THE MYTH OF BRUTUS THE TROJAN.
By the late R. N. Worth, F.G.S., etc.
Brutus, son of Sylvius, grandson of Æneas the Trojan, killed his father while hunting, was expelled from Italy, and settled in Greece. Here the scattered Trojans, to the number of seven thousand, besides women and children, placed themselves under his command, and, led by him, defeated the Grecian King Pandrasus. The terms of peace were hard. Pandrasus gave Brutus his daughter, Ignoge, to wife, and provided 324 ships, laden with all kinds of provisions, in which the Trojan host sailed away to seek their fortune. An oracle of Diana directed them to an island in the Western Sea, beyond Gaul, “by giants once possessed.” Voyaging amidst perils, upon the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea they found four nations of Trojan descent, under the rule of Corinæus, who afterwards became the Cornish folk. Uniting their forces, the Trojans sailed to the Loire, where they defeated the Gauls and ravaged Aquitaine with fire and sword. Then Brutus
“... Repaired to the fleet, and loading it with the riches and spoils he had taken, set sail with a fair wind towards the promised island, and arrived on the coast of Totnes. This island was then called Albion, and was inhabited by none but a few giants. Notwithstanding this, the pleasant situation of the places, the plenty of rivers abounding with fish, and the engaging prospect of its woods, made Brutus and his company very desirous to fix their habitation in it. They therefore passed through all the provinces, forced the giants to fly into the caves of the mountains, and divided the country among them, according to the directions of their commander. After this they began to till the ground and build houses, so that in a little time the country looked like a place that had been long inhabited. At last Brutus called the island after his own name, Britain, and his companions Britons; for by these means he desired to perpetuate the memory of his name; from whence afterwards the language of the nation, which at first bore the name of Trojan or rough Greek, was called British. But Corinæus, in imitation of his leader, called that part of the island which fell to his share Corina, and his people Corineans, after his name; and though he had his choice of the provinces before all the rest, yet he preferred this county, which is now called in Latin Cornubia, either from its being in the shape of a horn (in Latin Cornu), or from the corruption of the same name. For it was a diversion to him to encounter the said giants, which were in greater numbers there than in all the other provinces that fell to the share of his companions. Among the rest was one detestable monster called Goemagot, in stature twelve cubits, and of such prodigious strength that at one stroke he pulled up an oak as if it had been a hazel wand. On a certain day, when Brutus was holding a solemn festival to the gods in the port where they at first landed, this giant, with twenty more of his companions, came in upon the Britons, among whom he made a dreadful slaughter. But the Britons at last, assembling together in a body, put them to the rout, and killed them every one, except Goemagot. Brutus had given orders to have him preserved alive, out of a desire to see a combat between him and Corinæus, who took a great pleasure in such encounters. Corinæus, overjoyed at this, prepared himself, and, throwing aside his arms, challenged him to wrestle with him. At the beginning of the encounter, Corinæus and the giant, standing front to front, held each other strongly in their arms, and panted aloud for breath; but Goemagot presently grasping Corinæus with all his might, broke three of his ribs, two on his right side and one on his left; at which Corinæus, highly enraged, roused up his whole strength, and snatching him upon his shoulder, ran with him, as fast as the weight would allow him, to the next shore, and there getting upon the top of a high rock, hurled down the savage monster into the sea, where, falling on the sides of craggy rocks, he was torn to pieces, and coloured the waves with his blood. The place where he fell, taking its name from the giant’s fall, is called Lam Goemagot, that is, Goemagot’s Leap, to this day.”[[1]]
Such, in its complete form, is the myth of Brutus the Trojan, as told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, sometime Bishop of St. Asaph, who professed, and probably with truth, to translate the British history of which it forms a part from “a very ancient book in the British tongue,” given to him by Walter Mapes, by whom it had been brought from Brittany. Geoffrey wrote in the earlier part of the twelfth century, and he does not indicate with more precision than the use of the term “very ancient” the date of his original.
