ARTHUR IN WELSH LEGEND AND LITERATURE
To begin once more with Caxton, the preface to the _Morte Darthur_
states that of the “noble volumes made of Arthur and his noble knights”
there “be many in Welsh.” Caxton was, here, either drawing upon his
imagination or speaking with imperfect knowledge. It is true that
Arthur figures largely in the _Mabinogion_, but when we come to examine
closely even these tales, we find that he appears only in five out of
the eleven[45] which are designated by that name in Lady Charlotte
Guest’s well-known translation, while in the four tales--probably the
oldest of all--to which alone the title of “mabinogion” is strictly
applicable, he does not appear at all. Again, in the oldest Welsh
poetry Arthur is the merest shadow, and even the mediæval Welsh poets,
who might have been expected to drink deep of the wells of romance,
mention him only in the most casual and perfunctory way. There is,
however, just enough in these old Welsh poems and prose stories to
indicate that a legend of Arthur existed in Wales from a very early
period--certainly from a period long before the appearance of Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s _History_ in the twelfth century. The traditions embodied
in this literature are indeed vague and disconnected enough, for they
are drawn from an age when the art of romantic “exploitation” had not
yet been learnt; but they bear the unmistakable marks of a legendary
growth indigenous to Wales itself. As such, they are of exceptional
interest, and deserve a somewhat fuller notice than their actual range
and extent would seem to warrant.
The earliest Welsh literature in which we read of Arthur may be divided
into three distinct and well-marked groups. First come the few poems
in the oldest Welsh MSS which mention him. The allusions to Arthur in
these poems represent, probably, traditions derived from an earlier
period than anything contained in the second group of writings to be
noticed, the prose tales,--although, as will be seen, one or two of the
poems and prose stories appear to refer to the same legends. Lastly, we
have the Triads, which, according to Rhys, “give us the oldest account
of Arthur.”[46]
The compositions attributed to the oldest Welsh bards have come down
to us in MSS which date from the twelfth to the end of the fourteenth
century; the best known of them are four in number, and these were
edited long ago, with translations, by the late Dr W. F. Skene under
the title of _The Four Ancient Books of Wales_.[47] It is unnecessary
here to touch upon controversial questions affecting the antiquity and
the genuineness of the poems contained in these MSS. Many of them are,
plainly enough, not much older than the date of the compilation of the
particular MS in which they are found. Others, however, as plainly
contain what Matthew Arnold,[48] speaking of the prose _Mabinogion_,
calls “a _detritus_ of something far older,” and it is impossible to
avoid the conclusion that some of them refer to historical events
and personages of the sixth and seventh centuries, while others
contain mythological matter derived from a much remoter age. Here,
the references to Arthur in these poems alone concern us. They are
strangely few in number, and tantalisingly brief. In _The Black Book
of Carmarthen_ he is mentioned five times, in _The Book of Aneirin_
only once. He is the central figure in a remarkable poem in _The Book
of Taliesin_, and his name occurs in one other poem in that MS; in the
poetry of _The Red Book of Hergest_ nothing is heard of him, except
in a poem called ‘Gereint, son of Erbin,’ which is also found in _The
Black Book_. Three of the references in _The Black Book_ are of the
briefest character. In one poem[49] the bard tells us that he “has
been where Llacheu, the son of Arthur, was slain,” and that is all;
in another, evidently a late poem, we hear of “Arthur’s host,” or
“retinue” (_teulu Arthur_)[50]; while in a stanza, already alluded to,
in “The Songs of the Graves,” we are told that his grave is unknown. In
the solitary passage in which his name occurs in _The Book of Aneirin_
he is a standard of comparison,--a certain warrior is described as
being “an Arthur in the exhaustive conflict”[51]; the second of the two
poems in which he is mentioned in _The Book of_ _Taliesin_ refers,
without comment or description, merely to “Arthur’s steed.”[52]
There remain to be noticed the three poems which, alone, contain
anything more than such casual allusions as those we have just cited.
