third officer, the _comes Britanniæ_, was given
a general supervision over the other two, and the supreme charge of
the defences of the entire country. Sir John Rhys discovers in Arthur
the representative in the sixth century of this third officer of the
Roman military organisation. This supposition undoubtedly helps to
explain better than any other both Nennius’s description of Arthur as
_dux bellorum_, and the seemingly wide range of country covered by the
twelve battles which he is said to have fought.
It is, however, to be noted, as Rhys points out,[18] that while the
title apparently given in early Welsh literature to those who succeeded
to supreme power in Britain was _gwledig_, that name is never given
to Arthur. The term _gwledig_, itself, means no more than “ruler”
or “prince,” and is indiscriminately used in that sense in mediæval
Welsh,[19] but there is good reason to believe that, as applied to
certain warriors of the sixth century, the title was a Brythonic
equivalent of the official military title, _comes_ or _dux_. The most
famous bearer of the title, Maxen Wledig, comes within the Roman
period, and his renown is mainly due to romance[20]; three others who
are so called, Cunedda, Ceredig and Emrys (the Ambrosius Aurelianus
of Gildas), may very well have held one of the military offices in
question. “Cunedda Wledig and Ceredig Wledig are connected with the
north and appear to be guardians of the wall, while Emrys Wledig is
the antagonist of the Saxons. Thus Cunedda and Ceredig may be regarded
as Dukes of the Britains, while Emrys is a British Count of the Saxon
shore.”[21] Arthur, on the other hand, is in Welsh literature _yr
amherawdyr Arthur_, “the emperor Arthur,”[22] and so, as Rhys suggests,
“it is not impossible that, when the Roman _imperator_ ceased to have
anything more to say to this country, the title was given to the
highest officer in the island, namely, the _Comes_ _Britanniæ_, and
that in the words _yr amherawdyr Arthur_ we have a remnant of our
insular history.”[23]
An even more difficult problem than the determination of Arthur’s rank
is the identification of the twelve battlefields mentioned in Nennius’s
record. The twelfth century chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, tells
us that, even in his own time, “all the places were unknown”; hence
it is not surprising that those who have in our day sought to trace
geographically the course of Arthur’s campaigns have not brought us
much nearer certainty. The most plausible theory is that which would
locate most, if not all, the places named by Nennius in the region
of the Roman walls in the North,[24] a theory largely supported by
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s elaboration of Nennius’s account, and by the
fact that the names of several prominent characters connected with the
early exploits of Arthur are localised in Lowland Scotland. On the
other hand, it is contended that Mount Badon,[25] and Urbs Legionis,
at least, must be in the South, and that Linnuis--which in Geoffrey
appears as Lindisia (or Lindsey), “otherwise called Lindocolinum”--is
in the East. The localisation of Arthur’s battlefields is of no great
consequence as compared with the fact that the earliest record of
them, however vague and fragmentary, clearly points to a long and
victorious campaign conducted under his generalship against the Saxons
and other enemies of the Britons in the sixth century. Two, at least,
of the victories recorded by Nennius appear to have strongly seized
the imagination of later writers of Arthurian story. It mattered
less to them where “the castle of Guinnion” actually was than that
in the battle fought there Arthur “bore the image of the holy Virgin
Mary on his shoulders,” and thus established the tradition which
ultimately exalted him into “the first and chief of the three best
Christian kings.” Nennius’s brief statement is, of course, expanded and
embroidered by Geoffrey[26] and other romantic chroniclers in turn,
until the tradition becomes so firmly rooted as to make a modern poet
like Wordsworth single out Arthur as a champion of the early British
Church, and sing,
“Amazement runs before the towering casque
Of Arthur, bearing through the stormy field
The Virgin sculptured on his Christian shield.”[27]
Hence, even Tennyson takes no very great liberty with Arthurian
tradition when he converts “Arthur’s knighthood” into a Christian
fellowship avowing that
“The King will follow Christ, and we the King,
In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.”[28]
The other battle, of those mentioned by Nennius, that looms large in
subsequent Arthurian story is that of _Mons Badonis_, or Badon Hill.
