OF TINTAGEL
“There is a place within
The winding Severne sea,
On mids of rock, about whose foote
The tydes turn, keeping play,
A tower-y toppèd castle here,
Wide blazeth over all,
Which Corineus’ ancient broode
Tintagel Castle call.”--_Camden._
“Thou seest dark Cornwall’s rifted shore,
Old Arthur’s stern and rugged keep,
There, where proud billows dash and roar,
His haughty turret guards the deep.
“And mark yon bird of sable wing,
Talons and beak all red with blood,
The spirit of the long-lost king
Passed in that shape from Camlan’s flood.”
_R. S. Hawker._
Cornwall, the horn-shaped land, far removed from the great centres
of progress and industry, the land of giants, of a separate people
who until the last century spoke its own language;[15] the land
of holy wells and saints, of hut circles, dolmens, and earthwork
forts, memorials of extreme antiquity; the land of many stone crosses
indicating the early influence of Christianity; the land of so-called
giants’ quoits, chairs, spoons, punch-bowls, and mounds, sometimes the
work of primitive man, sometimes the work of fantastic Nature--this is
the land in which romance lingers and in which superstition thrives,
the land upon which seems to rest unmoving the shadow of the past.
Olden customs survive, the old fashion is not departed from. The
quaintness, the simplicity, the quietude, the charm of a bygone age may
be found yet in that part which Taylor, the water poet, described as
“the compleate and repleate Home of Abundance, noted for high churlish
hills, and affable courteous People.”
A tour through the land which romance has marked out for her own, and
where the fords, bridges, hills, and rocks are called after Arthur
or associated by tradition with his exploits, becomes easier every
year by the development of railways, little known in the wilder parts
until a decade or so ago. It must be sorrowfully confessed that the
visit to Tintagel, despite its charm, results in a certain amount
of disillusion. It contains no relic, nothing that can verily be
imagined a relic, of the old, old times when the flower of chivalry
ruled. As one walks down the solitary street and glances around he
sees that Tintagel is an antique, picturesque little place with its
quaint post-office of yore--battered by time, the roof fallen, and the
stonework disjointed--with its stunted cottages, its typical village
shop and hostelry, and its lonely church on the cliffs. Tintagel, as
it is, is unique, but it is not Arthurian unless we go direct to those
parts where Nature is not and never has been molested. The Pentargon
heights, the great gorges, the weird bays and caves, the rock-strewn
valleys, the imposing waterfalls--from these may be constructed the
scenery for the drama of the warlike king and his adventurous knights.
The huge bank of earth enclosing an oblong space, with its remnant of
stone-lining found near St. Breavard, is fitly called King Arthur’s
Hall. Such relics as are found in and near Tintagel are posterior to
King Arthur’s era. There is a Saxon cross to be seen, erected to the
memory of one Ælnat, a Saxon. A sybstel, or family pillar, with Saxon
inscription, found in Lanteglos Church, near Camelford, and a Roman
stone discovered in Tintagel churchyard, are ancient memorials of the
highest interest. Relics of the bronze age have been discovered also,
though the influence of the Phœnician tin-traders did not seemingly
extend to this mid part of Cornwall.
Tintagel, as the first locality mentioned in the romance, has a
special claim to attention: “It befell in the days of the noble Uther
Pendragon, when he was King of all England, and so reigned, that there
was a mighty and a noble Duke in Cornwalle that held long time wars
against him; and the Duke was named the Duke of Tintagil.” So run
the opening lines, introducing us at once to the western territory
and to the rocky stronghold indissolubly linked with Arthur’s fame.
Strange to say, however, the place is absolutely ignored in the later
half of the history, despite the fact that Cornwall was the scene of
some of the most important concluding events. Tintagel was apparently
forgotten by the chroniclers after the story of Tristram was related,
and the last mention of it as King Mark’s Castle, where treachery was
followed by bloodshed, where the allegiance of the knights began to
decline, and where folly, wantonness, and shame served as omens of
coming disaster and of the impending shock to the realm which Arthur
had made. The history of Tintagel begins in a tale of shame, though
King Uther’s deceit of Igraine appears to have been regarded less as
dishonour to himself than as a sign of his own and Merlin’s strategy
and venturesomeness.[16] Uther, having compassed the death of Gorlois,
had no further difficulty in persuading Igraine to become his wife, and
their son was Arthur, who at his birth was delivered to Sir Ector, “a
lord of faire livelyhood,” to be nourished as one of his own family.
