The Lost Land of King Arthur

by John Cuming Walters

The Saxons to subjection brought;

Rython, the mighty giant slain

By his good brand, relieved Bretagne:

The Pictish Gillamore in fight,

And Roman Lucius, own’d his might;

And wide were through the world renown’d

The glories of his Table Round.”—Scott.

Lovers of the Arthurian legend might feel a sense of disappointment if they were told that King Arthur never founded a Round Table, and that all tradition on that subject was belied. But the closest students of the ancient story are compelled to come to the conclusion that, even granting King Arthur “made a realm and reign’d,” his Round Table existed only in the imagination of later chroniclers and the weavers of the romances. The evidence in favour of the Round Table is of no substantial character, despite the veritable relic which exists at Winchester and is proudly pointed to as the original and genuine article. When Geoffrey of Monmouth pieced together the fragments of history, the fables, and the traditions of the last of the British heroes, and produced that wonderful narrative which has served as a basis upon which to rear the elaborate and complicated structure called by Malory the “noble hystorye of King Arthur,” he found nothing whatever in those sources of information either of the Round Table or of the Holy Grail. It was in 1155, when the “flower of Kings” had five centuries of dust upon his tomb, that Wace in the Brut gave the first intimation of the existence of the idea.—“Fist Artus la ronde table, dont Breton dient mainte fable;” from which we are led to infer that the tradition was of Breton origin. Others have assumed that the story of the Round Table established by King Arthur for the accommodation of twelve favourite knights who met in perfect equality was but a variation of that told of Charlemagne and his peers, though the foremost scholars now assure us that the two ideas were separate and distinct. The outstanding fact remains, however, that the earliest histories of Arthur are silent on the subject which is so impressive and memorable a feature of the later histories. Whence the idea was derived, and how it came to be imported into this narration, none can tell; but of its fitness of character there is no question. It is in thorough keeping with the Arthurian story, supplies an appropriate illustration of his character and methods, and enforces the leading doctrine of knightly fellowship and the unity of the chivalrous band whose primary object was “deeds of worship.”

It is absolutely impossible to reconcile the many conflicting accounts of how King Arthur’s Round Table was obtained. One report is that it was made by Merlin for Uther Pendragon; that Uther gave it to King Leodegraunce of Cameliard; and that Leodegraunce gave it as a wedding gift to Arthur when he married his daughter, Guinevere. Malory confirmed this in his Book of the Round Table and the Three Quests, when he put these words into the mouth of the king—“I love Guinevere, the King’s daughter, Leodegraunce, of the land of Cameliard, which holdeth in his house the Table Round, that ye told he had of my father, Uther.” And Leodegraunce, when he heard of the projected marriage, said: “He hath lands enough, he needeth none; but I shall send him a gift that shall please him much more, for I shall give him the Table Round, the which Uther Pendragon gave me; and, when it is full complete, there is a hundred knights and fifty; and as for a hundred good knights, I have myself, but I lack fifty, for so many have been slain in my days.” King Arthur received the Table Round and the hundred knights, “which,” he said, “please me more than right great wishes.”

In the Book of Sir Galahad we find that King Arthur “would wit how many had taken the quest of the Sancgreal, and to account them he prayed them all. Then found they by tale an hundred and fifty, and all were knights of the Round Table.” But obviously this Round Table which seated a hundred and fifty knights and left a space for the Holy Grail, was not the special Round Table for King Arthur and the favoured twelve knights of his selection; though it may have been the Round Table which in the Book of Sir Percivale we are told Merlin made “in token of the roundness of the world: for by the Round Table is the world signified by right. For all the world, Christian and heathen, resort unto the Round Table, and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the Round Table, they think them more blessed, and more in worship, than if they had gotten half the world.” So said the Queen of the Waste Lands to Sir Percivale. Yet in regard to this great institution there exists the bolder idea of its astronomical derivation, and considering to what extent astrology has entered into the Arthurian story the theory that the Round Table was suggested by the movement round the Pole of the Great Bear—“the seven clear stars of Arthur’s Table Round”—must not be overlooked. Each age of chivalry has had some such institution, and the Round Table continued to exist in this country until the time of the Third Edward. Yet the actual era remains unverified