” So thick was the throng that the warriors could
not distinguish each other, but "each slew downright, were he
swain, were he knight.
not distinguish each other, but "each slew downright, were he
swain, were he knight.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v01
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? , and, in the
general body of Arthurian romance, none is so ubiquitous. In
Chrétien de Troyes's Conte del Graal, and in Wolfram von Eschen-
bach's Parzival, Gawain is almost as important a personage as
Perceval himself. In the German poem Diu Krône, by Heinrich
von dem Türlin, he, and not Perceval, is the actual achiever of
the Grail quest. It is curious, however, to note that no other knight
undergoes so marked a transformation of character as he in his
progress through the romances. In the Mabinogion, and the
earlier stages of the legend generally, Gawain appears as the
paragon of knightly courtesy. In some of the later romances,
particularly in the more elaborate versions of the Grail legend,
as in Malory and Tennyson,
A reckless and irreverent knight is he3.
Before Malory's time, however, Gawain is uniformly presented in
English literature in a flattering light, and no Arthurian hero was
more popular with English writers. The finest of all Middle
English metrical romances, Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight,
i Zimmer, Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1890, No. 20, p. 831.
Gaston Paris gives summaries of a number of these in Histoire Littéraire de la
France, vol. XXX.
3 Tennyson, The Holy Grail, 852.
• See the Sir Gawayne romances, ed. Madden, Bannatyne Club (London, 1839).
## p. 270 (#290) ############################################
270
The Arthurian Legend
dealing with incidents derived, apparently, from a primitive form
of the Gawain legend, portrays him in his original character as a
model of chivalry and of all the knightly graces.
In the full-orbed Arthurian cycle the most dramatic feature of
the story which centres around the fortunes of Arthur himself is
the love of Lancelot for Guinevere. The story of Lancelot is a
comparatively late, and, to all appearance, a non-Celtic, graft upon
the original Arthurian stock. Whether, as some surmise, its
motive was originally suggested by the Tristram legend or not,
it remains as an obvious embodiment of the French ideal of
amour courtois, and is thus the most significant example of the
direct influence of the conceptions of chivalry upon the develop-
ment of Arthurian story. Lancelot first appears as the lover of
Guinevere in Chrétien's Chevalier de la Charrette, a poem written
at the instance of Marie of Champagne, who took a lively interest
in the elaboration of the theory and practice of "courtly love. "
Hence it came about that, as Chaucer tells us, women held “in
ful gret reverence the boke of Lancelot de Lake? " The book to
which Chaucer, like Dante in the famous passage about Paolo and
Francesca, refers is, doubtless, the great prose romance of Lancelot,
traditionally associated with the name of Walter Map. The
Lancelot is a vast compilation, of which there are three clear
divisions—the first usually called the Lancelot proper, the second
the Quest of the Holy Grail and the third the Morte Arthur
In the MSS, these romances are persistently attributed to Walter
Map; one version of the Quest is described as having been written
by him “for the love of his lord, king Henry, who caused it to be
translated from Latin into French. " A passage in Hue de
Rotelande's poem, Ipomedon, following the description of a
tournament which bears some resemblance to incidents recorded
in Lancelot, has been taken to furnish additional evidence of
Map's authorship. The main difficulty about assigning these
romances to Map is that of reconciling the composition of works
of such size with his known activity as a courtier and a public
man. Nor, apart from one or two fairy-stories included in it,
does what may be called his common-place book, De Nugis
Curialium, afford any indication of the life-long interest which
1 Nonne Prestes Tale, 392.
See Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum (Vol. I, pp. 345 sqq. ),
for an account of some of the MSS.
3 See ante, Chapter X, p. 190. For a full discussion of the problems suggested by
this passage, see Ward, Catalogue of Romances in B. M. (Vol. I, p. 734) and Miss
J. L. Weston's The Three Days' Tournament (Nutt, 1902).
## p. 271 (#291) ############################################
The Holy Grail
271
Arthurian romance must have had for one capable of so imposing
a contribution to its literature as the great prose Lancelot.
