THE LOST LAND OF KING ARTHUR
[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]
KING ARTHUR’S CASTLE AND EXECUTION ROCK, TINTAGEL
[_Frontispiece_]
THE LOST LAND
OF KING ARTHUR
BY
J. CUMING WALTERS
“On the one hand we have the man Arthur, ... on the other is 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.”--PROFESSOR RHYS.
“There is truth enough to make him famous besides
that which is fabulous.”--BACON.
_WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS_
LONDON
CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD.
1909
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK
FOREWORD
Within a small area in the West Country may be found the principal
places mentioned in the written chronicles of King Arthur--places
with strange long histories and of natural charm. In these pages an
impressionist view is given of the region once called Cameliard and
Lyonnesse. We have ventured into by-ways seldom entered, and we trust
to have gathered a few details which may not be wholly without interest
in their place. Facts are meagre about King Arthur, and romance has
so overlaid reality that his realm seems now to be veritably a part
of fairy-land. In this respect the journey is profitless, save that,
by taking Malory as a guide, we are led to a few delightful and
half-forgotten localities out of the ordinary route, from which romance
has not been wholly dislodged and where tradition survives and is
strong.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. OF THE KING AND HIS CHRONICLERS 1
II. OF LYONNESSE AND CAMELIARD 32
III. OF ARTHUR THE KING AND MERLIN
THE ENCHANTER 61
IV. OF TINTAGEL 86
V. OF CAERLEON-UPON-USK 113
VI. OF THE ROUND TABLE AND KING
ARTHUR’S BATTLES 130
VII. OF CAMELOT AND ALMESBURY 159
VIII. OF ST. KNIGHTON’S KIEVE AND THE
HOLY GRAIL 183
IX. OF CAMELFORD AND THE LAST BATTLE 194
X. OF GLASTONBURY AND THE PASSING OF
ARTHUR 216
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_Facing page_
King Arthur’s Castle and Execution Rock,
Tintagel _Frontispiece_
The Rocky Valley, Tintagel 40
Merlin’s Cave, Tintagel 70
King Arthur’s Castle, Tintagel 96
The Elephant Rock, Bossiney Cove 102
Barras Head, Tintagel 110
The Rocky Valley, Tintagel 150
St. Knighton’s Kieve, Tintagel 184
St. Knighton’s Glen 192
Mouth of Rocky Valley and Long Island, Tintagel 202
St. Michael’s Tower, Glastonbury 218
The Olde Pilgrim’s Inn, Glastonbury 222
St. Joseph’s Chapel, Glastonbury Abbey 224
Wells Cathedral 236
The Abbey Barn, Glastonbury 248
Ruins of St. Joseph’s Chapel, Glastonbury 254
THE LOST LAND OF KING ARTHUR
CHAPTER I
OF THE KING AND HIS CHRONICLERS
“What an enormous camera-obscura magnifier is Tradition! How a thing
grows in the human Memory, in the human Imagination, when love,
worship, and all that lies in the human Heart, are there to encourage
it!”--_Carlyle._
No pretence can be made that a complete or exhaustive history of King
Arthur is given in this and the following chapters. Only parts of his
story and parts of the story of his most illustrious knights are woven
into this mosaic of fact and fiction. Sometimes only a few threads of
the romance are to be discovered; at other times many are gathered into
the fabric.
I have taken those portions only of the Arthurian fable, built upon a
small substratum of historic fact, which suited the immediate purpose
in view; the rest, a huge mass, which it would have been unprofitable
to introduce, has perforce been omitted. The primary object has been
simply to call attention to the reputed relics of the great hero, to
mark some of the floating traditions of his power, and to speak of a
few of the localities which bear his name or are associated with his
deeds; and I have striven to add a little to the living interest in
the mouldering monuments, to brush away a little of the dust of ages
from existing evidences, to lift a little the veil of mystery which
darkens, disguises, or shrouds the lineaments of the king. As we find
him in history, and as he is represented in romance, he is so noble a
figure that we should dread to lose him or the conjuring influence of
his name. The proud and triumphing Roman reeled for a time under the
shock of Arthur’s hosts. The Saxon felt his almost invincible power.
Christendom hailed his noble order and rejoiced in his imperial sway.