Two of them are in _The Black Book_, and one would seem to bring us
into touch, though but remotely, with the historical “Arthur the
warrior,”--the _dux bellorum_ of Nennius, who may have held “the place
of the _imperator_ himself, when Britain ceased to be part of the
dominions of Rome.”[53] This latter poem is called ‘Gereint _filius_
Erbin,’[54]--a title identical with that of the prose romance which is
the Welsh collateral of Chrétien de Troyes’s _Erec_,--and, although
Gereint is its hero, Arthur is introduced as a war-leader of seemingly
higher rank. “At Llongborth,” the bard sings,
“saw I of Arthur’s
Brave men hewing with steel,
(Men of the) emperor, director of toil.
At Llongborth there fell of Gereint’s
Brave men from the borders of Devon,
And, ere they were slain, they slew.”
Where “Llongborth,” or “Ship’s port,” was, we do not know, but the
whole poem appears to refer to an actual battle in which Gereint’s
deeds had left a profound impression upon his bardic eulogist. The
association, in this poem, of Arthur with Gereint brings us, for the
first time, into the company of one of the knights who, in later
romance, belong to the goodly fellowship of the Round Table. In the
second _Black Book_ poem we are introduced to two others who figure
prominently in the romances,--Kei, or “Kay the seneschal,” and Bedwyr,
or Bedivere, “the latest-left of all” King Arthur’s knights. This poem
is cast in the form of a dialogue between Arthur and the keeper of a
castle who is called Glewlwyd of the Mighty Grasp, and who appears in
the Welsh prose stories as one of Arthur’s chief “porters.” Arthur
seeks entrance to the castle, and Glewlwyd, apparently, will not
open the gates without satisfying himself as to the number and the
credentials of his followers. Arthur, thereupon, proceeds to name them
and to recount their achievements. They are a weird company, bearing
strange names reaching back to the remotest regions of primitive Welsh
myth. Among them are Mabon, the son of Modron, “Uther Pendragon’s man”;
Manawyddan, the son of Llŷr, “profound in counsel,” who “brought home a
pierced buckler from Tryvrwyd”[55]; Mabon, son of Mellt, “who stained
the grass with gore”; Llwch Llawynawc, Angwas the Winged, Arthur’s son
Llacheu, and others.[56] But the two doughtiest among the champions
Arthur has around him are Bedwyr and Kei. Bedwyr, like Manawyddan,
fought at Tryvrwyd, and “by the hundred they fell” before him there;
“nine hundred to watch, six hundred to attack,” continues the bard, was
the measure of Bedwyr’s prowess. Still mightier was “the worthy Kei.”
“Vain were it to boast” against him in battle; “he slew as would an
hundred,--unless it were God’s doing, Kei’s death would be unachieved.”
Kei, we are further told, “slew nine witches”; he went “to Mona to
destroy lions,” and he fought against a mysterious monster called
“Palug’s Cat.” Capable as he was of all this, it is not surprising to
hear that Kei’s drinking powers were equal to those of four men. Of the
deeds of Arthur himself the poem tells us nothing.
A still more remarkable poem,--the last that remains to be noticed,--in
which certain strange deeds of Arthur are commemorated, is found in
_The Book of Taliesin_ under the name of ‘Preiddeu Annwvn,’ or ‘The
Spoils of Hades.’ It refers to various expeditions made by Arthur and
his men, in his ship Pridwen to certain mysterious regions oversea.
Definite names enough are given to the different places visited--Caer
Sidi, Caer Rigor, Caer Vandwy, and so on,--but the places themselves
remain quite unidentified. “Three freights of Pridwen,” sings the
bard, “were they who went with Arthur” on these expeditions; “seven
alone were we who returned” therefrom. One of the exploits achieved in
the course of these voyages was, apparently, the rape of a cauldron
belonging to the King of Hades, and the whole poem, according to
Rhys,[57] “evidently deals with expeditions conducted by Arthur by sea
to the realms of twilight and darkness.”
The last two poems here referred to have several features in common
with what is, probably, the oldest of the Arthurian prose tales in
Welsh,--the story of _Kulhwch and Olwen_. That story also tells of the
rape of a cauldron, belonging not, indeed, to the King of Hades, but
to one Diwrnach, who lived across the sea in Ireland; Arthur went in
quest of it, with a small retinue, in his ship Pridwen, and brought it
home “full of Irish money.” The second of the two poems refers to “a
speckled ox” (_ych brych_), and the acquisition of “a speckled ox” was
one of the tasks imposed upon Kulhwch by Olwen’s father as part of the
price to be paid for her hand. Again, nearly all the persons mentioned
in _The Black Book_ dialogue between Arthur and Glewlwyd figure also in
_Kulhwch and Olwen_. So, where the oldest Welsh Arthurian poetry comes
into contact with the oldest Welsh prose, the Arthur that we find dimly
outlined in both is a purely mythical hero.