The ascription to Walter Map of the prose Quest of the Holy
Grail links his name with the most intricate branch of Arthurian
romance. The Grail saga, in its various ramifications and exten-
sions, is the most difficult to interpret, and to account for his-
torically, of all the constituent elements of the “matter of Britain. ”
None, at any rate, affords a better illustration of the way in which
that matter came to be “subdued to what they worked in ” by a
particular group of romantic hands. Just as the ideals of courtly
chivalry shape and colour the story of Lancelot, so do the ascetic
proclivities of a monastic cult assert themselves in the gradual
unfolding of the legend of the Holy Grail. The original hero of
the Grail quest appears to have been Gawain ; but he is soon
displaced by the central figure of the existing versions of the
story, Perceval. Perceval, in his turn, is superseded by one who
“exemplifies, in a yet more uncompromising, yet more inhuman,
spirit, the ideal of militant asceticism," Lancelot's son, Galahad.
The earlier versions of the legend, however, know nothing of
Galahad, nor is there any reason for assuming that the primitive
forms of the story had any religious motive. In the Grail literature
which has come down to us, two distinct strata of legend, which
are, apparently, independent of each other in their origin, are to
be clearly traced. They are distinguished as the “Quest” proper,
and the “Early History" of the Holy Grail'. The best-known ver-
sions of the “Quest" are the Conte del Graal, of which the earlier
portions are by Chrétien de Troyes, the Parzival of Wolfram von
Eschenbach and the Welsh Mabinogi of Peredur. Of the “Early
History" the chief versions are the Joseph of Arimathea and
Merlin of Robert de Borron, and the Quête del St Graal attributed
to Map? . In the “Quest” forms of the legend the interest turns
mainly upon the personality of the hero, Perceval, and upon his
adventures in search of certain talismans, which include a sword,
a bleeding lance and a “grail” (either a magic vessel, as in
Chrétien, or a stone, as in Wolfram). The “Early History" versions
1 A. Nutt, The Legends of the Holy Grail (Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance
and Folklore, 1902), p. 72.
* This is the classification made by Alfred Nutt, our chief English authority on
the Grail legends.
3 Other versions of the Grail legend are those known as the Grand St Graal, the
Didot Perceval and Perceval le Gallois. The latter, a thirteenth century prose
romance, has been excellently translated by Sebastian Evans onder the name of
The High History of the Holy Grail.
## p. 272 (#292) ############################################
272 The Arthurian Legend
dwell, chiefly, upon the nature and origin of these talismans. The
search for the talismans is, in the “Quest” stories, connected with
the healing of an injured kinsman, and with the avenging of the
wrong done to him. In the fifteenth century English metrical
romance of Sir Percyvelle, the vengeance of a son upon his father's
slayers is the sole argument of the story.
The Grail cycle, in its fully developed form, would thus seem
to comprise stories of mythical and pagan origin, together with
later accretions due entirely to the invention of romancers with a
deliberately ecclesiastical bias. The palpably mythical character of
the earlier “Quest” versions points to their being of more archaic
origin than the “Early History" documents, and they are almost
certainly to be traced to Celtic sources. "The texture, the colour-
ing, the essential conception of the older Grail Quest stories can
be paralleled from early Celtic mythic romance, and from no other
contemporary European literature! . ” These tales, however, proved
susceptible of being used, in the late twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries, for religious purposes ; thus, the Grail came to be
identified with the cup of the Last Supper, which Pilate gave to
Joseph of Arimathea, and in which Joseph treasured the blood
that flowed from Christ's wounds on the Cross. The cup was
brought by Joseph to Britain, and its story is thus connected with
an old legend which attributed to Joseph the conversion of Britain
to Christianity. The traditions concerning this evangelisation of
Britain appear to have been specially preserved in documents kept
at the abbey of Glastonbury; and Glastonbury, associated as it
was even with Avalon itself, came, as we know, to have a significant
connection with Arthurian lore by the end of the twelfth century.