Now, where he ruled and made his kingdom, are submerged cities, fallen
towers, the wash of waters, the “trackless realm of Lyonnesse.” The sea
has swept over his territory, and the deep shadows of centuries have
fallen upon his deeds. His fame has been made imperishable by mighty
pens, and many a mountain fastness holds his name and gives it forth
to the world; many a towering rock preserves his story; many a frowning
height perpetuates his deeds; many a wild torrent proclaims his name.
So by a hundred contrivances does the memory of King Arthur endure, and
he looms, a giant, behind the mist of ages. Six hundred localities in
the British Isles alone, it has been computed, cherish traditions of
King Arthur, and his praise is sung by a multitude of voices, and in
every region where Celtic influence has been felt. Such an influence as
this cannot proceed wholly from the dry bones of fiction, or from the
golden toys of romance. Legends gather about a great name, just as ivy
covers the ruined column of old time; but the underlying base is there.
Those who contend that King Arthur never lived are open to the charge
of allowing the leaves of fable to hide from their eyes the ruined but
giant pillar beneath.
In the early unwritten history of this island the invading Brythonic
race mastered the inhabitants, the Goidels or Gauls, who had
amalgamated with the Neolithic race, and gave the country the name of
Britannia. To them is attributed the building of Stonehenge and the
round barrows in which the dead were interred. The Cambrians, the
Welsh, and the people of Brittany are their linguistic descendants. So
hardy, stalwart, and venturesome were the Brythons that they gradually
spread themselves over the greater part of the country and penetrated
far to the north. They offered determined defiance to the Romans three
centuries before the Christian era, and successively resisted Norsemen
and Saxons until five centuries of the Christian era had passed. Driven
first to the west, they took up their abode in the wilds of Wales, and
in Cornwall and Devon, and only succumbed at last to the exterminating
campaign of the Saxons, who first cut off the Britons of the north
and the south, and then defeated the two divisions of the race, first
at Chester and then at Bath. The crucial battle between Briton and
Saxon was under the leadership of the last of the British chiefs, the
Arthur of history and romance, and Cerdic the victorious leader of
the “Pagans.” Cerdic, sailing across the channel in his chiules, or
long ships, had landed at the Isle of Wight, fought King Natanleod
of Hampshire, with whom he maintained a five years’ campaign, and,
triumphant at last, and reinforced by the followers of his son and his
nephews, had established the West Seaxe, or Wessex Kingdom.
But, if defeated by the British at Mount Badon, the Saxons were not
long in reversing the issue, and Cerdic’s son Cymric, and his nephews
Stuffa and Whitgar, lived to see their rivals well-nigh exterminated.
At Wodensbury in Wiltshire the remnants of the British race joined with
the Angles in driving the hated Saxon from the sovereignty of Wessex,
but this, too, was without permanent result; for Cerdic’s next of
descent, Cadwalla, restored the supremacy of his house and race.
Cerdic is said to have died in 534, a date of some importance as
helping us to fix the true Arthurian era. The history of many of his
contemporaries is almost as vague as Arthur’s own, but Cerdic stands
out as a man of no uncertain history, and he serves the purpose of
allowing us to test the probabilities of Arthur’s reputed career. That
Cerdic’s record should be more definite, though extremely brief, is
due to the fact that he was a conqueror; that Arthur’s record should
be less definite, though extremely long, is due to the fact that he
was vanquished, and that his story became mixed with the fables of a
generation which did not know him. In the one case we have concrete
facts duly preserved; in the other we have merely a name which fires
the imagination, and a few events which in the course of time are
magnified by romance. Allegory is but truth’s shadow, and the very
songs we deem idle, even the loosely-strung nursery rhymes, may have
inner significance, as Carlyle has told us; men never believed in
songs that were meaningless, and “never risked their soul’s life on
allegories.” Real history and precious lore are bound up in these
shrunken shrouds of withered myths, and it is safe to assume that the
name that is enshrined in a folk-song is the name of a transcendent
hero, a truly great man deemed more than human, merged into the
preternatural, the ideal, or the divine. And, like the student at the
Wayside Inn of Sudbury Town, we can--
“Love the twilight that surrounds
The border-land of old romance,
* * * *
Where mighty warriors sweep along,
Magnified by the purple mist,
The dust of centuries and of song.”
Here it is that--
“The chronicles of Charlemagne,
Of Merlin and the Mort d’Arthure
Mingle together.”
