If all these conclusions, drawn by Mr. Skene from legends, Nennius, and place-names, be correct, Arthur was a real war-leader, fighting for the Britons, that is the Welsh of Strathclyde, whose country stretched from Dumbarton down through Cumberland. Even Geoffrey of Monmouth makes Arthur fight between Loch Lomond and Edinburgh, and give Lothian to King Lot, that is Llew, whose son, Medraut (Modred), turns traitor to Arthur. Bede places the battles at a time when the Picts had made an alliance with the Saxons, and these two peoples were in contact with each other not down in Cornwall, where later writers place "the last battle in the west," but exactly where Arthur seems to have fought, in the fighting place of Edward I and the Scots—from Carlisle to Dumbarton and Falkirk, and in Ettrick Forest and round Edinburgh, a region where several hills bear Arthur's name.
We need not, then, give up Arthur as a fabulous being, though legends far older than himself came to be told about him. In the oldest Welsh poems that survive he is mentioned among scores of other old heroes, now forgotten, and is always named as a great war-leader, "Emperor and conductor of the toil".
One mention is important. In a long Welsh poem on the graves of many heroes now forgotten, we read:—
The grave of March, the grave of Gwythar,
The grave of Gwgwan Gleddyvrudd,
A mystery to the world, the grave of Arthur.
(Or "not wise to ask where is the grave of Arthur.")
Thus it appears that, even in very early Welsh poetry, the Grave of Arthur (like that of James IV, slain at Flodden), was unknown; hence he was believed, like King James, not to be dead; he was in "the island valley of Avilion," and would come again to help his people, when he was healed of his grievous wound.
Several of his companions in the later French and English romances, such as Geraint, Kay, and Bedivere, were also known to these very early Welsh poets. Moreover, there exist in the Welsh "Mabinogion" ("Tales for the Young"), very ancient stories of Arthur which do not resemble the ordinary later romances about him, but are infinitely older and more poetical: such are "Kulhwch and Olwen" and "The Dream of Rhonabwy".
Probably about 1066 there were many tales of Arthur surviving in Brittany, a Brython (Welsh) country from which the exiled prince of South Wales returned home in 1077. If he brought these tales back and if the Welsh poets took them up, there would be plenty of Welsh Arthurian literature between 1077 and 1140, or thereabouts, when Geoffrey of Monmouth produced his "History of the Britons". He says that he has had the advantage of using a book in the Breton tongue, which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Brittany; this book he translates into Latin.
No such book can be found. It is probable that Geoffrey used Welsh and Breton traditions, and the patchwork book, parts of it very early, called the "History of the Britons," attributed to Nennius (about 796). In this we have a mixture of the real fighting Arthur of about 520, and the fabulous Arthur, a wonderful, powerful being, like all the old heroes of fable, who goes down to the mysterious land of darkness, like Odysseus and the Finnish Waïnamoïnen.
The patchwork book of Nennius derives the name of Britain from that person of pure fantasy, "Brut," "Brutus," great-grandson of Æneas; who sailed to the Isle of Albion. Now "Brut" was invented merely to explain the name "Britain," and to connect the Britons, or Welsh, with the Trojans. In the same way the Scots had framed false histories of their ancestress Scota, who came from Scythia to Ireland, by way of Egypt, Athens, and Spain.
All these legendary and fictitious materials, and others, were used by Geoffrey in what he called a "History"; and his "History," in spite of criticism, became the most popular book of the age. He begins with the flight of Æneas from Troy, and the flight of the great-grandson of Æneas, Brutus, to the Isle of Albion, "inhabited by none but a few giants". Brut builds New Troy (London) on the Thames, and so the romance runs on, a mere novel of adventures, those of Shakespeare's "King Lear" and "Cymbeline," for example, mixed up with history from Bede, till we come to Merlin the Enchanter, and Uther Pendragon, and the mysterious birth of Arthur, who is crowned king, and slays 900 Saxons with his own sword in one battle, conquers all Northern Europe and France, and defeats the Romans, all of which is sheer mediaeval fable. At home, in a great fight ("the battle of Camlan" it is called in older books than Geoffrey's) he kills Modred, and is carried to the Isle of Avallon or Avilion, to be healed of his wounds.