The glorification of Britain manifestly intended by this particular
use of the Grail legend suggests, once again, the interest taken by
the Angevin court in the diplomatic possibilities of adroit literary
manipulation of the Arthurian traditions. And if, indeed, Henry II
can be proved to have had anything to do with it at all, an argument
of some plausibility is established in support of the MS record
that the courtier, Walter Map, did, “for the love of his lord, king
Henry,” translate from Latin into French The Quest of the Holy
Grail.
There remains one other famous legend to be noticed, which
has attached itself to the Arthurian group, and which, in its origin
and character, is the most distinctively Celtic of them all. The
story of Tristram and Iseult is the most purely poetical, and,
1 Natt, Legends of the Holy Grail, p. 59.
## p. 273 (#293) ############################################
Tristram and Iseult
273
probably, the oldest, of the subsidiary Arthurian tales. Above all, its
scene, its character and its motif mark it out as the one undoubted
and unchallenged property of "the Celtic fringe. " Ireland and
Wales, Cornwall and Britanny, all claim a share in it. Tristram
appears, under the name of Drystan son of Tallwch, as a purely
mythical hero in a very old Welsh triad, which represents him as
the nephew, and swineherd, of Mark— March ab Meirchion-
protecting his master's swine against Arthur's attempt to get at
them'. Mark, in the earliest poetical versions of the tale, is king of
Cornwall. Iseult, the primal heroine, is a daughter of Ireland,
while the other Iseult, she of the White Hands, is a princess of
Britanny. The entire story breathes the very atmosphere, and
reflects the dim, mysterious half-lights, of the western islands
beaten by the gray, inhospitable sea—the sea, which, in the finest
rendering of the legend in English poetry, keeps up a haunting
choral accompaniment to Iseult's anguish-stricken cries at Tintagel,
when
all their past came wailing in the wind,
And all their future thundered in the sea 2.
Coloured by scarcely any trace of Christian sentiment, and only
faintly touched, as compared with the story of Lancelot, by the
artificial conventions of chivalry, the legend of Tristram bears
every mark of a remote pagan, and Celtic, origin. Neither in
classical, nor in Teutonic, saga, is there anything really comparable
with the elemental and over-mastering passion which makes the
story of Tristram and Iseult, in tragic interest and pathos, second
to none of the great love-tales of the world.
The Tristram legend was preserved, in all probability, in many
detached lays before it came to be embodied in any extant poem.
The earliest known poetical versions of the story are those of the
Anglo-Normans, Béroul (c. 1150) and Thomas (c. 1170), of which
we possess only fragments, and which were the foundations,
respectively, of the German poems of Eilhart von Oberge and
of Gottfried von Strassburg. A lost Tristan poem is also ascribed
to Chrétien de Troyes, and is supposed by some to have been used
by the writer, or writers', of the long prose Tristan, upon which
Malory largely drew. As it passed through the hands of these
1 See Rhys, The Arthurian Legend, p. 13, where it is said of March, or Mark, that
he was “ according to legends, both Brythonio and Irish, an unmistakable prince of
darkness. ”
• Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse,
The names, almost certainly fictitious, of Luces de Gast and of Hélie de Borron
are associated with the authorship of the prose Tristan,
E. L. I. CH. XII.
18
## p. 274 (#294) ############################################
274
The Arthurian Legend
writers, the Tristram story, like the rest, was subjected to the
inevitable process of chivalric decoration; but it has managed to
preserve better than the others its bold primitive characteristics.