But how the romance of King Arthur originated, how it came to be
written, how it was developed and elaborated, how from a simple history
it came to be invested with special significance and to be impregnated
with spiritual meanings--to explain this, it is necessary in some
measure to trace the course of early English literature and to mark the
advance of the English race. The story leads us back to dim times and
small beginnings. It recalls the semi-barbarism of the first centuries,
the fierce conflicts of contending tribes, the domination of Rome, the
last supreme encounters between Briton and Saxon, and the making of
that race which we believe inherits the hardy and heroic qualities of
both. No doubt the substratum of fact is overlaid with superstitions,
and fantasy has reared her airy edifices upon the frailest of history’s
foundations. The narrow track leading backward to the times of Arthur
is often undefined and irretraceable, and the traveller finds that
unstable bridges have been cast across the gulfs which have broken up
the way. Very seldom, therefore, can a strong foothold be obtained,
and one is often disposed to abandon the pursuit of truth as hopeless.
The tendency has ever been to strain facts to uncertain conclusions in
order to fit the exigencies of romance.
As discoverable error ever leads to general doubt, there are not
lacking those who deny that King Arthur ever existed. He is declared to
be a myth, a type, a symbol, an allegorical figure. Even Caxton, in
printing Malory’s history, was obliged to confute the sceptics by the
mention of what he deemed unassailable facts. It was “most execrable
infidelity,” said he, to doubt the existence of Joshua, David, Judas
Maccabæus, or Alexander; all the world knew there was a Julius Cæsar
and a Hector; “and,” he demanded to know with just indignation, “shall
the Jewes and the heathen be honoured in the memory and magnificent
prowesse of their worthies? Shall the French and German nations
glorifie their triumphs with their Godfrey and Charles [Charlemagne],
and shall we of this island be so possesst with incredulities,
diffidence, stupiditie, and ingratitude, to deny, make doubt, or
expresse in speech and history, the immortal name and fame of our
victorious Arthur? All the honour we can doe him is to honour ourselves
in remembrance of him.”
Having thus made it a point of national pride and honour with us to
accept and believe in King Arthur, Caxton proceeded to advance the
proofs of his existence, which were that his life was written in “many
noble volumes,” while his “sepulture” might be seen at Glastyngburye
[Glastonbury], that the print of his seal was preserved in Westminster
Abbey, and that “in the castel of Dover ye may see Gawayn’s skulle and
Cradok’s mantel; at Wynchester, the rounde table; in other places,
Lancelotte’s sworde, and many other thynges.” These irrefutable facts
admitted, to his thinking, of but one conclusion. “All these thynges
consydered, there can no man reasonably gaynsaye but there was a King
of thys lande named Arthur.” The quaint prologue to Malory’s romance
abundantly testifies that serious arguments must have been already
advanced against Arthur’s existence in order to call for so spirited a
rebuke and so complete an answer. But, as a matter of fact, the truth
of the histories referring to his exploits had been challenged from
the first, and in spite of the immense popularity they enjoyed and the
influence they possessed, they seem never to have been implicitly and
unanimously accepted as veracious records.
Three Welsh poets are supposed to have been the first to celebrate the
deeds of Arthur--the full-throated Taliesin, Aneurin, and Llywarch Hên.
The two latter bards commemorated the heroes who fell at the battle of
Cattraeth, in the year 603. Aneurin’s poem, “Gododin,” about a thousand
lines in length, is preserved in a manuscript of the thirteenth
century. The writer, who was present at the battle he describes, is
supposed by some to have been Gildas, the first historian; others say
he was the son of Gildas.[1] The poem is of a most obscure character,
and doubt has actually arisen as to the particular battle to which it
refers, a theory having been advanced that it celebrated a disaster
which befell the Britons at Stonehenge in 472. But Cattraeth is
supposed to have been Degstan, or Dawstane, in Liddlesdale, at which
the Saxons were defeated; and when such divergencies as these are
possible in regard to locality, persons, and dates, the value of
Aneurin’s poem as history may easily be estimated. The principal fact
which Aneurin tells us is that of “three warriors and threescore and
three hundred, wearing the golden torques,” only four escaped “from
the conflict of gashing weapons,” one being himself. Another of those
who escaped from Cattraeth was Kynon, known as “the dauntless,” whose
love for the daughter of Urien supplied the bards with a theme. Urien
himself fell in this great battle, and it was the poet Llywarch Hên
(buried, it is said, in the Church of Llanever, near Bala Lake) who
wrote his elegy. Llywarch Hên passed his younger days at King Arthur’s
Court as a free guest and a counselling warrior. His career is well
summarised by George Borrow in _Wild Wales_, Chapter LXXIII.