_Kulhwch and Olwen_, the most fantastic of all the Welsh prose tales
dealing with Arthur, palpably embodies Arthurian traditions current
in Wales at a very early date. “Almost every page of this tale,”
writes Matthew Arnold,[58] “points to traditions and personages of
the most remote antiquity, and is instinct with the very breath of
the primitive world.” The tale relates of the wooing of Olwen, the
daughter of one bearing the formidable name of Yspaddaden Pen Kawr, by
Kulhwch, so called because “he had been found in a swine’s burrow,”
but “nevertheless a boy of gentle lineage, and cousin unto Arthur.”
Kulhwch, after being told by his stepmother that he “should never
have a wife until he obtained Olwen,” is informed by his father that
“that will be easy for him.” “Arthur is thy cousin,” the father says;
“go, therefore, unto Arthur, to cut thy hair, and ask this of him as
a boon.” The winning of Olwen,--hard enough though it appears in the
story, which is mainly concerned with the long series of laborious
tasks imposed upon Kulhwch as conditions of gaining her hand--is
made “easy” through Arthur’s intervention. The hero starts by duly
presenting himself at “the gate of Arthur’s palace,” and he there meets
with the porter, Glewlwyd of the Mighty Grasp, who conveys to Arthur
the news of his arrival. Arthur is introduced to us as the head of
a court, keeping high state in his palace, or hall, which is called
Ehangwen (Broad-White). When Kulhwch comes to ask his “boon” of him,
Arthur replies, “Thou shalt receive the boon whatsoever thy tongue may
name, as far as the wind dries, and the rain moistens, and the sun
revolves, and the sea encircles, and the earth extends,--save only my
ship; and my mantle; and Caledvwlch,[59] my sword; and Rhongomyant, my
lance; and Wynebgwrthucher, my shield; and Carnwennan, my dagger; and
Gwenhwyvar, my wife.” Kulhwch proceeds to ask for help in his quest
not only from Arthur himself, but also from his knights and retainers,
of whom a long and weird list is given. Kai and Bedwyr--an apparently
inseparable pair--are first mentioned; then follows a series of strange
and fantastic names, of most of which no other record remains in
fable or folk-lore. Characters such as Taliesin, the chief of bards;
Manawyddan, son of Llŷr; Gereint, son of Erbin; Gwynn, the son of Nudd,
and some others, are heard of elsewhere. But what are we to make of
beings like Sugyn, the son of Sugnedydd, “who could suck up the sea
on which were three hundred ships, so as to leave nothing but a dry
strand”; or, “Gilla of the Deer-Legs, the chief-leaper of Ireland,”
who “would clear three hundred acres at one bound”; or, Gwevyl, the
son of Gwestad, who, “on the day that he was sad, would let one of
his lips drop below his waist, while he turned up the other like a
cap upon his head”; or, Medyr, the son of Methredydd, who could from
Cornwall “unerringly shoot the wren through the two legs” as far away
as Ireland; and other weird people endowed with similar superhuman
attributes? Arthur himself figures in the tale as a fairy king, having
all these strange beings at his service, and giving them orders in the
most direct and matter-of-fact way. One of his most useful henchmen,
for example, is “Menw, the son of Teirgwaedd”--corresponding to the
conventional enchanter of the universal fairy world--who could “cast
a charm and an illusion over them, so that none might see them while
they could see every one.” Other characters in the motley crowd are
said to “come from the confines of Hell”; others are “attendants” and
“huntsmen” of Arthur, while quite a large group figure as his “uncles”
and “kindred on his father’s side.”