The death of Uther while his son was yet an infant left the succession
in some doubt, and in order to prove Arthur’s right to the crown the
familiar device was adopted of drawing a sword from a stone. The
scene of the contest in which Arthur, now assumed by the chroniclers
to be a goodly youth, and Sir Ector’s son took part, is vaguely
described as being “the churchyard of the greatest church in London”;
and it is needless to say that only Arthur proved equal to the feat
of pulling the sword from the marble and the steel anvil in which it
stood. The letters of gold on the sword declared that “whoso pulleth
out this sword of this stone and anvile, is rightwise king borne of
England,” and Sir Ector and Sir Kay, his defeated son and Arthur’s
foster-brother, were the first to kneel to Arthur as their lord when
they saw Excalibur in his hand. Before the lords and commons Arthur
again proved his right and royalty at the feast of Pentecost, and with
the help of Merlin he proceeded immediately to establish his kingdom,
which, during Uther’s illness and after his death, had stood “in great
jeopardie.”
Gorlois, the husband of Igraine, had been the possessor of two castles,
Tintagel and Terabyl (or Damaliock), which may be judged to have been
at no great distance from one another. Terabyl is untraceable, though
it has been suggested that while Tintagel Castle was solely upon the
peninsula (Barras Head) which juts into the sea, Terabyl was the
castle upon the mainland. This theory is untenable. It is only in
comparatively recent times, with the widening of the chasm between the
peninsula and the mainland, that a division of any importance can be
noticed; and it is safe to assume that there was never more than one
castle at Tintagel. The rent in the rocks was spanned by a huge bridge,
as the crenellated walls now reaching to the edge on either side and
in a direct line with each other plainly attest. Terabyl, in which the
Duke entrenched himself when Uther Pendragon brought his hosts against
him, was evidently further inland than Tintagel, and the latter,
distinctly avowed to be “ten miles hence,” was selected as the refuge
for Igraine. Uther, marching southward from Camelot, reached Terabyl
first and laid siege to it; to reach Igraine at Tintagel he had still
to ride some distance. “The Duke of Tintagil espied how the king rode
from the siege of Terrabil, and, therefore, that night he issued out
of the castle at a posterne”--(Terabyl was noted for its “many issues
and pasternes out”)--“for to have distressed the king’s host. And so,
through his own issue, the Duke himself was slain or ever the king
came at the castle of Tintagil.” Geoffrey of Monmouth calls Terabyl
“castellum Dimilioc,” but under this name it is no less a mystery.
As it receives incidental mention only twice afterwards we may well
be content to rank Terabyl among the cities of romance, the names of
which alone existed. It may have been as unsubstantial as the enchanted
cities created by mysterious maidens for their courteous and faithful
lovers, which cities vanished in a night if vows were broken or false
words uttered.
It is said in some of the romances that twice a year the Castle of
Tintagel became invisible to the eyes of the common people. To-day it
is only in imagination that we can perceive the real castle of Arthur,
for whatever British fortress may ever have risen on these heights has
long since vanished--crumbled away into dust which is as nothingness.
Authentic history takes us back only to the time of the Norman
Conquest, when Tintagel was entered in Domesday Book as Dunchine, or
Chain Castle. It is the firm opinion of archæologists that the Romans
entrenched themselves here and left signs of their occupation, and
there are the strongest reasons for believing that Tintagel was a
British place of defence before the Roman invasion. Nature had marked
out the rocky height as a stronghold, and a race like the Britons
could scarcely have failed to avail themselves of all the advantages
it offered. But when we first read of Tintagel Castle apart from the
romances we find it in the occupation of English princes, notably of
Richard, Earl of Cornwall, otherwise known as the King of the Romans,
who in 1245 gave noble entertainment to his nephew, Prince of Wales,
then carrying on a desperate war for freedom against the English king.
