Arthur, taking with him his
British warriors only, returns home.
British warriors only, returns home.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v01
This
is just one of those weird mythological poems which are very
difficult to interpret, and where, again to quote Matthew Arnold,
the author “is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully
possess the secret. ” Here Arthur sets out upon various expe-
ditions over perilous seas in his ship Pridwen; one of them had
as its object the rape of a mysterious cauldron belonging to the
king of Hades. “Three freights of Pridwen,” says the bard, “were
they who went out with Arthur; seven alone were they who
returned" from Caer Sidi, Caer Rigor and the other wholly
unidentified places whither they fared. It is in this poem that
the closest parallels of all are found with incidents described in
the story of Kulhwch and Olwen, and, as a whole, it “evidently
deals with expeditions conducted by Arthur by sea to the realms
of twilight and darkness? . " But, here, the British king is much
further removed than in Kulhwch from any known country, and
appears as a purely mythical hero with supernatural attributes.
The most remarkable fragment for the tale, as we have it, is
an obvious torso-of all the early Welsh literature about Arthur
Rhys, preface to Dent's Malory, p. xxxiv, where the poom's correspondences with
Kulhwch are pointed out.
her fared. un incidents veridently
## p. 252 (#272) ############################################
252
The Arthurian Legend
that has come down to us is the prose romance of Kulhwch and
Olwen. The oldest extant text of it is that of the early fourteenth
century MS known as The White Book of Rhyderch', where we
find many remarkable archaisms which have been modernised in
the version of The Red Book of Hergest; but the original form
of the story is assigned, by the most competent authorities, to the
tenth century. It is included in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation
of the Mabinogion; and, as that translation largely contributed
to the fashioning of the most popular presentment of Arthurian
romance in modern English poetry, a brief account of the entire
series of these Welsh tales may here be appropriately given. All
the tales translated by Lady Guest are taken from The Red Book
of Hergest, with the exception of The History of Taliesin.
Taliesin, in the form we have it, is a compilation of obviously
late medieval origin, and is not found in any MS of an earlier
date than the end of the sixteenth century. The name Mabi-
nogion belongs, strictly speaking, to only four of the twelve stories
included in Lady Guest's book. Each of these four tales is called
in Welsh “ceinc y Mabinogi,” which means “a branch of the
Mabinogi”; and the correct title for the group should be “the
four branches of the Mabinogi. ” The term mabinogi signifies "a
tale of youth," or "a tale for the young. ” The “four branches” are
the tales known as Pwyll, prince of Dyved; Branwen, daughter
of Llŷr; Manawydan, son of Llŷr; and Math, son of Mathonwy.
They contain what is probably the most archaic body of Welsh
tradition in existence, are largely, if not entirely, mythological in
character and suggest many points of analogy with the mythic
tales of Ireland4. They deal, mainly, with the fortunes of three
great families, the children of Dôn, the children of Llŷr and the
family of Pwyll. In these stories, the Mabinogion proper, Arthur
does not appear at all.
Of the other tales, two—The Dream of Maxen Wledig and
Llud and Llevelys—are brief romantic excursions into the do-
main of ancient British history, later in date, probably, than
Geoffrey's Historia. Arthur does not figure in either. The
remaining five tales, however, are all Arthurian, but form two
1 In the Peniarth Library. Gwenogvryn Evans has an edition of this MS in
preparation.
* Rhys, Dent's Malory, p. xxxiv.
8 Thomas Love Peacock drew most of his matter for The Misfortunes of Elphin from
this tale.
* For a suggestive analysis of the probable origins and mythological significanca
of the “ four branches,” see Rhys, Celtic Folk-lore, vol. II.
A18 tale.
## p. 253 (#273) ############################################
The Mabinogion
253
distinct groups. In Kulhwch and Olwen and The Dream of
Rhonabwy we have two Arthurian stories of apparently pure
British origin, in which Arthur is presented in a milieu altogether
unaffected by the French romances. The second and better known
group, consisting of the three tales entitled The Lady of the
Fountain, Geraint, son of Erbin and Peredur, son of Evrawc,
are romances palpably based upon French originals. They corre-
spond, respectively, in their main features, to Chrétien de Troyes's
Le chevalier au lion, Erec and Le conte del Graal? .
The Mabinogion, as a whole, are the most artistic and de-
lightful expression of the early Celtic genius which we possess.
Nowhere else do we come into such close touch with the real
“Celtic magic," with the true enchanted land, where “the eternal
illusion clothes itself in the most seductive hues? " Composed
though they were, in all probability, by a professional literary
class, these stories are distinguished by a naive charm which
suggests anything but an artificial literary craftsmanship. The
supernatural is treated in them as the most natural thing in the
world, and the personages who possess magic gifts are made to
move about and speak and behave as perfectly normal human
creatures. The simple grace of their narrative, their delicacy and
tenderness of sentiment and, above all, their feeling for nature,
distinguish these tales altogether from the elaborate productions
of the French romantic schools; while in its lucid precision of form,
and in its admirable adaptation to the matter with which it deals,
no medieval prose surpasses that of the Welsh of the Mabinogion.
These traits are what make it impossible to regard even the later
Welsh Arthurian stories as mere imitations of Chrétien's poems.
Their characters and incidents may be, substantially, the same;
but the tone, the atmosphere, the entire artistic setting of the
Welsh tales are altogether different; and “neither Chrétien nor
Marie de France, nor any other French writer of the time, whether
in France or England, can for one moment compare with the
Welshmen as story-tellers pure and simple. "
i Le Conte del Graal is only in part the work of Chrétien.
» Repan, The Poetry of the Celtic Races. (Trans. Hutchison. )
* A. Nutt, in his edition of Lady C. Guest's Mabinogion, p. 352. Cf. Renan :
“ The charm of the Mabinogion principally resides in the amiable serenity of the
Celtic mind, neither sad nor gay, ever in suspense between a smile and a tear. We
have in them the simple recital of a child, unwitting of any distinction between the
noble and the common; there is something of that softly animated world, of that calm
and tranquil ideal to which Ariosto’s stanzas transport us. The chatter of the later
medieval French and German imitators can give no idea of this charming manner of
narration. The skilful Chrétien de Troyes himself remains in this respect far below
the Welsh story-tellers. " The Poetry of the Celtic Races.
## p. 254 (#274) ############################################
254
The Arthurian Legend
Kulhwch and Olwen, however, is the only one of these tales
that need detain us here, embodying as it does, in common with
the Welsh poems already quoted, Arthurian traditions far transcend-
ing in age the appearance of the Arthur of chivalry. Here, as
Matthew Arnold has said in an oft-quoted passage, the story-teller
"is like a peasant building his hut on the site of Halicarnassus or
Ephesus; he builds, but what he builds is full of materials of which
he knows not the history, or knows by a glimmering tradition
merely-stones ‘not of this building,' but of an older architecture,
greater, cunninger, more majestical. ” The main theme of the
story is the wooing of Olwen, the daughter of Yspađaden Pen
Kawr, by Kulhwch, the son of Kilyd, and the long series of
labours imposed upon the suitor in order to gain her hand
Olwen appears to have been well worth the arduous quest, for
“ her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were
her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone
amidst the spray of the meadow fountain," and "four white trefoils
sprung up wherever she trod. ” Arthur appears, here, not as the
ideal British warrior, nor as the hope and future restorer of his
race, but as a fairy king, overcoming uncouth and monstrous
enemies by his own and his followers' magic. All the same, he
is the lord of what is to the story-teller, in many places, a very
determinate realm; for, one of the most remarkable features of
Kulhwch and Olwen, as compared with the later Arthurian tales,
is the precision of its topography. The route of the boar-hunt,
for example-or the hunting of the Twrch Trwyth—may be traced,
without much difficulty, on our maps? .
Even more remarkable, however, than the topographical detail
of the story is the congeries of fabulous and fantastic Dames
grouped in it around the central figure of Arthur. This feature,
suggesting, as it does, the Arthurian court of the age of chivalry,
might be taken as evidence of the late redaction of the tale as we
have it, were it not that the story-teller gives details about most
of these strange characters which are evidently drawn from the
remnants of some lost saga. Arthur himself is introduced to us
in his palace, or hall, called Ehangwen, and thither Kulhwch comes
to crave his help to obtain Olwen; "and this boon I likewise seek,”
says Kulhwch, “at the hands of thy warriors. " These warriors
Kulhwch then proceeds to name in seemingly interminable suc-
cession. First in the long and weird list come Kai and Bedwyr;
others well known to early Welsh tradition include Gwynn and
to obtain Olwenien, and thither by
says Kulhwch
1 See Rhys's account of the hunt in Celtic Folklore, Vol. a, p. 572.
## p. 255 (#275) ############################################
one foot"; "Gure example, one Sol. 18 humour, briefly
Kulhwch and Olwen
255
Edern, the sons of Nud, Geraint, the son of Erbin, Taliesin, the
chief of bards, Manawyđan, the son of Llŷr. But, among the
company, there also appear several grotesque figures of whom
nothing is known save what the story-teller himself, giving rein,
as it would seem, to a deliberately mischievous humour, briefly
records. Thus we have, for example, one Sol, who “could stand
all day upon one foot”; Gwevy), the son of Gwestad, who “on the
day he was sad, would let one of his lips drop below his waist,
while he turned up the other like a cap upon his head”; Clust, the
son of Clustveinad, who "though he were buried seven cubits
beneath the earth, would hear the ant fifty miles off rise from her
nest in the morning. " Even familiar Arthurian heroes, like Kai,
are dowered with superhuman powers. “Kai had this peculiarity,
that his breath lasted nine nights and days under water, and he
could exist nine nights and nine days without sleep. ” “Very
subtle was Kai; when it pleased him he could make himself as
tall as the highest tree in the forest. " We are remote indeed,
in such company as this, from the knights of the Round Table;
but we are not so remote from the fairy world depicted in the
“Four Branches of the Mabinogi. ” The conclusion to which
Kulhwch and Olwen, and the few poems which mention Arthur,
clearly point is that the British king was far better known to
early Welsh tradition as a mythic hero than as the champion
of the Britons in their wars with the English. There may have
been a historical Arthur who was a comes Britanniae, or a dux
bellorum, of the sixth century, and his name, “re-echoed by the
topography of the country once under his protection," may have
"gathered round it legends of heroes and divinities of a past of
indefinite extent? . " What we do, however, know is that the
Arthur who emerges out of the mists of Celtic tradition at the
beginning of the twelfth century is an entirely imaginary being,
a king of fairy-land, undertaking hazardous quests, slaying monsters,
visiting the realms of the dead, and having at his call a number of
knightly henchmen, notably Kay and Bedivere, who are all but his
equals in wizardry and martial prowess. This mythical Arthur-
the creation of a primitive imagination altogether unaffected by
the sophisticated conceptions of chivalry and of conscious dealers
in romantic literary wares-belongs to early Welsh literature
alone.