Of the third and most important prophet and bard, Taliesin, Prince
of Song, we are told that he was the son of Saint Henwg; that he had
a miraculous birth; that he spake in wonderful verse at his nativity
and sang riddling tales; that he was invited by King Arthur to his
Court at Caerleon; and that, having presided over the Round Table as
a “golden-tongued knight,” he became chief of the Bards of the West.
A cairn near Aberystwyth marks the site of his grave. The story of
the bard of the radiant brow, of his wonderful delivery from pirates,
and of his poems, which excelled those of all others, has always
been a popular one, but the sifting of truth from fiction is no easy
task. His allusions to Arthur probably have no superior value to the
references of Aneurin and Llywarch Hên, and we are forced therefore to
dismiss them from account. Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to one
of his poetic romances, justly reminded his readers that the Bards,
or Scalds, were the first historians of all nations, and that their
intention was to relate events they had witnessed or traditions that
had reached them. “But,” he added, “as the poetical historian improves
in the art of conveying information, the authenticity of his narrative
invariably declines. He is tempted to dilate and dwell upon events that
are interesting to his imagination, and, conscious how indifferent
his audience is to the naked truth of his poem, his history gradually
becomes a romance.” Such were the early historians, as well as bards,
upon whose records the English chroniclers relied.
These chroniclers were Gildas and Nennius, of whom no very certain
biographical facts can be discovered, though the latter is said to have
been a monk at Bangor. Gildas is the reputed author of a treatise, _De
Excidio Britanniæ_, blindly copied by Bede, which supplied a history
of Britain from the time of the Incarnation to the year 560 A.D. But
darkness enshrouds the historian, of whose country, parentage, and
period much is surmised and little is discoverable. The erudite author
of _Culture in Early Scotland_, Dr. Mackinnon, believes that the writer
of the gloomy and pessimistic work on the destruction of Britain was
a Romanised Briton, who migrated to Brittany to escape the pitiless
severity of the Saxons, and there founded the monastery of Ruys. It
has even been claimed that Gildas was a native of Clydesdale, and if
this were so another link would exist to connect Arthur himself with
Scotland, for the historian was so closely identified with the race
and the cause championed by that king that his surname was taken from
Arthur’s famous battle of Badon, which, again, is said by some to have
been fought in the Lowlands.[2] Gildas was the wisest of the Britons
according to Alcuin, and Dr. Mackinnon thinks that his chronicle
should be accepted as authentic, in spite of its occasional errors
and its undoubted bias. The stern character of the writer is evinced
by his denunciations not only of Saxon excesses, but of the clerical
vices of his age. In short, Gildas was a religious devotee, an austere
and uncompromising critic of the demoralising customs of the time; a
species of prophet, also, who saw in corruption and degeneration the
signs of coming destruction for the race to which he belonged. Roman
influence had undermined the morals of the people and enervated public
and social life. The story Gildas tells is one of unrelieved gloom, but
it stands out in contrast to other narratives by its rugged simplicity
and its freedom from the more romantic elements. Murder, sacrilege, and
immorality were bringing about wholesale desolation, and the patriotic
Gildas saw no future before his country but absolute ruin and racial
extinction. His allusions to Arthur are scanty, incidental, and none
too complimentary, and they have assumed importance only as bases for
the construction of bold theories by subsequent writers.
In Somerset, near the ancient British settlement of Brean, is a rocky
islet known as Steep Holm, 400 feet high and about a mile and a half in
circumference. In this desolate place it is said that Gildas Badonicus
took refuge during the time of conflict between Britons and Saxons,
and that here he composed the greater part of _De Excidio Britanniæ_.