Among the many trials to which Olwen’s father submits Kulhwch is that
of “getting Arthur and his companions to hunt the Twrch Trwyth.” “He,”
says Yspaddaden, “is a mighty man, and he will not come for thee,
neither wilt thou be able to compel him.” Kulhwch knew better, for
he had already secured Arthur’s promise to help him to the utmost of
his own and his companions’ resources. The hunting of the Boar (the
_porcus Troit_) is one of the main features of the story; and, except
perhaps Meleager’s adventure to the quarry of the Calydonian boar,
there is no such swine-hunt in primitive literature. Many strange men
and beasts and implements were required for the chase and despatch of
Twrch Trwyth, and for the capture of “the comb and scissors” between
his ears, which Yspaddaden wanted for the proper trimming of his
unruly hair. Mabon, the son of Modron; Garselit, “the chief huntsman
of Ireland”; Gwynn, the son of Nudd, “whom God has placed over the
brood of devils in Annwn”; Gilhennin, “the king of France”; Drudwyn,
“the whelp of Greid”; Du, “the horse of Môr of Oerveddawg”; “the sword
of Gwrnach the Giant”;--all these, and many more such auxiliaries, had
to be secured for the Boar’s capture. But Kulhwch is not dismayed; “my
lord and kinsman Arthur,” he tells Yspaddaden, “will obtain for me all
these things, and I shall gain thy daughter, and thou shalt lose thy
life.”
The story of the hunt, with its many marvels, is chiefly remarkable
for its minute topographical and personal detail,--the topography
being indeed so precise as to make it all but possible to trace on a
modern map the route taken by the hunters.[60] The Boar is finally
driven into Cornwall, and thence “straight forward into the deep sea;
and thenceforth it was never known whither he went.” “Then,” says
the story-teller, “Arthur went to Gelli Wic, in Cornwall, to anoint
himself, and to rest from his fatigues.” He had, however, to assist
Kulhwch in one further enterprise,--the obtaining of “the blood of the
witch Orddu, of Pen Nant Govid (the Head of the Vale of Grief), on the
confines of Hell.” He did so by slaying the hag with his own hand,
cleaving her in twain “with Carnwennan, his dagger.” After that Kulhwch
goes boldly to Yspaddaden and asks, “Is thy daughter mine now?” “She is
thine,” said he, “but therefore needest thou not thank me, but Arthur,
who hath accomplished this for thee.”
_Kulhwch and Olwen_, it will be seen from this brief account of it,
is in all essentials a fairy-tale, embodying a mass of fantastic, and
even grotesque, folk-lore of an obviously pre-historic antiquity. It
is to fairy-land, also, that we are transported in another of the
Welsh tales, _The Dream of Rhonabwy_, composed probably during the
latter half of the twelfth century. Both it and _Kulhwch_ have much in
common with the mythic tales of Ireland. “We possess a considerable
number of Irish sagas, which betray the same characteristics as the
two Welsh tales: fondness for enumeration, triadic grouping, _bravura_
descriptive passages, and, notably in _Bricriu’s Feast_, a distinct
semi-parodistic tone.” The _Dream_,--of which the central feature, the
story of Owen and his ravens, must be very old,--is remarkable for a
series of minutely detailed and richly coloured word-pictures of
“Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings.”[61]
Among the marvellous objects described are Arthur’s sword and mantle
(called Gwenn), but the story-teller does not let his fancy play around
them so freely as around most of the things he depicts. The sword was
in the keeping of “Kadwr, earl of Cornwall,” whose duty it was to “arm
the king on the days of battle.” “And the similitude of two serpents
was upon the sword in gold. And when it was drawn from its scabbard, it
seemed as if two flames of fire burst forth from the jaws of serpents.”
Gwenn, the mantle, was “of diapered satin” with “an apple of ruddy gold
at each corner thereof,” and “it was one of its properties that upon
whomsoever it was put, he became lost to sight though he himself could
see every one.” Arthur himself is, in this tale, constantly referred to
as “the Emperor,” and he is first met with “sitting on a flat island”
below the Ford of the Cross on the Severn, “with Bedwini the Bishop on
one side of him, and Gwarthegydd, the son of Kaw, on the other.” Among
his retainers are his “cousin” March (or Mark), the son of Meirchion,
prince of “the men of Norway”; Edern, the son of Nudd, prince of “the
men of Denmark”; Kai, “the fairest horseman in all Arthur’s Court”;
and a host of others, many of whose names appear in the long catalogue
given in _Kulhwch and Olwen_. Some of these names, such as Tristan, the
son of Tallwch, and Peredur of the Long Lance, bring us into touch with
the later developments of Arthurian romance.