The use of Tintagel as a prison from which escape was almost impossible
was recognised from early times until the reign of Elizabeth, at which
era it began to fall into decay; and it was within the loneliest and
most exposed portion of the island that John Northampton, Lord Mayor
of London, who had abused his office, was immured for life by order of
Richard II. A sculptured moorstone, now moss-covered and illegible,
commonly called the altar-stone of King Arthur’s Chapel, is believed in
reality to be a monument of John Northampton’s own carving, wrought to
pass away the dreary days in his dungeon, and now marking the place of
his tomb. What is known as King Arthur’s Chapel is a spacious chamber
fifty-four feet long and twelve feet wide, the outline of which is
barely traceable. It is supposed to have been dedicated to Saint Uliane.
In Leland’s time Tintagel Castle was “sore wether-beten an yn ruine,”
and whether it was ever the stronghold of Arthur history does not
determine. The name was formerly Dundagil, meaning “the impregnable
fortress,” and Geoffrey of Monmouth did not exaggerate when he wrote
of it: “It is situated upon the sea, and on every side surrounded by
it, and there is but one entrance into it, and that through a straight
rock, which three men shall be able to defend against the whole of
the kingdom.” Leland, less interested in the matter, testified that
“the castelle hath bene a marvelus strong and notable forteres, and a
large thinge.... Without the isle rennith alonly a gate-house, a walle,
and a fals braye dyged and walled. In this isle remayne old walles,
and in the est part of the same, the ground beying lower, remaynith a
walle embateled, and men abyve saw thereyn a postern dore of yren.”
The chronicler and antiquary Carew supplies further evidence of the
strength of the structure. “The cyment,” he says, “wherewith the stones
were laid, resisteth the fretting furie of the weather better than
the stones themselves,” a fact which is strongly commented on also by
Norden, who thought that “neither time nor force of hands could sever
one from the other.” “Half the buildings,” continues Carew, “were
raised on the continent (the mainland) and the other halfe on an
island, continued together by a drawbridge, but now divorced by the
downfalne steepe cliffes on the further side.” There is a consensus
of opinion as to this drawbridge, Camden and other trustworthy
historians all confirming the report as to its existence, and this
further proves that there were not two castles at Tintagel.[17] The
gigantic impression of a foot is pointed out to credulous pilgrims;
it is the print left by King Arthur’s foot when he strode across
the chasm--backwards. This is as much to be relied upon as the fact
that the basins worn by the winds and waves in the rocks were King
Arthur’s cups and saucers, and that a dizzy dip of the heights over
the sea constituted his chair. It is surprising that the immense and
awe-inspiring caverns have escaped the fate of being called King
Arthur’s drinking-bowls. Yet all these conceits have their value as
proof of the deep-rooted belief in the king’s might as a monarch and
his stupendous stature as a man. The hero is rapidly passing into the
myth when such attributes are ascribed to him.
[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]
KING ARTHUR’S CASTLE, TINTAGEL
[_To face p. 96_]
Tintagel must have been even more impressive a scene a few centuries
ago than it is to-day, despite its wild sublimity in ruin. One more
witness of old time may be called forth to give his evidence of what it
was before the walls had been so buffeted and brought so low.
