‘The nearest neighbouring flood to Arthur’s ancient seat,
Which made the Britaines name thro’ all the world so great.
Like Camelot what place was ever yet renown’d?
Where, as at Caerleon, oft he kept the Table Round,
Most famous for the sports at Pentecost so long,
From whence all knightly deeds and brave atchievements sprong[[7]].’
These old legendary traditions, pleasant to hear or to know of, have been collected by another Somersetshire antiquarian, the late Rev. J. H. Bennett, Rector of South Cadbury[[8]]. Together with the legends told by Leland and others, and those which he himself gathered on the spot, Mr. Bennett has given a carefully detailed topographical description of the old town and fortress of Camelot, strong by nature and strengthened by art, where the Britons made their last stand against the Saxons; and he has shewn how its strategical position was connected, in fact as well as in romance, with the Isle of Avallon, the Monastery of Glastonbury, and the Nunnery of Almesbury. He thinks that during the hundred years which followed the taking of Sarum by the Saxons A. D. 551, during which (except in the capture of Bath in 577 A. D.) they made no further progress in the conquest of Somersetshire, Camelot became the capital of the South British kingdoms, and stemmed the tide of war in this direction by its great line of strongholds; and he thus suggests that we may have here the historical circumstances which connected or helped to connect, the legends of the great British hero with Camelot. Leland, who wrote his Itinerary early in Henry VIII’s reign, mentions, among other relics found at Camelot, a silver horseshoe, and Mr. Bennett gives us the words of one of the Cadbury peasants who told him ‘folks do say that on the night of the full moon King Arthur and his men ride round the hill, and their horses are shod with silver, and a silver shoe has been found in the track where they do ride, and when they have ridden round the hill they stop to water their horses at the wishing well.’ But more than three hundred years before Leland wrote, this still living legend had been recorded by Gervase of Tilbury, who, in his Otia Imperialia (date about 1212) says that in the woods of Britain the foresters, as the common people call the keepers of the woods and wild game, tell that on alternate days, about noon, or at midnight when the moon is full and shining, they often see an array of hunters with dogs and sound of horns, who, in answer to the enquirers, say that they are of the household and fellowship of Arthur. And, what is still more curious, Gervase, in the same place, gives a legend of Arthur, of Mount Etna, which singularly corresponds with that just mentioned as still living among the mounds of ancient Camelot. He tells that the horse of the Bishop of Catania had run away from his groom, and when the groom was following him up the precipitous side of the mountain, he came upon an open place where was the Great Arthur, resting upon a couch. Arthur ordered the horse to be brought back and restored to the bishop, sent him presents, and related how he had lain there, all those years, suffering from wounds he had received in the battle with his nephew Mordred, and Childeric the leader of the Saxons[[9]]. The British story of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table had spread through Italy by the side of the French romances of Roland and Charlemagne[[10]] but this curious transfer of an incident from Camelot in Somersetshire, to Mount Etna in Sicily seems as if it must have been due to some Norman troubadour who had actually passed from one land to the other, and given the proper local colouring to the story in its new home as the bee carries fertility from one garden to another. Scotland, too, among the stories by which she claimed her part in Arthur and his knights, had a tale how ‘Arthour Knycht he raid on nycht with gylten spur and candel lycht[[11]].’
Legend tells that Glastonbury—founded by Joseph of Arimathea, and his burial-place, though his body was vainly sought in Edward III’s reign—possesses the coffin of Arthur. It is said that Henry II found the bodies of Arthur and Guenever there, and that Guenever had yellow hair. Their skulls were afterwards taken for relics by Edward Longshanks and Eleanor.
Almesbury, where Guenever died a nun, is a town in Wiltshire, seven and a half miles from Salisbury, where may still be seen the ruins of its celebrated abbey. The name was originally Ambrosebury, then Ambresbury, and lastly Amesbury, as it is now spelt.
The ruins of the castle of Tintagil, too, may still be seen in Cornwall.