But alas for song! From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Tennyson, that last prodigious battle on the Camel has been the joy of poetry, and the mighty adventure between Arthur and Mordred has been told and retold a thousand times; yet if those warriors ever did meet, it was certainly in Scotland, and not Cornwall, that the encounter took place. Camlan is Camelon in the Valley of the Forth, and here a tolerably safe tradition tells that the King of the Picts, with his Scots and Saxons, defeated the Britons and slew their King.
Leland reported to Henry VII. that "This castle hath been a marvellous strong fortress and almost situ in loco inexpugnabile, especially from the dungeon that is on a great and terrabil crag environed with the se, but having a drawbridge from the residue of the castel on to it. Shepe now feed within the dungeon."
That Arthur was begotten at Tintagel we may please to believe; but that he died far from the land of his birth seems sure.
As for the existing ruin, it springs from that of the castle which saw the meeting of Arthur's parents, Uther Pendragon and the fair Igraine; but the original British building has long since vanished, and the present remains, dating from the Norman Conquest, did not rise until six hundred years later than the hero's death. An old Cornish tradition declares that Arthur's mighty spirit passed into a Cornish chough, and in the guise of that beautiful crow with the scarlet beak, still haunts the ruins of his birthplace.
A CORNISH CROSS
Kerning corn waved to the walls of the little churchyard and spread a golden foreground for the squat grey mass of the church that rose behind it. The building stood out brightly, ringed with oak and sycamore, and the turrets of the tower barely surmounted the foliage wrapped about it. Rayed in summer green the trees encircled church and burying-ground with shade so dense that the sun could scarce throw a gleam upon the graves. They lay close and girdled the building with mounds of grass and slabs of slate and marble. The dripping of the trees had stained the stones and cushions of moss flourished upon them. Here was the life of the hamlet written in customary records of triumphant age, failures of youth, death of children—all huddled together with that implicit pathos of dates that every churchyard holds.
But more ancient than any recorded grave, more venerable than the church itself, a granite cross ascended among the tombs. Centuries had weathered the stone so that every angle of its rounded head and four-sided shaft was softened. Time had wrought on the granite mass, as well as man, and fingering the relic through the ages, had blurred every line of the form, set grey lichens on the little head of the Christ that hung there and splashed the shaft with living russet and silver and jade-green. The old cross rose nine feet high, its simple form clothed in a harmony of colours beautiful and delicate. The arms were filled with a carved figure of primitive type and a carmine vegetation washed the rough surfaces and outlined the human shape set in its small tunic stiffly there. Green moss covered the head of the cross and incised patterns decorated its sides to within a foot or two of the grass by a churchyard path from which it sprang.
The design was of great distinction and I stood before one of the finest monuments in Cornwall. On the north side ran a zigzag; while to the south a more elaborate key-pattern was struck into the stone—a design of triangles enfolding each other. The back held the outline of a square filled with a cross and a shut semicircle carved beneath; while upon the face, under the head which contained the figure, there occurred another square with a cross. The shaft upon this side was adorned with the outline of a tall jug, or ewer, from which sprang the conventional symbol for a lily flower.