OF LYONNESSE AND CAMELIARD
“In olde dayes of the King Artour,
Of which that Bretons speken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of faerie.”--_Chaucer._
“I betook me among those lofty fables and romances which recount in
solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings,
and from hence had in renown over all Christendom.... Even these books
proved to me so many incitements to the love and steadfast observation
of virtue.”--_Milton._
“Time upon my waste committed hath such theft,
That it of Arthur here scarce memory hath left.”
_Drayton._
No matter how far the chroniclers of old departed from fact in the
details of their narratives, they grouped the incidents around a
central figure, a magnificent ancient hero; and, more than that, they
specified the actual locality in which that hero had won his renown.
But just as they magnified the hero out of all proportion, so they
extended the area of his realm beyond all possibility: hence the
difficulties that meet us in the search for truth.
Of the Celts, Ralph Waldo Emerson has perhaps left us, in brief, the
best record. He sums up the greatness and the importance of the race
by saying that of their beginning there is no memory, and that their
end is likely to be still more remote in the future; that they had
endurance and productiveness and culture and a sublime creed; that
they had a hidden and precarious genius; and that they “made the best
popular literature of the Middle Ages in the songs of Merlin and the
tender and delicious anthology of Arthur.” This race was not likely to
take a narrow view of its possessions, or to assign a small territory
to its greatest monarch. Its claim may be preposterous, but that comes
of the consciousness of superior strength and of daring imagination.
Britain was not large enough for the Celts; they required not a country
but a continent. And when their songs were sung, their stories told,
and their great Arthur’s name celebrated throughout the west, they
boldly affirmed that the west was his, and that he had subdued and
ruled the whole civilised world. Arthur’s England became in their eyes
the perfect realm, the ideal place; and the survival of this idea may
be discovered in the works of the poets, old and new.
“Foemen feet to dust have trod
The blue-robed messengers of God,”
was Llywarch Hên’s allusion to the slaughter of bards, evincing his
belief in their sacred character. Song was to the Cymry at once
education, a vent for national feeling, and a memorial of great events.
The bard ranked beside the artisan as one of the pillars of social
life. He had only one theme, his country’s hope, misfortune, and
destiny; and, as M. Thierry has aptly said, the nation, poetical in its
turn, extended the bounds of fiction by ascribing fantastic meaning to
the words. “The wishes of the bards were received as promises, their
expectations as prophecies; even their silence was made expressive. If
they sang not of Arthur’s death, it was a proof that Arthur yet lived;
if the harper undesignedly sounded some melancholy air, the minds of
his hearers spontaneously linked with the vague melody the name of
a spot, rendered mournfully famous by the loss of a battle with the
foreign conqueror. This life of hopes and recollections gave charms,
in the eyes of the latter Cambrians, to their country of rocks and
morasses.” How much we really owe, then, to historic fact and how
much to bardic song the accounting of Camelot and Avalon, Tintagel
and Almesbury, as the famous and redoubtable spots of Arthurian
accomplishments and occupation, would be difficult to decide. Literary
genius from the first centres in the minstrel, who is both composer and
singer, who stimulates to action and records events, who is himself
“doer” and “seer.”
But for this rich and sustained Celtic influence our literature would
be poor indeed, would be less romantic, less poetic, and lacking in
the vitality of human passions, human hopes and aspirations, human
suffering and despair. For the dominant note in Celtic literature--and
this particularly applies to the Arthurian legend which, despite
its boasts, is a story of failure--is an indefinable melancholy, an
exquisite regret; the poetry may be, as Matthew Arnold said, drenched
in the dew of natural magic, and the romances may be threaded with
radiant lights, but there always remains the underlying sombreness of
texture or the overhanging cloud-darkening of the scene. Joyous music
concludes in a minor key or is broken by a sudden note of pathos.
The Celtic bards sang of war, but though the heroes always went
forth bravely to battle it has been recorded that they “always fell.”
Victories are less frequently celebrated than defeats are mourned. The
glory of the Celt was vast and transcendent, but from minstrel-times it
was a fading glory. Work as the history-weavers might with the golden
shuttles of romance their tears mingled with the gleaming strands,
and the tissue as it left the loom was a medley of broken lights and
shadows. Nevertheless, the pictures they have left us of chivalrous
times remain unsurpassed for the grandeur of their conception: they
remain the model and despair of all ages.
