Of Geoffrey’s book, or him of Malleor’s ...”;[[453]]

but that he merely used the legend to give a substantial form to his ideal figure of the perfect English gentleman—a title to which the original Arthur could scarcely have laid claim. Still less does there remain in it the least trace of anything that could suggest mythology.

As much as this, however, might be said of Malory’s book. We may be fairly certain that the good Sir Thomas had no idea that the personages of whom he wrote had ever been anything different from the Christian knights which they had become in the late French romances from which he compiled his own fifteenth-century work. The old gods had been, from time to time, very completely euhemerized. The characters of the “Four Branches of the Mabinogi” are still recognizable as divine beings. In the later Welsh stories, however, their divinity merely hangs about them in shreds and tatters, and the first Norman adapters of these stories made them still more definitely human. By the time Malory came to build up his Morte Darthur from the foreign romances, they had altered so much that the shapes and deeds of gods could only be recognized under their mediæval knightly disguises by those who had known them in their ancient forms.

We have chosen Malory’s Morte Darthur, as almost the sole representative of Arthurian literature later than the Welsh poems and prose stories, for three reasons. Firstly, because it is the English Arthurian romance par excellence from which all later English authors, including Tennyson, have drawn their material. Secondly, because the mass of foreign literature dealing with the subject of Arthur is in itself a life-study, and could not by any possibility be compressed within the limits of a chapter. Thirdly, because Malory’s fine judgment caused him to choose the best and most typical foreign tales to weave into his own romance; and hence it is that we find most of our old British gods—both those of the earlier cycle and those of the system connected with Arthur—striding disguised through his pages.

Curiously enough, Sir Edward Strachey, in his preface to the “Globe” edition of Caxton’s Morte Darthur, uses almost the same image to describe Malory’s prose-poem that Matthew Arnold handled with such effect, in his Study of Celtic Literature, to point out the real nature of the Mabinogion. “Malory”, he says, “has built a great, rambling, mediæval castle, the walls of which enclose rude and even ruinous work of earlier times.” How rude and how ruinous these relics were Malory doubtless had not the least idea, for he has completely jumbled the ancient mythology. Not only do gods of the older and newer order appear together, but the same deities, under very often only slightly varying names, come up again and again as totally different characters.

Take, for example, the ancient deity of death and Hades. As King Brandegore, or Brandegoris (Brân of Gower), he brings five thousand mounted men to oppose King Arthur;[[454]] but, as Sir Brandel, or Brandiles (Brân of Gwales[[455]]), he is a valiant Knight of the Round Table, who dies fighting in Arthur’s service.[[456]] Again, under his name of Uther Pendragon (Uther Ben), he is Arthur’s father;[[457]] though as King Ban of Benwyk (the “Square Enclosure”, doubtless the same as Taliesin’s Caer Pedryvan and Malory’s Carbonek), he is a foreign monarch, who is Arthur’s ally.[[458]] Yet again, as the father of Guinevere, Ogyrvran has become Leodegrance.[[459]] As King Uriens, or Urience, of Gore (Gower), he marries one of Arthur’s sisters,[[460]] fights against him, but finally tenders his submission, and is enrolled among his knights.[[461]] Urien may also be identified in the Morte Darthur as King Rience, or Ryons, of North Wales,[[462]] and as King Nentres of Garloth;[[463]] while, to crown the varied disguises of this Proteus of British gods, he appears in an isolated episode as Balan, who fights with his brother Balin until they kill one another.[[464]]