“A statelye and impregnable seate,” is Norden’s testimony, “now rent
and rugged by force of time and tempests; her ruines testifye her
pristine worth, the view whereof, and due observation of her situation,
shape, and condition in all partes, may move commiseration that such
a statelye pile should perish for want of honourable presence. Nature
hath fortified, and art dyd once beautifie it, in such sorte as it
leaveth unto this age wonder and imitation.” Tintagel is to be visited
rather than described, though our most luxuriant poets have painted
it with lavish richness of words, and artists have depicted some of
its natural beauties in the most radiant of colours. From many a rocky
verge can be seen the dark remnants of Arthur’s fortress, inaccessible
on all sides but one; from the deep base the ocean spreads out without
bound, surging and boiling and casting up steam-like fountains of
hissing foam. Only a few arches and rude flights of steps, surmounted
by a frail-looking wooden door, now remain, with some fallen walls
which imperfectly outline the shape of what were once spacious royal
chambers. On a carpet of turf wander the small mountain sheep, and
pick their way about the narrow precipitous paths which wind around
the jagged sides of the cliffs. The fortifications are in ruin, and
the battlemented walls which encompassed the massive steeps are now
nothing but disconnected strips over which the curious traveller
looks into the angry waters grinding and regurgitating far below. The
noble bridge which once stretched across the yawning chasm dividing
the two promontories must alone be imagined, though its beginnings on
each side may be traced by the line of low stone arches reaching, and
stopping abruptly at, the edge. The hills “that first see bared the
morning’s breast,” the heights “the sun last yearns to from the west,”
as Swinburne has sung, are eternal, but Arthur’s castle has gone, and
Tintagel, “half in sea and high on land, a crown of towers,” is even
called by the dwellers no more by its old inspiring name.
The very mention of Cornish seas has an alluring sound, and one already
feels in the realm of romance when he descries in the mellow light of
an afternoon in late summer that smallest of villages perched upon
a rock overlooking the bluest of seas with its perpetual fringe of
powdery foam. Here at the edge of the Atlantic is a most beguiling
stretch of water, filling innumerable bays--water so clear and calm and
deep-hued far away that it is hard to realise that it makes a cruel and
treacherous sea in which only on the gentlest of days dare a swimmer
plunge and feel his way among the underlying rocks, or upon the roaring
waves of which dare a hardy sailor venture his boat. In storm this sea
is terrible. The waves upheave themselves like solid hillocks of water,
black at the base, and hurl themselves with appalling force against
the huge rocks, which have already been worn and broken by them into a
thousand fantastic shapes. Here and there the propelling force of the
incoming tide, working like a gigantic engine, sends with torrent-force
along narrow open passages a seething stream which beats its way
upward and dashes headlong over the barriers of wood and stone; and the
great smoke-coloured waves beyond rear themselves heavily, topple, and
crash down into the abyss with thunderous roaring. On they come, nearer
and nearer, louder and louder, those hard, rising, climbing, dissolving
bodies of incalculable strength, dashing themselves furiously over
every obstacle, sweeping with a hiss across the tracts of sand, and
obliterating the tall rocks which can be toilsomely climbed when the
waters retreat. Beneath this raging, battering sea lies a fabled
domain with all its fair cities and towers, and every watcher of those
stupendous, merciless billows can realise their potentiality to tear
away the land and drag it into the unseen deeps. Storm at Tintagel or
Trebarwith is both revelation and conviction: it is a manifestation
of remorselessness, a suggestion of irreparable ruin, desolation, and
loss. Easy indeed is it to imagine that the treacherous and cruel waves
driving rapaciously landward have already had their victory and are
savagely seeking to extend their conquest, and that hereabout lie “the
sad sea-sounding wastes of Lyonnesse.”