The transformation of the Welsh, or British, Arthur into a
romantic hero of European renown was the result of the contact
· Rbys, preface to Dent's Malory, p. xxxvi.
## p. 256 (#276) ############################################
256
The Arthurian Legend
of Norman culture and, as it would seem, Norman diplomacy,
with the Celtic races of the west. It was doubtless from Britanny,
rather than from Wales, that the Normans derived their first
knowledge of the Arthurian stories. Indeed, it is probable that
the nameless story-tellers of Britanny fastened upon, and expanded,
a number of popular traditions which prefigured the Arthur of
romance much more clearly than anything told or written in
Wales. The Armorican “Bretons" are probably those whom
Wace mentions as “telling many a fable of the Table Round? . "
In Britanny, also, a belief in Arthur's return must long have been
current, for Alanus de Insulis records that a denial of it in the
second half of the twelfth century would be likely to cost a man
his life in the country districts of Britanny. By the middle of
the eleventh century the relations between the duchy of Normandy
and the Bretons had become particularly close, and the duke of
Britanny was one of William the Conqueror's staunchest allies at
the time of the invasion of Britain.
It is not, however, to Britanny that the great Latin ex-
ploitation of the legend of Arthur, under Norman auspices,
belongs, but to a section of Great Britain where the Norman
conquerors had, very rapidly, succeeded in establishing intimate
relations with the Welsh. By the beginning of the twelfth
century the Normans had effected a firm settlement in South
Wales. Now, it happens that it was a writer associated, at
least by name, with the South Wales border, and claiming the
patronage of a princely Norman who held that part of the country
in fee, who, most of all, is entitled to be called the literary father
of Arthurian romance. Robert, earl of Gloucester, and a natural
son of Henry I-for there is no evidence in support of the tradition
that his mother was the beautiful Nest, the daughter of the Welsh
prince, Rhys ap Tewdwr-acquired, early in the twelfth century, the
lordship of Glamorgan by marriage with Mabel, daughter of Robert
Fitz-hamon, conqueror of Glamorgan. Robert, like his father, was
a liberal and a diplomatic patron of letters. It was to him that
William of Malmesbury, the greatest historian of his time, dedi.
cated his History. To him was due the foundation of the abbey
of Margam, whose chronicle is a valuable early authority for the
history of Wales. On his estates at Torigni was born Robert de
Monte, abbot of Mont St Michel, a chronicler of renown, and a
lover and student of Breton legends. Above all, it was under his
1 Roman de Brut, 1. 9994.
• Prophetia Anglicana, etc. (Frankfort, 1603), Bk. I, p. 17.
## p. 257 (#277) ############################################
Geoffrey of Monmouth
257
immediate patronage that Geoffrey of Monmouth compiled his
romantic History of the Kings of Britain.
Of Geoffrey's personal history we know little. His full name
appears to have been, significantly, Geoffrey Arthur. His relentless
critic, William of Newburgh, takes “Arthur” to have been a by-
name given to him on the score of his Arthurian fabrications ; but
the truth probably is that Arthur was the name of his father?
His connection with Monmouth is obscure; he may have been
born in the town, or educated at the priory founded there by
the Breton, Wihenoc. He was never, as he is commonly designated,
archdeacon of Monmouth, for there was no such archdeaconry in
existence. Whether he was by descent a Breton, or a Welshman,
we know no more than we do whether the famous “British book,"
which he professes to have used, was derived from Wales or from
Britanny. Neither matter is of much consequence. The “British
book” may very well have been an authentic document, since lost,
which was placed, as he tells us, at his disposal by his friend
Walter, archdeacon of Oxford. Much Welsh and Breton folk-lore
doubtless reached him through monastic channels. Nennius and
Bede furnished him with matter which can be clearly traced in his
text? There can be little doubt, however, that the main source
of the Arthurian portions of his History was Geoffrey's own
imagination. The floating popular traditions about Arthur, and
the few documents which he had to his hand, plainly suggested
to him the possibilities of developing a new and striking romantic
theme. Geoffrey appears to have gauged the tastes and fancies of
the courtly readers of his day with an astuteness worthy of a
Defoe. Romance was in demand, and Geoffrey, giving the rein
to his faculty for decorative and rhetorical writing, responded
to that demand with an address that would have done credit to
the most alert of modern novelists. The time-honoured vehicle
of the chronicle was turned to new and unexpected uses. Sober
and orthodox chroniclers, like William of Malmesbury and Henry
of Huntingdon, are deliberately warned off the ground thus opened
out for the poet and the romancer. The “kings of the Saxons”
were their legitimate subject; the "kings of the Britons" were
1 Flis name is given as Gaufridus Arturus in the list of witnesses to the foundation
charter of the abbey of Osnoy in 1129. See Dugdale, Monasticon, vi, p. 251, and
Sir F. Madden in Journal of the Archaeological Institute, 1858, p. 305.
? A full, and most suggestive, discussion of the whole subject of Geoffrey's sources
is given in The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles by R. H. Fletcher (Harvard
Studies in Phil. and Lit. Vol. x, 1906).
E. L. I. CH. XII.
17
## p. 258 (#278) ############################################
258
The Arthurian Legend
outside their province, for “the British book" was to them a sealed
volume.
Geoffrey's relation to the Latin chroniclers of his time is dealt
with in another chapter; here, his contributions to Arthurian
story alone claim our attention. The glorification of Arthur in
the History lends some countenance to the supposition that the
work was written with an interested motive. Geoffrey probably
aspired, like most of his class, to preferment in the church, and
may have hoped that his book would ingratiate him with the earl
of Gloucester and with Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, to whom
he dedicated, separately, the “Prophecies of Merlin. " Assuming
him to have had such motives, Geoffrey's History is interpreted
as being a kind of prose epic, intended to celebrate the united
glories of the composite Anglo-Norman empire which attained
its widest extent under Henry II? It did, indeed, provide a hero
in whom Norman and Saxon, Welshman and Breton, could take
common pride. Moreover, the ancient birthright and the essential
homogeneity of the various races embraced in the Angevin empire
were attested by an account of their descent from a branch of the
Trojan stock celebrated in the Aeneid. Brutus, whose eponymous
connection with the country had already been suggested by Nennius,
became for Britain what Aeneas was for Rome. Geoffrey's chronicle
is thus the first Brut, the first elaborate, and possibly “inspired,”
adaptation of the Brutus legend for the glorification of Britain ;
and, in time, all records of the early British kings, whether in
prose or verse, which had this mythic starting point, came to
be called Bruts-presumably in imitation of the title of Vergil's
epic.
Apart, however, from its Trojan prelude, and its possible
political or diplomatic motive, there is little real analogy between
Geoffrey's Brut and the Aeneid. For Arthur, after all, and not
Brutus, is Geoffrey's ultimate hero. The flos regum of early
Britain, the warrior who vindicates the essential valour of the
British people, and who not only triumphs over his insignificant
enemies in Britain itself, but conquers a great part of Europe
and forces even the once victorious Romans to pay tribute to
a British king, is Arthur. In him was fulfilled the prophecy that
“for the third time should one of British race be born who should
? See the epilogue to Geoffrey's History.
* This hypothesis is advanced with much ingenuity, and plausibility, in the epilogue
to what is the best English translation of Geoffrey's History, by Sebastian Evans,
London, 1903.
## p. 259 (#279) ############################################
Geoffrey of Monmouth
259
obtain the empire of Rome. ” Thus, Geoffrey brings all his powers
of rhetoric, and all his imagination, to bear upon his delineation of
Arthur and his exploits. The first six books of the History tell,
with many embellishments of style and with incidental references
to contemporary events elsewhere, inserted as so many grave
guarantees of authenticity, the story of Arthur's kingly prede-
cessors. At the close of the sixth book the weird figure of Merlin
appears on the scene; and Geoffrey pauses to give, in an entire
book, the fantastic prophecies attributed to that wonder-working
seer. Romance, frank and undisguised, now usurps the place of
sober, or affected, history. Merlin's magic arts are made largely
contributory to the birth of the most renowned Arthur. ” Uther
and Gorlois and Igerna and the castle of Tintagol, or Tintagel,
now take their place, for the first time, in the fabric of Arthurian
story.
Uther, with Merlin's assistance, gains admission to Igerna's
castle in the semblance of her lord, Gorlois, and begets Arthur ; upon
the death of Gorlois, Uther takes Igerna for his lawful queen, and
Arthur of due right succeeds to the throne. Crowned by Dubricius,
“archbishop of the City of Legions," at the early age of fifteen,
Arthur at once begins his career of conquest. The Saxons, Scots
and Picts are encountered and vanquished at the river Duglas ;
afterwards, with the aid of his cousin, king Hoel of Britanny,
Arthur subjugates the entire island and divides Scotland among
its original rightful rulers, Lot and his two brothers, Urian and
Augusel. Lot, we are told by the way, "had, in the days of
Aurelius Ambrosius, married Arthur's own sister, who had borne
unto him Gawain and Mordred. ” Having restored the whole
country to its ancient dignity, Arthur “took unto himself a wife
born of a noble Roman family, Guanhumara, who, brought up and
nurtured in the household of duke Cador, surpassed in beauty all
the other women of the island. " Ireland and Iceland are next
added to his conquests, while tribute is paid, and homage made
to him, by the rulers of the Orkneys and of Gothland. His
court now is the centre of a brilliant assemblage of knights, his
fear “falls upon the kings of realms oversea" and his “heart
became so uplifted within him” that "he set his desire upon
subduing the whole of Europe unto himself? ". Norway, Dacia
and Gaul fall in quick succession under Arthur's sway; Normandy
is made over to “Bedwyr, his butler,” and Anjou to “Kay, his
seneschal. ” Returning to Britain, Arthur next holds high court at
1 Bk. 1x, ch. XI.
17—2
## p. 260 (#280) ############################################
260
The Arthurian Legend
Caerleon-upon-Usk, then a city whose “kingly palaces” vied in
magnificence with those of Rome itself.
At that time was Britain exalted unto so high a pitch of dignity as that
it did surpass all other kingdoms in plenty of riches, in luxury of adornment,
and in the courteous wit of them that dwelt therein. Whatsoever knight in
the land was of renown for his prowess did wear his clothes and his arms all
of one same colour. And the dames, no less witty, would apparel them in
like manner in a single colour, nor would they deigu have the love of any
gave he had thrice approved bim in the wars. Wherefore at that time did
dames wax chaste and knights the nobler for their lovel.