This battle is of exceptional interest because it is possible to
assign to it an approximately certain date. The record in the _Annales
Cambriæ_ of the year 516 as its precise date is of less importance than
the fact that Gildas, the celebrated sixth century scribe, expressly
refers to the battle as having been fought in his natal year. In his
_De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniæ_, amid much vehement denunciation of
the British people and their degenerate leaders, Gildas gives a short
sketch of the history of Britain down to his own time. Coming to the
Saxon invasions, he states that they were first successfully checked
under the leadership of Ambrosius Aurelianus, the last of the Romans,
“a modest man, who alone of all his race chanced to survive the shocks”
of that troubled time.
After this, he continues, the struggle went on with varying fortune
“until the year of the siege of Badon Hill, and of almost the last
great slaughter inflicted upon the rascally crew. And this commences
(a fact I know) as the forty-fourth year, with one month now elapsed;
it is also the year of my birth.”[29] So far as the date goes, this
seems to mean that the year of the battle of Badon and of Gildas’s
own birth was the forty-fourth from that in which he wrote. As the
_De Excidio_ must have been written before the death of Maelgwn
Gwynedd--the Maglocunus against whom Gildas directs some of his
choicest invective--in or about the year 547, the date of the fight at
Badon Hill cannot well have been later than 504. At any rate, Gildas’s
testimony is sufficient warrant that some time during the first decade
of the sixth century a battle was fought against the Saxons at a place
called Badon Hill, in which the Britons were the victors.
But that battle, according to Nennius, was the one of all the twelve
recorded by him in which Arthur gave the most signal evidence of his
individual prowess; before his single onset “nine hundred and sixty
men” fell. Now Gildas, an unimpeachable sixth century authority,
makes no reference whatever to Arthur’s achievements in this, or any
other, encounter with the Saxons. This silence, so far as it affects
the historicity of Arthur, is less disturbing than it appears to be,
when account is taken of the character and motive of Gildas’s work as
a whole. The _De Excidio_ is not so much a history as a homily. Gildas
belonged to a “Romanist” party, and what the more or less unorganised
Britons sought to do for themselves, and their independence, was
to him but a decline upon savagery and selfish native pride. It
did not suit his purpose to celebrate the name and virtues of any
British prince, and it is significant that, apart from Ambrosius,--by
birth, apparently, no less than by his training and sympathies, a
thorough-going “Roman,”--he does not mention by name a single British
chieftain except as a target for his invective.
In the _mirabilia_ attached to Nennius’s _History_ Arthur is a
mythical figure as remote and as elusive as he is in early Welsh
poetry and triadic lore. In them, as in the earliest Welsh poems, he
is pre-eminently Arthur “the warrior,” but he is known besides as the
owner of a famous hound, and as the father of a son whose name had
been given to one of the natural features of the country. The first
“marvel,” in connection with which Arthur’s name occurs, is in the
region of Buelt, or Builth. Here, we are told, is a mound of stones,
on the top of which is one stone bearing the mark of a dog’s foot.
This mark was made by Cabal, “the dog of Arthur the warrior” (_Arthuri
militis_), when he was hunting “the boar Troit” (_porcum Troit_). The
pile of stones was put together by Arthur, and is called Carn, or the
Cairn of, Cabal. The marvel lay in the fact that, though men might come
and carry away the top stone “for the space of a day and a night,” the
stone was invariably found in its proper place the next day. Another
marvel, described in immediate succession, belongs to “the region which
is called Ercing,” or Archenfield. There may be found a tomb close by
a spring which is called the Source of the Amir,--_juxta fontem qui
cognominatur Licat Amir_, after the name of the man who was buried
there. This Amir was the son of “Arthur the warrior,” who himself
killed, and buried him, on that spot. The “marvellous” property of this
tomb was that, when men came to measure it, at various times, they
never found it of the same size; “and,” the writer ingenuously adds, “I
have made proof of this by myself” (_et ego solus probavi_). These two
_miracula_, as he calls them, are all that Nennius, or his authority,
has to tell us of the mythical, as distinguished from the historical,
Arthur.
