Such a mourning had not been.”
Arthmael, bear’s servant or worshipper, was a Welsh prince, but here, as in Ireland, all the Arths are now merged in Arthur.
Ardghal, or Ardal, of high valour, is an Erse name, and was long used, though it has now been suppressed by the supposed Anglicism Arnold, eagle-power. It explains the name of Arthgallo, who, in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s legendary history, is the persecuting brother, whom Elidure’s untiring love and generosity finally won from his cruel courses to justice and mercy. Artegal and Elidure was one of the best ante-Shakesperian dramas; and Artegal was selected by Spenser as one of the best and noblest of his knights-errant, representing Arthur Lord Grey.
Ardrigh was an Erse term for the supreme monarch over their five lesser realms, and is still applied by the native Irish to the king of France,—much as the Greeks were wont to style the Persian monarch the Great King. This most probably accounts for the term Arviragus, which we picked up by the Romans, and applied to that son of Cymbeline who was really the brave Caradwg. Ardheer is another form of this same title of the highest chief, and the later critics tell us to consider this as the origin of our hero.
He is not, indeed, mentioned by Gildas, unless he be the “dragon of the island;” but his omission from that letter is only to his credit, and the individuality of Arthur stands on the testimony of Welsh bards up to his own date, and of universal tradition.
Arthur, or Arthwys, seems to have been the son of Uthyr, and Emrys, whom he succeeded, bearing the title of Pendragon in his own tongue, and of Imperator in Latin, which was the language of politics to the Britons. A Silurian like Caradwg, his spirit was the same, and his hereditary possessions would seem to have been on the Welsh border, with Caerleon on Uske for their capital; but he was born at Tintagel in Cornwall, and he was prompt in flying to the aid of the British cause in all quarters. The West Saxons were his chief enemies, and his battles, twelve in number, are almost all in the kingdom of Wessex; but he must also have been acknowledged by the northern Britons of the old province of Valentia, and have ruled over “fair Strathclyde and Reged wide” from his fortress at Carlisle. After a brave reign of forty years, he at length perished through the treachery of his nephew; but whether his last fatal battle was fought in Strathclyde, Cornwall, or in Somerset, it seems impossible to determine.
The Cymry mourned passionately. The Welsh bards made Triads, and the Armoricans sang songs.
Nennius mentions Arthur in the sixth century.
In 720, a person called Eremita Britannus, or the British hermit, is said to have written about King Arthur; the Welsh Mabinogion, or children’s tales, were all centering on him; and when, in the early part of the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth brought out his chronicle, it was translated all over Europe, even into Greek, and furnished myriads of romances, metrical and otherwise.
The outline of the Arthur of romance scarcely needs to be here traced; the prince, brought up in concealment, establishing his claim by pulling the sword out of the stone whence no one else could detach it; the Christian warrior, conquering all around, and extending his victories to Rome; the band of Knights; the vow and quest of the Holy Grail that breaks the earthly league; the fall and defection of the two most accomplished knights through unhallowed love, the death of one, and the rebellion of the other, the lover of Arthur’s own faithless wife,—all opening the way to the fatal treason of the nephew; and the last battle, when the wounded king causes his sword to be thrown into the river, as a signal to the fairies, who bear him away to their hidden isle. All this is our own peculiar insular heritage of romance, ennobled as it has been by old Mallory’s prose in the fifteenth century, and in the nineteenth by Tennyson’s poetry, the best of all the interpretations of the import of Arthur himself.