The pomp and colour of the age of chivalry, and its ideals of
knightly love, are thus already beginning to qualify imaginative
conceptions of the Arthurian court; while the picture of Arthur
himself, as the head of princely vassals and emulous knights, makes
the transition easy to the fellowship of the Round Table, and to all
the other accretions of later romances. But Geoffrey does not,
any more than the early Welsh poets and story-tellers or the later,
and more deliberate, purveyors of fantastic fables, altogether
remove his Arthur from wonderland. The British king still slays
monsters; by his own hand he kills a Spanish giant at St Michael's
Mount, and a still more formidable foe, the giant "Ritho of Mount
Eryri, who had fashioned him a furred cloak of the kings he had
slain. ” Equally marvellous is Arthur's individual might in battle,
for, in his encounters with the Romans, "nought might armour
avail” his antagonists “but that Caliburn would carve their souls
from out them with their blood. ”
The great battle with the Romans, in which Arthur displayed
such prowess, was a fateful one. The British hosts did, indeed,
gain the victory; and Hoel and Gawain (Walgainus) performed
prodigies of valour second only to those of Arthur himself. But
the triumph was obtained at a heavy cost; many illustrious British
chieftains, and, above all, the faithful Kay and Bedwyr, were
numbered among the slain. The result of the battle was to fire
Arthur with the design of marching upon the city of Rome itself.
He was already beginning to climb the passes of the Alps, when
"message was brought him that his nephew Mordred, unto whom
he had committed the charge of Britain, had tyrannously and
traitorously set the crown of the kingdom upon his own head, and
had linked him in unhallowed union with Guenevere, the queen,
in despite of her former marriage? ".
Arthur, taking with him his
British warriors only, returns home. Mordred meets him as he
18. Evans's trans. (London, 1903).
* Book , ch. x.
## p. 261 (#281) ############################################
Geoffrey of Monmouth
261
lands, and, in the ensuing battle, Gawain and many others are slain.
Mordred, however, is driven back, and Guinevere, in terror for her
safety, becomes a nun. The final battle is fought at the river
Camel in the west country. Mordred is defeated and slain, and
most of the leaders on both sides perish. “Even the renowned
king Arthur himself was wounded unto death, and was borne
thence unto the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds. "
Such, in brief, is the narrative through the medium of which -
Arthur made his triumphant entry to the kingship of the most
splendid province of medieval romance. Let Geoffrey have the
credit which is his due. It is little to the point to seek to minimise
his influence upon the rise and growth of Arthurian romance by
emphasising his omissions,—that, for example, he knows nothing
of Lancelot, of Tristram, of the Holy Grail and of other famous
characters and incidents of the fully-developed legend. The salient
fact is that while, before the appearance of Geoffrey's History,
Arthur, as a literary hero, is virtually unknown, he becomes, almost
immediately afterwards, the centre of the greatest of the romantic
cycles. He is, indeed, transformed eventually into a very different
being from the warlike British champion of Geoffrey's book; but it
is in that book that we obtain our first full-length literary portrait of
him, and, in the Mordred and Guinevere episode, that we find the
first deliberate suggestion of the love-tragedy which the romancers
were quick to seize upon and to expand. Geoffrey's Arthur is, no
doubt, largely a Normanised Arthur, and many of the details and
incidents woven into his narrative are derived from his knowledge
and observation of Norman manners and Norman pomp? ; but his
story, as a whole, has, like every vivid product of the imagination,
a charm altogether independent of the time and the conditions
of its making, and is charged throughout with the seductive magic
of romance. Hence the spell which Geoffrey's legends exerted over
many famous English poets, haunted by memories of
what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son,
Begirt with British and Armorio knights.
Possibly, no work before the age of printed books attained such
immediate and astonishing popularity. To this the number of
extant MSS of the work bears testimony, while translations,
See Fletcher, The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles (Harvard, 1906).
pp. 109 sqq.
3 The British Museum alone has thirty-five, and the Bodleian sixteen.
## p. 262 (#282) ############################################
262 The Arthurian Legend
adaptations and continuations of it formed one of the staple
exercises of a host of medieval scribes. The sensation created
by the book at the time of its first circulation is attested by one
of the earliest, if not the earliest of all, writers who borrowed from
it-Alfred of Beverley. In the preface to his History, largely an
abridgment of Geoffrey compiled about 1150, Alfred states that
Geoffrey's book was so universally talked of that to confess ignorance
of its stories was the mark of a clown.
In the epilogue to his History, where he bids William of
Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon “be silent as to the kings
of the Britons,” Geoffrey commits the task of writing their further
history to “Caradoc of Llancarvan, my contemporary. " No Latin
chronicle bearing Caradoc's name is known to exist; but certain
Welsh compilations, continuing Geoffrey's narrative down to the
year 1156, are, on very doubtful authority, ascribed to him.
Caradoc's authorship is, however, claimed with more confidence
for a work which embodies a few Arthurian traditions of which
Geoffrey seems to have been ignorant--the Latin Life of Gildas.
In this curious production, written either before or shortly after
Geoffrey's death? , Arthur is described, first of all, as being engaged
in deadly feud with Hueil, or Huel, king of Scotland and one of
Gildas's twenty-three brothers, whom he finally kills ; he subse-
quently comes into collision with Melwas, the wicked king of “the
summer country," or Somerset, who had, unknown to him, abducted
his wife, Guenever, and concealed her in the abbey of Glastonia
Just as the two kings are about to meet in battle, the monks of
Glastonia, accompanied by Gildas, intervene and succeed in per-
suading Melwas to restore Guenever to Arthur. This would seem
to be the earliest appearance of the tradition which makes Melwas
(the Mellyagraunce of Malory) an abductor of Guinevere. Other
Latin lives of Welsh saints, written not long after the Life of
Gildas, record traditions about Arthur which are quite independent
of Geoffrey3, a fact which would seem to indicate that Geoffrey's
direct borrowings of Arthurian stories from Welsh sources are
comparatively slight.
Popular though it immediately became elsewhere, Geoffrey's
History, it is strange to find, seems to have aroused little interest
1 See the English translation published in 1584 by David Powell.
; According to a competent authority, about 1160 (F. Lot in Romania, xxrv, 330).
The MS (at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) is of the twelfth century.
See, for example, the Life of St Carannog and the Life of St Cadoc in Rees's
Cambro-British Saints (1853).
## p. 263 (#283) ############################################
The French Romances 263
in Wales. An important Welsh translation of it', which was, at
one time, supposed to have been its “British” original, was, indeed,
made at an early date, but the medieval Welsh bards remained
altogether indifferent to Arthurian story. The second great period
of Welsh bardic activity extends from the twelfth century down to
the death of prince Llywelyn ap Gruffud in 1282; but we look in
vain among the works of the crowd of bards who flourished at this
period for any celebration of Arthur and his deeds. There is no
Welsh metrical romance, or epic, of Arthur. The medieval bards -
sing, in preference, of living warriors or of those lately dead, well
knowing that such encomiastic poetry brought its ready rewards.
It is to her prose story-tellers that Wales owes her one incomparable
contribution to Arthurian romance in the native tongue.
The full value of the Arthurian stories as poetic and romantic
matter and, in particular, their possibilities of adaptation and
expansion as ideal tales of chivalry, were first perceived in France,
or, at any rate, by writers who used the French language. Three
stages, or forms, in the literary exploitation to which the legends
were subjected by French romantic writers, can be clearly traced.
First comes the metrical chronicle, in which Geoffrey's quasi-
historical narrative appears in an expanded and highly-coloured
romantic setting, and of which Wace's Brut is the earliest standard
example. This was the literary form in which the Arthurian
legend made its first appearance in English. Next in order, and
not much later, perhaps, in their actual origin, come the metrical
romances proper. These poetical romances, of which the works
of Chrétien de Troyes are at once the typical, and the most success-
ful, examples, are concerned with the careers and achievements
of individual knights of the Arthurian court. In them, Arthur
himself plays quite a subordinate part; his wars and the com-
plications that led to his tragic end are altogether lost sight of.
The third stage is represented by the prose romances, which began
to be compiled, probably, during the closing years of the twelfth
century, and which underwent a continuous process of expansion,
interpolation and redaction until about the middle of the thirteenth
century. Many of these prose romances, such as those of Merlin
1 Ystorya Brenhined y Brytanyeit in The Red Book of Hergest (edd. Rhys and
Gwenogvryn Evans, Oxford, 1890). Another Welsh chronicle, also at one time
supposed to have beon Geoffrey's original, is Tysilio's Brut, printed in the Myvyrian
Archaeology of Wales as “ from the Red Book of Hergest. " No such chroniole, how.
ever, appears in The Red Book. Tysilio is supposed to have lived in the seventh
century; the chronicle ascribed to him is not found in any MS earlier than the
fifteenth.
## p. 264 (#284) ############################################
264 The Arthurian Legend
and Lancelot, give much greater prominence than the poems do
to Arthur's individual deeds and fortunes. The most celebrated
name associated with the authorship of these prose works is that
of Walter Map, who, calling, as he does, the Welsh his "fellow-
countrymen," brings Wales and the Angevin court, once more, into
touch with the development of the Arthurian legend.
The Norman clerk, Wace, was the first French writer who
turned Geoffrey of Monmouth's fabulous chronicle to profitable
poetical uses. Geoffrey Gaimar, an Anglo-Norman writer who
lived in the north of England, had, probably, anticipated Wace's
design”; but no copy of Gaimar's translation has been preserved.
Wace's poem was completed in 1155, and, according to Layamon,
was dedicated to queen Eleanor, the wife of Henry II-another
fact which indicates the interest taken by the Anglo-Norman court
in the literary exploitation and the dissemination of British legends.
Wace was a courtly writer, and in his narrative Arthur appears as
the flower of chivalry, the ideal knightly warrior of the Norman
imagination. Although his poem is based, in substance, entirely
on Geoffrey's History, Wace is far from being a mere servile
translator of Geoffrey. He dresses up Geoffrey's matter with a
wealth of picturesque detail and of colour all his own. Moreover,
he seems to have had access to romantic traditions, or stories,
quite unknown to Geoffrey. The Round Table, for example, is
first heard of in Wace and of it, as he says, “the Bretons tell
many a fable. ” It was made by Arthur in order to settle all
disputes about precedence among his knights“. Wace also amplifies
Geoffrey's account of the passing of Arthur. The British king is
not merely left in Avalon "to be cured of his wounds”; he is still
there, the Bretons await him, and say that he will come back and
live again. Wace's poem, as a whole, thus represents an inter-
mediate stage between the chronicles and the pure romances. It
must have contributed powerfully to the popularity of "the matter
of Britain,” by putting it into a form and a language which com-
manded a much larger constituency of readers than would be
attracted by any Latin prose narrative, however highly coloured
or agreeably written.
