Britain stood as the boundary of the universe, beyond Which all was air
and water--and long it was ere the trembling coasters were certain
whether Britain was an island or a continent, a secret probably to the
dispersed natives themselves. It was the triumphant fleet of Agricola,
nearly a century after the descent of Caesar, which, encircling it,
proclaimed to the universe that Britain was an island. From that day
Albion has lifted its white head embraced by the restless ocean, but
often betrayed by that treacherous guardian, she became the possession
of successive races.
Nations have derived their names from some accidental circumstance; some
peculiarity marking their national character, or descriptive of the site
of their country. The names of our island and of our islanders have
exercised the inquiries, and too often the ingenuity, of our antiquarian
etymologists. There are about half a hundred origins of the name of
Britain; some absurd, many fanciful, all uncertain.[1] Our primitive
ancestors distinguished themselves, in pride or simplicity, as _Brith_
and _Brithon_; _Brith_ signified stained, and _Brithon_, a stained man,
according to Camden.[2] The predilection for colouring their bodies
induced the civilized Romans to designate the people who were driven to
the Caledonian forests as _Picts_, or a painted people.
That the native term of _Brith_ or _Brithon_, by its curt harshness,
would clash on the modulating ear of the Greek voyager, or the Latin
poet, seems probable, for by them it was amplified. And thus we owe to
sonorous antiquity the name now famous as their own, for BRITANNIA first
appeared in their writings, bequeathed to us by the masters of the world
as their legacy of glory.
To the knowledge of the Romans the island exceeded in magnitude all
other islands; and they looked on this land with pride and anxiety,
while they dignified Britain as the "Roman island." The Romans even
personified the insular Genius with poetic conceptions. Britannia is
represented as a female seated on a rock, armed with a spear, or leaning
on a prow, while the ship beside her attests her naval power. We may yet
be susceptible of the prophetic flattery, when we observe the Roman has
also seated her on a globe, with the symbol of military power, and the
ocean rolling under her feet.[3]
The tale of these ancient Britons who should have been our ancestors is
told by the philosophical historian of antiquity. Under successive Roman
governors they still remained divided by native factions: "A
circumstance," observes Tacitus, "most useful for us, among such a
powerful people, where each combating singly, all are subdued." A
century, as we have said, had not elapsed from the landing of Caesar to
the administration of Agricola. That enlightened general changed the
policy of former governors; he allured the Britons from their forest
retreats and reedy roofs to partake of the pleasures of a Roman city--to
dwell in houses, to erect lofty temples, and to indulge in dissolving
baths. The barbarian who had scorned the Roman tongue now felt the
ambition of Roman eloquence; and the painted Briton of Caesar was
enveloped in the Roman toga. Severus, in another century after Agricola,
as an extraordinary evidence of his successful government, appealed to
Britain--"Even the Britons are quiet!" exclaimed the emperor. The
tutelary genius of Rome through four centuries preserved Britain--even
from the Britons themselves; but the Roman policy was fatal to the
national character, and when the day arrived that their protector
forsook them, the Britons were left among their ancient discords: for
provincial jealousies, however concealed by circumstances, are never
suppressed; the fire lives in its embers ready to be kindled.
The island of Britain, itself not extensive, was broken into petty
principalities: we are told that there were nearly two hundred
kinglings, the greater part of whom did not presume to wear crowns.
Sometimes they united in their jealousies of some paramount tyrant, but
they raged among themselves; and the passion of Gildas has figured them
as "the Lioness of Devonshire" encountering a "Lion's Whelp" in
Dorsetshire, and "the Bear-baiter," trembling before his regal brother,
"the Great Bull-dog." "These kings were not appointed by God," exclaims
the British Jeremiah; he who wrote under the name of Gildas. Thus the
Britons formed a powerless aggregate, and never a nation. The naked
Irish haunted their shores, covering their sea with piracy; and the
Picts rushed from their forests--giants of the North who, if Gildas does
not exaggerate, even dragged down from their walls the amazed Britons.
