OF CAMELOT AND ALMESBURY
“With tabor blithe and bugle sound,
Unto King Arthur’s Table Round,
Right valiant hearts I wot,
Drink, in thy spirit’s lusty glee,
And pledge with fullest jollity
These knights of Camelot.”--_Richard Hengist Horne._
“King Arthur at Camelot kept his Court Royall
With his faire Queene, Dame Guiniver the gay:
And many bold barons sitting in hall,
With ladies attired in purple and pall:
And heraults with hewkes hooting on high,
Cryed ‘Largesse! Largesse! Chevaliers très-hardies!’”
--_Percy Reliques._
“God’s holy name was on his tongue,
Thine in his heart--Queen Guinevere.”--_Paton._
Those who press the question, where is many-tower’d Camelot, where is
the royal mount rising between the forest and the field, where is the
flashing city of the marvellous gate, may be referred by the veracious
historian to a village in France, or by the unromantic antiquary to a
hamlet in Scotland. Time has razed the real city, wherever it was, and
the poet can invest it with charms and environ it with wonders which
it never possessed. The simple lover of the legend will be content
to find King Arthur’s favourite haunt in the fair domain of England,
amid the sleepy vales and the undisturbed hills of restful Somerset.
On the Mendips, within sight of a long range of wooded verdant hills,
many a tower and steeple dotting the vale which sweeps away until lost
in the bluish haze of distance, here and there a bright homestead
twinkling on the heights or nestling in the bowery hollows, there is a
deserted place called Cadbury Camp. A stone wall winds round an ancient
encampment and marks its bounds, and just across the open land looking
towards Portishead lie the widening waters of the Bristol Channel.
The hills around show every variety of green as they stretch further
and further from the shore, and one would think that the region had
been unvisited for a thousand years. And if tradition be true, this
was Camelot, Camelot where King Arthur sought repose; Camelot where
Sir Lancelot brought the daughter of King Leodegraunce of the land of
Cameliard, “the gentilest and fairest lady”; Camelot where the king was
wedded “unto dame Guenever in the church of St. Stevens with great
solemnitie.” It was at Camelot, on the occasion of this ceremony, that
Merlin bade the knights of the Round Table (the gift of Leodegraunce
to King Arthur) to sit still while he showed them “a strange and
marvellous adventure.” As they sat waiting and expectant, a white hart
ran into the hall, followed by a white brachet (or scenting hound) and
by thirty couple of black running hounds “with a great crie”; and the
hart, wounded by the brachet, overthrew one of the knights, and led Sir
Gawaine, accompanied by Sir Gaheris, upon a wonderful quest, in which
he fought against great odds, slew a lady in a castle by misadventure,
learnt that “a knight without mercy is without worshippe,” and
returning to Camelot, saddened and disgraced, was bidden by the king
and queen henceforth to “be with al ladyes and to fight for their
quarrels.”
It is worthy of note that Gawaine not only plays a most important part
in the romance, but that, like Sir Kay, his character is variously
described and at times unnecessarily assailed by the chroniclers. By
laborious efforts his intentions are perverted and contempt thrown upon
his actions, and the episode of the “foule and shameful” slaying of the
lady enabled the chroniclers to dwell upon his “vilanous” deed and his
mercilessness, while at the same time they were able to explain his
subsequent acts of courtesy as the result of the duty put upon him by
the king. Gawaine was Arthur’s nephew, the son of Morgan le Fay, and
Malory presents him to us alternately as the soul of chivalry and the
type of faithlessness. This accounts for Tennyson’s query, “Art thou
not he whom men call light-of-love?” and for the poet’s assertion that
his courtesy had “a touch of traitor in it.” Gawaine is frequently
made the subject of reproof in the romance, though he came out nobly
in the end when he vowed to be revenged on sinful Lancelot, fought him
valorously, and died like a great hero. According to the original Welsh
story, it must be remembered, Gawaine was called the Golden-Tongued,
owing to his powers of persuasion, none being able to resist him what
he asked. In the Triads he is addressed by Arthur as “Gwalchmai, of
faultless answers,” and revolting Tristram, who dared the king to nine
hundred combats, listened to Gawaine and yielded to his solicitation.