These apparently casual records of Arthurian marvels are noteworthy,
not only as indicating an early association of Arthurian traditions
with the topography of Wales, but also as affording a connecting link
between the earliest Latin documents in which Arthur’s name is found
and one of the very oldest of the Welsh Arthurian tales. In the Welsh
romance, or rather fairy-tale, of _Kulhwch and Olwen_,--the primitive
literary form of which probably dates from the tenth century,[30]--the
hunting of the _Twrch Trwyth_, or the Boar Trwyth (the _porcus Troit_
of Nennius), forms one of the capital features. Now, in that hunt, as
described in _Kulhwch and Olwen_, Arthur’s dog Cabal, or Cavall,--which
is the Welsh form of the name,--takes part; he is led to the chase by
Arthur’s faithful henchman, Bedwyr, or Bedivere.[31] Nor was it in
bringing to bay “the boar Troit” alone that Cavall took part. He was
conspicuous in the capture and the slaughter of another monster, who is
called an Arch- or Head-Boar, bearing the fearsome name of “Yskithyrwyn
Benbaedd.” “And Arthur,” we read,[32] “went himself to the chase,
leading his own dog Cavall. And Kaw, of North Britain, mounted Arthur’s
mare Llamrei, and was first in the attack. Then Kaw, of North Britain,
wielded a mighty axe, and absolutely daring he came valiantly up to the
boar, and clave his head in twain. And Kaw took away the tusk. Now the
boar was not slain by the dogs that Yspaddaden had mentioned, but by
Cavall, Arthur’s own dog.”[33]
The battle of Mount Badon, as we have seen, is recorded in the
_Annales Cambriæ_, contained in a MS of the tenth century. Still more
interesting is another record in that document under the year 537. In
that year, we read, was fought “the battle of Camlan, in which Arthur
and Medraut fell.” Although we hear nothing of Medraut’s treachery, or
of his being Arthur’s nephew, here, so far as we know, is the first
recorded allusion to what subsequently became one of the prime tragic
features in Arthurian story. Medrod, or Modred, is the villain of the
romances, and Camlan is that “dim, weird battle of the west,” where
Arthur fought the “traitor of his house,” and
“Striking the last stroke with Excalibur
Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell.”[34]
In Welsh prose romance we hear of Camlan both in _Kulhwch and Olwen_
and in _The Dream of Rhonabwy_; it is also mentioned in the Triads, and
there are two references to the place in the oldest Welsh poetry. In
‘The Verses of the Graves’ in _The Black Book of Carmarthen_, we are
told that “the grave of the son of Osvran is in Camlan,”[35] and in
a poem in _The Red Book of Hergest_, a nameless bard labouring under
forebodings of coming tumult in his own day, prophesies that “Camlan
will be heard again, scenes of groaning will again be seen, and dismal
lamentations.”[36] Apart from these meagre references, Latin chronicles
and early Welsh literature are alike altogether silent about what, in
later romance and poetry, stands out as the most fateful battle in
Arthur’s career. Geoffrey of Monmouth is the first to give us elaborate
details about Arthur’s encounter with Modred, and his motley army of
Saxons, Picts and Scots, on the banks of “the river Cambula,” or Camel.
The river, according to Geoffrey, is in the west country, and the
battle is popularly supposed to have been fought near Camelford,[37] in
Cornwall.
When we come to examine the remaining chronicle literature of the
pre-Norman period, we find no mention of Arthur’s name, and nothing but
the briefest allusion to the campaigns in which he is supposed to have
fought. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the dedicatory epistle prefacing his
British _History_, expresses his surprise that Bede, in his “elegant
treatise,” has nothing to say about Arthur. If Arthur was indeed
widely known as a Christian champion, it is somewhat strange that an
ecclesiastical writer of the first half of the eighth century should
have passed over his deeds in silence. Moreover, Bede does mention
Ambrosius as a successful leader against the Saxons, and knows of “the
siege of Baddesdown-hill.” Bede’s silence about Arthur is not to be
lightly ignored, nor easily explained away, in any critical discussion
of the historicity of Arthur. Bede stands as the primary authority and
the model of what Stubbs calls “the most ancient, the most fertile,
the longest lived and the most widely spread” of all the “schools of
English mediæval history,”[38]--the Northumbrian. The best and most
trustworthy of the chroniclers who followed him--such, for example, as
William of Malmesbury and William of Newburgh (Geoffrey’s remorseless
assailant)--pay their tributes to his industry, wisdom and integrity.