Leland records that the hermit “preached every Sunday in a church by
the seashore, which stands in the country of Pebidiane, in the time
of King Trifunus; an innumerable multitude hearing him. He always
wished to be a faithful subject to King Arthur. His brothers, however,
rebelled against that king, unwilling to endure a master. Hueil
(Howel), the eldest, was a perpetual warrior and most famous soldier,
who obeyed no king, not even Arthur himself.” Steep Holm was invaded
by pirates, and Gildas was compelled to seek another asylum. He chose
Glastonbury, and there he died. His attitude was pessimistic in the
extreme. “The poor remnant of our nation,” he said, “being strengthened
that they might not be brought to utter destruction, took arms under
Ambrosius, a modest man, who, of all the Roman nation, was then alone
in the confusion of this troubled period by chance left alive. His
parents, who, for their merit, were adorned with the purple, had been
slain in the same broils, and now his progeny, in these our days,
although shamefully degenerated from the worthiness of their ancestors,
provoked to battle their conquerors, and, by the goodness of God,
obtained the victory.” In this dismal strain did he write of triumphs,
and the power with which he described defeat may therefore easily be
guessed.
The answer that has been given to the question, oft repeated: Why is
history so silent on King Arthur? is a strange one. It is said that
Gildas, on hearing that Arthur had slain his brother Howel, was
so deeply offended that he determined that the hero should not be
celebrated by him. In revenge, he cast into the sea “many excellent
books which he had written concerning the acts of Arthur, and in the
praise of his nation, by reason of which thing you can find nothing
of so great a prince expressed in authentic writings.” Gildas himself
supplies another explanation, for he bewailed the loss of national
records “which have been consumed in the fires of the enemy, or have
accompanied my exiled countrymen into distant lands.” His own sources
of information were those which he found in Armorica and other portions
of the Continent.
Nennius is supposed to have compiled another comprehensive history
comparable with that of Gildas--_Historia Britonum_--the period
embraced being from the days of Brute the Trojan to the year 680 A.D.
But so much doubt prevails as to his work, that the history, despite
the later date, has been ascribed to Gildas himself. Both may have been
forgeries of the tenth or eleventh century. For five or six centuries
the story of Arthur was “folk-lore,” and was preserved in snatches
of song, a few fragments of which still exist. Such a legend, as
Longfellow says, can only--
“Spring at first
Out of the hunger and the thirst
In all men for the marvellous.
And thus it filled and satisfied
The imagination of mankind,
And this ideal to the mind
Was truer than historic fact.”
Songs in praise of heroes, real or mythical, always exist among rude
peoples--the sagas which nations unwillingly let die. They are the
repository of national history, the inspiration of an aspiring and
progressive race, the embodiment of its hopes, the treasury of its
traditions. Mythology, “the dark shadow which language throws on
thought,” is the first outcome of mental activity and percipience--the
struggle for human expression of all that is marvellous and memorable.
All the early history of races is mixed and engloomed with dim
allegories. Intense reverence for divinities, or the awe of them, leads
to the making of fables and the reciting of marvels, in which the gods
speak and act as men, or men speak and act as gods. The thoughts of
primitive peoples are concentrated upon the hero, the commanding figure
who typifies their desires, and about whose name cluster legends of
victory. Not infrequently, divine qualities are attributed to that
hero who thus looms majestically upon the horizon of history, and
ultimately becomes a religion. “The gods of fable are the shining
moments of great men,” Emerson said, and whether the Arthurs and Odins
of mythology were men worshipped as deities, or deities divested of
divinity and transformed into historic heroes, the after-ages must
always have some difficulty in deciding. What we know is that the
interval between language and literature is crowded with shadowy
mythological lore, and little of the light flashed back from to-day can
illumine the haunted, mystic, twilight time of phantom and superstition.
Yet Geoffrey, Archdeacon of Monmouth, and afterwards Bishop of St.
Asaph (1100-1154), in giving shape and substance to the Arthurian
legends and traditions, had no better material to work with than that
supplied by the British folk-songs, the tainted records of Gildas and
Nennius, and the so-called Armoric collections of Walter, Archdeacon
of Oxford, who flourished in the eleventh century, and connected the
Arthur of Brittany with the Arthur of Siluria. Geoffrey’s famous
_Chronicon sive Historia Britonum_, dedicated to Robert, Earl of
Gloucester, and given to the world in the Latin tongue in the year
1115, was professedly a translation of the _Brut y Brenhined_, a
“history of the Kings of Britain, found in Brittany,” best described in
Wordsworth’s phrase: “A British record long concealed in old Armorica,
whose secret springs no Gothic conqueror e’er drank.”