1 De Nugis Curialium, Dist. 11, ch. XX.
2 Gaimar had probably completed his work by 1150. His lost History of the
Britons formed a prelude to his L'Estorie des Engles, which has been preserved (ed.
Hardy and Martin, Rolls Series, 1888–9).
* Layamon states that Waoe "gave” his book to “the noble Eleanor, who was the
high king Henry's queen," Brut, 11. 42, 43.
* LI. 9994–10,007.
OL. 13,685.
## p. 265 (#285) ############################################
Layamon
265
Above all, Wace's Brut is of signal interest to English readers
as forming the basis of the solitary contribution of any consequence
made by an English writer to the vast and varied mass of Arthurian
literature before the fourteenth centuryl. Layamon, however, is
a very different poet from Wace. While not indifferent to romance,
as several significant additions to the Arthurian part of his story
will show, Layamon wrote his Brut as a frankly patriotic English --
epic. Wace's work is almost as artificial and exotic a product
as the poetical romances; it was designed as a contribution to the
polite literature of the Norman aristocracy. Layamon, dwelling
in seclusion on the banks of the Severn, where “it was good to be,"
was fired by an ambition “to tell the noble deeds of England,” and
to tell them in the English tongue. His poem is the first articulate
utterance of the native English genius reasserting itself in its own
language after the long silence which succeeded the Conquest.
Although he borrows most of his matter from Wace, Layamon,
in manner and spirit, is much nearer akin to the robust singers
of the Old English period than to the courtly French poet. The
simple force and vividness of the primitive English epic reappear
in descriptions of battle scenes and of heroic deeds. Even the
poet's diction is scrupulously pure English. And Arthur, who,
in the hands of the professional romancers, had already become
all but an alien to his fatherland, is restored to his rightful
place as the champion of Britain, and the great Christian king
who
Drew all the petty princedoms under him,
Their king and head, and made a realm, and reign'd.
Arthur, therefore, was to Layamon, primarily, the ideal British
hero-an actual king of England, whose character and prowess
deserved the veneration of his countrymen altogether apart from
the glamour with which romance had enshrouded his name. But
Layamon was a poet; and upon him, as upon the rest, the romantic
glamour works its inevitable spell Elf-land claims Arthur, both
at his birth and at his death. Elves received him into the world;
they gave him gifts, to become the best of knights and a mighty
king, to have long life and to be generous above all living men ? .
At his passing, Arthur says he will go to Argante (Morgan le fay),
the splendid elf; she will heal him of his wounds, so that he will
return again to his kingdoms. Again, Arthur's byrnie was made
for him by Wygar, the elvish smith", his spear by Griffin of the
1 Cf. ante, Chapter x, pp. 234 ff.
i Ll. 19,254 sqq. (Madden's ed. ).
Ll. 28,610 sqq.
4 L. 21,133.
## p. 266 (#286) ############################################
266 The Arthurian Legend
city of the wizard Merlin (Kaermerđin)? Caliburn, his sword,
was wrought in Avalon with magic craft? ; the Round Table, by
a strange carpenter from beyond the seas. Nowhere, however,
does Layamon's poem breathe more of the spirit of pure romance
than in the passages which describe Arthur's last battle and fall.
The encounter took place at Camelford (Camlan) "a name that
will last for ever+. ” The stream, hard by, “was flooded with blood
unmeasured. ” So thick was the throng that the warriors could
not distinguish each other, but "each slew downright, were he
swain, were he knight. " Modred and all his knights perished
and “there were slain all the brave ones, Arthur's warriors, high
and low, and all the Britons of Arthur's board. ” Of all the two
hundred thousand men who fought, none remained, at the end
of the fight, save Arthur and two of his knights. But Arthur was
sorely wounded, and, bidding the young Constantine, Cador's son,
take charge of his kingdom, he consigns himself to the care of
Argante, “the fairest of all maidens," who dwells in Avalon. Thence,
cured of his wounds, he will come again to "dwell with the Britons
with mickle joy. "
Even with the words there came from the sea a short boat, borne on the
waves, and two women therein, wondrously arrayed; and they took Arthur
anon, and bare him quickly, and softly laid him down, and fared forth away,
Then was brought to pass that which Merlin whilom said, that there should
be sorrow untold at Arthur's forth-faring. The Britons believe yet that he is
alive, and dwelleth in Avalon, with the fairest of all elves, and ever yet the
Britons look for Arthur's coming. Was never the man born, nor ever of
woman chosen, that knoweth the sooth, to say more of Arthur. But whilom
there was a seer hight Merlin; he said with words and his sayings were
800th-that an Arthur should yet come to help the Britons.
In this passage, as in many others, Layamon supplies several
details not found in Wace, and his poem throughout bears abundant
evidence that he drew upon a fund of independent traditions
gleaned from many fields. Among the most interesting of
Layamon's additions to, and amplifications of, Wace's narrative
are his accounts of Arthur's dream shortly before his last return
to Britain, and of the origin and the making of the Round Table.
The dream, of which neither Geoffrey nor Wace know anything,
foreshadows the treachery of Modred and Guinevere, and disturbs
1 L. 23,783. L. 21,135. L. 22,910. • Ll. 28,533 899.
01. Tennyson, Passing of Arthur:
“For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend blew friend not knowing whom he slew. "
6 See Ll. 28,020 sqq.
## p. 267 (#287) ############################################
Subsidiary Legends
267
Arthur with the sense of impending doom. The occasion of the
institution of the Round Table is, as in Wace, a quarrel for
precedence among Arthur's knights; but the description of the
actual making, and of the properties, of the Table is all Layamon's
own. It was while he was in Cornwall, after the quarrel among
his knights, that Arthur met the man from oversea who offered
to “make him a board, wondrous fair, at which sixteen hundred
men and more might sit ? . " Its huge size notwithstanding, and
though it took four weeks to make, the board could, by some
magic means, be carried by Arthur as he rode, and set by him
in what place soever he willed. Like Wace, Layamon evidently
knew stories about the Round Table, of which the origin has
never been traced; for “this was that same table” he says, “ of
which the Britons boast”—the Britons, who tell “ many leasings”
of king Arthur, and say of him things that never happened in the
kingdom of this world ? . " So it would appear that Layamon, had
he pleased, could have told us much more of Arthur. Even as it
stands, however, his poem is a notable contribution to Arthurian
story, and has the unique distinction of being the first celebration
of “the matter of Britain” in the English tongue.
When we pass from the metrical chronicles to the pure
romances, both verse and prose, we all but part with the traditional
British Arthur altogether. Not only are we suddenly transported
into the “no man's land” of chivalry, but we find ourselves
surrounded by strange apparitions from regions Geoffrey and his
translators never knew. In the romances, the Arthurian court
serves but as a convenient rendezvous for a
moving row
Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go
in quest of adventures which bear little, or no, relation to the
British king. Characters, of whom the chroniclers tell us nothing,
and who were themselves the heroes of quite independent legends,
now make a dramatic entry upon the Arthurian stage. Tristram and
Lancelot and Perceval play parts which divert our attention quite
away from that assigned to Arthur himself. Thus, a complete
history of Arthurian romance involves a series of enquiries into
the growth of a number of legends which have, for the most part,
only the most artificial connection with the original Arthurian
tradition. Some of these legends are as archaic, and as purely
mythical, as the primitive fables about the British Arthur, and
See 11. 22,910 sqq.
? L. 23,987.
## p. 268 (#288) ############################################
268
The Arthurian Legend
were probably current in popular lays long before the latter half
of the twelfth century. A full account of the romances in which
they were embodied and enriched during the age of chivalry
belongs to the history of French, and German, rather than to that
of English, literature. Not until the fourteenth century do we
come across a single English writer whose name is to be mentioned
in the same breath with those of Chrétien de Troyes and the
authors of the French prose romances, or of Wolfram von
Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg and Hartmann von Aue.
Here, only the briefest review can be attempted of the main
features of the subsidiary legends which were imported, by these
and other writers, into the vast Arthurian miscellany. .
Of all such legends, the most intimately connected with Arthur
himself is the story of Merlin. In Welsh tradition, Merlin, or
Myrdin, is a figure very similar to Taliesin—a wizard bard of the
sixth century, to whom a number of spurious poetical compositions
came, in course of time, to be ascribed. His first association with
Arthur is due to Geoffrey of Monmouth, who identifies him with
the Ambrosius of Nennius and makes of him both a magician and
a prophet; to his magic arts, as we have seen, the birth of Arthur
was largely due. His character is further developed in a Latin
hexameter poem, Vita Merlini, composed, probably, about the
year 1148 and attributed by several competent authorities to
Geoffrey. This poem, however, presents us with a conception of
the mage which is not easy to reconcile with the account given of
him in Geoffrey's History, and suggests many points of analogy
with certain early Welsh poems in which Merlin figures, and with
which Geoffrey could hardly have been acquainted? . Merlin makes
his first appearance in French romantic poetry in a poem of which
only a fragment has been preserved, supposed to be by Robert de
Borron, and dating from the end of the twelfth century. Upon
this poem was based the French prose romance of Merlin, part of
which is assigned to Robert de Borron, and which exists in two
forms-the first known as the “ordinary” Merlin, and the other
as the Suite de Merlin. For Robert de Borron, the enchanter's
arts are but so many manifestations of the powers of darkness ;
Merlin himself becomes the devil's offspring and most active agent.
From the Suite de Merlin, of which Malory's first four books are
an abridged version, was derived one of the minor offshoots of
1 These resemblances are pointed out in what is the fullest account of the Merlin
saga in English, Outlines of the History of the Legend of Merlin, by W. E. Mead
(Part 1v of II. B. Wheatley's edition of the prose Merlin in the E. E. T. 8. series).
## p. 269 (#289) ############################################
Gawain
269
Arthurian romance, the striking story of Balin and Balan. The
earliest romance of Merlin in English is the metrical Arthour and
Merlin, translated from a French original at the beginning of the
fourteenth century. This work, however, is not so well known as
the great prose Merlin, a translation from the French made about -
the middle of the fifteenth century.
