There, where proud billows dash and roar,
His haughty turret guards the deep.
“And mark yon bird of sable wing,
Talons and beak all red with blood,
The spirit of the long-lost king
Passed in that shape from Camlan’s flood.”
R. S. Hawker.
Cornwall, the horn-shaped land, far removed from the great centres of progress and industry, the land of giants, of a separate people who until the last century spoke its own language;[15] the land of holy wells and saints, of hut circles, dolmens, and earthwork forts, memorials of extreme antiquity; the land of many stone crosses indicating the early influence of Christianity; the land of so-called giants’ quoits, chairs, spoons, punch-bowls, and mounds, sometimes the work of primitive man, sometimes the work of fantastic Nature—this is the land in which romance lingers and in which superstition thrives, the land upon which seems to rest unmoving the shadow of the past. Olden customs survive, the old fashion is not departed from. The quaintness, the simplicity, the quietude, the charm of a bygone age may be found yet in that part which Taylor, the water poet, described as “the compleate and repleate Home of Abundance, noted for high churlish hills, and affable courteous People.”
A tour through the land which romance has marked out for her own, and where the fords, bridges, hills, and rocks are called after Arthur or associated by tradition with his exploits, becomes easier every year by the development of railways, little known in the wilder parts until a decade or so ago. It must be sorrowfully confessed that the visit to Tintagel, despite its charm, results in a certain amount of disillusion. It contains no relic, nothing that can verily be imagined a relic, of the old, old times when the flower of chivalry ruled. As one walks down the solitary street and glances around he sees that Tintagel is an antique, picturesque little place with its quaint post-office of yore—battered by time, the roof fallen, and the stonework disjointed—with its stunted cottages, its typical village shop and hostelry, and its lonely church on the cliffs. Tintagel, as it is, is unique, but it is not Arthurian unless we go direct to those parts where Nature is not and never has been molested. The Pentargon heights, the great gorges, the weird bays and caves, the rock-strewn valleys, the imposing waterfalls—from these may be constructed the scenery for the drama of the warlike king and his adventurous knights. The huge bank of earth enclosing an oblong space, with its remnant of stone-lining found near St. Breavard, is fitly called King Arthur’s Hall. Such relics as are found in and near Tintagel are posterior to King Arthur’s era. There is a Saxon cross to be seen, erected to the memory of one Ælnat, a Saxon. A sybstel, or family pillar, with Saxon inscription, found in Lanteglos Church, near Camelford, and a Roman stone discovered in Tintagel churchyard, are ancient memorials of the highest interest. Relics of the bronze age have been discovered also, though the influence of the Phœnician tin-traders did not seemingly extend to this mid part of Cornwall.
Tintagel, as the first locality mentioned in the romance, has a special claim to attention: “It befell in the days of the noble Uther Pendragon, when he was King of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty and a noble Duke in Cornwalle that held long time wars against him; and the Duke was named the Duke of Tintagil.” So run the opening lines, introducing us at once to the western territory and to the rocky stronghold indissolubly linked with Arthur’s fame. Strange to say, however, the place is absolutely ignored in the later half of the history, despite the fact that Cornwall was the scene of some of the most important concluding events. Tintagel was apparently forgotten by the chroniclers after the story of Tristram was related, and the last mention of it as King Mark’s Castle, where treachery was followed by bloodshed, where the allegiance of the knights began to decline, and where folly, wantonness, and shame served as omens of coming disaster and of the impending shock to the realm which Arthur had made. The history of Tintagel begins in a tale of shame, though King Uther’s deceit of Igraine appears to have been regarded less as dishonour to himself than as a sign of his own and Merlin’s strategy and venturesomeness.[16] Uther, having compassed the death of Gorlois, had no further difficulty in persuading Igraine to become his wife, and their son was Arthur, who at his birth was delivered to Sir Ector, “a lord of faire livelyhood,” to be nourished as one of his own family. The death of Uther while his son was yet an infant left the succession in some doubt, and in order to prove Arthur’s right to the crown the familiar device was adopted of drawing a sword from a stone. The scene of the contest in which Arthur, now assumed by the chroniclers to be a goodly youth, and Sir Ector’s son took part, is vaguely described as being “the churchyard of the greatest church in London”; and it is needless to say that only Arthur proved equal to the feat of pulling the sword from the marble and the steel anvil in which it stood. The letters of gold on the sword declared that “whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvile, is rightwise king borne of England,” and Sir Ector and Sir Kay, his defeated son and Arthur’s foster-brother, were the first to kneel to Arthur as their lord when they saw Excalibur in his hand. Before the lords and commons Arthur again proved his right and royalty at the feast of Pentecost, and with the help of Merlin he proceeded immediately to establish his kingdom, which, during Uther’s illness and after his death, had stood “in great jeopardie.”