The other three _Mabinogion_, so called, in which Arthur figures,--_The
Lady of the Fountain_, _Geraint_, and _Peredur_,--will be noticed in
a subsequent chapter, for these stories, whether they were directly
based upon French originals or not, palpably belong to a period when
the Arthurian legends had been, or were being, exploited for romantic
purposes by French writers. The natural transition from such stories
as _Kulhwch and Olwen_ is to the Welsh Triads, the oldest group of
which certainly contain traditions about Arthur as archaic as anything
to be found in either the poems or the prose tales already reviewed.
Here, only a few of the more significant allusions to Arthur contained
in them need be quoted. Arthur is first mentioned in connection with
Medraut’s, or Modred’s, treachery, and he is described--much as in
Geoffrey’s Chronicle--as conducting a victorious campaign against the
Romans. The final battle with the Romans, of which Geoffrey gives so
elaborate an account, is said to take place “beyond Mount Mynneu,”
and in it Arthur encounters, and slays with his own hand, the Roman
Emperor himself.[62] Modred, who had been left in charge of Britain,
hearing of the grievous slaughter of Arthur’s “best men” in this
battle, revolts. Arthur returns, “and then took place the battle of
Camlan between Arthur and Medraut, when Arthur slew Medraut, and Arthur
himself was mortally wounded; and _he was buried in a palace in the
isle of Avallach_.” In another Triad, Arthur is made responsible for
one of “the Three Wicked Uncoverings” of the Isle of Britain, viz.,
the uncovering of “the head of Brân the Blessed from the White Mount”
in London. The ‘mabinogi’ of _Branwen, daughter of Llŷr_, relates how
the head of Brân had been buried, by his own command, in the White
Mount, with its face towards France. While it remained undisturbed,
this island would be secure from invasion,--hence the “wickedness”
of Arthur’s “uncovering.” Another of the Triads speaks of Arthur as
the husband of three wives, each called Guinivere,--“Gwenhwyfar, the
daughter of Gwryd Gwent, Gwenhwyfar, the daughter of Gwythur, son of
Greidawl, and Gwenhwyfar, the daughter of Ogrvan the Giant.” This
strange statement, as Rhys points out, appears to have its parallel
in the Irish story of Echaid Airem, where we hear of three women all
bearing the name of Etáin, and “the three Gwenhwyfars are the Welsh
equivalents of the three Etáins, and the article in the Triads must
be held to be of great antiquity.”[63] One of the last records in
this group of Triads has affinities both with the four ‘Mabinogion,’
properly so-called, and with one of the old Welsh poems cited in this
chapter; it also contains a curiously interesting reference to a
character who, in mediæval romance, appears as the hero of the most
poetical of all the legends included in the Arthurian cycle. This Triad
refers, mainly, to certain swine legends, and is entitled _The Three
Stout Swineherds of the Isle of Britain_; but it mentions, besides
swine, “Palug’s cat,”--hence its connection with ‘Preiddeu Annwvn,’
the poem from _The Book of Taliesin_ already alluded to. The first of
the “three swineherds” is Pryderi, the son of Pwyll, “Head of Annwn,”
and his story is told in full in the ‘mabinogi’ of _Pwyll, prince
of Dyved_. It is strange, however, to find that the second of these
pre-eminent swineherds is Drystan, or Tristan, son of Tallwch,--the
knightly Tristram of later romance. “The second” stout swineherd, so
the record runs, “was Drystan, son of Tallwch, with the swine of March
(Mark), son of Meirchion, while the swineherd went on a message to
Essyllt (Iseult). Arthur and March and Kai and Bedwyr came, all four
to him, but obtained from Drystan not even as much as a single porker,
whether by force, or fraud, or theft.”