The tomb of Gawaine, according to William of Malmesbury, was discovered
in the time of William the Conqueror in Wales, county Pembroke, where
Lady Charlotte Guest tells us there is a district called Castell
Gwalchmai. Gawaine’s courtesy was proverbial in Chaucer’s time, and
the Welsh historians impute to him great scientific learning--“there
was nothing of which he did not know the elements and the material
essence.” Hence Scott’s reference to “the gentle Gawain’s courteous
lore.”[25] All this is inconsistent with the levity and harshness
attributed to him by Malory, though his wanton betrayal of Sir Pelleas
and his guilty relations with Ettarde exposed him to the charge of
infamy and caused him to lose grace in the sight of those chroniclers
who had begun to give a spiritual significance to the tales of Arthur’s
Court, and to find in the recital opportunities for preaching purity.
Pelleas’s hopeless love for the scornful maiden is one of the saddest
stories which form part of the Arthurian records. In his despair at
being rejected by the “sovereign lady” for whom he had fought and
prevailed, he sought the help of Sir Gawaine--“And, Sir Knight, sith
ye are so nigh a cousin unto King Arthur, and a king’s son, therefore
I pray thee, betray me not, but help me, for I may never come by her
but by the help of some good knight; for she is in a strong castle
here fast by, within this four miles, and over all this country she
is lady of.” Gawaine vowed to serve him, and declared that he would
ride to the castle, taking with him Pelleas’s horse and armour, and
tell her that he had slain her lover: “and so shall I come within to
her, and then shall I do my true part, and ye shall not fail to have
her love.” But instead of winning Ettarde for Pelleas, he won her for
himself, declaring that he had slain Pelleas and had come for her love.
They went out of the castle and dwelt with each other for two days in
a pavilion. The rest of the pitiful story is best told in Malory’s own
words. “And on the third day, in the morning early, Sir Pelleas armed
him, for he had not slept sith that Sir Gawaine departed from him; for
Sir Gawaine had promised him by the faith of his body to come unto him
to his pavilion by the priory within the space of a day and a night.
Then Sir Pelleas mounted on horsebacke, and came to the pavilion that
stood without the castle.... Then hee went to the third pavilion and
found Sir Gawaine with his lady Ettarde; and when he saw that, his
heart almost brast with sorrow, and he said: ‘Alas, that ever a knight
should bee found so false.’ And then he tooke his horse and might no
longer abide for sorrow. And when hee had ridden nigh halfe a mile, he
turned againe and thought to sley them both, and when he saw them lye
so fast sleeping, unneth (scarcely) hee might hold him on horseback
for sorrow, and said thus to himselfe, ‘Though this knight be never so
false, I will not sley him sleeping, for I will never destroy the high
order of knighthood.’ ... And when he came to the pavilions (a third
time) he tied his horse to a tree, and pulled out his sword naked in
his hand, and went straight to them where as they lay together, and
yet he thought that it were great shame for him to sley them sleeping,
and laid the naked sword overthwart both their throats, and then hee
tooke his horse, and rod foorth his way, making great and wofull
lamentation.” Such is the story of Sir Gawaine and Sir Pelleas, knights
of Camelot.
At Camelot, at the vigil of Pentecost, the knights gathered, Sir
Gawaine among them, and his falseness began to bring upon him
retribution. All the seats at the Round Table were filled, save the
Siege Perilous, though the time had now come, “four hundred winters,
and four and fifty being accomplished, after the passion of our Lord
Jesus Christ,” that the place should be no longer vacant. The king
wished, according to custom, to see an adventure before sitting down to
meat, and tidings were brought him of a marvellous stone floating in
the river, and a sword sticking in it. Lancelot warned the knights not
to touch the sword: “Who assayeth for to take that sword, and faileth
of it, he shall receive a wound by that sword.” Nevertheless, Gawaine,
obeying the command of the king, took the sword by the handle, but
failed to move it; and Gawaine next day vowed to set forth upon the
quest of the Grail, the vision of which had appeared unto the assembly
when they returned from “Camelot’s minster.” His quest was unavailing.
Through the streets of Camelot the knights sallied forth, “and there
was weeping of the rich and poor, and the king returned away, and
might not speak for weeping.” Of all who failed, Gawaine failed most
signally. The monk of the abbey where he sought refuge condemned
his wickedness, and the good men at the hermitage of whom he asked
harbour for charity, reproached him with his mischievous life of many
winters, and sternly bade him do penance. If Sir Gawaine redeemed his
reputation as the champion of the injured king, it scarcely sufficed to
atone for the evil he wrought when the days were fair at Camelot.