Its original existence in the form of scattered popular lays is, to
some extent, attested by one of the poems of Marie of France
Le Chèvrefeuille (The Honeysuckle)-recording a pretty stratagem
of Tristan during his exile from king Mark's court, whereby he
succeeded in obtaining a stolen interview with Iseult. Nor was it
the Tristram legend alone that was thus preserved in popular lays
from a period anterior to that of the great romantic efflorescence
of Arthurian story. Many isolated poems dealing with characters
and incidents subsequently drawn into the Arthurian medley must
have been based upon traditions popularised by the rude art of
some obscure minstrels, or story-tellers, "Breton" or other. One
of the best known examples of such poems is Marie of France's lay
of Lanval, a Celtic fairy-tale quite unconnected, originally, with
the Arthurian court. Even more ambitious works, such as the
Chevalier au Lion, or Yvain, and the Erec, of Chrétien, were almost
certainly founded upon poems, or popular tales, of which the
primitive versions have been irretrievably lost. For the Welsh
prose romances of The Lady of the Fountain and of Geraint-
the heroes of which, Owein and Geraint, correspond respectively to
Chrétien's Yvain and Erec—while resembling the French poems in
their main incidents, cannot be satisfactorily accounted for except
on the supposition that the stories embodied in them originally
existed in a much older and simpler form than that in which they
are presented by Chrétien.
In this necessarily cursory review of an extensive and compli-
cated subject, a good deal has been claimed for Celtic sources and
Celtic influence; and it may not be out of place to conclude with
an attempt to summarise, very briefly, the actual debt of English
literature to the early literature of the Celtic peoples. Upon few
subjects has there been, in our time, so much vague and random
writing as upon so-called Celtic “traits” and “notes” in English
imaginative literature. Renan and Matthew Arnold, in two famous
essays, which, in their time, rendered a real service to letters by
calling attention to the buried literary treasures of Wales and
Ireland, set a fashion of speculating and theorising about “the
Celt” as perilous as it is fascinating. For, after all, no critical
method is more capable of abuse than the process of aesthetic
literary analysis which seeks to distinguish the Celtic from the
## p. 275 (#295) ############################################
-
Celtic Literature
275
other ingredients in the genius of the greater English writers, and
which sounds Shakespeare, or Byron, or Keats for the Celtic "note. ”
While there is no difficulty about admitting that the authentic
literature of the Celts reveals a “sentiment,” a “natural magic,” a
“turn for style," and even a “Pindarism” and a “Titanism,”1 which
are all its own, it is a very different matter to assign a Celtic
source to the supposed equivalents of these things in later English
poetry. An example of the peculiar dangers besetting such
speculations is furnished by Matthew Arnold's own observations
about Macpherson and the Celtic “melancholy. ” The Ossianic
poems, whatever their original Gaelic sources may have been,
reflect far more of the dour melancholy peculiar to the middle
eighteenth century than of anything really characteristic of the
primitive Celtic temperament. Matthew Arnold is, indeed, able to
parallel the laments over the desolation of the halls of Balclutha,
and so on, with extracts from the old Welsh poet, Llywarch Hên.
But even Llywarch's anguish as he contemplates the vanished
glories of the hall of Kyndylan is by no means peculiar to the
Celt. The same melancholy vein is found in the early poetry of
other races; it appears in the Old English poems of The Seafarer
and The Wanderer, and even in the ancient poetry of the east, for
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep,
And Bahrám, that great Hunter-the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head but cannot break his Sleep.
The direct influence of Celtic literature upon that of England
amounts, on any strict computation, to very little. And this is only
natural when we remember that the two languages, in which the
chief monuments of that literature are preserved—Welsh and Irish
-present difficulties which only a very few intrepid English
linguists have had the courage and the patience to surmount.
Thus it happens, for example, that the greatest of all the medieval
Welsh poets-Davyd ap Gwilym, a contemporary of Chaucer—is
only known to English readers by fragmentary notices, and
indifferent translations, supplied by George Borrow. A few tanta-
lising, and freely translated, scraps—for they are nothing more
from the Welsh bards are due to Gray; while Thomas Love Peacock
has treated, in his own peculiar vein of sardonic humour, themes
borrowed from ancient Welsh poetry and tradition. Above all,
there remains the singularly graceful translation of the Welsh
1 These are some of Matthew Arnold's “notes” of the Celtic genius in The Study
of Celtic Literature.