The description of Arthurian England, the “Logris” of the chroniclers,
comports with the suggestions of romance, but ill accords with the
facts.[5] Even if we grant the Round Table and the Quest of the Grail,
the fact remains that the times were barbarous and that the Britons of
the sixth century had only reached the outer borders of civilisation.
The exploits of the knights themselves are indicative of a prevailing
state of lawlessness verging perilously upon absolute savagery.
Appalling rites were practised in the castle strongholds, and the life
neither of man nor woman was deemed precious. The romancers themselves
do not disguise that the purpose and the methods of the knights were
little superior to the purpose and methods of those whom they warred
against; and the common practice of the knights to “reward themselves”
in their own ways for victories achieved disposes at once of the
contention that their motives were unselfish, or that their chivalry
was pure and disinterested. The England of King Arthur was therefore
by no means like to be the ideal land of peace, beauty, and content
which poets have imagined. Neither can we concede the whole claim to
Arthur’s undisputed possession of the entire kingdom. The freedom with
which the chroniclers spoke of the king’s unmolested journey north,
south, east, and west, only proves that they made an unwarrantable use
of names. Among the places loosely mentioned or referred to at random
in the romance, or perchance confused in the writers’ minds with places
within a small area, we must count all those beyond the Severn and
Trent, unless we adopt the alternative theory and accept the north as
Arthur’s realm. To these we add all the large proportion of places,
more or less fantastically named, which seem to have had no existence
out of the chroniclers’ brain. Where shall we look for Carbonek, for
the land of Petersaint, for Joyous Isle, for Waste Lands, for Lonazep,
for Goothe, for Case, for the Castles of Grail, La Beale Regard,
Pluero, Jagent, and Magouns? to say nothing of a host of others. And
are we to be deluded by the familiarity with which Jerusalem, Tuscany,
Egypt, Turkey, and Hungary are spoken of, into believing that these
distant places were really visited by Arthur and his knights? Even if
we were to concede all the localities mentioned in Malory’s work we
should be confronted by a new difficulty in the _Mabinogion_, where
quite a fresh series of towns and countries is mentioned in addition to
many of the old ones. But while in the _Mabinogion_ the west of Europe
is almost exclusively dealt with, the English, French, and German
historians would be content with nothing less than the best part of the
hemisphere. No petty view, however, must be taken of the Arthur-land of
romance. If Caerleon was his capital, we must believe that he was not
unknown north of the Humber, and that he had a castle in old Carlisle.
Calydon and Brittany, Ireland and Wales, acknowledged his power and
felt his sway. The Roman himself met Arthur face to face; knights
carried his fame to Constantinople--so the early historians asseverate,
and so they doubtless sincerely believed.
But the more cautious student will confine his attention to a group
of but half-a-dozen places in South Wales, Devonshire, and Cornwall,
and will doubt the truth of tradition even when it mingles with the
nomenclature of the romance. Of Lyonnesse whelmed beneath the waves
we have no knowledge; it is a lost and perhaps half fabulous region.
Cameliard, whose boundaries are fairly well known, is strewed with
doubtful relics, and preserves a multitude of strange stories. These
are all that remain to us when we have traversed King Arthur’s land.