His _Ecclesiastical History_ is no mere desultory, or mechanical,
record; it bears the impress of a great, and honest, personality. In
his record of the Saxon invasions, it is true, he follows Gildas,
even to the extent of largely reproducing his very words. There is
no conclusive evidence that he knew anything of the documents from
which Nennius compiled his _History_, although one cannot, of course,
deny the probability of his knowledge of them. The only plausible
explanation of his silence about Arthur is that he drew his materials
solely from Saxon tradition and from Latin records, and that he was
either ignorant of, or distrusted, the Celtic, or British, traditions
concerning Arthur which had their origin and home in the West and in
the then “farthest North.” If, on the other hand, stories of Arthur’s
deeds were widely current in Lowland Scotland, it is surprising that a
Northumbrian writer should apparently have known nothing of them.
Again, there is no mention whatever of Arthur in the Saxon _Chronicle_.
The fact that the _Chronicle_ contains no record of a fight, successful
or otherwise, against the Britons for a long period after 527, or
530, seems to confirm Nennius’s account of the decisive check to the
Saxon advance given in the battles with which he associates Arthur’s
name. On the other hand, the battle at Badon Hill must, as we have
seen, have been fought long before the year 527. There is no question
about the superior trustworthiness of the _Chronicle_ to Nennius’s
narrative as a historical authority.[39] Here, again, the silence can
only be explained on the assumption that the compilers of the Saxon
_Chronicle_ did not care much about recording British victories, and
cared less, or knew nothing at all, about the British chieftains
who won them. As against this assumption, it should be noted that
the _Chronicle_ does mention such British names as Vortigern and
Natanleod,--the latter a “British king” slain in the year 508, just
at the time when Arthur’s prowess, according to tradition, was at its
height.
The meagreness of the pre-Norman Arthurian records which have been
here reviewed stands in significant contrast to the amplitude and
the range of the Arthurian matter which we find in the romantic
productions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The contrast is
so startling as to suggest at once that the coming of the Normans to
Britain had much to do with what may be called the aggrandisation of
Arthur. It was Geoffrey of Monmouth, as we shall see, writing under the
direct auspices of a cultured Norman potentate, who did more than any
other man to spread the renown of Arthur as a presumably historical
character, and to give him for centuries an assured place in the
chronicle literature of Britain. But Geoffrey could not have written
“to order” such a book as his _History_ had he not a large stock of
popular traditions to draw upon. All the evidence seems to point to
the period extending from the tenth to the twelfth centuries as that
of the popular growth of an Arthurian legend, on a large scale, among
“the Celtic fringe.” By the beginning of the twelfth century Arthurian
stories were circulating freely in Brittany, Cornwall and Wales. It
is only on this supposition that one can account, for example, for a
tumult caused at Bodmin in the year 1113, by a certain monk from Laon
who had the temerity to deny that Arthur still lived.[40] Later on in
the same century, as Alanus de Insulis records,[41] belief in Arthur’s
“return” was so firmly held in the country districts of Brittany that a
denial of it might have cost a man his life. Moreover, two chroniclers
of repute who wrote before Geoffrey bear clear testimony to the
widespread currency of Arthurian traditions in their day, and to the
curiosity aroused in serious historians concerning the deeds of the
British king.
None of the Anglo-Norman chroniclers ranks higher as a trustworthy
historical authority than William of Malmesbury,--the first great
successor of Bede, whom he calls his master and exemplar. In the first
chapter of his _History of the Kings of England_--the first version of
which was completed in 1125--we find the following passage referring to
the Saxon invasions in the sixth century:--
“When he (Vortimer) died, the British strength decayed, and all hope
fled from them; and they would soon have perished altogether, had not
Ambrosius, the sole survivor of the Romans, who became monarch after
Vortigern, quelled the presumptuous barbarians by the powerful aid of
the warlike Arthur. This is the Arthur of whom the idle tales of the
Britons rave even unto this day; a man worthy to be celebrated not in
the foolish dreams of deceitful fables, but in truthful histories. For
he long sustained the declining fortunes of his native land, and roused
the uncrushed spirit of the people to war.”