18-2
## p.
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? , and, in the
general body of Arthurian romance, none is so ubiquitous. In
Chrétien de Troyes's Conte del Graal, and in Wolfram von Eschen-
bach's Parzival, Gawain is almost as important a personage as
Perceval himself. In the German poem Diu Krône, by Heinrich
von dem Türlin, he, and not Perceval, is the actual achiever of
the Grail quest. It is curious, however, to note that no other knight
undergoes so marked a transformation of character as he in his
progress through the romances. In the Mabinogion, and the
earlier stages of the legend generally, Gawain appears as the
paragon of knightly courtesy. In some of the later romances,
particularly in the more elaborate versions of the Grail legend,
as in Malory and Tennyson,
A reckless and irreverent knight is he3.
Before Malory's time, however, Gawain is uniformly presented in
English literature in a flattering light, and no Arthurian hero was
more popular with English writers. The finest of all Middle
English metrical romances, Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight,
i Zimmer, Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1890, No. 20, p. 831.
Gaston Paris gives summaries of a number of these in Histoire Littéraire de la
France, vol. XXX.
3 Tennyson, The Holy Grail, 852.
• See the Sir Gawayne romances, ed. Madden, Bannatyne Club (London, 1839).
## p. 270 (#290) ############################################
270
The Arthurian Legend
dealing with incidents derived, apparently, from a primitive form
of the Gawain legend, portrays him in his original character as a
model of chivalry and of all the knightly graces.
In the full-orbed Arthurian cycle the most dramatic feature of
the story which centres around the fortunes of Arthur himself is
the love of Lancelot for Guinevere. The story of Lancelot is a
comparatively late, and, to all appearance, a non-Celtic, graft upon
the original Arthurian stock. Whether, as some surmise, its
motive was originally suggested by the Tristram legend or not,
it remains as an obvious embodiment of the French ideal of
amour courtois, and is thus the most significant example of the
direct influence of the conceptions of chivalry upon the develop-
ment of Arthurian story. Lancelot first appears as the lover of
Guinevere in Chrétien's Chevalier de la Charrette, a poem written
at the instance of Marie of Champagne, who took a lively interest
in the elaboration of the theory and practice of "courtly love. "
Hence it came about that, as Chaucer tells us, women held “in
ful gret reverence the boke of Lancelot de Lake? " The book to
which Chaucer, like Dante in the famous passage about Paolo and
Francesca, refers is, doubtless, the great prose romance of Lancelot,
traditionally associated with the name of Walter Map. The
Lancelot is a vast compilation, of which there are three clear
divisions—the first usually called the Lancelot proper, the second
the Quest of the Holy Grail and the third the Morte Arthur
In the MSS, these romances are persistently attributed to Walter
Map; one version of the Quest is described as having been written
by him “for the love of his lord, king Henry, who caused it to be
translated from Latin into French. " A passage in Hue de
Rotelande's poem, Ipomedon, following the description of a
tournament which bears some resemblance to incidents recorded
in Lancelot, has been taken to furnish additional evidence of
Map's authorship. The main difficulty about assigning these
romances to Map is that of reconciling the composition of works
of such size with his known activity as a courtier and a public
man. Nor, apart from one or two fairy-stories included in it,
does what may be called his common-place book, De Nugis
Curialium, afford any indication of the life-long interest which
1 Nonne Prestes Tale, 392.
See Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum (Vol. I, pp. 345 sqq. ),
for an account of some of the MSS.
3 See ante, Chapter X, p. 190. For a full discussion of the problems suggested by
this passage, see Ward, Catalogue of Romances in B. M. (Vol. I, p. 734) and Miss
J. L. Weston's The Three Days' Tournament (Nutt, 1902).
## p. 271 (#291) ############################################
The Holy Grail
271
Arthurian romance must have had for one capable of so imposing
a contribution to its literature as the great prose Lancelot.