Lyonnesse is reported to have been a region of extreme fertility,
uniting the Scilly Isles with Western Cornwall. The hardy Silures
were the inhabitants of this tract, and were remarkable for their
industry and piety. No fewer than one hundred and forty churches
testified to the latter quality, and the rocks called Seven Stones
mark the site of their largest city. Tradition is untrustworthy
as to any great cataclysm, but the Saxon chronicle declared that
Lyonnesse was destroyed by a “high tide” on November 11, 1099. The
assumption is that where the sea now sweeps with tremendous force,
between Land’s End and the Scillies, once lay a fair region, another
Atlantis, which formed no unimportant part of King Arthur’s realm. The
etymology of the name Scilly is more or less doubtful. The word has
been identified with Silura, or Siluria, the land of the Silures--that
is, South Wales. Malory’s Surluse, or Surluce, reminiscent of the
French Sorlingues, if it be not Scilly must remain unidentified. The
first mention of it is in the history of La Cote Male Taile, where
it is said that Sir Lancelot and the damsel Maledisant (afterwards
known as Bienpensant) “rode forth a great while until they came
to the border of the county of Surluse, and there they found a fair
village with a strong bridge like a fortress.” A later reference shows
that it was in and about Cornwall that the knights were at this time
staying and seeking adventures with the king; and the “riding forth
a great while to the border of the country of Surluse” would fit in
with the idea that Cornwall and Scilly were not then divided by the
sea, but formed part of the kingdom of Lyonnesse. Sir Tristram, who is
essentially a Lyonnesse knight, was sought in the country of Surluse
when he had vanished during the period of King Mark’s treachery; and
there seems no doubt that, though an accessible part of the kingdom,
it was a considerable distance away, and perhaps somewhat out of the
beaten track. Sir Galahalt, “the haut prince,” was its ruler, and
he was resorted to by the knights; but we are distinctly told that
“the which country was within the lands of King Arthur,” and for that
reason Sir Galahalt could not even arrange a joust without obtaining
his sovereign’s consent. Again, Sir Galahalt was known as Sir Galahalt
“of the Long Isles,” which admits of a fair deduction, and seems not
without its significance in this argument.
[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]
THE ROCKY VALLEY, TINTAGEL
[_To face p. 40_]
The “guarded Mount,” dedicated to St. Michael, overlooks the long
Atlantic waves, the waste of waters, and “towards Namancos and Bayona’s
hold,” and this Ultima Thule is thronged with traditions of Arthur and
his lost territory. Grim, cavernous Pengwaed, or Land’s End, with its
granite rocks; the Lizard, and Penzance, the last town in England, are
all stored with these old memories; and the waves flooding the bays
tell of that younger time over which hangs perpetual shadow. This is
the Lyonnesse of Tennyson’s imagining, the
“Land of old, upheaven from the abyss
By fire, to sink into the abyss again,”
where long hillocks dip down to the sea-line, where the coast spreads
out into shifting treacherous sand, and where amid the dreary plains
the Silures fought their battles for life and freedom.[6] At Vellan,
Arthur slaughtered so many Danes that the mill next day was worked
with blood. Land’s End still shows its “Field of Slaughter,” and by
the coast Arthur and Mordred met during the last conflict. Lyonnesse
may have included Armorica also, still rich with its incomparable
traditions and its unsurpassed folk-songs. For once the people of
Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales, speaking practically the same tongue,
lavished all their poetic wealth upon the Arthurian cycle of legendary
history, claimed the knights in common, and each still claims to
possess the more famous shrines. Merlin’s forest thus becomes a part
of Lyonnesse; Joyous Gard (as we shall presently see) can still be
found in Brittany, instead of Northumberland; and Avalon, instead of
being a pilgrim’s resort in Somerset, is an island off the Breton
coast, seen dimly from the wild moorland country, strewn with
dolmens, and reaching down to a shore of silvery sands. Between the
orange-coloured rocks “the sea rushes up in deep blue and brilliant
green waves of indescribable transparency. On a bright summer day the
whole scene is one of unspeakable radiance. Delightful little walks
wind round the western headland, where more groups of rock appear, as
weird and fantastic as the first.”[7] And across the stretch of azure
sea lies the dim islet which Breton legend affirms is King Arthur’s
resting-place. When we consider the French sources of the history
compiled by Geoffrey, Wace, and Map, the reasonableness of believing
that Avalon was at first located in Brittany becomes at once apparent,
and the wonder is that in this and many other cases the transference
of the scenes to England should have been so complete or that English
equivalents should have been so readily accepted.