No one has described this wildly beautiful sea with greater charm and
realism than Swinburne, who has watched it in all moods, seen it in
the blueness of calm, seen it strive and shiver “like spread wings of
angels blown by the sun’s breath,” seen it when the glad exhilarated
swimmer feels
“The sharp sweet minute’s kiss
Given of the wave’s lip, for a breath’s space curled
And pure as at the daytime of the world,”
--seen it again when the east wind made the water thrill, and the
soft light went out of all its face, and the green hardened into iron
blue. A walk from Camelford to Tintagel, passing Trebarwith, and on
from Tintagel to Boscastle, passing Bossiney and many a smaller cove
on the way, reveals the most wonderful and alluring of all changeful
sea-pictures, and displays most vividly the marvel and magic of the
rugged coast. The towering rocks have been wrought by time and carved
by wind and wave into grotesque images, broken at the base into sunless
caves, worn at the heights into sharp and gleaming pinnacles, fretted
and cut, rounded and cracked, sundered and cast down, the massive
blocks made veritably the sport of the elements, so that the beholder
may easily believe himself in the realm of enchantment. All the
sounding shores of Bude and Boss are legend-haunted. The mariner hears
the chime and toll of the lost bells of Bottreaux when he comes within
sight of the “silent tower,” which stands white and grim upon the
headland. The wail of lured voyagers and the despairing lament of the
smugglers who brought them with false lights to their doom are listened
to in awe on stormy nights, and there are visions of good ships that
went down among the rocks in the tragic desperate days of which so many
ghastly tales are told. The last of the Cornish wreckers, for whom,
when he lay dying, a ship with red sails came in a tremendous sea and
bore him shrieking away, looms as an apparition on the darkest nights,
and the cries of tormented spirits mingle with the blast. Merlin, with
flowing beard, is said to pace the shore, and Arthur and his knights
to revisit the scenes of their exploits. The spirit of the king hovers
about sea and land in the form of the almost sacred chough, reverenced
and preserved by the inhabitants that they may not unwittingly injure
their hero. Further north at Bude Haven the long Atlantic breakers
roll, and perhaps there is no more imposing spectacle than the coil
of waves coming in upon the far-extending and rock-strewn sands. The
undulations, miles long, seem to rise and curl far out at sea at short
regular distances from each other, and mass upon mass they break
with thunder-sound and cataract upon the shore. The most brilliant of
sunsets glow in the perfect summer weather when day dies slowly over
these “far-rolling, westward-smiling seas,” and they leave the night
still radiant. The whole land is sweet and bright with flowers: on
one side lies the glittering surf lacing itself in white foam about
the boulders, and on the other side rises the circle of hills topped
by the massy brown summits of Row Tor and Brown Willy. Sometimes the
deserted quarries give a spectral look to the landscape, and when
the rain spatters and darkens the piles of rough slate the aspect is
weird and gloomy indeed. But given a day of sunshine when the sea is
a sparkling emerald or the deepest of blues, when the sky is clear or
only softened with diaphanous rings of cirrus-cloud, when the moss
glistens on the rocks and the expanse of meadowland is a vivid carpet
of green, when the winding hilly lanes flanked by tall hedges are white
and shadowless, and the little tinkling runlets are silver gleams, and
then this tract of Arthur’s Cornwall is almost the land of faerie which
poets have sung.
[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]
THE ELEPHANT ROCK, BOSSINEY COVE
[_To face p. 102_]
What more fitting than that the grave of Tristram and Iseult should
have been at Tintagel, where the sea they loved came with its strong
and awful tides, and now
“Sweeps above their coffined bones
In the wrecked chancel by the shivered shrine”?
The deep sea guards them and engirds them, and no man shall say where
the lovers lie in their last sleep. King Mark buried the two in one
grave, and planted over it a rose-bush and vine, the branches of which
so intermingled that they became inseparable. Arnold, Swinburne, and
Tennyson have best told the whole story in our language in modern
times. But it is no slight task to trace the literary history and
development of the beautiful theme. A German minnesänger of the twelfth
century, Gotfrit of Strasburg, is the first to whom the romance is
ascribed, though Scott and others have claimed for Thomas of Ercildoune
(Thomas the Rhymer) the best poetic version, only one copy of which
is extant. A thirteenth-century manuscript, which contains a French
metrical version of the romance, has been noted by Lockhart as citing
the authority of Thomas the Rhymer for the story of Tristram and
Iseult; but Thomas’s version was totally different from the prose
romances. Great efforts have been made at one time and another to prove
the story to be of English, French, and German origin, but at least
this much is assured--the principal scenes are English, and the leading
events in the history of Tristram, the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall,
occur at Tintagel. He journeyed to Ireland to bring back the daughter
of the queen of that country, and he journeyed to Brittany to bring
back his own wife, that Iseult of the White Hand who failed to win his
love. His adventures as a Knight of the Round Table took him, as was
usual, over much territory and to foreign lands; but it is to Cornwall
that the interest always returns, and in which it is concentrated.