Such a people in their terrified councils were to be suppliants to the
valour of foreigners; from that hour they were doomed to be chased from
their natal soil. They invited, or they encouraged, another race to
become their mercenaries or their allies. The small and the great from
other shores hastened to a new dominion. Britain then became "a field of
fortune to every adventurer when nothing less than kingdoms were the
prize of every fortunate commander."[4]
We have now the history of a people whose enemies inhabited their
ancient land: the flame and the sword ceaselessly devouring the soil;
their dominion shrinking in space, and the people diminishing in number;
victory for them was fatal as defeat. The disasters of the Britons
pursued them through the despair of almost two centuries; it would have
been the history of a whole people ever retreating, yet hardly in
flight, had it been written. Shall we refuse, on the score of their
disputed antiquity the evidence of the Welsh bards? The wild grandeur of
the melancholy poetry of those ancient Britons attests the reality of
their story and the depth of their emotions.[5]
We have spun the last thread of our cobweb, and we know not on what
points it hangs, such irreconcileable hypotheses are offered to us by
our learned antiquaries, whenever they would account for the origin or
the disappearance of a whole people. The mystery deepens, and the
confusion darkens amid contradictions and incredibilities, when the
British historian contemplates in the perspective the Fata Morgana of
another Britain on the opposite shores of the ancient Armorica, another
Britain in La Bretagne.
The ancient Armorica was a district extending from the Loire to the
Seine, about sixty leagues, and except on the land side, which joined
Poictou, is encircled by the ocean. Composed of several small states, in
the decline of the Roman empire they shook off the Roman yoke, and their
independence was secured by the obscurity of their sequestered locality.
The tale runs that Maximus, having engaged his provincial Britons in his
ambitious schemes, rewarded their military aid by planting them in one
of these Armorican communities. To give colour to this tradition, the
story adds that this Roman general had a considerable interest in Wales,
"having married the daughter of a powerful chieftain, whose chapel at
Carnarvon is still shown."[6] The marriage of this future Roman emperor
with a Welsh princess would serve as an embellishment to a Welsh
genealogy. This event must have occurred about the year 384. When the
Britons were driven out of their country by faithless allies, Armorica
would offer an easy refuge for fugitives; there they found brothers
already settled, or friends willing to receive them.[7]
In this uncertainty of history, amid the dreams of theoretical
antiquaries, we cannot doubt that at some time there was a powerful
colony of Britons in Armorica; they acquired dominion as well as
territory. They changed that masterless Armorican state to which they
were transplanted from an aristocracy into a monarchy--that government
to which they had been accustomed; they consecrated the strange land by
the baptism of their own national name, and to this day it is called
Bretagne, or Britain; and surely the Britons carried with them all their
home-affections, for they made the new country an image of the old: not
only had they stamped on it the British name, but the Britons of
Cornwall called a considerable district by their own provincial name,
known in France as "Le Pays de Cornouaille;" and their speech
perpetuated their vernacular Celtic. At the siege of Belleisle in 1756,
the honest Britons of the principality among our soldiers were amazed to
find that they and the peasants of Brittany were capable of conversing
together. This expatriation reminds us of the emotions of the first
settlers in the New World. Ancient Spain reflected herself in her New
Spain; and our first emigrants called their "plantations" "New England;"
distributing local names borrowed from the land of their birth--undying
memorials of their parent source!
This singular event in the civil annals of the ancient Britons has given
rise to a circumstance unparalleled in the literary history of every
people, for it has often involved in a mysterious confusion a part of
our literary and historical antiquities. The Britain in France is not
always discriminated from our own; and this double Britain at times
becomes provokingly mystifying. Two eminent antiquaries, Douce and
Ritson, sometimes conceived that Bretagne meant England; a circumstance
which might upset a whole hypothesis.
In the fastnesses of Wales, on the heights of Caledonia, and on the
friendly land of Armorica, are yet tracked the fugitive and ruined
Britons. It is most generally conceded that they retreated to the
western coasts of England, and that, often discomfited, they took their
last refuge in those "mountain heights" of Cambria.
Their shadowy Arthur has left an undying name in romance, and is a
nonentity in history. Whether Arthur was a mortal commander heading some
kings of Britain, or whether religion and policy were driven to the
desperate effort for rallying their fugitives by a national name, and "a
hope deferred," like the Sebastian of Portugal, this far-famed chieftain
could never have been a fortunate general; he displayed his
invincibility but in some obscure and remote locality; he struck no
terror among his enemies, for they have left his name unchronicled: nor
living, have the bards distinguished his pre-eminence. "The grave of
Arthur is a mystery of the world," exclaimed Taliessin, the great bard
of the Britons. But the mortal who vanished in the cloud of conflict had
never seen death; and to the last the Britons awaited for the day of
their Redeemer when Arthur should return in his immortality, accompanied
by "the Flood-King of the Deluge," from the Inys Avallon, the Isle of
the Mystic Apple-tree, their Eden or their Elysium. Arthur was a myth,
half Christian and half Druidical. In Armorica, as in Wales, his coming
was long expected, till "Esperance bretonne" became proverbial for all
chimerical hopes.
