John Walters - The Lost Land of King Arthur

Within a small area in the West Country may be found the principal places mentioned in the written chronicles of King Arthur—places with strange long histories and of natural charm. In these pages an impressionist view is given of the region once called Cameliard and Lyonnesse. We have ventured into by-ways seldom entered, and we trust to have gathered a few details which may not be wholly without interest in their place. Facts are meagre about King Arthur, and romance has so overlaid reality that his realm seems now to be veritably a part of fairy-land. In this respect the journey is profitless, save that, by taking Malory as a guide, we are led to a few delightful and half-forgotten localities out of the ordinary route, from which romance has not been wholly dislodged and where tradition survives and is strong.

No pretence can be made that a complete or exhaustive history of King Arthur is given in this and the following chapters. Only parts of his story and parts of the story of his most illustrious knights are woven into this mosaic of fact and fiction. Sometimes only a few threads of the romance are to be discovered; at other times many are gathered into the fabric.

I have taken those portions only of the Arthurian fable, built upon a small substratum of historic fact, which suited the immediate purpose in view; the rest, a huge mass, which it would have been unprofitable to introduce, has perforce been omitted. The primary object has been simply to call attention to the reputed relics of the great hero, to mark some of the floating traditions of his power, and to speak of a few of the localities which bear his name or are associated with his deeds; and I have striven to add a little to the living interest in the mouldering monuments, to brush away a little of the dust of ages from existing evidences, to lift a little the veil of mystery which darkens, disguises, or shrouds the lineaments of the king. As we find him in history, and as he is represented in romance, he is so noble a figure that we should dread to lose him or the conjuring influence of his name. The proud and triumphing Roman reeled for a time under the shock of Arthur’s hosts. The Saxon felt his almost invincible power. Christendom hailed his noble order and rejoiced in his imperial sway. Now, where he ruled and made his kingdom, are submerged cities, fallen towers, the wash of waters, the “trackless realm of Lyonnesse.” The sea has swept over his territory, and the deep shadows of centuries have fallen upon his deeds. His fame has been made imperishable by mighty pens, and many a mountain fastness holds his name and gives it forth to the world; many a towering rock preserves his story; many a frowning height perpetuates his deeds; many a wild torrent proclaims his name. So by a hundred contrivances does the memory of King Arthur endure, and he looms, a giant, behind the mist of ages. Six hundred localities in the British Isles alone, it has been computed, cherish traditions of King Arthur, and his praise is sung by a multitude of voices, and in every region where Celtic influence has been felt. Such an influence as this cannot proceed wholly from the dry bones of fiction, or from the golden toys of romance. Legends gather about a great name, just as ivy covers the ruined column of old time; but the underlying base is there. Those who contend that King Arthur never lived are open to the charge of allowing the leaves of fable to hide from their eyes the ruined but giant pillar beneath.

In the early unwritten history of this island the invading Brythonic race mastered the inhabitants, the Goidels or Gauls, who had amalgamated with the Neolithic race, and gave the country the name of Britannia. To them is attributed the building of Stonehenge and the round barrows in which the dead were interred. The Cambrians, the Welsh, and the people of Brittany are their linguistic descendants. So hardy, stalwart, and venturesome were the Brythons that they gradually spread themselves over the greater part of the country and penetrated far to the north. They offered determined defiance to the Romans three centuries before the Christian era, and successively resisted Norsemen and Saxons until five centuries of the Christian era had passed. Driven first to the west, they took up their abode in the wilds of Wales, and in Cornwall and Devon, and only succumbed at last to the exterminating campaign of the Saxons, who first cut off the Britons of the north and the south, and then defeated the two divisions of the race, first at Chester and then at Bath. The crucial battle between Briton and Saxon was under the leadership of the last of the British chiefs, the Arthur of history and romance, and Cerdic the victorious leader of the “Pagans.” Cerdic, sailing across the channel in his chiules, or long ships, had landed at the Isle of Wight, fought King Natanleod of Hampshire, with whom he maintained a five years’ campaign, and, triumphant at last, and reinforced by the followers of his son and his nephews, had established the West Seaxe, or Wessex Kingdom.

But, if defeated by the British at Mount Badon, the Saxons were not long in reversing the issue, and Cerdic’s son Cymric, and his nephews Stuffa and Whitgar, lived to see their rivals well-nigh exterminated. At Wodensbury in Wiltshire the remnants of the British race joined with the Angles in driving the hated Saxon from the sovereignty of Wessex, but this, too, was without permanent result; for Cerdic’s next of descent, Cadwalla, restored the supremacy of his house and race.

Cerdic is said to have died in 534, a date of some importance as helping us to fix the true Arthurian era. The history of many of his contemporaries is almost as vague as Arthur’s own, but Cerdic stands out as a man of no uncertain history, and he serves the purpose of allowing us to test the probabilities of Arthur’s reputed career. That Cerdic’s record should be more definite, though extremely brief, is due to the fact that he was a conqueror; that Arthur’s record should be less definite, though extremely long, is due to the fact that he was vanquished, and that his story became mixed with the fables of a generation which did not know him. In the one case we have concrete facts duly preserved; in the other we have merely a name which fires the imagination, and a few events which in the course of time are magnified by romance. Allegory is but truth’s shadow, and the very songs we deem idle, even the loosely-strung nursery rhymes, may have inner significance, as Carlyle has told us; men never believed in songs that were meaningless, and “never risked their soul’s life on allegories.” Real history and precious lore are bound up in these shrunken shrouds of withered myths, and it is safe to assume that the name that is enshrined in a folk-song is the name of a transcendent hero, a truly great man deemed more than human, merged into the preternatural, the ideal, or the divine. And, like the student at the Wayside Inn of Sudbury Town, we can—

Here it is that—