No knight of the primitive Arthurian fellowship enjoyed a
higher renown than Arthur's nephew, Gawain. Under the name
of Gwalchmei, Gawain figures prominently in the Welsh Triads
and in the Mabinogion; while, as Walgainus, he is one of Arthur's
most faithful and doughty lieutenants in the wars recounted by
Geoffrey. So great was the traditional fame of Gawain that
William of Malmesbury thought it worth while to record the
discovery of his grave in Pembrokeshire; and there is some
evidence that his name was well known even in Italy by the
beginning of the twelfth century? He was, probably, the centre
of a cycle of adventures quite independent of, and quite as old as,
the original Arthur saga. He is certainly the hero of more
episodic romances than any other British knight?
is just one of those weird mythological poems which are very
difficult to interpret, and where, again to quote Matthew Arnold,
the author “is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully
possess the secret. ” Here Arthur sets out upon various expe-
ditions over perilous seas in his ship Pridwen; one of them had
as its object the rape of a mysterious cauldron belonging to the
king of Hades. “Three freights of Pridwen,” says the bard, “were
they who went out with Arthur; seven alone were they who
returned" from Caer Sidi, Caer Rigor and the other wholly
unidentified places whither they fared. It is in this poem that
the closest parallels of all are found with incidents described in
the story of Kulhwch and Olwen, and, as a whole, it “evidently
deals with expeditions conducted by Arthur by sea to the realms
of twilight and darkness? . " But, here, the British king is much
further removed than in Kulhwch from any known country, and
appears as a purely mythical hero with supernatural attributes.
The most remarkable fragment for the tale, as we have it, is
an obvious torso-of all the early Welsh literature about Arthur
Rhys, preface to Dent's Malory, p. xxxiv, where the poom's correspondences with
Kulhwch are pointed out.
her fared. un incidents veridently
## p. 252 (#272) ############################################
252
The Arthurian Legend
that has come down to us is the prose romance of Kulhwch and
Olwen. The oldest extant text of it is that of the early fourteenth
century MS known as The White Book of Rhyderch', where we
find many remarkable archaisms which have been modernised in
the version of The Red Book of Hergest; but the original form
of the story is assigned, by the most competent authorities, to the
tenth century. It is included in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation
of the Mabinogion; and, as that translation largely contributed
to the fashioning of the most popular presentment of Arthurian
romance in modern English poetry, a brief account of the entire
series of these Welsh tales may here be appropriately given. All
the tales translated by Lady Guest are taken from The Red Book
of Hergest, with the exception of The History of Taliesin.
Taliesin, in the form we have it, is a compilation of obviously
late medieval origin, and is not found in any MS of an earlier
date than the end of the sixteenth century. The name Mabi-
nogion belongs, strictly speaking, to only four of the twelve stories
included in Lady Guest's book. Each of these four tales is called
in Welsh “ceinc y Mabinogi,” which means “a branch of the
Mabinogi”; and the correct title for the group should be “the
four branches of the Mabinogi. ” The term mabinogi signifies "a
tale of youth," or "a tale for the young. ” The “four branches” are
the tales known as Pwyll, prince of Dyved; Branwen, daughter
of Llŷr; Manawydan, son of Llŷr; and Math, son of Mathonwy.
They contain what is probably the most archaic body of Welsh
tradition in existence, are largely, if not entirely, mythological in
character and suggest many points of analogy with the mythic
tales of Ireland4. They deal, mainly, with the fortunes of three
great families, the children of Dôn, the children of Llŷr and the
family of Pwyll. In these stories, the Mabinogion proper, Arthur
does not appear at all.
Of the other tales, two—The Dream of Maxen Wledig and
Llud and Llevelys—are brief romantic excursions into the do-
main of ancient British history, later in date, probably, than
Geoffrey's Historia. Arthur does not figure in either. The
remaining five tales, however, are all Arthurian, but form two
1 In the Peniarth Library. Gwenogvryn Evans has an edition of this MS in
preparation.
* Rhys, Dent's Malory, p. xxxiv.
8 Thomas Love Peacock drew most of his matter for The Misfortunes of Elphin from
this tale.
* For a suggestive analysis of the probable origins and mythological significanca
of the “ four branches,” see Rhys, Celtic Folk-lore, vol. II.
A18 tale.
## p. 253 (#273) ############################################
The Mabinogion
253
distinct groups. In Kulhwch and Olwen and The Dream of
Rhonabwy we have two Arthurian stories of apparently pure
British origin, in which Arthur is presented in a milieu altogether
unaffected by the French romances. The second and better known
group, consisting of the three tales entitled The Lady of the
Fountain, Geraint, son of Erbin and Peredur, son of Evrawc,
are romances palpably based upon French originals. They corre-
spond, respectively, in their main features, to Chrétien de Troyes's
Le chevalier au lion, Erec and Le conte del Graal? .
The Mabinogion, as a whole, are the most artistic and de-
lightful expression of the early Celtic genius which we possess.
Nowhere else do we come into such close touch with the real
“Celtic magic," with the true enchanted land, where “the eternal
illusion clothes itself in the most seductive hues? " Composed
though they were, in all probability, by a professional literary
class, these stories are distinguished by a naive charm which
suggests anything but an artificial literary craftsmanship. The
supernatural is treated in them as the most natural thing in the
world, and the personages who possess magic gifts are made to
move about and speak and behave as perfectly normal human
creatures. The simple grace of their narrative, their delicacy and
tenderness of sentiment and, above all, their feeling for nature,
distinguish these tales altogether from the elaborate productions
of the French romantic schools; while in its lucid precision of form,
and in its admirable adaptation to the matter with which it deals,
no medieval prose surpasses that of the Welsh of the Mabinogion.
These traits are what make it impossible to regard even the later
Welsh Arthurian stories as mere imitations of Chrétien's poems.
Their characters and incidents may be, substantially, the same;
but the tone, the atmosphere, the entire artistic setting of the
Welsh tales are altogether different; and “neither Chrétien nor
Marie de France, nor any other French writer of the time, whether
in France or England, can for one moment compare with the
Welshmen as story-tellers pure and simple. "
i Le Conte del Graal is only in part the work of Chrétien.
» Repan, The Poetry of the Celtic Races. (Trans. Hutchison. )
* A. Nutt, in his edition of Lady C. Guest's Mabinogion, p. 352. Cf. Renan :
“ The charm of the Mabinogion principally resides in the amiable serenity of the
Celtic mind, neither sad nor gay, ever in suspense between a smile and a tear. We
have in them the simple recital of a child, unwitting of any distinction between the
noble and the common; there is something of that softly animated world, of that calm
and tranquil ideal to which Ariosto’s stanzas transport us. The chatter of the later
medieval French and German imitators can give no idea of this charming manner of
narration. The skilful Chrétien de Troyes himself remains in this respect far below
the Welsh story-tellers. " The Poetry of the Celtic Races.
## p. 254 (#274) ############################################
254
The Arthurian Legend
Kulhwch and Olwen, however, is the only one of these tales
that need detain us here, embodying as it does, in common with
the Welsh poems already quoted, Arthurian traditions far transcend-
ing in age the appearance of the Arthur of chivalry. Here, as
Matthew Arnold has said in an oft-quoted passage, the story-teller
"is like a peasant building his hut on the site of Halicarnassus or
Ephesus; he builds, but what he builds is full of materials of which
he knows not the history, or knows by a glimmering tradition
merely-stones ‘not of this building,' but of an older architecture,
greater, cunninger, more majestical. ” The main theme of the
story is the wooing of Olwen, the daughter of Yspađaden Pen
Kawr, by Kulhwch, the son of Kilyd, and the long series of
labours imposed upon the suitor in order to gain her hand
Olwen appears to have been well worth the arduous quest, for
“ her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were
her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone
amidst the spray of the meadow fountain," and "four white trefoils
sprung up wherever she trod. ” Arthur appears, here, not as the
ideal British warrior, nor as the hope and future restorer of his
race, but as a fairy king, overcoming uncouth and monstrous
enemies by his own and his followers' magic. All the same, he
is the lord of what is to the story-teller, in many places, a very
determinate realm; for, one of the most remarkable features of
Kulhwch and Olwen, as compared with the later Arthurian tales,
is the precision of its topography. The route of the boar-hunt,
for example-or the hunting of the Twrch Trwyth—may be traced,
without much difficulty, on our maps? .
Even more remarkable, however, than the topographical detail
of the story is the congeries of fabulous and fantastic Dames
grouped in it around the central figure of Arthur. This feature,
suggesting, as it does, the Arthurian court of the age of chivalry,
might be taken as evidence of the late redaction of the tale as we
have it, were it not that the story-teller gives details about most
of these strange characters which are evidently drawn from the
remnants of some lost saga. Arthur himself is introduced to us
in his palace, or hall, called Ehangwen, and thither Kulhwch comes
to crave his help to obtain Olwen; "and this boon I likewise seek,”
says Kulhwch, “at the hands of thy warriors. " These warriors
Kulhwch then proceeds to name in seemingly interminable suc-
cession. First in the long and weird list come Kai and Bedwyr;
others well known to early Welsh tradition include Gwynn and
to obtain Olwenien, and thither by
says Kulhwch
1 See Rhys's account of the hunt in Celtic Folklore, Vol. a, p. 572.
## p. 255 (#275) ############################################
one foot"; "Gure example, one Sol. 18 humour, briefly
Kulhwch and Olwen
255
Edern, the sons of Nud, Geraint, the son of Erbin, Taliesin, the
chief of bards, Manawyđan, the son of Llŷr. But, among the
company, there also appear several grotesque figures of whom
nothing is known save what the story-teller himself, giving rein,
as it would seem, to a deliberately mischievous humour, briefly
records. Thus we have, for example, one Sol, who “could stand
all day upon one foot”; Gwevy), the son of Gwestad, who “on the
day he was sad, would let one of his lips drop below his waist,
while he turned up the other like a cap upon his head”; Clust, the
son of Clustveinad, who "though he were buried seven cubits
beneath the earth, would hear the ant fifty miles off rise from her
nest in the morning. " Even familiar Arthurian heroes, like Kai,
are dowered with superhuman powers. “Kai had this peculiarity,
that his breath lasted nine nights and days under water, and he
could exist nine nights and nine days without sleep. ” “Very
subtle was Kai; when it pleased him he could make himself as
tall as the highest tree in the forest. " We are remote indeed,
in such company as this, from the knights of the Round Table;
but we are not so remote from the fairy world depicted in the
“Four Branches of the Mabinogi. ” The conclusion to which
Kulhwch and Olwen, and the few poems which mention Arthur,
clearly point is that the British king was far better known to
early Welsh tradition as a mythic hero than as the champion
of the Britons in their wars with the English. There may have
been a historical Arthur who was a comes Britanniae, or a dux
bellorum, of the sixth century, and his name, “re-echoed by the
topography of the country once under his protection," may have
"gathered round it legends of heroes and divinities of a past of
indefinite extent? . " What we do, however, know is that the
Arthur who emerges out of the mists of Celtic tradition at the
beginning of the twelfth century is an entirely imaginary being,
a king of fairy-land, undertaking hazardous quests, slaying monsters,
visiting the realms of the dead, and having at his call a number of
knightly henchmen, notably Kay and Bedivere, who are all but his
equals in wizardry and martial prowess. This mythical Arthur-
the creation of a primitive imagination altogether unaffected by
the sophisticated conceptions of chivalry and of conscious dealers
in romantic literary wares-belongs to early Welsh literature
alone.