In the _Prologue_ by Caxton we are told that record of King Arthur was
to be found in “the toune of Camelot, the grete stones and mervayllous
werkys of yron lying under the grounde, and ryal vautes, which dyvers
now lyving hath seen.” These relics have vanished, and Camelot is
nothing but a waste. But there is just a chance that Caxton had some
other Camelot than South Cadbury in his mind, for he speaks of it as in
Wales, while in the story of the burial of Balin and Balan by Merlin we
read that “Balin’s sword was put in marble stone, standing upright as
great as a milstone, and the stone hoved alwayes above the water, and
did many yeares, and so by adventure it swam downe the streame to the
citie of Camelot, that is in English, Winchester.”[26] This confusion
is easily explained. Putting aside the fact that there is little
coherence or consistency in the geography of the romance, we have
already suggested a reason for the chronicler’s statement that Camelot
was Winchester. In Monmouthshire is Caer-went, a resort of King Arthur,
and Winchester was known as Caer-wynt, a sufficiently close resemblance
to lead the old chroniclers astray. Obviously there must have been more
than one Camelot, if we are to pay any heed to the situation, distance,
and characteristics mentioned in Malory’s chapters. Caer-went has a
history dating back to the fifth century, when a school or college was
founded there by Ynyr Gwent, king of the district called Gwent, and
the husband of Vortimer’s daughter, Madrun. At Caer-went was fought
one of the last British battles with the Saxons just as they were
reaching the gates of Caerleon itself. The town is situated on the
Via Julia, or military road, made by Julius Frontius in the year 80,
and traces of it remained at the beginning of last century. Leland
speaks of its four great gates which “yet appear,” and an enthusiastic
pilgrim in 1802 wrote that the place, despite its present uninviting
and desolate aspect, deserved “every attention that can be bestowed by
the antiquarian or lover of those scites memorable for having been the
scenes of magnificence, genius, and heroism. Roman greatness has at
this place shone with a splendour little inferior to any other part of
the kingdom.” By some Caer-went is supposed to have been the capital
of the Silures, before Caerleon, and to have had a population of ten
thousand. Leland describes it as “a sumtyme fair and large cyte.” As a
British camp it may figure under various names in the romances.
We associate Camelot with the more peaceful part of Arthur’s life, and
with the brighter and more hopeful history of his followers, though
sad and tragic episodes in that history are by no means lacking. Up
the soft velvety sward came the knights in armour ready to tourney for
the prize of ladies’ smiles, and where the bee buzzes and the pheasant
runs was heard the clash of arms or the caracolling of many steeds.
Here, too, and we tell now a more certain truth, came the Roman with
his legions; here met contending forces, and the repose of the land was
broken with the tumult of war. Time has swept away every vestige of the
power and glory of old, and left the open field, the trench, and the
broken gray wall, as the sole mementoes of Camelot, but about all has
retained the glamour of one heroic name. The rabbit and the mole burrow
to the foundations of Arthur’s royal town, and the centuries have laid
moss and leaf upon the unfrequented paths and the vanishing signs of
former occupation. Yet no one can spend an hour at Cadbury Camp without
feeling that “the dust we tread once breathed.” The Severn sparkles in
the distance, and was probably the “river of Camelot,” where Merlin set
the “peron” or tombstone, and where Sir Tristram appointed his meeting
with Palamides.
No description of Camelot, with its courts and towers, its knights
and people, could be more entrancing than Tennyson’s. He told of the
mighty hall built by Merlin, with its mystic symbols in sculpture and
statuary; and he said that it was reached by the “sacred mount”--
“And all the dim, rich city, roof by roof,
Tower after tower, spire by spire,
By grove and garden-lawn, and rushing brook.”
Arthur’s statue had been moulded with a crown, and “peaked wings
pointing to the Northern Star,” and this representation again calls
attention to the astronomical significance of the history of the king
whose name is preserved in Arcturus, the star of first magnitude, above
which is set “Arthur’s chair,” Ursa Major.