One may generally tell the divinities of the underworld in these romances by their connection, not with the settled and civilized parts of England, but with the wild and remote north and west, and the still wilder and remoter islands. Just as Brân and Urien are kings of Gower, so Arawn, under the corruptions of his name into “Anguish” and “Anguissance”, is made King of Scotland or Ireland, both countries having been probably confounded, as the same land of the Scotti, or Gaels.[[465]] Pwyll, Head of Annwn, we likewise discover under two disguises. As Pelles, “King of the Foreign Country”[[466]] and Keeper of the Holy Grail, he is a personage of great mythological significance, albeit the real nature of him and his surroundings has been overlaid with a Christian veneer as foreign to the original of Pelles as his own kingdom was to Arthur’s knights. The Chief of Hades figures as a “cousin nigh unto Joseph of Arimathie”,[[467]] who, “while he might ride supported much Christendom, and holy church”.[[468]] He is represented as the father of Elayne (Elen[[469]]), whom he gives in marriage to Sir Launcelot, bestowing upon the couple a residence called “Castle Bliant”,[[470]] the name of which, there is good evidence to show, is connected with that of Pwyll’s vassal called Teirnyon Twryf Vliant in the first of the Mabinogi.[[471]] Under his other name of “Sir Pelleas”—the hero of Tennyson’s Idyll of Pelleas and Ettarre—the primitive myth of Pwyll is touched at a different point. After his unfortunate love-passage with Ettarre (or Ettard, as Malory calls her), Pelleas is represented as marrying Nimue,[[472]] whose original name, which was Rhiannon, reached this form, as well as that of “Vivien”, through a series of miscopyings of successive scribes.[[473]]

With Pelles, or Pelleas, is associated a King Pellean, or Pellam, his son, and, equally with him, the Keeper of the Grail, who can be no other than Pryderi.[[474]] Like that deity in the Mabinogi of Mâth, he is defeated by one of the gods of light. The dealer of the blow, however, is not Arthur, as successor to Gwydion, but Balin, the Gallo-British sun-god Belinus.[[475]]

Another dark deity, Gwyn son of Nudd, we discover under all of his three titles. Called variously “Sir Gwinas”,[[476]] “Sir Guynas”,[[477]] and “Sir Gwenbaus”[[478]] by Malory, the Welsh Gwynwas (or Gwyn) is altogether on Arthur’s side. The Cornish Melwas, split into two different knights, divides his allegiance. As Sir Melias,[[479]] or Meleaus,[[480]] de Lile (“of the Isle”), he is a Knight of the Round Table, though, on the quarrel between Arthur and Launcelot, he sides with the knight against the king. But as Sir Meliagraunce, or Meliagaunce, it is he who, as in the older myth, captures Queen Guinevere and carries her off to his castle.[[481]] Under his Somerset name of Avallon, or Avallach, he is connected with the episode of the Grail. King Evelake[[482]] is a Saracen ruler who was converted by Joseph of Arimathea, and brought by him to Britain. In his convert’s enthusiasm, he attempted the quest of the holy vessel, but was not allowed to succeed.[[483]] As a consolation, however, it was divinely promised him that he should not die until he had seen a knight of his blood in the ninth degree who should achieve it. This was done by Sir Percivale, King Evelake being then three hundred years old.[[484]]

Turning from deities of darkness to deities of light, we find the sky-god figuring largely in the Morte Darthur. The Lludd of the earlier mythology is Malory’s King Loth, or Lot, of Orkney,[[485]] through an intrigue with whose wife Arthur becomes the father of Sir Mordred. Lot’s wife was the mother also of Sir Gawain, whose birth Malory does not, however, attribute to Arthur, though such must have been the original form of the myth.[[486]] Sir Gawain, of the Arthurian legend, is the Gwalchmei of the Welsh stories, the successor of the still earlier Lleu Llaw Gyffes, just as Sir Mordred—the Welsh Medrawt—corresponds to Lleu’s brother Dylan. As Sir Mordred retains the dark character of Medrawt, so Sir Gawain, even in Malory,[[487]] shows the attributes of a solar deity. We are told that his strength increased gradually from dawn till high noon, and then as gradually decreased again—a piece of pagan symbolism which forms a good example of the appositeness of Sir Edward Strachey’s figure; for it stands out of the mediæval narrative like an ancient brick in some more modern building.