John Walters - The Lost Land of King Arthur

But how the romance of King Arthur originated, how it came to be written, how it was developed and elaborated, how from a simple history it came to be invested with special significance and to be impregnated with spiritual meanings—to explain this, it is necessary in some measure to trace the course of early English literature and to mark the advance of the English race. The story leads us back to dim times and small beginnings. It recalls the semi-barbarism of the first centuries, the fierce conflicts of contending tribes, the domination of Rome, the last supreme encounters between Briton and Saxon, and the making of that race which we believe inherits the hardy and heroic qualities of both. No doubt the substratum of fact is overlaid with superstitions, and fantasy has reared her airy edifices upon the frailest of history’s foundations. The narrow track leading backward to the times of Arthur is often undefined and irretraceable, and the traveller finds that unstable bridges have been cast across the gulfs which have broken up the way. Very seldom, therefore, can a strong foothold be obtained, and one is often disposed to abandon the pursuit of truth as hopeless. The tendency has ever been to strain facts to uncertain conclusions in order to fit the exigencies of romance.

As discoverable error ever leads to general doubt, there are not lacking those who deny that King Arthur ever existed. He is declared to be a myth, a type, a symbol, an allegorical figure. Even Caxton, in printing Malory’s history, was obliged to confute the sceptics by the mention of what he deemed unassailable facts. It was “most execrable infidelity,” said he, to doubt the existence of Joshua, David, Judas Maccabæus, or Alexander; all the world knew there was a Julius Cæsar and a Hector; “and,” he demanded to know with just indignation, “shall the Jewes and the heathen be honoured in the memory and magnificent prowesse of their worthies? Shall the French and German nations glorifie their triumphs with their Godfrey and Charles [Charlemagne], and shall we of this island be so possesst with incredulities, diffidence, stupiditie, and ingratitude, to deny, make doubt, or expresse in speech and history, the immortal name and fame of our victorious Arthur? All the honour we can doe him is to honour ourselves in remembrance of him.”

Having thus made it a point of national pride and honour with us to accept and believe in King Arthur, Caxton proceeded to advance the proofs of his existence, which were that his life was written in “many noble volumes,” while his “sepulture” might be seen at Glastyngburye [Glastonbury], that the print of his seal was preserved in Westminster Abbey, and that “in the castel of Dover ye may see Gawayn’s skulle and Cradok’s mantel; at Wynchester, the rounde table; in other places, Lancelotte’s sworde, and many other thynges.” These irrefutable facts admitted, to his thinking, of but one conclusion. “All these thynges consydered, there can no man reasonably gaynsaye but there was a King of thys lande named Arthur.” The quaint prologue to Malory’s romance abundantly testifies that serious arguments must have been already advanced against Arthur’s existence in order to call for so spirited a rebuke and so complete an answer. But, as a matter of fact, the truth of the histories referring to his exploits had been challenged from the first, and in spite of the immense popularity they enjoyed and the influence they possessed, they seem never to have been implicitly and unanimously accepted as veracious records.

Three Welsh poets are supposed to have been the first to celebrate the deeds of Arthur—the full-throated Taliesin, Aneurin, and Llywarch Hên. The two latter bards commemorated the heroes who fell at the battle of Cattraeth, in the year 603. Aneurin’s poem, “Gododin,” about a thousand lines in length, is preserved in a manuscript of the thirteenth century. The writer, who was present at the battle he describes, is supposed by some to have been Gildas, the first historian; others say he was the son of Gildas. 1 1 Aneurin was born about the year 500, and as “a monarch of bards” was of much repute in Manan Gododin, a part of Cymric Scotland. The Welsh Britons included all the Lowlands in their territory, and, as is well known, the names familiar in Arthurian romance can be traced to Scotland, the West of England, and France alike, as will afterwards be shown in these pages. Aneurin’s nationality, however, is particularly well worth recalling in view of the theory that Arthur was Scotch. The poem is of a most obscure character, and doubt has actually arisen as to the particular battle to which it refers, a theory having been advanced that it celebrated a disaster which befell the Britons at Stonehenge in 472. But Cattraeth is supposed to have been Degstan, or Dawstane, in Liddlesdale, at which the Saxons were defeated; and when such divergencies as these are possible in regard to locality, persons, and dates, the value of Aneurin’s poem as history may easily be estimated. The principal fact which Aneurin tells us is that of “three warriors and threescore and three hundred, wearing the golden torques,” only four escaped “from the conflict of gashing weapons,” one being himself. Another of those who escaped from Cattraeth was Kynon, known as “the dauntless,” whose love for the daughter of Urien supplied the bards with a theme. Urien himself fell in this great battle, and it was the poet Llywarch Hên (buried, it is said, in the Church of Llanever, near Bala Lake) who wrote his elegy. Llywarch Hên passed his younger days at King Arthur’s Court as a free guest and a counselling warrior. His career is well summarised by George Borrow in Wild Wales , Chapter LXXIII.