Thus the aborigines of this island vanished, but their name is still
attached to us. The Anglo-Saxons became our progenitors, and the Saxon
our mother-tongue. Yet so complex and incongruous is the course of time,
that we still call ourselves Britons, and "true Britons;" and the land
we dwell in Great Britain. Nor is it less remarkable, that the days of
the Christian week commemorate the names of seven Saxon idols.[8] There
are improbabilities and incongruities in authentic history as hard to
reconcile as any we meet with in wild romance.
During six centuries the Saxons and the Normans combined to banish from
the public mind the history of the Britons: it was lost; it did not
exist even among the Britons in Wales. In the reign of Henry the First,
an Archdeacon of Oxford, who was that king's justiciary, being curious
in ancient histories, opportunely brought out of "Britain in France," "a
very ancient book in the British tongue." This book, which still forms
the gordian knot of the antiquary, he confided to the safe custody and
fertile genius of Geoffry, the Monk of Monmouth. It contained a regular
story of the British kings, opening with Brute, the great grandson of
Priam in this airy generation; kings who, Geoffry "had often wondered,
were wholly unnoticed by Gildas and Bede." "Yet," adds our historian,
"their deeds were celebrated by many people in a _pleasant manner_, and
_by heart, as if they had been written_." This remarkable sentence aptly
describes that species of national songs which the early poets have
always provided for the people, traditions which float before history is
written. Whether this very ancient British book, almost five centuries
old, was a volume of these poetical legends, which our historian might
have arranged into that "regular history" which is furnished by his
Latin prose version, we are left without the means of ascertaining,
since it proved to be the only copy ever found, and was never seen after
the day of the translation. The Monk of Monmouth does not arrogate to
himself any other merit than that of a faithful translator, and with
honest simplicity warns of certain additions, which, even in a history
of two thousand years contained in a small volume, were found necessary.
We are told that the Britons who passed over into France carried with
them "their archives." But there were other Britons who did not fly to
the sixty leagues of Armorica; and of these the only "archives" we hear
of are those which the romancers so perpetually assure us may be
consulted at Caerleon, or some other magical residence of the visionary
Arthur. The Armorican colony must have formed but a portion of the
Britons; and it would be unreasonable to suppose, that these fugitives
could by any human means sequestrate and appropriate for themselves the
whole history of the nation, without leaving a fragment behind. Yet
nothing resembling the Armorican originals has been traced among the
Welsh. Our Geoffry modestly congratulates his contemporary annalists,
while he warns them off the preserve where lies his own well-stocked
game. And thus he speaks:--"The history of the kings who were the
successors in Wales of those here recorded, I leave to Karadoc of
Lancarven, as I do also the kings of the Saxons to William of Malmesbury
and Henry of Huntingdon; but I advise them to be silent concerning the
British kings, since they have not that book written in the British
tongue which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Britain." Well
might Geoffry exult. He possessed the sole copy ever found in both the
Britains.
The British history is left to speak for itself in a great simplicity of
narrative, where even the supernatural offers no obstacle to the faith
of the historian--a history which might fascinate a child as well as an
antiquary. These remote occurrences are substantiated by the careful
dates of a romantic chronology. Events are recorded which happened when
David reigned in Judea, and Sylvius Latinus in Italy, and Gad, Nathan,
and Asaph prophesied in Israel. And the incidents of Lear's pathetic
story occurred when Isaiah and Hosea flourished, and Rome was built by
the two brothers. It tells of one of the British monarchs, how the lady
of his love was concealed during seven years in a subterraneous palace.
On his death, his avengeful queen cast the mother and her daughter into
the river which still bears that daughter's name, Sabrina, or the
Severn, and was not forgotten by Drayton. Another incident adorns a
canto of Spenser; the Lear came down to Shakspeare, as the fraternal
feuds of Ferrex and Porrex created our first tragedy by Sackville. There
are other tales which by their complexion betray their legendary origin.
