The Lost Land of King Arthur

12

Arthur’s career has been thus conveniently summarised: “At the age of fifteen he succeeded his father as King of Damnonium. He was born in 452, had three wives, of whom Guinevere was the second, and was betrayed by the third during his absence in Armorica. Mordred concluded a league with Arthur’s great foe, Cedric the Saxon; and at the age of ninety, after seven years’ continual war, the famous king was defeated at Camelford in 543.” Fuller compares him to Hercules in (1) his illegitimate birth, (2) his arduous life, and (3) his twelve battles. Joseph Ritson, whose antiquarian researches are noted for their fullness and originality, came to the conclusion that though there were “fable and fabrication” in the hero, a real Arthur lies behind the legendary hero. He appeared when the affairs of the Britons were at their worst after Vortigern’s death, checked the ravages of the Romans, and kept the pillaging Saxons at bay. Professor Montagu Burrows, in his commentaries on the history of England, argues that the Cymry of Arthur’s time were a band of Romano-Britons who produced leaders like Cunedda to take command of the native forces left by the departing Romans. They remained more British than Gaelic, but were gradually driven, with their faces to the foe, into Wales and the Welsh borderland. “The Arthurian legends,” he continues, “embody a whole world of facts which have been lost to history in the lapse of time, and form a poetry far from wholly fictitious.” Renan declares that few heroes owe less to reality than Arthur. “Neither Gildas nor Aneurin, his contemporaries, speaks of him; Bede did not know his name; Taliesin and Llwarc’h Hên gave him only a secondary place. In Nennius, on the other hand, who lived about 850, the legend has been fully unfolded. Arthur is already the exterminator of the Saxons; he has never experienced defeat; he is the suzerain of an army of kings. Finally, in Geoffrey of Monmouth, the epic creation culminates.”

13

Ashmole, in his History of the Order of the Garter, declares that, in addition to the dragon, King Arthur placed the picture of St. George on his banner.

14

Mr. Glennie thinks the scene is in Carnarvonshire, to the south of Snowdon, overlooking the lower end of Llyn y Dinas. Here is Dinas Emrys, a singular isolated rock, clothed on all sides with wood, containing on the summit some faint remains of a building defended by ramparts. It was of this place Drayton wrote—

On the south of Carnarvon Bay is Nant Gwrtheryn, the Hollow of Vortigern, a precipitous ravine by the sea, said to be the last resting-place of the usurper, when he fled to escape the rage of his subjects on finding themselves betrayed to the Saxons.

15

The Cornish language was spoken until 1768. In that year Daines Barrington met the old fish-wife Dolly Pentreath, whose name has become memorable as that of the last person to speak Cornish. The last sermon in Cornish was preached in 1678 in Landewednack Church. The slackening of the Saxon advance at the Tamar enabled the Cornish to preserve their tongue, closely allied to that of Wales and Brittany, and described as “naughty Englysshe” in the reign of the eighth Henry.

16

The following curious little item from R. Hunt’s volume ought not to be lost sight of:—“I shall offer a conjecture, touching the name of Tintagel, which I will not say is right but only probable. Tin is the same as Din, Dinas, and Dixeth, deceit; so that Tindixel, turned for easier pronunciation to Tintagel, Dundagel, etc., signifies Castle of Deceit, which name might be aptly given to it from the famous deceit practised here by Uther Pendragon by the help of Merlin’s enchantment.” George Borrow says: “Tintagel does not mean the Castle of Guile, but the house in the gill of the hill, a term admirably descriptive” (Wild Wales, cap. cvii.).

17

It is difficult to understand how a writer like the late Mrs. Craik could ever have fallen into this error. In her Unsentimental Journey through Cornwall she makes every effort to prove that the building on the mainland was the castle of Terabyl, and she insists that there were (and are) two castles at Tintagel. “One sits in the sea, and the other is upon the opposite heights of the mainland, with communication by a narrow causeway. This seems to confirm the legend, how Igraine’s husband shut himself and his wife in two castles, he being slain in the one, and she married to the victorious king Uther in the other.” It is obvious that the writer of these lines was unacquainted with Malory.

18

Silchester, originally a Celtic fortress, and a city of the size of London, is also reported to have been the scene of Arthur’s coronation at the age of fifteen by Dubritius. Modern excavations have proved the importance of the city as a great centre of life and industry, in Roman and British times, with its Forum, Basilica, and rows of shops and houses; and if the Calleva Attrebatum were really Arthur’s crowning place, its fitness and worth for so imposing an event cannot be disputed. Although Silchester is not directly referred to in the Romances, Arthur’s Hampshire connections are numerous. They centre in Winchester, where his predecessor and foster-father, Ambrosius Aurelianus, died in the year 508. It was at Silchester also that the chief men of the provinces met after Uther Pendragon’s death and petitioned Dubritius, Archbishop of Caerleon, to consecrate Arthur the successor to the dead king.

