King Arthur Legends.
Those Arthur legends had been floating about in ballad or song, but they never had much mention in anything pretending to be history[14] until Geoffrey of Monmouth’s day. There is nothing of them in the Saxon Chronicle: nothing of them in Beda: King Alfred never mentions King Arthur.
But was there ever a King Arthur? Probably: but at what precise date is uncertain: probable, too, that he had his court—as many legends run—one time at Caerleon, “upon Usk,” and again at Camelot.[15] Caerleon is still to be found by the curious traveller, in pleasant Monmouthshire, just upon the borders of Wales, with Tintern Abbey and the grand ruin of Chepstow not far off; and a great amphitheatre among the hills (very likely of Roman origin) with green turf upon it, and green hillsides hemming it in—is still called King Arthur’s Round Table.
Camelot is not so easy to trace: the name will not be found in the guide-books: but in Somersetshire, in a little parish, called “Queen’s Camel,” are the remains of vast entrenchments, said to have belonged to the tourney ground of Camelot. A little branch of the Yeo River (you will remember this name, if you have ever read Charles Kingsley’s “Westward, Ho”—a book you should read)—a little branch, I say, of the Yeo runs through the parish, and for irrigating purposes is held back by dykes, and then shot, shining, over the green meadows: hence, Tennyson may say truly, as he does in his Idyls of the King—
“They vanished panic-stricken, like a shoal
Of darting fish, that on a summer’s morn
Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot,
Come slipping o’er their shadow, on the sand.”
There are some features of this ancient fable of King Arthur, which are of much older literary date than the times we are now speaking of. Thus “the dusky barge,” that appears on a sudden—coming to carry off the dying King,—