There may not be much to warrant the various traditions of Camelot,
and there remains nothing to verify them. South Cadbury, or Cadbury
Camp, silent and deserted as it now is, undoubtedly has a curious
history. It was anciently known as Camallate and Camellek, and was
early associated with King Arthur; it was a hill-fort of that strange,
strong race of warriors, the Belgæ, who overran the southern counties
and were dislodged from their strongholds with the greatest difficulty
by the Romans. This camp was as the rallying-point in the British and
Christian dominion of Gladerhaf, or Somerset. Some have supposed it
was the Cathbrigion where Arthur routed the Saxons in a great battle,
and so linked his name indissolubly with the locality. Leland in his
Itinerary described it as “sometime a famous town or castle, upon
a very torre or hill, wonderfully enstrengthened of nature”; and
John Selden, in his notes to the _Polyolbion_ of Drayton, definitely
described it as “a hill of a mile compass at the top, four trenches
encircling it, and twixt every one of them an earthen wall; the
contents of it, within about twenty acres, full of ruins and relics
of old buildings.” It has yielded various ancient weapons, Roman
coins, a silver horseshoe, and articles of camp equipage. The four
concentric deep ditches and the ramparts, forty-five feet apart, can
still be traced, and the camp seems to have been originally connected
with an extensive intrenchment on the opposite summit of the hill to
the north-west. From its position Cadbury must have been an important
station commanding the military road which ran from Bower Walls on the
Avon to the neighbouring heights of Clevedon--the little town which
gave birth to Arthur Henry Hallam, whose ancestral abode, Clevedon
Court, is sheltered by the fir-trees which are seen grouped in gloom
from Cadbury’s height. At Clevedon also dwelt Coleridge for a time,
as several of his poems, written in celebration of the surrounding
scenes, will for ever remind us. From Cadbury can be discerned the
pretty village of Wrington, where is cherished the memory of the Rev.
W. Leeves, who fashioned for “Auld Robin Gray” a fitting melody. It is
easy to perceive that the possessor of a stronghold on Cadbury would
be able to hold in subjection the entire district, and the name of the
place appears to bear witness that a decisive battle once raged there,
for _cad_ is the Cornish and Cymrian word for battle, and _bury_ for
hill or brow.
But it is Arthur, and Arthur only, who is commemorated at Cadbury Camp
to-day. There may be seen his Round Table, and the local superstition
runs that within the charmed circle the king may be seen sitting with
his knights behind barred golden gates. The great intrenchment is
called the site of King Arthur’s Palace; in the field below is King
Arthur’s Hunting Causeway; and it is King Arthur’s Well which springs
from the hillside and bubbles up in the fourth ditch. These recall the
wondrous past, the golden days, when the fame and splendour of Arthur’s
Court were on all tongues, and the poet could long afterwards ask--
“Like Camelot what place was ever yet renown’d,
Where, as at Caerleon, oft he kept the Table Round,
Most famous for the sports at Pentecost so long,
From whence all knightly deeds and brave achievements sprong.”
It was at Camelot that, when Arthur “let make a crie” the lords,
knights, and gentlemen of arms gathered, and “there the King would let
make a counsoile generall, and a great justes.” It was to Camelot that
Sir Pellinore came “passing sore” and told his saddest of stories; and
it was to Camelot that King Arthur turned after wearying combat and
hot adventure, certain there to enjoy rest and to find his queen and
the barons “right glad of his comming.” “What tidings at Camelot?”
asked one knight of another whom he encountered. “By my head,” said
the other, “there have I beene, and espied the court of King Arthur,
and there is such a fellowship that they may never be brok, and wel
nigh al the world holdeth with King Arthur, for there is the flower of
chivalry.” Such was the renown of Camelot.