19

Of this wooden bridge G. W. Manby in his Guide (published 1802) gives an illustration, and says: “As numerous coins have been found where the piles of the bridge are now placed, there is no doubt of its being the original pass. To a person unaccustomed to such a bridge, the rattling noise whenever any weight is going over naturally occasions some apprehensions.... The accounts of the tide rising so high as to cover the bridge are erroneous; it never has been known yet; but that assertion has given rise to the idea of the bridge being purposely loose to prevent its being carried away in such cases. The amazing floods to which the river is subject would render it not surprising if accidents did happen.” Tennyson, who obtained from the genius loci both inspiration and enlightment, refers in Geraint and Enid to the rapidity of the turn of the tidal waters of the Usk:—

Modern Caerleon, however, with its commonplace railway station, its porters shouting “Car—lion,” its new bridge, its spoilt Norman church, and its street of small dwelling-houses, is likely at first to disappoint the pilgrim, who only by searching and waiting can hope to find the links with the city’s historic past.

20

Frere’s poem was caustic, but it had a certain value in showing the unromantic side of Arthurian times. The following verses, than which far less delicate ones could be found in the poem, may be taken as a specimen:—

When we come to consider probabilities, aided by such unsparing lines as these, we may even accept as truth the old folk-song which tells that when King Arthur ruled the land he “ruled it like a swine.” The American poet, the late Mr. Eugene Field, in his “Lay of Camelot,” has also shown the humorous aspect of the Arthurian Court. While all this may be legitimate enough, and provide opportunities for the wit of the authors, it is not the aspect which we prefer to contemplate for any length of time, or one which has any continuous pleasure for the mind.

21

The names of, and the leading incidents in, the twelve “glorious wars,” are enumerated with accuracy by Tennyson in Lancelot and Elaine, the recital coming from Lancelot’s lips, and having for its purpose the proof that at the time “there lived no greater leader.” Joseph Ritson’s curious little volume on King Arthur likewise treats this subject fully.

22

Gildas Badonicus, as we have seen in the first chapter, is also a reputed native of Bath.

23

Mr. E. W. B. Nicholson, in the Academy (1896), advanced a number of very strong and learned arguments in favour of the original idea that Mons Badonicus was Bath.

24

Sandwich is mentioned several times in the romance, but the references are unimportant. Ancient as the place is, there is no reason to connect it with British occupation. At the time the chronicles were written, however, it was too important a seaport to escape mention.

25

Lytton, agreeing with Southey that Gawaine’s character suffered at the caprice of the poets and that he was “shamefully calumniated,” speaks of

William Morris, in The Defence of Guenevere, makes Gawaine the accuser of the queen, and he is denounced for treachery.

26

As a matter of history it is worth noting that Winchester, in Hampshire, passed to the Saxons in the year 515, after which time Cardic held it. King Arthur was then only twenty-three years old, and could not have extended his territory as far as Hampshire.

27

“Compare Guinevere or Iseult with those Scandinavian furies Gudrun and Chrimhilde, and you will avow that woman such as chivalry conceived her, an ideal of sweetness and loveliness set up as the supreme end of life, is a creation in reality Celtic.”—Renan.

28

The ancient ballad, discovered, annotated, and to a slight extent supplemented, by Dr. Percy, follows very exactly the story of Arthur’s last days as given in the romances except that it ascribes to Sir Lucan the acts usually credited to Sir Bedivere. Not a detail is omitted, not a point is missed. On the morning of Trinity Monday the ghost of Sir Gawaine is said to have appeared to the king and warned him not to fight if he prized his life, but to wait until Sir Lancelot returned from France. The parley which followed between Arthur and Mordred is next described, but just as a month’s league had been decided upon the adder’s sting brought about the “woeful chance As ever was in Christentie.” When the wounded knight drew his sword the two hosts immediately “joined battayle,” and fought until only three men were left alive.

29

It is interesting to compare Tennyson’s lines with Longfellow’s in The Spanish Student, the similarity of phrasing being so marked. Victorian, the student, observes that it is in vain he throws unto oblivion’s sea the sword [of love] that pierces him—

30

Glastonbury occupies a former site of Druidical worship, and Professor Rhys believes the name to be a corruption of the British word glasten, an oak, the Druids cultivating both the oak and the apple as foster parents of their sacred mistletoe. Glestenaburh, says Canon Taylor, was assimilated by the Saxons to their gentile form Glestinga-burh or Glæsting-burh, which being supposed by a false etymology to mean the “shining” or “glassy” town was mistranslated by the Welsh as Ynys-Widrin, the Island of Glass.

31

William Morris slightly varied the story in his King Arthur’s Tomb, when he represents Lancelot journeying to “where the Glastonbury glided towers shine” and relates that

32

The Holy Grail is pointed out in particular at Genoa Cathedral. “It was brought from Cæsarea in 1101, is a hexagonal dish of two palms’ width, and was long supposed to be of real emerald, which it resembles in colour and brilliancy.”

33

Some historians, perhaps with better reason, declare that he was born in 405 at Kilpatrick, Dumbarton, a little town at the junction of the Levin and Clyde. He is variously reported to have died in 493 and 507, some placing his age at 88, and others at 120.