The more obscure names of places would doubtless be identified if the
search were more assiduous in Brittany than in Britain, and if the
original Breton nomenclature were used as a basis. Tristram, Iseult,
and Lancelot at least are French, and the prevailing tone of the
romances in which they figure is French; we must look to Brittany
for some part of the scenery.[8] At various times it has been stated
that Sir Lancelot’s Joyous Gard was none other than Alnwick, or else
Bamborough Castle, in Northumberland, a structure which dates from the
year 554, and may have been the site of an earlier stronghold.[9] But
why Sir Lancelot, a Breton Knight of Arthur’s Court, whose exploits are
confined to Lyonnesse, the southern portion of King Arthur’s territory,
should have had his castle located in the north cannot be determined,
unless we so far revise our opinions as to credit (as some have done)
the existence of a Scotch knight of that name. Instead of looking to
Northumberland for Sir Lancelot’s stronghold, and endeavouring to
identify Bamborough as his residence, why not turn straightway to
France, his native land, and accept such facts as are there to be
found? The chronicle of Malory itself says that Joyous Gard was “over
sea.” Beyond the forest of Landerneau may still be seen the traditional
site of a Chateau de la Joyeuse-Garde, with an ancient gateway and a
Gothic vault of the twelfth century remaining. Here at least we find
the name; the Breton regards the spot as that which Lancelot, the
Breton knight, claimed as his own; and the scene is in that Armorica
from which the original traditions sprang, or, at least, where they
took earliest root.[10] In addition to Joyous Gard, Brittany boasts of
its Tristan Island in the Bay of Douarnenez, named after the “Tristan
des Léonais” who was the rival of King Mark. King Mark, too (“Marc’h,”
in the original, signifying horse, and so named because of his pointed
ears), has his own locality, for according to Breton legend he was not
ruler of Cornwall but of Plomarc’h, which place lies a little to the
east of Douarnenez and contains the ruins of his “palace.” But Renan
justly inquired, if Armorica saw the birth of the Arthurian cycle, how
was it that we failed to find there any traces of the nativity?
Cameliard is a tract in some respects not so hard to define or
locate as Lyonnesse. The town of Brecknock, three miles from which
is Arthur’s Hill, seems to have marked one of its borders, and its
capital was a now undiscoverable city, Carohaise. Ritson believes
that Arthur’s kingdom could not have been considerable, and he is
disposed to grant him the lordship only over Devon and Cornwall,
with perhaps some territory in South Wales, the land called Gore or
Gower. Be that as it may, his name, by a series of links, extends
from Cornwall to Northumberland, from the Scillies to London, and
from London to Carlisle. The British tribe, the Silures, to which
Arthur belonged, occupied the region now divided into the counties
of Hereford, Monmouth and Glamorgan. Brecknock and Radnor may have
been added, and it is certain that Arthur had supreme dominion over
Cornwall and part of Somerset and Devon. Any “kings” of these places,
such as Erbin, father of Geraint, must have been tributary to him.
Tacitus has left us an account of the valour, the determination, and
the warrior qualities of the Silures, who had Iberian blood in their
veins. It was after the Roman and Saxon invasions that they removed
their seat of Government from London to Siluria, Arthur having his
court at Caerleon. The Britons were a Christian race, for that religion
had been introduced among the Latinised Brythonic tribes before the
end of the second century. This race prevailed over the Goidels and
Ivernians in the territory, and on the recall of the Roman legions
one of the Brythons succeeded the Dux Britanniarum and thus became
the head of the Cymry (or Cambroges, “fellow-countrymen”). Saxon
Cerdic and his son Cymric for twenty years found it impossible to
break through the forest districts west of the Avon, which formed the
outwork of the British forces; and we may almost take it for granted
that at one time the whole of the west country was in Arthur’s power,
a line from Liddlesdale in the north to the southern extremity of
Lyonnesse, taking in Cumberland, Wales (and perhaps Staffordshire and
Shropshire), Devon and Cornwall, roughly marking the boundary. But his
reported excursions north of the Trent and to the east counties would
also lead to the inference that for some time the tribe overran the
major part of the country. Hence we can account for the large number
of scattered memorials of the monarch found in all parts of the land,
though superstition may have attached his name to many places where
he was absolutely unknown. Arthur’s Seats, or Quoits, abound. They
are to be found both in North and South Wales, and the name seems
to have been given to any rock or commanding situation which in the