Among the “wind-hollowed heights and gusty bays” of Tintagel, and
within the “towers washed round with rolling foam,” the knight and
the damsel wedded to King Mark, who had saved him from torture and
death, lived their lives of forbidden love. The Minstrel-knight
suited his voice to the mellow chords of his harp, and wandered about
the woods and beside the sea in the May-time of his happiness with
Iseult the Queen. And when the knight had wedded another Iseult, it
was at Tintagel that Mark’s wife, with her passionate thoughts, her
sorrow, and her despair, sat alone in a casement and heard the night
speak and thunder on the sea “ravening aloud for ruin of lives.” Such
words can be easily comprehended by those who have seen Tintagel in
storm, the wind roaring, the seas flashing white, a blinding mist of
rain between the heavy sky and the weltering waves. The rage of the
elements, the vehemence of the warring tide, the dash and the recoil at
the castle-base, have only their parallel in the human passion which
was too strong for life itself to withstand, when deserted Iseult saw
before her the corpse of her lover. Tristram, ill-fated from birth, was
doomed to die by treachery. He was wounded, and learnt that he could
only be healed by the magic art of the woman he loved, of her who had
cured him before. He sent for Iseult to cross the sea in order to save
him, and commanded the messenger to hoist a white sail if she consented
and was on her way. The white sail was hoisted, but the other Iseult,
the faithful but neglected wife, could not resist saying what jealousy
prompted--that the sail was black. Sir Tristram immediately expired.
Malory’s romance declares that the knight met his death at the hands
of King Mark, who slew him “as he sat harping afore his lady La Beale
Isoud, with a trenchant glaive, for whose death was much bewailing of
every knight that ever were in King Arthur’s days.”
The literary history and the variations of the extremely ancient and
supremely sorrowful story can only be adequately treated in such a
volume as that of M. Losseth, who has given an account of twenty-four
manuscripts containing Tristram’s history, of six works in the French
National Library, of Malory’s version, and of one Italian, two Danish,
and one German translation or original rendering. Some have attributed
the authorship to Cormac of Ireland in the third century; others
believe the Welsh bards first sang it; the French claimed it for
their _trovères_, but have now admitted its British origin. Yet it is
remarkable how French, Cornish, and Irish histories intermingle in the
romance, and how the magic element occasionally enters, spoiling it as
history but enriching it as a legend. The story is one of such pathos
that the predominating influence of the Celt in suggesting and shaping
it must instantly be recognised. But so many have worked on the theme,
early and late--none perhaps with such superb effect as Wagner--that
the primitive conception is apt to be forgotten or ignored; it has been
overlaid with details gathered from many lands, and embellished by the
poetic fancies of many races. The story has become European; Beroul,
Christian of Troyes, Thomas of Brittany, Robert the northern monk,
Eilhard of Oberge, Gottfrid and the other early Germans, the Provençal
minstrels--all these have altered and added to the tale of the knight
who slew the sea-monster, the Morhout, saved the Cornish maidens from
shame and death, was wounded by a poisoned arrow, healed by Iseult the
Beautiful, and both of whom, drinking of a magic love-potion intended
for Iseult’s destined husband, afterwards experienced all the joys and
pangs of an unhallowed love which Dante himself could not refrain from
celebrating and condoning. The story abounds in mystic symbolism, or,
rather, that symbolism has been found in it; and the inevitable Sun-god
myth has been perceived in its details.
Tintagel, a picture in the waters, is at its best when the sky becomes
a rose above it, and the sun dipping into a golden bath leaves a track
gleaming like pearl across the shoaling sea. The waves as they rise
and fall make emerald and purple lines in moments of magic change, and
their crests of foam sparkle jewel-like with a thousand instantaneous
lights. Then “all the rippling green grows royal gold” as the sun,
like a splendid bubble, floats on the water’s edge. Round the pointed
brown rocks are fringes of white foam ever widening and contracting;
the oncoming waters with an exultant bound sometimes spring high in
fountains and then sink slowly and gently as if fairy spires were
dissolving in thinnest powder. Again, with a roar and an access of
strength, the waves return impetuously, raging and grinding, churned
as by some mighty hidden wheel into yeasty foam. Vista-like the long
bright track, now a deep red band, leads back to the inner chambers of
the sun, and the sea draws the orb into its dark, mysterious depths.