The ascription to Walter Map of the prose Quest of the Holy
Grail links his name with the most intricate branch of Arthurian
romance. The Grail saga, in its various ramifications and exten-
sions, is the most difficult to interpret, and to account for his-
torically, of all the constituent elements of the “matter of Britain. ”
None, at any rate, affords a better illustration of the way in which
that matter came to be “subdued to what they worked in ” by a
particular group of romantic hands. Just as the ideals of courtly
chivalry shape and colour the story of Lancelot, so do the ascetic
proclivities of a monastic cult assert themselves in the gradual
unfolding of the legend of the Holy Grail. The original hero of
the Grail quest appears to have been Gawain ; but he is soon
displaced by the central figure of the existing versions of the
story, Perceval. Perceval, in his turn, is superseded by one who
“exemplifies, in a yet more uncompromising, yet more inhuman,
spirit, the ideal of militant asceticism," Lancelot's son, Galahad.
The earlier versions of the legend, however, know nothing of
Galahad, nor is there any reason for assuming that the primitive
forms of the story had any religious motive. In the Grail literature
which has come down to us, two distinct strata of legend, which
are, apparently, independent of each other in their origin, are to
be clearly traced. They are distinguished as the “Quest” proper,
and the “Early History" of the Holy Grail'. The best-known ver-
sions of the “Quest" are the Conte del Graal, of which the earlier
portions are by Chrétien de Troyes, the Parzival of Wolfram von
Eschenbach and the Welsh Mabinogi of Peredur. Of the “Early
History" the chief versions are the Joseph of Arimathea and
Merlin of Robert de Borron, and the Quête del St Graal attributed
to Map? . In the “Quest” forms of the legend the interest turns
mainly upon the personality of the hero, Perceval, and upon his
adventures in search of certain talismans, which include a sword,
a bleeding lance and a “grail” (either a magic vessel, as in
Chrétien, or a stone, as in Wolfram). The “Early History" versions
1 A. Nutt, The Legends of the Holy Grail (Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance
and Folklore, 1902), p. 72.
* This is the classification made by Alfred Nutt, our chief English authority on
the Grail legends.
3 Other versions of the Grail legend are those known as the Grand St Graal, the
Didot Perceval and Perceval le Gallois. The latter, a thirteenth century prose
romance, has been excellently translated by Sebastian Evans onder the name of
The High History of the Holy Grail.
## p. 272 (#292) ############################################
272 The Arthurian Legend
dwell, chiefly, upon the nature and origin of these talismans. The
search for the talismans is, in the “Quest” stories, connected with
the healing of an injured kinsman, and with the avenging of the
wrong done to him. In the fifteenth century English metrical
romance of Sir Percyvelle, the vengeance of a son upon his father's
slayers is the sole argument of the story.
The Grail cycle, in its fully developed form, would thus seem
to comprise stories of mythical and pagan origin, together with
later accretions due entirely to the invention of romancers with a
deliberately ecclesiastical bias. The palpably mythical character of
the earlier “Quest” versions points to their being of more archaic
origin than the “Early History" documents, and they are almost
certainly to be traced to Celtic sources. "The texture, the colour-
ing, the essential conception of the older Grail Quest stories can
be paralleled from early Celtic mythic romance, and from no other
contemporary European literature! . ” These tales, however, proved
susceptible of being used, in the late twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries, for religious purposes ; thus, the Grail came to be
identified with the cup of the Last Supper, which Pilate gave to
Joseph of Arimathea, and in which Joseph treasured the blood
that flowed from Christ's wounds on the Cross. The cup was
brought by Joseph to Britain, and its story is thus connected with
an old legend which attributed to Joseph the conversion of Britain
to Christianity. The traditions concerning this evangelisation of
Britain appear to have been specially preserved in documents kept
at the abbey of Glastonbury; and Glastonbury, associated as it
was even with Avalon itself, came, as we know, to have a significant
connection with Arthurian lore by the end of the twelfth century.
