King Arthur has been so laid hold of by the romancers, and his story has been so embellished with astounding flourishes of the imagination, that we are inclined to doubt whether he ever existed, and all the more so because we find legend attached to him and associated with localities alike in Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland. Mr. Skene has shown very good cause for identifying the sites of some of his battles with remains of fortifications in Scotland.[9] How, then, can we account for his presence in Cornwall and Wales? As a matter of fact, this is perfectly explicable. The Saxons held possession of the whole east of Britain as far as the ridge which runs between Yorkshire and Lancashire; as also the region about Leeds, which latter constituted the kingdom of Elmet. Needwood and Arden forests lay between the rival people. Strathclyde, Cumberland, Rheged, now Lancashire, all Wales, with Powis occupying Shropshire and Cheshire, Gloucester, Bath, and Dumnonia, extending through Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset, formed one great confederation of Britons under a head king. Geraint had previously been head of the confederacy, and we find traces of him accordingly in Cornwall, Somerset, Wales, and at Hereford. The Pendragon, or chief king, had to be at every post along the frontier that was menaced. So with Arthur; he was in Cornwall, indeed, but he was also in Wales, where he is spoken of in the lives of some of the saints, as we have seen, always as a bully. And he was in Scotland opposing the advance of the Bernicians. His father, Uthr, had been head king before him, but Geraint had been chosen as Pendragon on the death of Uthr; Geraint fell in 522, and it is held that Arthur perished in 537. There are several reminiscences of King Arthur in the district. At Slaughter Bridge he is thought to have fallen. Above Camelford rise Dinnevor (Dinnas-vawr), the Great Castle, and King Arthur’s Downs, with a singular oblong rectangular structure on it called King Arthur’s Hall, the purport of which has not been discovered. At Tintagel are his cups and saucers, hollows in the rock, and his spirit is said to haunt the height as a monstrous white gull wailing over the past glories of Britain. At Killmar is his bed. Near Tintagel is Porth-iern, which is either the Iron Port or that of Igerna, Arthur’s mother; at Boscastle is Pentargon (Arthur’s Head). The Christian name of Gwenivere, his faithless wife, is still by no means rare, as Genefer.
Tintagel is but a fragment. There was anciently a rift with a bridge over it between one court of the castle and the other; but the rift has expanded to a gaping mouth, and rock and wall have fallen to form a mound of débris that now connects the mainland with what, but for this heap, would be an islet.
TINTAGEL
Tintagel, properly Dun-diogl, the “Safe Castle,” has been built of the black slate rock, with shells burnt for lime. A few fragments of wall remain on the mainland, and a few more on the island, where is also the ruin of a little chapel, with its stone altar still in situ. The situation is superb, and were the ruins less ruinous, the scene from the little bay that commands the headland would be hardly surpassed. On Barras Head, opposite, a company are erecting a fashionable modern hotel.
About the cliffs may still be seen the Cornish chough, with its scarlet legs, but the bird is becoming scarce. The south coast of Cornwall is now entirely deserted by the choughs, and the only remaining colonies are found at intervals on the side facing the Atlantic. Unhappily visitors are doing their utmost to get them exterminated by buying the young birds that are caught and offered for sale. But the jackdaws are also driving them, and probably in-and-in breeding is leading to their diminution. The choughs not being migratory birds, and sticking much to the same localities, those who desire to obtain their eggs or rob the nests of the young know exactly which are their haunts year by year.
“The free wild temperament of choughs,” writes Mr. A. H. Malan, “will not brook any confinement, but must have absolute liberty and full exercise for their wings. If this is not the case, they generally get an attack of asthma, which usually proves fatal, in their first year.
“Everyone has seen a chough, if only in a museum; and therefore knows the beautiful glossy black of the adult plumage, the long wings crossed over the back and extending beyond the squared tail, the long, slender red legs, and the brilliant red curved bill. But only those who have kept them know their marvellous docility. You may train a falcon to sit on your wrist and come down to the lure, with infinite labour; but to a chough brought up from the nest it comes quite natural to be at one moment flying in high air—it may be hotly pursued by a party of rooks, and leading them a merry dance, since, being long-winged birds, choughs hold the rooks, crows, and jackdaws very cheap, inasmuch as these baser creatures can never come near enough to injure them—and the next to come in at the open window, alight on the table, or jump on one’s knee and sit there any length of time, absolutely still, while the head and back are stroked with the hand or a pen, combining the complete confidence of a cat or a dog with the wild freedom of the swallow. No other bird with which I am acquainted thus unites the perfection of tameness with the limitless impetuosity of unreclaimed nature.”[10]
Brown Willy and Rough Tor are fine hills rising out of really ghastly bogs, Crowdy and Stannon and Rough Tor marshes, worse than anything of the sort on Dartmoor, places to which you hardly desire to consign your worst enemies, always excepting promoters of certain companies. I really should enjoy seeing them flounder there.