Then follows a reference, based upon Nennius’s narrative, to the battle
of Mount Badon. This passage, although somewhat confused in its account
of the relative positions of Vortigern, Ambrosius and Arthur in the
events of their time, is significant as indicating not only Arthur’s
fame as a fabled British hero in William’s day, but the historian’s
own regret at the absence of authentic information about a warrior
so worthy of lasting commemoration. Another noteworthy reference to
Arthur in William of Malmesbury’s history occurs in his account of the
discovery in Pembrokeshire of the grave of Gawain, “Arthur’s noble
nephew.”[42] Gawain, we are told, “was driven from his kingdom by the
brother and nephew of Hengist,” and “he deservedly shared, with his
uncle, the praise of retarding for many years the calamity of his
falling country. The grave of Arthur is nowhere to be seen; hence
ancient songs fable that he is still to come.” Here we have positive
evidence that, long before Geoffrey’s time, Arthur’s “return” was sung
of by British bards whose compositions, with the solitary exception of
the stanza in ‘The Songs of the Graves,’ already referred to, appear to
have been irretrievably lost.
Henry of Huntingdon is not so trustworthy a chronicler as William of
Malmesbury, and his account of Arthur is, substantially, borrowed, with
embellishments, from Nennius. Henry’s place in a review of Arthurian
records is due not to his _History_, but to a letter, addressed to a
friend named Warinus,[43] which singularly attests the interest then
felt in the history of Arthur. That letter recounts how Henry, while
on a journey to Rome in the year 1139, stopped at the abbey of Bec in
Normandy and was there shown by the chronicler, Robert of Torigni, a
“great book,” written by one “Geoffrey Arthur,” containing a history
of the early kings of Britain. The book in question was, almost
certainly, an early draft of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s famous _Historia
Regum Britanniæ_. But it is curious to find that Henry’s abstract of
the book, as given in the letter to Warinus, differs in one important
respect--and that alone concerns us at this stage--from the text of
Geoffrey’s _History_ as given in all the MSS of that work in its final
form. Geoffrey’s account of the “passing” of Arthur--an incident which
offered to so imaginative a writer unrivalled opportunities of romantic
decoration--is singularly devoid of ornament. Henry’s abstract of
this part of the book which he found at Bec is, on the other hand, a
highly-coloured piece of writing.
“When he (Arthur) was about to cross over the Alps, an envoy said unto
him, ‘Modred, thy nephew, hath set thy crown upon his own head with the
assistance of Cheldric, king of the English, and hath taken thy wife
unto himself.’ Arthur, thereupon, seething over with wondrous wrath,
returning into England, conquered Modred in battle, and after pursuing
him as far as unto Cornwall, with a few men fell upon him in the midst
of many, and when he saw that he could not turn back said, ‘Comrades,
let us sell our death dear. I, for my part, will smite off the head of
my nephew and my betrayer, after which death will be a delight unto
me.’ Thus spake he, and hewing a way for himself with his sword through
the press, dragged Modred by the helmet into the midst of his own men
and cut through his mailed neck as through a straw. Natheless, as he
went, and as he did the deed, so many wounds did he receive that he
fell, albeit that his kinsmen the Britons deny that he is dead, and
do even yet solemnly await his coming again. He was, indeed, the very
first man of his time in warlike prowess, bounty and wit.”[44]
The vivid personal details of this narrative may be due to Henry’s own
imagination, for it is well known that he, like Geoffrey, exercised
that faculty largely in his treatment of history; but, even so, the
passage is curiously significant in its bearing upon the martial fame
of Arthur, and upon the belief in his “return” cherished by “his
kinsmen the Britons,” in the first half of the twelfth century.
The review given in this chapter of the earliest Arthurian
records,--all of which are in Latin,--as distinguished from Celtic song
or fable, points clearly to the gradual growth, around the personality
of a real British warrior of the sixth century, of a legend which by
the twelfth century had assumed a form that arrested, though it might
baffle, the leading historians of the day. Now, it so happened that the
twelfth century was the seed-time of mediæval romance in Europe, and
how effectively the legend of Arthur was thenceforth exploited for
romantic purposes will be seen later on. It remains, however, for us,
first, to give some account of what was known, or fabled, about Arthur
among “his kinsmen the Britons” themselves, as recorded in their extant
prose and poetry.