The waves lace themselves around the pinky-green islets, and the
verdant headlands, succeeding each other in almost interminable series
till the eye catches the gleam of the Lizard lights, begin to soften
mistily away behind the twilight veil. A little ship, far off, skims
over the sea-rim and disappears; a tiny cloud floats up like a loose
silken sail, silvery white. The seagulls and the choughs flit about the
broken arches of the castle, and shadows fall long and deep across the
deep ravinous path leading inland from the precipitous heights.
At such time Tintagel is telling its own story, weaving its own
romance; and words seem vain when those shattered columns, those
fallen walls, that unbridged chasm, are there to make the tale. Of the
after-history of the place what matters it? We would fain have the
story end, as it began, with Arthur and Guinevere, King Mark, Mage
Merlin, and Tristram and Iseult. Every roll of the breakers is a voice
from the past, and every crumbling chamber a chapter in that history
which only the true poet transcribes. Yet even while such thoughts are
forcing themselves upon the mind of the beholder of a typical August
sunset over Tintagel, the end of the day will be near. The arc of the
sun blazes upon the sea-line, an edge of fiery carmine, and a fleecy
train of cirrus-cloud crimsons with the last rays. Slowly and yet
perceptibly the light dies away and leaves the heaving sea mystically
dusk and the world full of shadows. Darkness looms over Tintagel. The
overhanging crags look as if they might crack, break off, and thunder
down into the open-mouthed sea below. The black chough wheels about
the ruins--the spirit of Arthur, say the people, revisiting the scene
of his glory. Arcturus, the star of Arthur, glistens in the blue sky
right over the castle height, and Arthur’s Harp shapes itself more
dimly further east--for the constellations themselves were named after
the puissant king. The tide is at its height and has flooded the little
stony beach to which a steep path leads; the caves are full; on the
horizon the night-clouds come up and shape themselves into fantastic
forms of towers, and the real which are near, and the imagined which
are far, scarce can be distinguished.
[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]
BARRAS HEAD, TINTAGEL
[_To face p. 110_]
Lytton seems to have had Tintagel, or a very similar place in the
north, in his mind when he described the arrival of the Cymrian
King, pursued by the Saxons, at a beach of far resounding seas where
wave-hollowed caves arched, and
“Column and vault, and seaweed-dripping domes
Long vistas opening through the streets of dark,
Seem’d like a city’s skeleton, the homes
Of giant races vanish’d.”
This tract of land around Tintagel is crowded with memorials and
with relics about which superstition has cast its web. The caer-camp
at Trenail Bury, and the huge stone monuments which lie embedded
in the earth, take us back to British times. The pools, looking
black and weird among the hills, all have their legends, and the
wells commemorate a multitude of saints known only to Cornwall.
Castle-an-Dinas looms majestically at a height of nearly eight hundred
feet against the horizon: here was King Arthur’s hunting ground, and
the remains of the structure cresting the summit was his palace. The
scenes of some of his hard-fought battles are the wide valleys closed
in by the shadowy hills, and the crags dashed by the tumultuous sea.
You may wander at will for miles in any direction still keeping in
sight the sturdy granite church standing exposed on the highest bit of
the coast; you will hear no sound but the whimpering cry of the gulls;
and you will be free to reconstruct here in imagination the vanished
realm of King Arthur, while the words of the old priest, Joseph Iscarus
of Exeter, ring in your ears--
“From this blest place immortal Arthur sprung
Whose wondrous deeds shall be for ever sung,
Sweet music to the ear, sweet honey to the tongue.
The only prince that hears the just applause,
Greatest that e’er shall be, and best that ever was.”