popular fancy was fit to bear it. In Anglesey, in the wooded grounds of
Llwyliarth a seat of the Lloyd family, a rocking stone, the famous Maen
Chwf, is called Arthur’s Quoit. Cefn Bryn ridge in Glamorganshire, an
imposing elevation, is crowned with a cromlech, together with numerous
cairns and tumuli. The cromlech, known as Arthur’s Stone, is a mass
of millstone grit fourteen feet long and seven feet two inches deep,
and rests upon a number of upright supporters each five feet high. In
the Welsh Triads this cromlech, which is near the turnpike road from
Reynoldstone to Swansea, is alluded to as “the big stone of Sketty,”
and it ranks as one of the wonders of Wales. Another such stone is to
be found in Moccas parish, Herefordshire, the cromlech in this case
being eighteen feet long, nine feet broad, and twelve feet thick, and
supported originally by eleven upright pillars. The colossal king
was to have colossal monuments. Brecknockshire has several imposing
memorials of Arthur. Five miles south of Brecon rise the twin peaks of
the mountain range, and they are designated Arthur’s Chair. A massive
British cromlech adjoining the park of Mocras Court is called Arthur’s
Table. On the edge of Gossmoor there is a large stone upon which are
impressed marks resembling four horse-shoes. Tradition asserts that
these marks were made by the horse King Arthur rode when he resided
at Castle Denis and hunted on the moors. Between Mold and Denbigh is
Moel Arthur, an ancient British fort, defended by two ditches of great
depth. At Rhuthyn (Ruthin) in the vicinity King Arthur is said to have
beheaded his enemy Huail (Howel), to whom Gildas refers. The record
might be extended indefinitely, though no valid argument can be based
upon any of the facts. The indiscriminate use of Arthur’s name often
shows an extravagance of imagination and a reckless disregard of what
is appropriate. Between Mold and Ruthin, for instance, is Maen Arthur,
a stone which popular fancy has adjudged to bear the exact impression
of the hoof of the king’s steed. There is something like substantial
reason for believing that the British hero was connected with Monmouth,
Cardiff, and even with Dover, and either the Arthur of the Silures or
another British chief seems to have reached Carlisle--that is, if the
chronicles did not confuse Cardoile with Carduel. The Cumbrian Arthur
figures in two ancient ballads, “The Marriage of Gawaine,” and “The Boy
and the Mantle,” while Scott’s poem of Arthur and his Court at Carlisle
is, of course, too well known to need more than a reference. In the
time of Baeda Carlisle was known as Lugubalia, which name by corruption
became Luel. The British prefix Caer, a stone fort, made the name
Caer-Luel, and as such it was long known. It gradually degenerated into
Carliol, and finally became Carlisle. That the ancient city should
have become confused with Caerleon is natural and explicable. Yet
Arthur’s connection with a portion of the north is strongly insisted
on. Where Wigan now stands he fought a famous battle. Pendragon Castle
in Westmoreland claims him as its founder; and passing by easy stages
we find ourselves confronted with a Northumbrian Arthur. From this
point the transition to Scotland itself is extremely easy, the lowland
part of that country being claimed as the veritable Cameliard.
According to no mean authority, we must leave England entirely and
search in the North alone for the sites, not only of King Arthur’s
battles, but for all the places connected with his exploits and his
residence. Badon is then found in Linlithgowshire at Bowden Hill, and
the great battle of Arderydd is located at Arthuret in Liddlesdale.
The Scotch Merlin and the Scotch Lancelot are the king’s companions,
and a Scotch Gildas is the historian. The resting place of Avalon is
then found in the caverns of the Eildon Hills, and the voice to rouse
him from his charmed sleep will echo through them and “peal proud
Arthur’s march from fairyland.” As a curious fact it may be mentioned
that nearly all the heroes of the “Four Ancient Books of Wales” are
traced to Scotland, and admittedly in the Arthurian legend the British
king was connected with as northern a place as the Orkneys by the
marriage of his sister to the king of those islands. Of King Arthur,
the Scotch ballad rudely tells that when he ruled that land he “ruled
it like a swine.” The story of the king was the diversion of James
V., who may have known that Drummelziar on the Tweed could boast of a
Holy Thorn like Glastonbury, that there was an Arthur’s Oven on the
Carron near Falkirk, and that Guinevere’s sepulchre was at Meigle in
Strathmore. Edinburgh, or Agnet, is positively represented as the site
where the Castle of Maidens stood, and the lion-shaped Arthur’s Hill
is supposed to confirm the tradition that here the king abode and
made his name.[11] His tomb is pointed out in Perthshire, and all the
machinery of the romances is claimed as of Scotch origin and invention.
