—The Canterbury Tales.
The Story of King Arthur
(In Twelve Numbers)
By Winona C. Martin
After the last story is told (the Passing of Arthur), and the children standing with Sir Bevidere upon the highest crag of the jutting rock, see the warrior King pass with the three tall queens in the dusky barge beyond the limits of the world, they too, wonder gazing on the splendor of his Passing. Though defeated in the last weird battle in the west, yet he was victorious in his ideals, for he became the spiritual King of his race.
“From the great deep to the great deep he goes.” The children hear but do not quite understand—it is the better for that because something of the mystery of life and death is awakened in the child. In that it serves its highest purpose. It helps the child to realize that there are things in life that eye have not seen nor ear heard, and let it not be forgotten that while we use these great stories for formal work, the formal is always the result of the creative.
“The letter killeth; the spirit giveth life.” Thus it is that child and teacher leave the low plains of the “lesson hearer” and hand in hand walk the upland pastures of the soul.—Ed.
I. Merlin and His Prophecies
Once, in those dim, far off times when history fades away and is lost in the mists of tradition, there sat upon the throne of Britain a man named Vortigern. Like many another king of his day—and of later days for that matter, he had no right whatever to the crown, for he had gained it by the betrayal of a trust, and, some believed, by a still darker crime. Constantine, his overlord, who had reigned in Britain before him, had, at his death, committed to this Vortigern, his chief minister, the care of his three sons, Constans, the heir, and his two brothers Pendragon and Uther. Soon after the King’s death little Constans had mysteriously disappeared. Then the true friends of the two remaining princes, fearing for their lives, had fled with them across the sea and found refuge for them at the court of France.
All this, however, was now many years ago; and so long had Vortigern’s right to rule been unquestioned that he had almost forgotten his crime.
In the early days of his reign he had indeed fought valiantly against the only enemies that the Britons had at that time greatly to fear. These were the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed Saxons who came from beyond the seas led by Hengest and Horsa. But as the years had passed, he and his warriors had given themselves up more and more to lives of luxury and idleness, so that at last they had been obliged to make a shameful peace with the enemy, and the Saxons were now gradually becoming masters of the land.