In reality his imagination had been fired by the bardic celebrations of
Arthur’s triumphs, the songs still sung vauntingly by an unconquered
race. The old monkish chronicler manifested a marvellous ingenuity in
imparting circumstantiality of the most convincing character to his
narrative. He connected place-names of great repute with eponymous
heroes; he linked the truths of the Roman occupation with the
half-truths or fables of the British resistance; he wove some of the
most striking Scriptural facts into the fabric of the romance; he so
leavened falsehood with reality that the imposture was hard to detect,
especially in an uncritical age, and the effect was most impressive
upon the minds of an unreasoning generation. His inventions did not
extend to incidents; these he took from the chronicles to hand, and he
can only be charged with a free amplification of the records, and a
readjustment of the events which had been described. Notwithstanding
all the craft and devices of the chronicler, however, his history was
almost immediately challenged, William of Newburgh, a Yorkshire monk,
declaring that Geoffrey had “lied saucily and shamelessly,” with many
other hard terms. He charged the supposed chronicler with making use
of, and wholly depending upon, the old Breton tales, and with adding
to these contestable compilations “increase of his own.” Nor was
William of Newburgh alone in his protests and denunciation. Giraldus
Cambriensis, by a parable, implied that Geoffrey’s work was a deceit.
There was a man at Caerleon, he said, who could always tell a liar
because he saw the devil and his imps leaping upon the man’s tongue.
The Gospel of St. John was given him; he placed it in his bosom; and
the evil spirits vanished. Then the _History of the Britons_, by
“Geoffrey Arthur” (“Arthur” was a by-name of Geoffrey’s), was handed
to him, and the imps immediately reappeared in greater numbers, and
remained a longer time than usual on his body and on his book. _Cœdit
quæstio_. But all this did not prevent Geoffrey’s masterpiece in nine
books from attaining a remarkable popularity both in its original form
and when translated, as it rapidly was, into the Anglo-Saxon and the
Norman-French languages, where it could be fully understanded of the
people. It covered the history of the Britons from the time of Brut,
great-grandson of Æneas of Troy, to Cadwallader’s death in 688.
The first translators were Geoffrey Gaisnar or Gaimar, in 1154 (the
original history had been published only seven years previously),
who turned the story into Norman-French verse, and Wace, a native of
Jersey, who obtained the favour of the Norman kings, and was the author
of two long romances in Norman-French--the famed _Brut_, or _Geste des
Bretons_, and the almost equally famous _Roman de Rou_. The former
work was a free metrical rendering, published in Henry II.’s reign, of
Geoffrey’s _Chronicle_, with some new matter. Wace, according to Hallam
the historian, was a prolific versifier who has a “claim to indulgence,
and even to esteem, as having far excelled his contemporaries without
any superior advantages of knowledge.” It was in emulation of him that
several Norman writers composed metrical histories.
Then came Layamon, a Midland priest living at a noble church at Emly,
or Arley, who at the close of the twelfth century produced the first
long poem written in the English language. He did not go to Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s work direct, but wrote an amplified imitation of Wace’s
version of the _Chronicle_. Layamon’s paraphrase contained just over
double the number of lines in Wace’s poem, the additions consisting
chiefly of interpolated dramatic speeches. There were already Cymric,
Armoric, Saxon, and Norman ingredients in the medley of history and
romance, and to these Layamon added a slight Teutonic element, for the
chansons of the Trouvères had carried the fame of Arthur into Germany,
and already new legends with new meanings were germinating from the
loosely-scattered seed. With Artus for the central figure and with
courtly chivalry for the theme, these variations and expansions of
the story of the British chief exercised as powerful and enduring an
influence upon the people of France and Germany as they had done, and
continued to do, upon the people of Britain. The good priest seems
to have had no other object in writing in good plain Saxon the story
of King Arthur than to make widely known among his countrymen the
noble deeds in which he evidently had an abounding faith. In fact,
his purpose was purely patriotic. The only guile he employed was in
supplying the names of many persons and places, in addition to the
speeches, all of which circumstances served to magnify the literary
imposture. Walter Map, or Mapes, a man of the Welsh Marches, with a
reputation for exceeding frankness and honour, followed Layamon and
introduced other and more striking details of permanent value. Map
was the friend of Becket, and is believed to have been for some time
the king’s chaplain. For the love of the king his work was done. His
Latin satirical poems display his chief characteristics, and it is