If, however, we are to accept the writings of Nennius as they have been handed down as substantially of the date assigned to them by the author—the middle of the ninth century—the legend of Brutus, though not in the full dimensions of the Geoffreian myth, was current at least a thousand years ago; and in two forms. In one account, Nennius states that our island derives its name from Brutus, a Roman consul, grandson of Æneas, who shot his father with an arrow, and, being expelled from Italy, after sundry wanderings settled in Britain—a statement that agrees fairly well with that of Geoffrey. In the other account, which Nennius says he had learned from the ancient books of his ancestors, Brutus, though still through Rhea Silvia, his great-grandmother, of Trojan descent, was grandson of Alanus, the first man who dwelt in Europe, twelfth in descent from Japhet in his Trojan genealogy, and twentieth on the side of his great-grandfather, Fethuir. Alanus is a kind of European Noah, with three sons—Hisicion, Armenon, and Neugio; and all his grandsons are reputed to have founded nations—Francus, Romanus, Alamanus, Brutus, Gothus, Valagothus, Cibidus, Burgundus, Longobardus, Vandalus, Saxo, Boganus. He is wholly mythical.
Brutus here does not stand alone. He falls into place as part of a patriarchal tradition, assigning to each of the leading peoples of Europe an ancestor who had left them the heritage of his name. This one fact, to my mind, removes all suspicion of the genuineness of these passages of Nennius, which have been sometimes regarded as interpolations. With Geoffrey not only is the story greatly amplified, but it is detached from its relations, and is no longer part of what may fairly be called one organic whole. Nennius, therefore, gives us an earlier form of the myth than Geoffrey. I think, too, that the essential distinctions of the two accounts render it clear that the ancient authorities of Nennius and Geoffrey are not identical, from which we may infer that the original tradition is of far older date than either of these early recorders.
But we may go still further. Whether the legend of Brutus is still extant in an Armoric form, I am not aware, but it appears in Welsh MSS. of an early date; the “Brut Tysilio” and the “Brut Gr. ab Arthur” being important. It has been questioned whether, in effect, these are not translations of Geoffrey; but there seems no more reason for assuming this than for disbelieving the direct statement of Geoffrey himself, that he obtained his materials from a Breton source. Bretons, Welsh, and Cornish are not only kindred in blood and tongue, but, up to the time when the continuity of their later national or tribal life was rudely shattered, had a common history and tradition, which became the general heritage. If the story of Brutus has any relation to the early career of the British folk, we should expect to discover traces of the legend wherever the Britons found their way. If this suggestion be correct, if Geoffrey drew from Armoric sources, and if the “Brut Tysilio,” which is generally regarded as the oldest of the Welsh chronicles, represents an independent stream, the myth must be dated back far beyond even Nennius, as the common property of the Western Britons, ere, in the early part of the seventh century, the successes of the Saxons hemmed one section into Wales, another into Cornwall, and drove a third portion into exile with their kindred in Armorica. There is, consequently, good reason to believe that the tradition is as old as any other portion of our earliest recorded history or quasi-history, and covers, at least, the whole of our historical period.
The narrative of Geoffrey does not give the myth in quite its fullest shape. For that we have to turn to local sources. Tradition has long connected the landing of Brutus with the good town of Totnes; the combat between Corinæus and Goemagot with Plymouth Hoe. Like the bricks in the chimney called in to witness to the noble ancestry of Cade, has not Totnes its “Brutus stone”? And did not Plymouth have its “Goemagot”?
The whole history of the “Brutus stone” appears to be traditional, if not recent. My friend, Mr. Edward Windeatt, informs me that it is not mentioned anywhere in the records of the ancient borough of Totnes. I fail to find any trace of it in the pages of our local chroniclers, beyond the statement of Prince (Worthies) that “there is yet remaining towards the lower end of the town of Totnes a certain rock called Brute’s Stone, which tradition here more pleasantly than positively says is that on which Brute first set his foot when he came ashore.” The good people of Totnes, so it is said, have had it handed down to them by their fathers from a time beyond the memory of man, that Brutus, when he sailed up the Dart, which must consequently have been a river of notable pretensions, stepped ashore upon this stone, and exclaimed, with regal facility of evil rhyme:—