That is true, said the colonel, and one of those am I; but I beg pardon for interrupting you: I pray you to proceed.
After a period of three hundred and ten years, the Celtes being subdued by Albion the giant, and this island subjected to his dominion, he changed its name of Samothea to that of Albion. This same Albion the giant was, as every body knows, the fourth son of Neptune—
I am proud to hear it, cried the colonel, but I protest to you it is the first I ever heard of him, or any of his family: I can now account for our superiority in naval affairs; and I most heartily hope that the trident, which this son of Neptune inherited from his father, shall never in any time to come be wrested from his posterity of this island.
I hope not, replied De Lancaster; but I proceed with my narrative—Upon the landing of Brute with his Trojans, (which was not above three thousand years ago) I find it asserted by Master Henry Lyte of Lytescarie, that this island was no better than a rude and barren wilderness, ferarum altrix, a nursery for wild beasts, as he slightingly denominates it; but I must take leave to tell that learned antiquary, that his history, which he proudly styles The Light of Britain, might more properly be called The Libel upon Britain; for I will neither give credit to his lions, which he presumes to say overran the island, nor implicitly acquiesce in his monstrous white bulls, with shagged manes and hairy foreheads, forasmuch as I find no mention of them in our King Edward the First’s letters to Pope Boniface, wherein this very point of the landing of Brute in Albion is very learnedly discussed. As for his lions, I treat that fable with contempt, for, besides that King Edward does not mention them, I will never believe there could have been one in the whole island, else how came King Madan, the grandson of this very Brute, to be killed and devoured by wolves in a hunting match, when it has been notorious from all time, that the wolf will fly from the hunter, that has anointed himself with lion’s tallow? Will any man suppose that the royal sportsman could have failed taking that obvious precaution, had there been but a single ounce of the fat of that animal in the whole kingdom?
Nobody will suppose it, said Wilson, and I am satisfied there were no lions for the reason you assign: I must beg leave to doubt also if there was any authority for his enormous white bulls, provided you are quite sure that King Edward does not hint at them in his correspondence with the Pope: but have we not lost sight of your ancestors amongst these lions and the bulls?
Not so, replied De Lancaster, for upon the partition, which Brute made of the kingdom between his three sons Locrine, Camber and Albanact, my family is found in the Cambrian district upon the very spot, where Kray Castle now stands; which will warrant me in saying without vanity that few land-holders in the island can boast a longer tenure in their possessions, this being not above sixty-six years after the taking of Troy, and eleven hundred thirty and two years before the Christian æra.
That is quite sufficient, said the colonel: few post-diluvian families can produce a better title.
CHAPTER VII.
The Narrative is interrupted by the Arrival of a Letter from old Morgan of Glen Morgan.
It is not always the greatest misfortune, that can befal the listener to a long story, if the teller shall chance to be called off in the middle of it. This was just now the case with Robert De Lancaster, who had advanced in his narrative but a very few years on this side of the Trojan war, when the arrival of the servant, whom he had dispatched with his letter of congratulation to old Morgan of Glen-Morgan, cut him short in his progress, and it probably required as much philosophy on his part to command his patience, as it did on Wilson’s to conceal his pleasure.
However this might be, De Lancaster upon the receipt of Morgan’s answer to his letter, came to an immediate pause in his story, and leaving about three thousand years of his pedigree as yet unaccounted for, read as follows—