The transformation of the Welsh, or British, Arthur into a
romantic hero of European renown was the result of the contact
· Rbys, preface to Dent's Malory, p. xxxvi.
## p. 256 (#276) ############################################
256
The Arthurian Legend
of Norman culture and, as it would seem, Norman diplomacy,
with the Celtic races of the west. It was doubtless from Britanny,
rather than from Wales, that the Normans derived their first
knowledge of the Arthurian stories. Indeed, it is probable that
the nameless story-tellers of Britanny fastened upon, and expanded,
a number of popular traditions which prefigured the Arthur of
romance much more clearly than anything told or written in
Wales. The Armorican “Bretons" are probably those whom
Wace mentions as “telling many a fable of the Table Round? . "
In Britanny, also, a belief in Arthur's return must long have been
current, for Alanus de Insulis records that a denial of it in the
second half of the twelfth century would be likely to cost a man
his life in the country districts of Britanny. By the middle of
the eleventh century the relations between the duchy of Normandy
and the Bretons had become particularly close, and the duke of
Britanny was one of William the Conqueror's staunchest allies at
the time of the invasion of Britain.
It is not, however, to Britanny that the great Latin ex-
ploitation of the legend of Arthur, under Norman auspices,
belongs, but to a section of Great Britain where the Norman
conquerors had, very rapidly, succeeded in establishing intimate
relations with the Welsh. By the beginning of the twelfth
century the Normans had effected a firm settlement in South
Wales. Now, it happens that it was a writer associated, at
least by name, with the South Wales border, and claiming the
patronage of a princely Norman who held that part of the country
in fee, who, most of all, is entitled to be called the literary father
of Arthurian romance. Robert, earl of Gloucester, and a natural
son of Henry I-for there is no evidence in support of the tradition
that his mother was the beautiful Nest, the daughter of the Welsh
prince, Rhys ap Tewdwr-acquired, early in the twelfth century, the
lordship of Glamorgan by marriage with Mabel, daughter of Robert
Fitz-hamon, conqueror of Glamorgan. Robert, like his father, was
a liberal and a diplomatic patron of letters. It was to him that
William of Malmesbury, the greatest historian of his time, dedi.
cated his History. To him was due the foundation of the abbey
of Margam, whose chronicle is a valuable early authority for the
history of Wales. On his estates at Torigni was born Robert de
Monte, abbot of Mont St Michel, a chronicler of renown, and a
lover and student of Breton legends. Above all, it was under his
1 Roman de Brut, 1. 9994.
• Prophetia Anglicana, etc. (Frankfort, 1603), Bk. I, p. 17.
## p. 257 (#277) ############################################
Geoffrey of Monmouth
257
immediate patronage that Geoffrey of Monmouth compiled his
romantic History of the Kings of Britain.
Of Geoffrey's personal history we know little. His full name
appears to have been, significantly, Geoffrey Arthur. His relentless
critic, William of Newburgh, takes “Arthur” to have been a by-
name given to him on the score of his Arthurian fabrications ; but
the truth probably is that Arthur was the name of his father?
His connection with Monmouth is obscure; he may have been
born in the town, or educated at the priory founded there by
the Breton, Wihenoc. He was never, as he is commonly designated,
archdeacon of Monmouth, for there was no such archdeaconry in
existence. Whether he was by descent a Breton, or a Welshman,
we know no more than we do whether the famous “British book,"
which he professes to have used, was derived from Wales or from
Britanny. Neither matter is of much consequence. The “British
book” may very well have been an authentic document, since lost,
which was placed, as he tells us, at his disposal by his friend
Walter, archdeacon of Oxford. Much Welsh and Breton folk-lore
doubtless reached him through monastic channels. Nennius and
Bede furnished him with matter which can be clearly traced in his
text? There can be little doubt, however, that the main source
of the Arthurian portions of his History was Geoffrey's own
imagination. The floating popular traditions about Arthur, and
the few documents which he had to his hand, plainly suggested
to him the possibilities of developing a new and striking romantic
theme. Geoffrey appears to have gauged the tastes and fancies of
the courtly readers of his day with an astuteness worthy of a
Defoe. Romance was in demand, and Geoffrey, giving the rein
to his faculty for decorative and rhetorical writing, responded
to that demand with an address that would have done credit to
the most alert of modern novelists. The time-honoured vehicle
of the chronicle was turned to new and unexpected uses. Sober
and orthodox chroniclers, like William of Malmesbury and Henry
of Huntingdon, are deliberately warned off the ground thus opened
out for the poet and the romancer. The “kings of the Saxons”
were their legitimate subject; the "kings of the Britons" were
1 Flis name is given as Gaufridus Arturus in the list of witnesses to the foundation
charter of the abbey of Osnoy in 1129. See Dugdale, Monasticon, vi, p. 251, and
Sir F. Madden in Journal of the Archaeological Institute, 1858, p. 305.
? A full, and most suggestive, discussion of the whole subject of Geoffrey's sources
is given in The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles by R. H. Fletcher (Harvard
Studies in Phil. and Lit. Vol. x, 1906).
E. L. I. CH. XII.
17
## p. 258 (#278) ############################################
258
The Arthurian Legend
outside their province, for “the British book" was to them a sealed
volume.
Geoffrey's relation to the Latin chroniclers of his time is dealt
with in another chapter; here, his contributions to Arthurian
story alone claim our attention. The glorification of Arthur in
the History lends some countenance to the supposition that the
work was written with an interested motive. Geoffrey probably
aspired, like most of his class, to preferment in the church, and
may have hoped that his book would ingratiate him with the earl
of Gloucester and with Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, to whom
he dedicated, separately, the “Prophecies of Merlin. " Assuming
him to have had such motives, Geoffrey's History is interpreted
as being a kind of prose epic, intended to celebrate the united
glories of the composite Anglo-Norman empire which attained
its widest extent under Henry II? It did, indeed, provide a hero
in whom Norman and Saxon, Welshman and Breton, could take
common pride. Moreover, the ancient birthright and the essential
homogeneity of the various races embraced in the Angevin empire
were attested by an account of their descent from a branch of the
Trojan stock celebrated in the Aeneid. Brutus, whose eponymous
connection with the country had already been suggested by Nennius,
became for Britain what Aeneas was for Rome. Geoffrey's chronicle
is thus the first Brut, the first elaborate, and possibly “inspired,”
adaptation of the Brutus legend for the glorification of Britain ;
and, in time, all records of the early British kings, whether in
prose or verse, which had this mythic starting point, came to
be called Bruts-presumably in imitation of the title of Vergil's
epic.
Apart, however, from its Trojan prelude, and its possible
political or diplomatic motive, there is little real analogy between
Geoffrey's Brut and the Aeneid. For Arthur, after all, and not
Brutus, is Geoffrey's ultimate hero. The flos regum of early
Britain, the warrior who vindicates the essential valour of the
British people, and who not only triumphs over his insignificant
enemies in Britain itself, but conquers a great part of Europe
and forces even the once victorious Romans to pay tribute to
a British king, is Arthur. In him was fulfilled the prophecy that
“for the third time should one of British race be born who should
? See the epilogue to Geoffrey's History.
* This hypothesis is advanced with much ingenuity, and plausibility, in the epilogue
to what is the best English translation of Geoffrey's History, by Sebastian Evans,
London, 1903.
## p. 259 (#279) ############################################
Geoffrey of Monmouth
259
obtain the empire of Rome. ” Thus, Geoffrey brings all his powers
of rhetoric, and all his imagination, to bear upon his delineation of
Arthur and his exploits. The first six books of the History tell,
with many embellishments of style and with incidental references
to contemporary events elsewhere, inserted as so many grave
guarantees of authenticity, the story of Arthur's kingly prede-
cessors. At the close of the sixth book the weird figure of Merlin
appears on the scene; and Geoffrey pauses to give, in an entire
book, the fantastic prophecies attributed to that wonder-working
seer. Romance, frank and undisguised, now usurps the place of
sober, or affected, history. Merlin's magic arts are made largely
contributory to the birth of the most renowned Arthur. ” Uther
and Gorlois and Igerna and the castle of Tintagol, or Tintagel,
now take their place, for the first time, in the fabric of Arthurian
story.
Uther, with Merlin's assistance, gains admission to Igerna's
castle in the semblance of her lord, Gorlois, and begets Arthur ; upon
the death of Gorlois, Uther takes Igerna for his lawful queen, and
Arthur of due right succeeds to the throne. Crowned by Dubricius,
“archbishop of the City of Legions," at the early age of fifteen,
Arthur at once begins his career of conquest. The Saxons, Scots
and Picts are encountered and vanquished at the river Duglas ;
afterwards, with the aid of his cousin, king Hoel of Britanny,
Arthur subjugates the entire island and divides Scotland among
its original rightful rulers, Lot and his two brothers, Urian and
Augusel. Lot, we are told by the way, "had, in the days of
Aurelius Ambrosius, married Arthur's own sister, who had borne
unto him Gawain and Mordred. ” Having restored the whole
country to its ancient dignity, Arthur “took unto himself a wife
born of a noble Roman family, Guanhumara, who, brought up and
nurtured in the household of duke Cador, surpassed in beauty all
the other women of the island. " Ireland and Iceland are next
added to his conquests, while tribute is paid, and homage made
to him, by the rulers of the Orkneys and of Gothland. His
court now is the centre of a brilliant assemblage of knights, his
fear “falls upon the kings of realms oversea" and his “heart
became so uplifted within him” that "he set his desire upon
subduing the whole of Europe unto himself? ". Norway, Dacia
and Gaul fall in quick succession under Arthur's sway; Normandy
is made over to “Bedwyr, his butler,” and Anjou to “Kay, his
seneschal. ” Returning to Britain, Arthur next holds high court at
1 Bk. 1x, ch. XI.
17—2
## p. 260 (#280) ############################################
260
The Arthurian Legend
Caerleon-upon-Usk, then a city whose “kingly palaces” vied in
magnificence with those of Rome itself.
At that time was Britain exalted unto so high a pitch of dignity as that
it did surpass all other kingdoms in plenty of riches, in luxury of adornment,
and in the courteous wit of them that dwelt therein. Whatsoever knight in
the land was of renown for his prowess did wear his clothes and his arms all
of one same colour. And the dames, no less witty, would apparel them in
like manner in a single colour, nor would they deigu have the love of any
gave he had thrice approved bim in the wars. Wherefore at that time did
dames wax chaste and knights the nobler for their lovel.