The names of localities are traced, and by transporting Arthur boldly
to the Lowlands we account more easily for his rapid incursions into
Northumberland and of the country north of the Trent, if we cannot for
his equally rapid journeys to Dover and Almesbury and Winchester.
Are not the interchangeability of names and the duplication of persons
and places susceptible of a very simple explanation? Caerleon, or
Carduel, was confused with Carlisle, each in itself a fitting and
likely place for Arthurian exploits; the historians were grievously
misled as to Winchester and the part it occupied in the romances;
and we know now that various contradictions simply arose from the
confusion in the minds of the chroniclers, who never seemed to have
been quite certain whether Caledonia and Calydon were not one and
the same, whether Camelot was inland or by the sea, whether Joyous
Gard was a few days’ or a few months’ journey from Cornwall, whether
Camelot was in England or in Wales, whether Arthur’s “owne castell”
at Tintagel could be reached by “riding all night” from London, or
whether Lyonnesse was Cornwall or Brittany. A hundred topographical
complexities meet us wherever we look, and the sole conclusion of the
matter is that Geoffrey and his successors inextricably mixed Scotch,
Welsh, and Armoric details both in regard to the stories and the
localities. The historians made no effort to be consistent in their
allusions, to reconcile contradictory statements, or to account for
abrupt changes of scene from the South-West to the North. While they
endeavoured to concentrate Arthur’s kingdom in South Wales and Cornwall
they made occasional sweeps to Berwick and Edinburgh, and annihilated
the distance between Dover and Carlisle. To add to the confusion there
were names, especially in the Lowlands of Scotland and in the West of
England, of the same derivation, and, as Mr. Glennie has demonstrated,
it is as easy to discover a Caledonian Caerleon, Avalon, or Camelot as
it is to discover any of them in the district once called Cameliard.
The unravelling of the skein, which became more and more entangled
as new hands developed the romances, is now almost an impossibility.
Arthur’s own name was changed, and it has been affirmed that he is
still confused with Arthurius of Gwent, and with others of like name
who were distinct persons. The conclusion of the whole matter must
be that names in the romances are a source of error and confusion;
that different significances were attached to them by the chroniclers
themselves, and that if the truth be ever established totally new
meanings may be expected.
Let me here give one instance of possible confusion of names, and
broach a somewhat bold theory. The name Camelford, the scene of the
last battle, is by some said to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon
_gafol_, meaning “tribute,” the spot so called marking the ford where
of old time tribute was paid. The name Guildford is also declared to
have a similar signification, and, in fact, to be but a variation
of Camelford. If this be so, a curious point arises. Guildford is
mentioned towards the close of the Arthurian history. Sir Lancelot
and the king having parted company, it is recorded that Arthur
“departed towards Winchester with his fellowship. And so by the way
the king lodged in a towne called Astolat, which is now in English
called Gilford.” Upon this Mr. Aldis Wright observes: “Guildford in
Surrey is no doubt the place alluded to; but I am not aware that the
name of Astolat or Astolot (Caxton) is given to it in any authentic
history.” It may be argued that King Arthur would be more likely to
pass through Guildford, Surrey, than through Camelford, Cornwall. But
his starting point is not certain, and it must be specially noted that
the Winchester to which he was making his way was not Winchester in
Hampshire but “Camelot, that is, Winchester” (Book XVIII., c. 9). The
unauthorised and even absurd interpolation that Camelot was Winchester
at once changes the whole argument. Disregarding this misleading
explanation we find that Arthur was on his way to Camelot from one of
his Courts, and if Camelot was in Somersetshire it is most likely that
Camelford would be one of the intermediate stages. But the importance
of the whole contention is this: Astolat, as frequently mentioned in
connection with the “faire maide” Elaine and Sir Lancelot’s worthiest
love episode, is undiscoverable. The name is unknown outside romance;
and though we are assured that it is “now in English called Gilford,”
no authority can be found for the assertion. Besides, Guildford in
Surrey was rather beyond the borders of the British Kingdom, even
granting occasional excursions to Middlesex and Kent. But if Guildford
were synonymous with Camelford, as the derivation permits us to
believe, then Astolat was none other than Camelford, and at once there
are light and order where formerly prevailed obscurity and confusion.
