(Wace, _Brut_, 13681 ff.; Layamon, 23080 ff., 28610 ff.)
The belief that Arthur would return to earth, which was firmly
established among the Britons by the beginning of the twelfth
century, does not in early records appear clothed in any definite
narrative form. In later sources it assumes several phases,
the most common of which is that recorded by Layamon that Arthur had
been taken by fays from his final battle-field to Avalon, the Celtic
otherworld, whence after the healing of his mortal wound he would
return to earth. Layamon's story conforms essentially to an early type
of Celtic fairy-mistress story, according to which a valorous hero, in
response to the summons of a fay who has set her love upon him, under
the guidance of a fairy messenger sails over seas to the otherworld,
where he remains for an indefinite time in happiness, oblivious of
earth. It is easy to see that the belief that Arthur was still living,
though not in this world, might gradually take shape in such a form as
this, and that his absence from his country might be interpreted as
his prolonged sojourn in the distant land of a fairy queen, who was
proffering him, not the delights of her love, but healing for his
wounds, in order that when he was made whole again he might return "to
help the Britons." Historic, mythical, and romantic tradition have
combined to produce the version that Layamon records. Geoffrey of
Monmouth (xi. 2), writing in the mock role of serious historian and
with a tendency to rationalisation, says not a word of the wounded
king's possible return to earth. Wace, with characteristic caution,
affirms that he will not commit himself as to whether the Britons, who
say that Arthur is still in Avalon, speak the truth or not. Here, as
in the story of the Round Table, it is Layamon who has preserved for
us what was undoubtedly the form that the belief had already assumed
in Celtic story, through whatever medium it may have passed before it
reached his hands.
In the _Vita Merlini_,[21] a Latin poem attributed by some scholars to
Geoffrey of Monmouth, a curious version of Arthur's stay in Avalon is
given. The wounded king is taken after the battle of Camlan to the
Isle of Apples (for such was understood to be the meaning of the
name _Avalon_), which is the domain of a supernatural maiden, wise and
beautiful, Morgen by name, who understands the healing art, and who
promises the king that he shall be made whole again if he abides long
with her. This is the first mention in literature of Morgan la Fée,
the most powerful fay of French romance, and regularly the traditional
healer of Arthur's wounds in Avalon.
The Argante of Layamon's version is doubtless the same being as
Morgana, for whose name, which in any of its current spellings had
the appearance of a masculine proper name, Layamon either may have
substituted a more familiar Welsh name, Argante, as I have already
shown he might easily have done (_Studies in the Fairy Mythology of
Arthurian Romance_, Boston, 1903, pp. 26-28), or, as Professor J.L.
Bruce, with equal plausibility, has recently suggested, he may have
used a corruption of one form of the fay's name, Morgant (_Modern
Language Notes_, March, 1911, pp. 65-68).
[I have discussed the various versions of Arthur's stay in Avalon in
_Studies in Fairy Mythology_, chapter III. On Avalon, see _id._, p. 40,
note 2. On the early belief in Arthur's return to earth, see Geoffrey
of Monmouth (_Everyman's Library_), Introduction, p. 10.]