The glorification of Britain manifestly intended by this particular
use of the Grail legend suggests, once again, the interest taken by
the Angevin court in the diplomatic possibilities of adroit literary
manipulation of the Arthurian traditions. And if, indeed, Henry II
can be proved to have had anything to do with it at all, an argument
of some plausibility is established in support of the MS record
that the courtier, Walter Map, did, “for the love of his lord, king
Henry,” translate from Latin into French The Quest of the Holy
Grail.
There remains one other famous legend to be noticed, which
has attached itself to the Arthurian group, and which, in its origin
and character, is the most distinctively Celtic of them all. The
story of Tristram and Iseult is the most purely poetical, and,
1 Natt, Legends of the Holy Grail, p. 59.
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Tristram and Iseult
273
probably, the oldest, of the subsidiary Arthurian tales. Above all, its
scene, its character and its motif mark it out as the one undoubted
and unchallenged property of "the Celtic fringe. " Ireland and
Wales, Cornwall and Britanny, all claim a share in it. Tristram
appears, under the name of Drystan son of Tallwch, as a purely
mythical hero in a very old Welsh triad, which represents him as
the nephew, and swineherd, of Mark— March ab Meirchion-
protecting his master's swine against Arthur's attempt to get at
them'. Mark, in the earliest poetical versions of the tale, is king of
Cornwall. Iseult, the primal heroine, is a daughter of Ireland,
while the other Iseult, she of the White Hands, is a princess of
Britanny. The entire story breathes the very atmosphere, and
reflects the dim, mysterious half-lights, of the western islands
beaten by the gray, inhospitable sea—the sea, which, in the finest
rendering of the legend in English poetry, keeps up a haunting
choral accompaniment to Iseult's anguish-stricken cries at Tintagel,
when
all their past came wailing in the wind,
And all their future thundered in the sea 2.
Coloured by scarcely any trace of Christian sentiment, and only
faintly touched, as compared with the story of Lancelot, by the
artificial conventions of chivalry, the legend of Tristram bears
every mark of a remote pagan, and Celtic, origin. Neither in
classical, nor in Teutonic, saga, is there anything really comparable
with the elemental and over-mastering passion which makes the
story of Tristram and Iseult, in tragic interest and pathos, second
to none of the great love-tales of the world.
The Tristram legend was preserved, in all probability, in many
detached lays before it came to be embodied in any extant poem.
The earliest known poetical versions of the story are those of the
Anglo-Normans, Béroul (c. 1150) and Thomas (c. 1170), of which
we possess only fragments, and which were the foundations,
respectively, of the German poems of Eilhart von Oberge and
of Gottfried von Strassburg. A lost Tristan poem is also ascribed
to Chrétien de Troyes, and is supposed by some to have been used
by the writer, or writers', of the long prose Tristan, upon which
Malory largely drew. As it passed through the hands of these
1 See Rhys, The Arthurian Legend, p. 13, where it is said of March, or Mark, that
he was “ according to legends, both Brythonio and Irish, an unmistakable prince of
darkness. ”
• Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse,
The names, almost certainly fictitious, of Luces de Gast and of Hélie de Borron
are associated with the authorship of the prose Tristan,
E. L. I. CH. XII.
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## p. 274 (#294) ############################################
274
The Arthurian Legend
writers, the Tristram story, like the rest, was subjected to the
inevitable process of chivalric decoration; but it has managed to
preserve better than the others its bold primitive characteristics.