To Camelot the knights sent their prisoners to do homage to King Arthur
and confess his greatness. The church of St. Stephen’s, often called
the Minster, was the place where the king and his followers assembled
to hear the Archbishop’s blessing upon their enterprises, and in the
adjoining grounds the principal men slain in battle were buried with
all honour. The twelve kings who fell in war with King Lot “were
buried in the church of Saint Stephen’s, in Camelot, and the remnant
of knights and of other were buried in a great rock,” so one of the
records runs. By the side of Lanceor’s tomb, made by Merlin, Tristram
and Lancelot encountered each other and “fought together unknown,”
and “either wounded other wonderly sore, that the blood ran out upon
the grass”; then, discovering that they were friends, they yielded up
their swords, “either kissed other an hundred times,” and rode back to
Camelot. Elaine, the mother of Galahad, came to Camelot richly attired,
and put Lancelot to shame, and it was at Camelot that the last sad
scenes in their tragic drama were enacted. The quest for the Sancgreal
began there, and King Arthur, full of forebodings, took a last review
of his knights and caused them to assemble for a last tournament in
Camelot’s meadows, “that after your death men may speak of it, that
such good knights were wholly together such a day.” The queen and
her ladies beheld the noble gathering from her tower, and saw Sir
Galahad, the perfect knight, break the spears of all who came against
him save that of his father, Sir Lancelot, and that of his compeer Sir
Percivale. When next we read of Camelot, Arthur is regretting the loss
of half his noble company; and when the worst had come to pass, and the
king discovered the wrong done to him by Lancelot and Guinevere, it
was of lonely Camelot he thought with tenderest regret. Tennyson has
seized upon this idea, and put into the mouth of the king the mournful
soliloquy as he muses on his faithless wife--
“How sad it were to live
And sit once more within the lonely hall,
And miss the wonted number of my knights,
* * * * *
And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk
Thy shadow still would glide from room to room,
And I should evermore be vexed with thee
In hanging robe or vacant ornament
Or ghostly footfall echoing on the stair.”
This was when the time was come that Arthur should see Camelot no
more--when he had gone forth to his last fight, and Guinevere had taken
the nun’s habit and immured herself in Almesbury.
Renan has very finely remarked that in Celtic literature woman is
more tenderly and delicately portrayed than in the writings and
songs of any other race. Love is “a mystery, a kind of intoxication,
a madness, a giddiness,” and woman is superbly idealised until she
seems in our eyes an ethereal, radiant, half-spiritual or even angelic
creature. The romances are “dewy with feminine sentiment,” and the
chivalric conception of the heroine is so pure and beautiful that
Percivale’s sister, or Geraint’s wife, appears “as a sort of vague
vision intermediate between man and the supernatural world.” Even
faithless Guinevere--is she not so rarely beautiful, are not her spell
and witchery so strong, that, while hating her sin, we hesitate to
join in her condemnation, and have no heart to approve such passionate
denunciation as was spoken by the king in his hour of gloom?[27] The
vision of Guinevere flashes upon us as she was when Lancelot led her
from Cameliard to the king’s court at Camelot, when she went a-Maying
with her maidens, and when she was the cynosure of all eyes among the
spectators of the tournament. There was something daring on the part
of the old chroniclers in making King Arthur’s danger issue from the
best of knights and the most lovely of women--the two nearest to him,
and bound to him by the most sacred ties of love and honour. Still
more strange is it that, deep as their sinning was, we have so little
blame--or rather, let us say, resentment--for Lancelot and Guinevere.
This is not because Arthur has not the strongest claim upon our
sympathy, or because for one moment he fails to win our admiration; it
is only because Lancelot and Guinevere also have strong human claims
upon us, and so far have won our regard that we cannot withhold our
compassion also. Were not the knights themselves reluctant to condemn?
The romance brings out the fact conspicuously that it was not the
noblest, but the meanest, of the knights who revealed the wrong to
the king; nor was it the gallant men who willed that Guinevere should
die at the stake for her infidelity. And in the end do we not pity
mournful and repentant Lancelot in his lonely castle, or when paying
that noblest of tributes to his dead master? And does not even a deeper
feeling extend to the desolate woman who wore out her life in the
Almesbury convent?
