Ragged curtains of castellated stone climb up the northern side of a
promontory and stretch their worn and fretted grey across the sea and
sky. They are pierced with a Norman door, and beyond them there spreads
a blue sea to the horizon; above it shines a summer sky, against whose
blue and silver the ruin sparkles brightly. Beneath, a little bay opens,
and the dark cliffs about it are fringed with foam; while beyond, "by
Bude and Bos," the grand coastline is flung out hugely, cliff on cliff
and ness on ness, until Hartland lies like a cloud on the sea and little
Lundy peeps above the waters. Direct sunshine penetrates the haze from
point to point, now bringing this headland out from among its
neighbours, now accentuating the rocky islands, or flashing on some
sea-bird's wing.
Shadow, too, plays its own sleight; the cliff that was sun-kissed fades
and glooms, while the scarps and planes before shaded, shine out again
and spread their splendour along the sea. Light and darkness race over
the waves also, and now the fringes of foam flash far off in the
sunshine and streak the distant bases of earth; now they are no more
seen, when the cloud shadows dim their whiteness and spread purple on
the blue.
A ewe and her lamb come through the gateway in the castle wall. They
share the green slopes with me and browse along together. Overhead the
gulls glide and a robber gull chases a jackdaw, who carries a lump of
bread or fat in his beak. The gull presses hard upon the smaller bird,
and Jack at last, after many a turn and twist, drops his treasure.
Whereupon the gull dives downward and catches it in mid-air before it
has fallen a dozen yards.
The flora on these crags is interesting, though of little diversity.
Familiar grasses there are, with plantain and sheep's sorrel, the silene
and cushion pink, the pennywort and blue jasione, the lotus and
eye-bright; but unsleeping winds from the west affect them as altitude
dwarfs the alpines, and these things, though perfect and healthy and
fair to see, are reduced to exquisite miniatures, where they nestle in
the crannies of the rocks and flash their pink and white, or blue and
gold, against the grey and orange lichens that wash the stones with
colour and climb the ruin in the midst.
In sheltered nooks the foxglove nods, but he, too, is dwarfed, yet seems
to win a solid splendour of bells and intensity of tint from his
environment.
Other castle fragments there are--scattered here and on the neighbour
cliff to the east; but they are of small account--no more than the
stumps of vanished ramparts and walls. Even so, they stood before any
word was printed concerning them, or pictures made. An ancient etching
of more than two hundred years old shows that their fragments were then
as now, and only doubtful tradition furnishes the historian with any
data.
But the castle is perched on a noble crag, whose strata of marble and
slate and silver quartz slope from east to west downward until they
round into sea-worn bosses and dip under the blue. The story of
gigantic upheavals is written here, and the weathered rocks are cleft
and serrated and full of wonderful convolutions for dawn and dusk to
play upon. Here more wild flowers find foothold, and the wild bird makes
her home. The cliffs are crested with samphire, and the white umbels of
the carrot; they are brushed with the pale lemon of anthyllis, and the
starry whiteness of the campion; they are honeycombed beneath by
caverns, where the sea growls on calm days and thunders in time of
storm.
Westward of the mount, guarding the only spot where boat can land from
these perilous waters, a fragment of the ruin still holds up above the
little bay, within bow-shot of any adventurous bark that would brave a
landing.
Here is all that is left of the last castle on this famous headland. Of
the so-called "Arthurian" localities, the most interesting and richest
in tradition is that of North Cornwall, and at its centre lie these
ancient strongholds. In addition to the Castle of Tintagel one finds
King Arthur's Hall and Hunting Seat, his bed and his cups and saucers,
his tomb and his grave.
It is a long and intricate story, and none may say what fragment of
reality homes behind the accumulated masses of myth and legend. With the
bards of the sixth century and those that followed them we find the
English beginnings of Arthur and his celebration as a first-class
fighting man. Then it would seem he disappeared for a while, and takes
no place, either in history or romance, until the ninth century. In 858,
however, one Nennius, a Briton, made a history of the hero, some three
centuries after his supposed death in 542. The "magnanimous Arthur" of
Nennius fought against the Saxons, and, amid many more noble than
himself, was twelve times chosen commander of his race. The Britons, we
learn, conquered as often as he led them to war; and in his final and
mightiest battle--that of Badon Hill--we are to believe that 940 of the
enemy fell by Arthur's hand alone--a Homeric achievement, unassisted
save by the watching Lord. Thereafter his activities ranged over other
of the Arthurian theatres and campaigns before he died at Camlan.
But alas for song! From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Tennyson, that last
prodigious battle on the Camel has been the joy of poetry, and the
mighty adventure between Arthur and Mordred has been told and retold a
thousand times; yet if those warriors ever did meet, it was certainly in
Scotland, and not Cornwall, that the encounter took place. Camlan is
Camelon in the Valley of the Forth, and here a tolerably safe tradition
tells that the King of the Picts, with his Scots and Saxons, defeated
the Britons and slew their King.
Leland reported to Henry VII. that "This castle hath been a marvellous
strong fortress and almost _situ in loco_ inexpugnabile, especially from
the dungeon that is on a great and terrabil crag environed with the se,
but having a drawbridge from the residue of the castel on to it. Shepe
now feed within the dungeon."
That Arthur was begotten at Tintagel we may please to believe; but that
he died far from the land of his birth seems sure.
As for the existing ruin, it springs from that of the castle which saw
the meeting of Arthur's parents, Uther Pendragon and the fair Igraine;
but the original British building has long since vanished, and the
present remains, dating from the Norman Conquest, did not rise until six
hundred years later than the hero's death. An old Cornish tradition
declares that Arthur's mighty spirit passed into a Cornish chough, and
in the guise of that beautiful crow with the scarlet beak, still haunts
the ruins of his birthplace.