Its original existence in the form of scattered popular lays is, to
some extent, attested by one of the poems of Marie of France
Le Chèvrefeuille (The Honeysuckle)-recording a pretty stratagem
of Tristan during his exile from king Mark's court, whereby he
succeeded in obtaining a stolen interview with Iseult. Nor was it
the Tristram legend alone that was thus preserved in popular lays
from a period anterior to that of the great romantic efflorescence
of Arthurian story. Many isolated poems dealing with characters
and incidents subsequently drawn into the Arthurian medley must
have been based upon traditions popularised by the rude art of
some obscure minstrels, or story-tellers, "Breton" or other. One
of the best known examples of such poems is Marie of France's lay
of Lanval, a Celtic fairy-tale quite unconnected, originally, with
the Arthurian court. Even more ambitious works, such as the
Chevalier au Lion, or Yvain, and the Erec, of Chrétien, were almost
certainly founded upon poems, or popular tales, of which the
primitive versions have been irretrievably lost. For the Welsh
prose romances of The Lady of the Fountain and of Geraint-
the heroes of which, Owein and Geraint, correspond respectively to
Chrétien's Yvain and Erec—while resembling the French poems in
their main incidents, cannot be satisfactorily accounted for except
on the supposition that the stories embodied in them originally
existed in a much older and simpler form than that in which they
are presented by Chrétien.
In this necessarily cursory review of an extensive and compli-
cated subject, a good deal has been claimed for Celtic sources and
Celtic influence; and it may not be out of place to conclude with
an attempt to summarise, very briefly, the actual debt of English
literature to the early literature of the Celtic peoples. Upon few
subjects has there been, in our time, so much vague and random
writing as upon so-called Celtic “traits” and “notes” in English
imaginative literature. Renan and Matthew Arnold, in two famous
essays, which, in their time, rendered a real service to letters by
calling attention to the buried literary treasures of Wales and
Ireland, set a fashion of speculating and theorising about “the
Celt” as perilous as it is fascinating. For, after all, no critical
method is more capable of abuse than the process of aesthetic
literary analysis which seeks to distinguish the Celtic from the
## p. 275 (#295) ############################################
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Celtic Literature
275
other ingredients in the genius of the greater English writers, and
which sounds Shakespeare, or Byron, or Keats for the Celtic "note. ”
While there is no difficulty about admitting that the authentic
literature of the Celts reveals a “sentiment,” a “natural magic,” a
“turn for style," and even a “Pindarism” and a “Titanism,”1 which
are all its own, it is a very different matter to assign a Celtic
source to the supposed equivalents of these things in later English
poetry. An example of the peculiar dangers besetting such
speculations is furnished by Matthew Arnold's own observations
about Macpherson and the Celtic “melancholy. ” The Ossianic
poems, whatever their original Gaelic sources may have been,
reflect far more of the dour melancholy peculiar to the middle
eighteenth century than of anything really characteristic of the
primitive Celtic temperament. Matthew Arnold is, indeed, able to
parallel the laments over the desolation of the halls of Balclutha,
and so on, with extracts from the old Welsh poet, Llywarch Hên.
But even Llywarch's anguish as he contemplates the vanished
glories of the hall of Kyndylan is by no means peculiar to the
Celt. The same melancholy vein is found in the early poetry of
other races; it appears in the Old English poems of The Seafarer
and The Wanderer, and even in the ancient poetry of the east, for
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep,
And Bahrám, that great Hunter-the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head but cannot break his Sleep.
The direct influence of Celtic literature upon that of England
amounts, on any strict computation, to very little. And this is only
natural when we remember that the two languages, in which the
chief monuments of that literature are preserved—Welsh and Irish
-present difficulties which only a very few intrepid English
linguists have had the courage and the patience to surmount.
Thus it happens, for example, that the greatest of all the medieval
Welsh poets-Davyd ap Gwilym, a contemporary of Chaucer—is
only known to English readers by fragmentary notices, and
indifferent translations, supplied by George Borrow. A few tanta-
lising, and freely translated, scraps—for they are nothing more
from the Welsh bards are due to Gray; while Thomas Love Peacock
has treated, in his own peculiar vein of sardonic humour, themes
borrowed from ancient Welsh poetry and tradition. Above all,
there remains the singularly graceful translation of the Welsh
1 These are some of Matthew Arnold's “notes” of the Celtic genius in The Study
of Celtic Literature.
18-2
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