Whatever assumed the form of history was long deemed authentic; and such
was the authority of this romance of Geoffry, that when Edward the First
claimed the crown of Scotland in his letter to the pope, he founded his
right on a passage in Geoffry's book; doubtless this very passage was
held to be as veracious by the Scots themselves, only that on this
occasion they decided to fight against the text. Four centuries after
Geoffry had written, when Henry the Seventh appointed a commission to
draw up his pedigree, they traced the royal descent from the imaginary
Brutus, and reckoning all Geoffry's British kings in the line--the
fairies of history--made the English monarch a descendant in the
hundredth degree. We now often hear of "the fabulous" History of Geoffry
of Monmouth; but neither his learned translator in 1718, nor the most
eminent Welsh antiquaries, attach any such notion to a history crowded
with domestic events, and with names famous yet unknown.
After the lapse of so many centuries, the scrutinising investigation of
a thoughtful explorer in British antiquities has demonstrated, through a
chain of recondite circumstances, that this History of Geoffry of
Monmouth, and its immediate predecessor, the celebrated Chronicle of the
pseudo-Archbishop Turpin, were sent forth on the same principle on which
to this day we publish party pamphlets, to influence the spirit of two
great nations opposed in interest and glory to each other; in a word,
that they were two Tales of a Tub thrown out to busy those mighty
whales, France and England.[9]
One great result of their successful grasp of the popular feelings could
never have been contemplated by these grave forgers of fabulous history.
The Chronicle of Archbishop Turpin and the British History of Geoffry of
Monmouth became the parents of those two rival families of romances
which commemorate the deeds of the Paladins of Charlemagne, and the
Knights of Arthur, the delight of three centuries.
The Welsh of this day possess very ancient manuscripts, which they
cherish as the remains of the ancient Britons. These preserve the deep
strains of poets composed in triumph or in defeat, the poetry of a
melancholy race. Gray first attuned the Cymry harp to British notes,
more poetical than the poems themselves, while others have devoted their
pens to translation, unhappily not always master of the language of
their version. These manuscripts contain also a remarkable body of
fiction in the MABINOGION, or juvenile amusements, a collection of prose
tales combining the marvellous and the imaginative. Some are chivalric
and amatory, stamped with the manners and customs of the middle ages;
others apparently of a much higher antiquity, like all such national
remains, are considered mythological; some there are not well adapted,
perhaps, to the initiation of youth. Obviously they are nothing more
than short romances; but we are solemnly assured that the Mabinogion
abound with occult mysteries, and that simple fiction only served to
allure the British neophyte to bardic mysticism. A learned writer, who
is apt to view old things in a new light, and whose boldness invigorates
the creeping toil of the antiquary, reveals the esoteric
doctrine----"the childhood alluded to in their title is an early and
preparatory stage of initiation; they were calculated to inflame
curiosity, to exercise ingenuity, and lead the aspirant gradually into a
state of preparation for things which ears not long and carefully
disciplined were unfit to hear."[10]
Every people have tales which do not require to be written to be
remembered, whose shortness is the salt which preserves them through
generations. Our ancestors long had heard of "Breton lays" and "British
tales," from the days of Chaucer to those of Milton; but it was reserved
for our own day to ascertain the species, and to possess those forgotten
yet imaginative effusions of the ancient Celtic genius. Our literary
antiquaries have discovered reposing among the Harleian manuscripts the
writings of Marie de France,[11] an Anglo-Norman poetess, who in the
thirteenth century versified many old Breton lais, which, she says, "she
had heard and well remembered." Who can assure us whether this
Anglo-Norman poetess gathered her old tales, for such she calls them, in
the French Britain or the English Britain, where she always resided?
It is among the Welsh we find a singular form of artificial memory which
can be traced among no other people. These are their TRIADS. Though
unauthorized by the learned in Celtic antiquities, I have sometimes
fancied that in the form we may possess a relic of druidical genius. A
triad is formed by classing together three things, neither more nor
less, but supposed to bear some affinity, though a fourth or fifth might
occur with equal claim to be admitted into the category.[12] To connect
three things together apparently analogous, though in reality not so,
sufficed for the stores of knowledge of a Triadist; but to fix on any
three incidents for an historical triad discovered a very narrow range
of research; and if designed as an artificial memory, three insulated
facts, deprived of dates or descriptions or connexion, neither settled
the chronology, nor enlarged the understanding. It is, however, worthy
of remark, that when the Triad is of an ethical cast, the number _three_
may compose an excellent aphorism; for three things may be predicated
with poignant concision, when they relate to our moral qualities, or to
the intellectual faculties: in this capricious form the Triad has often
afforded an enduring principle of human conduct, or of critical
discrimination; for our feelings are less problematical than historical
events, and more permanent than the recollection of three names.[13]