The pomp and colour of the age of chivalry, and its ideals of
knightly love, are thus already beginning to qualify imaginative
conceptions of the Arthurian court; while the picture of Arthur
himself, as the head of princely vassals and emulous knights, makes
the transition easy to the fellowship of the Round Table, and to all
the other accretions of later romances. But Geoffrey does not,
any more than the early Welsh poets and story-tellers or the later,
and more deliberate, purveyors of fantastic fables, altogether
remove his Arthur from wonderland. The British king still slays
monsters; by his own hand he kills a Spanish giant at St Michael's
Mount, and a still more formidable foe, the giant "Ritho of Mount
Eryri, who had fashioned him a furred cloak of the kings he had
slain. ” Equally marvellous is Arthur's individual might in battle,
for, in his encounters with the Romans, "nought might armour
avail” his antagonists “but that Caliburn would carve their souls
from out them with their blood. ”
The great battle with the Romans, in which Arthur displayed
such prowess, was a fateful one. The British hosts did, indeed,
gain the victory; and Hoel and Gawain (Walgainus) performed
prodigies of valour second only to those of Arthur himself. But
the triumph was obtained at a heavy cost; many illustrious British
chieftains, and, above all, the faithful Kay and Bedwyr, were
numbered among the slain. The result of the battle was to fire
Arthur with the design of marching upon the city of Rome itself.
He was already beginning to climb the passes of the Alps, when
"message was brought him that his nephew Mordred, unto whom
he had committed the charge of Britain, had tyrannously and
traitorously set the crown of the kingdom upon his own head, and
had linked him in unhallowed union with Guenevere, the queen,
in despite of her former marriage? ".
Arthur, taking with him his
British warriors only, returns home. Mordred meets him as he
18. Evans's trans. (London, 1903).
* Book , ch. x.
## p. 261 (#281) ############################################
Geoffrey of Monmouth
261
lands, and, in the ensuing battle, Gawain and many others are slain.
Mordred, however, is driven back, and Guinevere, in terror for her
safety, becomes a nun. The final battle is fought at the river
Camel in the west country. Mordred is defeated and slain, and
most of the leaders on both sides perish. “Even the renowned
king Arthur himself was wounded unto death, and was borne
thence unto the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds. "
Such, in brief, is the narrative through the medium of which -
Arthur made his triumphant entry to the kingship of the most
splendid province of medieval romance. Let Geoffrey have the
credit which is his due. It is little to the point to seek to minimise
his influence upon the rise and growth of Arthurian romance by
emphasising his omissions,—that, for example, he knows nothing
of Lancelot, of Tristram, of the Holy Grail and of other famous
characters and incidents of the fully-developed legend. The salient
fact is that while, before the appearance of Geoffrey's History,
Arthur, as a literary hero, is virtually unknown, he becomes, almost
immediately afterwards, the centre of the greatest of the romantic
cycles. He is, indeed, transformed eventually into a very different
being from the warlike British champion of Geoffrey's book; but it
is in that book that we obtain our first full-length literary portrait of
him, and, in the Mordred and Guinevere episode, that we find the
first deliberate suggestion of the love-tragedy which the romancers
were quick to seize upon and to expand. Geoffrey's Arthur is, no
doubt, largely a Normanised Arthur, and many of the details and
incidents woven into his narrative are derived from his knowledge
and observation of Norman manners and Norman pomp? ; but his
story, as a whole, has, like every vivid product of the imagination,
a charm altogether independent of the time and the conditions
of its making, and is charged throughout with the seductive magic
of romance. Hence the spell which Geoffrey's legends exerted over
many famous English poets, haunted by memories of
what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son,
Begirt with British and Armorio knights.
Possibly, no work before the age of printed books attained such
immediate and astonishing popularity. To this the number of
extant MSS of the work bears testimony, while translations,
See Fletcher, The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles (Harvard, 1906).
pp. 109 sqq.
3 The British Museum alone has thirty-five, and the Bodleian sixteen.
## p. 262 (#282) ############################################
262 The Arthurian Legend
adaptations and continuations of it formed one of the staple
exercises of a host of medieval scribes. The sensation created
by the book at the time of its first circulation is attested by one
of the earliest, if not the earliest of all, writers who borrowed from
it-Alfred of Beverley. In the preface to his History, largely an
abridgment of Geoffrey compiled about 1150, Alfred states that
Geoffrey's book was so universally talked of that to confess ignorance
of its stories was the mark of a clown.
In the epilogue to his History, where he bids William of
Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon “be silent as to the kings
of the Britons,” Geoffrey commits the task of writing their further
history to “Caradoc of Llancarvan, my contemporary. " No Latin
chronicle bearing Caradoc's name is known to exist; but certain
Welsh compilations, continuing Geoffrey's narrative down to the
year 1156, are, on very doubtful authority, ascribed to him.
Caradoc's authorship is, however, claimed with more confidence
for a work which embodies a few Arthurian traditions of which
Geoffrey seems to have been ignorant--the Latin Life of Gildas.
In this curious production, written either before or shortly after
Geoffrey's death? , Arthur is described, first of all, as being engaged
in deadly feud with Hueil, or Huel, king of Scotland and one of
Gildas's twenty-three brothers, whom he finally kills ; he subse-
quently comes into collision with Melwas, the wicked king of “the
summer country," or Somerset, who had, unknown to him, abducted
his wife, Guenever, and concealed her in the abbey of Glastonia
Just as the two kings are about to meet in battle, the monks of
Glastonia, accompanied by Gildas, intervene and succeed in per-
suading Melwas to restore Guenever to Arthur. This would seem
to be the earliest appearance of the tradition which makes Melwas
(the Mellyagraunce of Malory) an abductor of Guinevere. Other
Latin lives of Welsh saints, written not long after the Life of
Gildas, record traditions about Arthur which are quite independent
of Geoffrey3, a fact which would seem to indicate that Geoffrey's
direct borrowings of Arthurian stories from Welsh sources are
comparatively slight.
Popular though it immediately became elsewhere, Geoffrey's
History, it is strange to find, seems to have aroused little interest
1 See the English translation published in 1584 by David Powell.
; According to a competent authority, about 1160 (F. Lot in Romania, xxrv, 330).
The MS (at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) is of the twelfth century.
See, for example, the Life of St Carannog and the Life of St Cadoc in Rees's
Cambro-British Saints (1853).
## p. 263 (#283) ############################################
The French Romances 263
in Wales. An important Welsh translation of it', which was, at
one time, supposed to have been its “British” original, was, indeed,
made at an early date, but the medieval Welsh bards remained
altogether indifferent to Arthurian story. The second great period
of Welsh bardic activity extends from the twelfth century down to
the death of prince Llywelyn ap Gruffud in 1282; but we look in
vain among the works of the crowd of bards who flourished at this
period for any celebration of Arthur and his deeds. There is no
Welsh metrical romance, or epic, of Arthur. The medieval bards -
sing, in preference, of living warriors or of those lately dead, well
knowing that such encomiastic poetry brought its ready rewards.
It is to her prose story-tellers that Wales owes her one incomparable
contribution to Arthurian romance in the native tongue.
The full value of the Arthurian stories as poetic and romantic
matter and, in particular, their possibilities of adaptation and
expansion as ideal tales of chivalry, were first perceived in France,
or, at any rate, by writers who used the French language. Three
stages, or forms, in the literary exploitation to which the legends
were subjected by French romantic writers, can be clearly traced.
First comes the metrical chronicle, in which Geoffrey's quasi-
historical narrative appears in an expanded and highly-coloured
romantic setting, and of which Wace's Brut is the earliest standard
example. This was the literary form in which the Arthurian
legend made its first appearance in English. Next in order, and
not much later, perhaps, in their actual origin, come the metrical
romances proper. These poetical romances, of which the works
of Chrétien de Troyes are at once the typical, and the most success-
ful, examples, are concerned with the careers and achievements
of individual knights of the Arthurian court. In them, Arthur
himself plays quite a subordinate part; his wars and the com-
plications that led to his tragic end are altogether lost sight of.
The third stage is represented by the prose romances, which began
to be compiled, probably, during the closing years of the twelfth
century, and which underwent a continuous process of expansion,
interpolation and redaction until about the middle of the thirteenth
century. Many of these prose romances, such as those of Merlin
1 Ystorya Brenhined y Brytanyeit in The Red Book of Hergest (edd. Rhys and
Gwenogvryn Evans, Oxford, 1890). Another Welsh chronicle, also at one time
supposed to have beon Geoffrey's original, is Tysilio's Brut, printed in the Myvyrian
Archaeology of Wales as “ from the Red Book of Hergest. " No such chroniole, how.
ever, appears in The Red Book. Tysilio is supposed to have lived in the seventh
century; the chronicle ascribed to him is not found in any MS earlier than the
fifteenth.
## p. 264 (#284) ############################################
264 The Arthurian Legend
and Lancelot, give much greater prominence than the poems do
to Arthur's individual deeds and fortunes. The most celebrated
name associated with the authorship of these prose works is that
of Walter Map, who, calling, as he does, the Welsh his "fellow-
countrymen," brings Wales and the Angevin court, once more, into
touch with the development of the Arthurian legend.
The Norman clerk, Wace, was the first French writer who
turned Geoffrey of Monmouth's fabulous chronicle to profitable
poetical uses. Geoffrey Gaimar, an Anglo-Norman writer who
lived in the north of England, had, probably, anticipated Wace's
design”; but no copy of Gaimar's translation has been preserved.
Wace's poem was completed in 1155, and, according to Layamon,
was dedicated to queen Eleanor, the wife of Henry II-another
fact which indicates the interest taken by the Anglo-Norman court
in the literary exploitation and the dissemination of British legends.
Wace was a courtly writer, and in his narrative Arthur appears as
the flower of chivalry, the ideal knightly warrior of the Norman
imagination. Although his poem is based, in substance, entirely
on Geoffrey's History, Wace is far from being a mere servile
translator of Geoffrey. He dresses up Geoffrey's matter with a
wealth of picturesque detail and of colour all his own. Moreover,
he seems to have had access to romantic traditions, or stories,
quite unknown to Geoffrey. The Round Table, for example, is
first heard of in Wace and of it, as he says, “the Bretons tell
many a fable. ” It was made by Arthur in order to settle all
disputes about precedence among his knights“. Wace also amplifies
Geoffrey's account of the passing of Arthur. The British king is
not merely left in Avalon "to be cured of his wounds”; he is still
there, the Bretons await him, and say that he will come back and
live again. Wace's poem, as a whole, thus represents an inter-
mediate stage between the chronicles and the pure romances. It
must have contributed powerfully to the popularity of "the matter
of Britain,” by putting it into a form and a language which com-
manded a much larger constituency of readers than would be
attracted by any Latin prose narrative, however highly coloured
or agreeably written.