as a wit rather than a writer that he was famous at the Court. Yet
it was this man who is held to have conceived the character of the
pure and stainless knight Sir Galahad, assigning to him what is in
some respects the chief, or at all events the worthiest, position in
the Arthurian list of knights. If Sir Galahad, stainless, chivalrous,
alone capable of achieving the Quest of the Grail, were the creation of
Walter Map, to him we owe that spiritual and religious element which
refines and enriches King Arthur’s history. Map wrote the story of the
Grail, a Christianised rendering of Celtic myth, and to him probably
we owe the moving and impressive _Mort_, with those notable outbursts
which rank among the treasures of our literature. He, however, had
the originals to work upon. The Welsh had taken their legends to
Brittany, the troubadours were singing them, and the German and the
French chroniclers were at work. And though there is no doubt that
Map contributed in a considerable degree to the romances, it must be
faithfully recorded that questions have arisen whether he was really
capable of doing all that has been attributed to him, and whether, if
he had the capacity, he would also have had the inclination. “Spotless
spirituality,” such as he is supposed to have infused into the story,
is scarcely consistent with the character of the man whose Anacreontics
are often lacking in refinement.[3]
So far, it will be easily conceded, very little has been advanced in
the way of proof of the existence of the British prince and hero, of
the Cymric “Dux Bellorum,” of the Chief of the Siluri or Dumnonii,
the name given to the remnant of the British races driven westward
by the Saxons. We can understand Milton questioning who Arthur was,
and doubting “whether any such reigned in Britain.” “It had been
doubted heretofore, and may be again with good reason,” he wrote,
notwithstanding the fascination possessed by--
“What resounds
In fable or romance of Uther’s son
Begirt with British and Armoric knights.”
Geoffrey’s “monument of stupendous delusion” had not deceived him, and
Sir Thomas Malory’s laborious compilation, while winning unstinted
admiration for its beauty, richness, and delectation, would be as
unconvincing historically as were Caxton’s quaintly-argued evidences.
All the tributaries which now combined to make the full broad current
of Arthurian literature were infected at their sources, numerous and
widely separated as those sources were. If Malory depended, as we have
the authority of the best scholars for believing, upon the several
ancient romances of Merlin, the inventions and adaptations of Walter
Map, the mysterious compilations of pseudonymous “Helie de Bouri” and
“Luces de Gast,” with other manuscripts--some of which are untraced--of
like character, it was obvious that he was only presenting us with an
aggregation of the impostures, inventions, fables, and falsities of
the centuries preceding. That Malory had a conscientious belief in the
romance is extremely probable, though in the absence of all information
concerning him--for he is a name, a great name, and little more--we can
only infer this from the scrupulous manner in which he has performed
his task and from the commendatory form in which it was issued in the
year 1485.
Judged purely as literature, and with every allowance made for want
of uniformity in level as well as for the tediousness of numberless
digressions, Malory’s romance only admits of one opinion; and to
him and to Caxton (who, despite the humility of his prologues and
epilogues, and his professions of “simpleness and ignorance,” was a
scholar and a master of middle-class English) the race is under a
perpetual debt.[4] The compiler does not seem to be open to the charge
levelled against him by Sir Walter Scott, that he “exhausted at hazard,
and without much art or combination, from the various French prose
folios”; on the contrary it is easy to conceive that he exercised
that “painful industry” with which he is credited by the writer of
the Preface to the edition of 1634. In addition to this, he stamped
his own individuality upon the work, and manifested a singular purity
of taste by removing the grosser elements which stained many of the
earlier versions, and by preserving all that was best as literature and
in keeping with the finest and truest spirit of romance. We know from
the scholarly investigations of Dr. Sommer and Sir Edmund Strachey
how judicious Malory was in translating from his “French books,” or in
making abstracts, or in amending and enlarging. With true insight he
chose the material that was of good report and of genuine worth; the
dross he cast aside. Malory may have belonged to a Yorkshire family,
judging from the fact that Leland recorded that a Malory possessed a
lordship in that county, but there is no slight authority for believing
that he was a Welshman and a priest--“a servant of Jesu both day and
night,” as he himself said. That he was a good and earnest Christian
his own work proves beyond all question, for he imparted all the
religious ardour to the romance that he could, and accentuated that
element when it had already been introduced.