Another point worth mention is that, although tradition marks Camelford
as the actual scene of important events in the Arthurian history, and
although from its situation, its proximity to Tintagel, and its steep
hill suitable to be crowned by a baron’s castle such as Sir Bernard of
Astolat possessed, we may safely surmise that it was well known to
the ever-journeying knights, yet the actual name of Camelford is never
mentioned in the chronicles. As it was of Anglo-Saxon origin, this
omission would easily be accounted for in the earliest records, while
if Astolat was the traditional name it is at once clear how it could
equally be applied to Camelford and to Guildford. We must of course
remember that where the chroniclers themselves sought to elucidate they
too often confused; the finger-posts they set up have started many
upon weary and fruitless journeys, and the guidance offered with such
confidence turns out most commonly to be the most random of guesses.
If, however, we may place the slightest credence in the “Astolat, which
is now in English called Gilford,” as much can be said for “Gilford”
being “Gafolford” or Camelford, as for its being “Gyldeford” or
Guildford. The stretch of low-lying level fields on either side of the
Camel, the sharp-peaked hills in the distance, the dark meres among the
hills, and the angry sea lashing against the rocks visible a mile or
two away, all accord with the typical scenery of King Arthur’s realm,
and make us not unwilling to believe that famous Astolat was here to be
found.
When all is told, when all the searching is ended, it is found that
some half-dozen places only stand out pre-eminent from the host of
localities in the West in each of which only a single seed seems to
have germinated; and these half-dozen places, like the last citadels of
the hero, resist every effort and assault of the invader to dislodge
the traditions of Arthur. I have not attempted to write a history of
these places, but only to say something of their aspect to-day and of
the chief events and ancient traditions linked with their names. Now
and again I mention facts of later date for the purpose of showing
that these famous spots have continued to be the centres of activity
and connected with great characters; but in the main I confine myself
to the legends of Arthur and to the episodes of chivalry. To have
attempted more would have entailed not only a far more comprehensive
work, but the treatment of the subject in a more scientific spirit than
is here displayed. The object has been to deal rather with the romantic
side than with the technical, for which the deep scholarship of a Rhys
or a Müller alone can be the qualification. It is necessary to premise
also that of the most conspicuous Arthurian localities nothing but the
bare tradition can be recorded. That tradition lives and is cherished,
but its origin is undiscoverable. The sap lingers in the branches,
but the roots are detached and lost. The legend is spread everywhere,
but there are no verities. The visitor to the Arthurian scenes finds
nothing but eponymous names and superstitions--indeed, the evidence
present leads him to other conclusions than those he seeks. He looks
for a British encampment, and he finds a _post_-Roman; he looks for a
relic of Arthur, and he finds one of Antoninus. What is persistently
ascribed to the British hero, or associated with his times, is either
intangible or is irreconcilable with existing facts. Castles he is
said to have inhabited were built centuries after his death, and there
can only remain the free speculation that they mark the site of a
former structure of which no trace remains and of which no record was
made. Spots which are called King Arthur’s grave, or his seat, or his
hunting-ground, or his camp, neither he nor his band, it often happens,
could ever have been near. We look for persons, and we find a crowd of
phantoms; we eagerly watch for demonstrations, and we find myth and
fable; we hope to see the clear page of history, and we find a page
that is undecipherable or blotted with shadows. Records are effaced,
song and story delude, the track to truth is almost closed. Everything
crumbles into dust at the touch, like Guinevere’s golden hair, and
nothing is now left but the pure romance. And some of us may be content
and almost glad to have it so.