1 De Nugis Curialium, Dist. 11, ch. XX.
2 Gaimar had probably completed his work by 1150. His lost History of the
Britons formed a prelude to his L'Estorie des Engles, which has been preserved (ed.
Hardy and Martin, Rolls Series, 1888–9).
* Layamon states that Waoe "gave” his book to “the noble Eleanor, who was the
high king Henry's queen," Brut, 11. 42, 43.
* LI. 9994–10,007.
OL. 13,685.
## p. 265 (#285) ############################################
Layamon
265
Above all, Wace's Brut is of signal interest to English readers
as forming the basis of the solitary contribution of any consequence
made by an English writer to the vast and varied mass of Arthurian
literature before the fourteenth centuryl. Layamon, however, is
a very different poet from Wace. While not indifferent to romance,
as several significant additions to the Arthurian part of his story
will show, Layamon wrote his Brut as a frankly patriotic English --
epic. Wace's work is almost as artificial and exotic a product
as the poetical romances; it was designed as a contribution to the
polite literature of the Norman aristocracy. Layamon, dwelling
in seclusion on the banks of the Severn, where “it was good to be,"
was fired by an ambition “to tell the noble deeds of England,” and
to tell them in the English tongue. His poem is the first articulate
utterance of the native English genius reasserting itself in its own
language after the long silence which succeeded the Conquest.
Although he borrows most of his matter from Wace, Layamon,
in manner and spirit, is much nearer akin to the robust singers
of the Old English period than to the courtly French poet. The
simple force and vividness of the primitive English epic reappear
in descriptions of battle scenes and of heroic deeds. Even the
poet's diction is scrupulously pure English. And Arthur, who,
in the hands of the professional romancers, had already become
all but an alien to his fatherland, is restored to his rightful
place as the champion of Britain, and the great Christian king
who
Drew all the petty princedoms under him,
Their king and head, and made a realm, and reign'd.
Arthur, therefore, was to Layamon, primarily, the ideal British
hero-an actual king of England, whose character and prowess
deserved the veneration of his countrymen altogether apart from
the glamour with which romance had enshrouded his name. But
Layamon was a poet; and upon him, as upon the rest, the romantic
glamour works its inevitable spell Elf-land claims Arthur, both
at his birth and at his death. Elves received him into the world;
they gave him gifts, to become the best of knights and a mighty
king, to have long life and to be generous above all living men ? .
At his passing, Arthur says he will go to Argante (Morgan le fay),
the splendid elf; she will heal him of his wounds, so that he will
return again to his kingdoms. Again, Arthur's byrnie was made
for him by Wygar, the elvish smith", his spear by Griffin of the
1 Cf. ante, Chapter x, pp. 234 ff.
i Ll. 19,254 sqq. (Madden's ed. ).
Ll. 28,610 sqq.
4 L. 21,133.
## p. 266 (#286) ############################################
266 The Arthurian Legend
city of the wizard Merlin (Kaermerđin)? Caliburn, his sword,
was wrought in Avalon with magic craft? ; the Round Table, by
a strange carpenter from beyond the seas. Nowhere, however,
does Layamon's poem breathe more of the spirit of pure romance
than in the passages which describe Arthur's last battle and fall.
The encounter took place at Camelford (Camlan) "a name that
will last for ever+. ” The stream, hard by, “was flooded with blood
unmeasured. ” So thick was the throng that the warriors could
not distinguish each other, but "each slew downright, were he
swain, were he knight. " Modred and all his knights perished
and “there were slain all the brave ones, Arthur's warriors, high
and low, and all the Britons of Arthur's board. ” Of all the two
hundred thousand men who fought, none remained, at the end
of the fight, save Arthur and two of his knights. But Arthur was
sorely wounded, and, bidding the young Constantine, Cador's son,
take charge of his kingdom, he consigns himself to the care of
Argante, “the fairest of all maidens," who dwells in Avalon. Thence,
cured of his wounds, he will come again to "dwell with the Britons
with mickle joy. "
Even with the words there came from the sea a short boat, borne on the
waves, and two women therein, wondrously arrayed; and they took Arthur
anon, and bare him quickly, and softly laid him down, and fared forth away,
Then was brought to pass that which Merlin whilom said, that there should
be sorrow untold at Arthur's forth-faring. The Britons believe yet that he is
alive, and dwelleth in Avalon, with the fairest of all elves, and ever yet the
Britons look for Arthur's coming. Was never the man born, nor ever of
woman chosen, that knoweth the sooth, to say more of Arthur. But whilom
there was a seer hight Merlin; he said with words and his sayings were
800th-that an Arthur should yet come to help the Britons.
In this passage, as in many others, Layamon supplies several
details not found in Wace, and his poem throughout bears abundant
evidence that he drew upon a fund of independent traditions
gleaned from many fields. Among the most interesting of
Layamon's additions to, and amplifications of, Wace's narrative
are his accounts of Arthur's dream shortly before his last return
to Britain, and of the origin and the making of the Round Table.
The dream, of which neither Geoffrey nor Wace know anything,
foreshadows the treachery of Modred and Guinevere, and disturbs
1 L. 23,783. L. 21,135. L. 22,910. • Ll. 28,533 899.
01. Tennyson, Passing of Arthur:
“For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend blew friend not knowing whom he slew. "
6 See Ll. 28,020 sqq.
## p. 267 (#287) ############################################
Subsidiary Legends
267
Arthur with the sense of impending doom. The occasion of the
institution of the Round Table is, as in Wace, a quarrel for
precedence among Arthur's knights; but the description of the
actual making, and of the properties, of the Table is all Layamon's
own. It was while he was in Cornwall, after the quarrel among
his knights, that Arthur met the man from oversea who offered
to “make him a board, wondrous fair, at which sixteen hundred
men and more might sit ? . " Its huge size notwithstanding, and
though it took four weeks to make, the board could, by some
magic means, be carried by Arthur as he rode, and set by him
in what place soever he willed. Like Wace, Layamon evidently
knew stories about the Round Table, of which the origin has
never been traced; for “this was that same table” he says, “ of
which the Britons boast”—the Britons, who tell “ many leasings”
of king Arthur, and say of him things that never happened in the
kingdom of this world ? . " So it would appear that Layamon, had
he pleased, could have told us much more of Arthur. Even as it
stands, however, his poem is a notable contribution to Arthurian
story, and has the unique distinction of being the first celebration
of “the matter of Britain” in the English tongue.
When we pass from the metrical chronicles to the pure
romances, both verse and prose, we all but part with the traditional
British Arthur altogether. Not only are we suddenly transported
into the “no man's land” of chivalry, but we find ourselves
surrounded by strange apparitions from regions Geoffrey and his
translators never knew. In the romances, the Arthurian court
serves but as a convenient rendezvous for a
moving row
Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go
in quest of adventures which bear little, or no, relation to the
British king. Characters, of whom the chroniclers tell us nothing,
and who were themselves the heroes of quite independent legends,
now make a dramatic entry upon the Arthurian stage. Tristram and
Lancelot and Perceval play parts which divert our attention quite
away from that assigned to Arthur himself. Thus, a complete
history of Arthurian romance involves a series of enquiries into
the growth of a number of legends which have, for the most part,
only the most artificial connection with the original Arthurian
tradition. Some of these legends are as archaic, and as purely
mythical, as the primitive fables about the British Arthur, and
See 11. 22,910 sqq.
? L. 23,987.
## p. 268 (#288) ############################################
268
The Arthurian Legend
were probably current in popular lays long before the latter half
of the twelfth century. A full account of the romances in which
they were embodied and enriched during the age of chivalry
belongs to the history of French, and German, rather than to that
of English, literature. Not until the fourteenth century do we
come across a single English writer whose name is to be mentioned
in the same breath with those of Chrétien de Troyes and the
authors of the French prose romances, or of Wolfram von
Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg and Hartmann von Aue.
Here, only the briefest review can be attempted of the main
features of the subsidiary legends which were imported, by these
and other writers, into the vast Arthurian miscellany. .
Of all such legends, the most intimately connected with Arthur
himself is the story of Merlin. In Welsh tradition, Merlin, or
Myrdin, is a figure very similar to Taliesin—a wizard bard of the
sixth century, to whom a number of spurious poetical compositions
came, in course of time, to be ascribed. His first association with
Arthur is due to Geoffrey of Monmouth, who identifies him with
the Ambrosius of Nennius and makes of him both a magician and
a prophet; to his magic arts, as we have seen, the birth of Arthur
was largely due. His character is further developed in a Latin
hexameter poem, Vita Merlini, composed, probably, about the
year 1148 and attributed by several competent authorities to
Geoffrey. This poem, however, presents us with a conception of
the mage which is not easy to reconcile with the account given of
him in Geoffrey's History, and suggests many points of analogy
with certain early Welsh poems in which Merlin figures, and with
which Geoffrey could hardly have been acquainted? . Merlin makes
his first appearance in French romantic poetry in a poem of which
only a fragment has been preserved, supposed to be by Robert de
Borron, and dating from the end of the twelfth century. Upon
this poem was based the French prose romance of Merlin, part of
which is assigned to Robert de Borron, and which exists in two
forms-the first known as the “ordinary” Merlin, and the other
as the Suite de Merlin. For Robert de Borron, the enchanter's
arts are but so many manifestations of the powers of darkness ;
Merlin himself becomes the devil's offspring and most active agent.
From the Suite de Merlin, of which Malory's first four books are
an abridged version, was derived one of the minor offshoots of
1 These resemblances are pointed out in what is the fullest account of the Merlin
saga in English, Outlines of the History of the Legend of Merlin, by W. E. Mead
(Part 1v of II. B. Wheatley's edition of the prose Merlin in the E. E. T. 8. series).
## p. 269 (#289) ############################################
Gawain
269
Arthurian romance, the striking story of Balin and Balan. The
earliest romance of Merlin in English is the metrical Arthour and
Merlin, translated from a French original at the beginning of the
fourteenth century. This work, however, is not so well known as
the great prose Merlin, a translation from the French made about -
the middle of the fifteenth century.
No knight of the primitive Arthurian fellowship enjoyed a
higher renown than Arthur's nephew, Gawain. Under the name
of Gwalchmei, Gawain figures prominently in the Welsh Triads
and in the Mabinogion; while, as Walgainus, he is one of Arthur's
most faithful and doughty lieutenants in the wars recounted by
Geoffrey. So great was the traditional fame of Gawain that
William of Malmesbury thought it worth while to record the
discovery of his grave in Pembrokeshire; and there is some
evidence that his name was well known even in Italy by the
beginning of the twelfth century? He was, probably, the centre
of a cycle of adventures quite independent of, and quite as old as,
the original Arthur saga. He is certainly the hero of more
episodic romances than any other British knight?