The romance of Arthur was enriched, to use Gibbon’s words, with
the various though incoherent ornaments which were familiar to the
experience, the learning, or the fancy of the twelfth century. Every
nation enhanced and adorned the popular romance, until “at length the
light of science and reason was re-kindled, the talisman was broken,
the visionary fabric melted into air, and by a natural though unjust
reverse of public opinion the severity of the present age became
inclined to question the existence of Arthur.” That Arthur’s name
should stream like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak is the fault
of the mediæval writers who, in taking the British king for their hero,
could represent no age but their own, and had no consciousness of
anachronism. It came natural to them in speaking of the sixth-century
knights to endow them with the attributes of the thirteenth and
fourteenth century, and to describe Arthur’s Britain much as they
would have described the Britain of a Henry or an Edward. The Arthur
of Geoffrey, of Walter Map, and of Malory is as impossible as the
Arthur of Wagner, Lytton, Swinburne, and Tennyson. Most of the writers
on chivalry have either viewed and treated the Knights of the Round
Table as contemporary heroes, or have altogether idealised them. We
are forced to the conclusion that Geoffrey and all the other mediæval
chroniclers had no real conception of the character of the age of
which they wrote; if they discovered real names and real persons they
transported them to an imaginary world and invested them with fabulous
attributes. They made reality itself unreal, transformed heroes into
myths, and buried history beneath romance; they had no power to
recognise truth even when it appeared to them.
King Arthur was a traditional and historic chieftain of rude times,
the man of an epoch, a hero to be sung and remembered. His life must
have been a tumult; his seventy odd battles were the events of his era.
Whether he represents a nascent civilisation, or whether, following the
Romans, he simply maintained a barbaric splendour in the cities they
had made or by means of some enlightened laws they had instituted, is a
matter of dispute. But he is the “gray king,” the elemental hero, not
the advanced type. It is a remarkable fact that English scholars have
until quite recently done so little to popularise Arthurian literature.
Malory’s version remained almost inaccessible until Southey issued his
edition, and the best work of all was undertaken for us in latter years
by Dr. Sommer, a German. Considering the hold on the imagination which
the romance possessed, little was done to elucidate the obscurities
and to solve the mysteries concerning not only the authors but the
heroes themselves and the land to which they belonged. Much has been
conjectured, but we feel that we are dealing more with phantoms and
fancies than with realities and facts. Yet what an inspiration King
Arthur has been! His name has lingered, his memory has been treasured
in national ballads. Poets have in all ages hovered round the subject,
and some have alighted upon it, only perhaps to leave it again as
beyond their scope.
“The mightiest chiefs of British song
Scorned not such legends to prolong.”
Milton, Spenser, Dryden, Warton, Collins, Scott and Gray, together
with derided and half-forgotten Blackmore; Lytton, with his ambitious
epic, doomed to unmerited neglect; Rossetti, James Russell Lowell, and
lastly, Arnold, Morris, Swinburne, and Tennyson--these have lifted
the romance into the highest and purest realm of poetry, and have
impregnated the story with new meanings and illuminated it with rich
interpretation.
All have felt the influence of Arthur’s history, “its dim enchantments,
its fury of helpless battle, its almost feminine tenderness of
friendship, its fainting passion, its religious ardours, all at length
vanishing in defeat and being found no more.” We have seen how the
Arthurian history, real or fabulous, arose from early traditions and
grew as each chronicler handled it and combined with it the traditions
and the fictions of other races. It lost nothing by its transfusion
into new tongues, but was enriched by the imaginations of the adapters
and combined with the stories already current in other lands. The
hero that Celtic boastfulness had created became the representative
hero of at least three peoples in these early times, and the songs of
the Trouvères speedily spread his fame over Western Europe. We find
Arthur represented as the master of a vast kingdom, and his power
extending to Rome itself; and we find him claimed as the natural hero
of nearly every race which heard his praise and was kindled to valour
by the example of his exploits. Each country seemed bent upon supplying
at least one representative of the Table Round, and eagerly competed
for the pre-eminence and perfection of the knight of its choice. The
kingdom allotted to him was without limit, and as the elder Disraeli
would put it, “fancy bent her iris of many-softened hues over a
delightful land of fiction.”
Lost though King Arthur’s realm is, the land of the ancient British
chieftain must have been real, and it is most possible that we tread
the dust which covers it in journeying from Caerleon to Glastonbury,
from Glastonbury to Camelford, from Camelford to Tintagel. To these
places is our pilgrimage directed.