These four examples are quite sufficient to show that in the Triads,
no less than in the oldest Welsh tales and poems dealing with Arthur,
we come upon traditions handed down from a very remote age, which were
all but incomprehensible to the mediæval scribes who garnered them, and
are therefore preserved in a bewilderingly confused and disconnected
form. They are the _disjecta membra_ of a lost mythology, the legacy
of pre-historic Celtic heathendom, which even the most learned and
ingenious interpreters of primitive folk-lore and religion find it
well-nigh impossible to restore into a coherent and intelligible
whole.[64]
They, however, who would rob us of a historical and a chivalric
King Arthur must, perforce, leave us an Arthur whose attributes
as a presumed pagan deity do not prevent the unsophisticated from
recognising in him an ideal prince of fairy-land. It is as such a
prince that he appears against the setting of “old,” but not altogether
“unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago,” in which he is
presented in the early literature of Wales. It is as such a prince that
one, at least, of the great English poets accepts him. To Spenser,
Arthur, “taken from mother’s pap” and
“straight deliver’d to a Faery knight
To be upbrought in gentle thewes and martiall might,”[65]
was just the potent deliverer required to bring the Red Cross
Knight and the rest of that questing company out of their various
difficulties, and to establish, through a series of timely
interventions, his right to the hand of the Fairy Queen.
In both _Kulhwch and Olwen_ and _The Dream of Rhonabwy_, as also in the
Triads, we find frequent mention of Cornwall as a district with which
Arthur is intimately connected. It is to Cornwall that he retires to
rest after the hunting of the boar; and it is to Cornwall that Kai, at
the close of _The Dream of Rhonabwy_, bids all repair who “would follow
Arthur.” His home, and his court, there is at a place called Kelli, or
Gelli, Wic. In later Arthurian literature little, if anything, is heard
of Kelli Wic; Caerleon-upon-Usk displaces it altogether as the scene
of Arthur’s central court. But, with Geoffrey of Monmouth, two other
Cornish localities are brought into dramatic connection with Arthur’s
fortunes--viz., Tintagol, or Tintagel; and Dimilioc, or Damelioc. These
places are unheard of in the Welsh Arthurian tales, but, according to
Geoffrey, it was at Dimilioc that Uther besieged, and his men slew,
Gorlois; and it was this siege that enabled Uther, in the semblance
of Gorlois, to gain access to Igerne in her retreat at the castle of
Tintagel, and so to become the father of “the most renowned Arthur.” It
is a pity that no Cornish records have survived to throw some further
light upon these momentous events. It is, however, very unlikely that
Geoffrey would have incorporated them in his narrative, had there not
been, in Cornwall as in Wales, traditions long current which associated
the name of Arthur with some of the ancient strongholds of the country.
No less significant, as indicative of the existence of a separate
Cornish legend of Arthur, is that Geoffrey, with others, tells us that
the last and fatal battle with Medrod took place on the river Camel
in Cornwall. It is not, perhaps, easy to reconcile these traditions
with the theory that Arthur’s life and achievements were confined to
North Britain. But that theory is no less difficult to reconcile with
the abundance, and the ubiquity, of Arthurian place-names in all the
districts, except Ireland, that make up “the Celtic fringe.” “Only the
Devil is more often mentioned in local association than Arthur.”[66]
The precise significance of such association is perhaps, in both cases,
equally indeterminable.
Investigators of Arthurian origins talk a good deal about Brittany.
Unfortunately, there is no early Breton, any more than Cornish,
literature to draw upon for any further information about a
pre-historic, or a pre-romantic, Arthur. The _lais_ of Marie of
France are supposed to embody matter borrowed from Breton minstrels
who sang before the flourishing of romance; but only one of her
poems, ‘Lanval’--and that but remotely--has any connection with early
Arthurian lore. It may be that “the Bretons” whom Wace mentions as
“telling many a fable of the Table Round”[67] were Armorican Britons.
We know for certain, at any rate, that a legend of Arthur, which
included a belief in his “return,” had taken firm root in Brittany
by the twelfth century.[68] There is, therefore, no difficulty about
assuming that it was from the Bretons, rather than from the Welsh,
that the Normans derived their first knowledge of Arthur, and so came
to construct out of the stories connected with him the romantic cycle
known as the _matière de Bretagne_. The controversy waged about the
relative shares of Great and of Little Britain in supplying matter for
the French romantic writers[69] is of no real consequence--everybody
is agreed that that matter is to be ultimately traced to a Celtic,
and a British, source. What is of more importance is the fact that
before any “matter of Britain” is heard of as a great romantic theme,
a writer appeared who, by means of an orderly narrative embodied in an
apparently sober chronicle, aroused an interest in Arthur’s life and
deeds such as no mere romance could ever have succeeded in doing. He
was Geoffrey of Monmouth, and it is in his _History_ that we get our
first full-length portrait of Arthur as a great, and actual, “king of
Britain.”