What ingredient of historic fact there may be in the record that the
Ambresbyrig of the Saxons, and the Caer Emrys of the “Mabinogion” was
the queen’s retreat, the faithful alone must decide. All that impartial
and not too credulous historians can do is to pronounce the place as
not unlikely, not impossible, and not unfitting as her abode and as
the scene of her last acts of restitution and repentance. Almesbury
is a British earthwork of forty acres, the stronghold of Ambrosius
Aurelianus, Dux Britanniarum, of Roman lineage, but the champion of
the Britons against the Saxon horde. Religious associations both early
and late cling to this ancient place, and long after Guinevere was
dust a Benedictine monastery, founded by Queen Elfrida, continued the
religious traditions of the earlier era; and the fact that Almesbury
was the customary retreat of royal ladies who wished to withdraw from
the world confirms the character of the place as depicted in Malory’s
chronicle. Guinevere gave herself up to lamentation among the nuns,
“and never creature could make her merry”; Sir Lancelot’s visit only
strengthened her resolution to make amends for the past, and prompted
him also to seek, too late, perfection in righteous living. While in
a hermitage himself there came to him the vision of the queen’s end,
and taking her corpse to Glastonbury, he performed for it the last
rites, and then delivered himself over to death. His resting-place
was Joyous Gard, which, in his grief he had called Dolorous Gard;
the queen was laid by her husband’s side in the island-valley. But
at Llanilterne, near Cardiff, a huge quoin stone may be seen with an
almost undecipherable _Hic jacet_, and popular tradition declares that
this is Guinevere’s monument. “Through this knight and me,” said the
queen, when Sir Lancelot and she met in the Almesbury convent, “all
the wars were wrought, and the death of the most noble knights of the
world: for through our love that we have loved together is my most
noble lord slain; therefore, wit thou well, Sir Lancelot, I am in such
a plight to get my soul’s health; and yet I trust, through God’s grace,
that after my death for to have the sight of the blessed face of Jesu
Christ, and at the dreadful day of doom to sit on his right side: for
as sinful creatures as ever was I are saints in heaven.” When next the
“falsely true” knight saw the queen he was in his monk’s habit and she
was “wrapped in seared cloths of reins, from the top to the toe, in
thirty fold”; then, on foot, he followed her to her tomb, recalling
“her beauty, her bounty, and her nobleness.” The next scene is at
Joyous Gard itself, with Sir Lancelot smiling as he lies dead, and a
hundred torches burning about him; while Sir Ector de Maris delivers
the noblest of tributes to the courtliest knight, the truest friend,
the meekest man, the sternest foe, and “the truest lover of a sinful
man that ever loved woman.”
From Camelot to Almesbury is a far journey, and that journey marks the
two extremes of Arthurian history from the happiest to the saddest,
from the height of power and the plenitude of peace to the final
desolation and unavailing regret. The bridge which connects Camelot
with Almesbury is made up of the greatest achievements and the deepest
tragedies of Arthur’s reign. It is a bridge of ascent and descent, its
highest point marked by the puissance of the Table Round and Galahad’s
achievement of the quest of the Grail, its lowest part dipping into the
eternal gloom which followed the last battle in the west--a gloom from
which the Britons were destined never to emerge. That gloom falls over
Almesbury, but Camelot is still left in the light.
Never was, and never can be, such a fairyland as “many-tower’d
Camelot.” Its crystal dykes, its slope street, its weird white gate,
and its spires and turrets without number, are a poet’s dream. It
was the city of enchanters, built by fairy kings, a city which had no
beginning, was raised by no human hands, and can have no end--
“A city of shadowy palaces,
And stately, rich in emblem and the work
Of ancient Kings who did their days in stone,”
a city of pure delights, of calm and innocence, of splendour and
contentment.
“Out of bower and casement shyly glanced
Eyes of pure women, wholesome stars of love;
And all about a healthful people stept
As in the presence of a gracious king.”
Where, indeed, could be this new Eden save in the imagination of the
romancer who conceived a fitting scene for King Arthur’s Court? It
is like the fairy gold which vanishes whenever a hand reaches out to
touch it. The “Camaletic Mount” is one of Nature’s hallowed places, a
place of wondrous stillness and magic charm, a place to regard as the
stronghold of romance, and yet not the place that poets have sung. One
can easily imagine the Lady of Shalott prisoned here in her bower, and
seeing all the moving world as shadows in a mirror; and one can deem
the scene appropriate for the meeting of Lancelot and the Lily-maid who
lifted up her eyes and lov’d him with that love which was her doom. It
is not well to inquire more deeply and more closely into the past of
Camelot, but to heed the poet’s warning--
“Never seek to behold
Where the crystal streams ran in the City of Gold.”
Better to people it with the phantoms of Arthur’s Court than to
discover that the cavemen of the Mendips made it an abode. “The people
can telle nothing ther, but that they have hard say that Arture much
resorted to Camalot,” wrote Leland, and that suffices. Camelot is
purely ideal, and it is enough to find a real Camelot which faintly
recalls the place which Arthur’s eulogists deemed fitting for his
Court. Such cities, which had no beginning, have no end, and Camelot
will last as long, and prove as indestructible, as Fairyland itself.
“The thrushes sang in the lone garden there--
Clanging of arms about pavilion fair,
Mixed with the knights’ laughs; there, as I well know,
Rode Lancelot, the king of all the band,
And scowling Gawaine, like the night in day,
And handsome Gareth, with his great white hand
Curl’d round the helm-crest, ere he join’d the fray.”