Of the third and most important prophet and bard, Taliesin, Prince of Song, we are told that he was the son of Saint Henwg; that he had a miraculous birth; that he spake in wonderful verse at his nativity and sang riddling tales; that he was invited by King Arthur to his Court at Caerleon; and that, having presided over the Round Table as a “golden-tongued knight,” he became chief of the Bards of the West. A cairn near Aberystwyth marks the site of his grave. The story of the bard of the radiant brow, of his wonderful delivery from pirates, and of his poems, which excelled those of all others, has always been a popular one, but the sifting of truth from fiction is no easy task. His allusions to Arthur probably have no superior value to the references of Aneurin and Llywarch Hên, and we are forced therefore to dismiss them from account. Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to one of his poetic romances, justly reminded his readers that the Bards, or Scalds, were the first historians of all nations, and that their intention was to relate events they had witnessed or traditions that had reached them. “But,” he added, “as the poetical historian improves in the art of conveying information, the authenticity of his narrative invariably declines. He is tempted to dilate and dwell upon events that are interesting to his imagination, and, conscious how indifferent his audience is to the naked truth of his poem, his history gradually becomes a romance.” Such were the early historians, as well as bards, upon whose records the English chroniclers relied.

These chroniclers were Gildas and Nennius, of whom no very certain biographical facts can be discovered, though the latter is said to have been a monk at Bangor. Gildas is the reputed author of a treatise, De Excidio Britanniæ , blindly copied by Bede, which supplied a history of Britain from the time of the Incarnation to the year 560 A.D. But darkness enshrouds the historian, of whose country, parentage, and period much is surmised and little is discoverable. The erudite author of Culture in Early Scotland , Dr. Mackinnon, believes that the writer of the gloomy and pessimistic work on the destruction of Britain was a Romanised Briton, who migrated to Brittany to escape the pitiless severity of the Saxons, and there founded the monastery of Ruys. It has even been claimed that Gildas was a native of Clydesdale, and if this were so another link would exist to connect Arthur himself with Scotland, for the historian was so closely identified with the race and the cause championed by that king that his surname was taken from Arthur’s famous battle of Badon, which, again, is said by some to have been fought in the Lowlands. 2 2 A Badon in Linlithgowshire is the reputed site. Gildas was the wisest of the Britons according to Alcuin, and Dr. Mackinnon thinks that his chronicle should be accepted as authentic, in spite of its occasional errors and its undoubted bias. The stern character of the writer is evinced by his denunciations not only of Saxon excesses, but of the clerical vices of his age. In short, Gildas was a religious devotee, an austere and uncompromising critic of the demoralising customs of the time; a species of prophet, also, who saw in corruption and degeneration the signs of coming destruction for the race to which he belonged. Roman influence had undermined the morals of the people and enervated public and social life. The story Gildas tells is one of unrelieved gloom, but it stands out in contrast to other narratives by its rugged simplicity and its freedom from the more romantic elements. Murder, sacrilege, and immorality were bringing about wholesale desolation, and the patriotic Gildas saw no future before his country but absolute ruin and racial extinction. His allusions to Arthur are scanty, incidental, and none too complimentary, and they have assumed importance only as bases for the construction of bold theories by subsequent writers.