In relation to the earlier battle on the Camel, if there was one, and the supposed connection of Arthur with it, I must mention a scrap of topographical evidence, which is far from conclusive, but which may be taken for what it is worth. In this supposed battle, Cador, Duke of Cornwall, half-brother to Arthur, or, according to another account, his nephew, takes a traditional place among the slain. About three miles from Camelford, between the Camel and the sea, stands a large sepulchral mound which looks down upon the Atlantic from an elevation of over a thousand feet. This is known as Cadõn Barrow, and the tradition is that it covers the body of Cador. To this tumulus especial consideration and sanctity have long been attached. If it covers the bones of Arthur’s kinsman the place consorts with his death on the Camel. At a distance of about seven miles from the battlefield, be it Arthur’s or Egbert’s, stands another sepulchral mound in which an interested person might find an Arthurian association. This mound is known as the Giant’s Grave, or King Arthur’s Grave. It lies within a gigantic double-walled enclosure which has the name of Warbstowe Bury, one of the largest of the British camps of Cornwall. This occupies a commanding situation, and would furnish an ideal resting-place for a Cornish hero. But whatever be the purpose of the mound, we have no reason to connect it with Arthur. The name is employed somewhat at random: barrows are common in Cornwall; and we must have consistent historical evidence before we suppose Arthur to occupy the Giant’s Grave or his kinsman Cadõn Barrow.
The evidence which is wanting with regard to Arthur’s battle on the Camel comes to light on the Firth of Forth. There is reason to suppose that tradition did not err in the fatal association of Arthur and Mordred, though the place of the last scene was not Cornwall but Scotland. The name Camlan, which has been freely given by later writers to the supposed battle on the Camel, is not to be found there, nor, so far as I can ascertain, in Cornwall.
Skene and Stuart Glennie maintain with much converging evidence that Camlan is Camelon[16] on the river Carron, in the valley of the Forth, where it is said are the remains of a Roman town. Here, according to Scotch tradition, Arthur and Mordred met. We have evidence which appears to be sufficient that Mordred was King of the Picts, or, as he is sometimes termed, King of Scotland, and the head of a confederacy of Picts, Scots, and Saxons, or, as some authorities have it, Picts, Scots, and renegade Britons. With this composite army he gave battle to Arthur and his faithful British force, in which the latter were defeated and Arthur slain.
It is worth noting as in favour of the Scottish location of the battle that Geoffrey, who places it on the Camel, nevertheless states Mordred’s force to have consisted of Picts and Scots. It is surely improbable that Arthur could have been confronted in Cornwall by a great army of these northern savages. On the Forth[17] they were numerous and much at home. Mordred was supposed to have been the son of Llew, to whom Arthur had given Lothian. These particulars are confirmed by the ‘Chronicle of the Scots.’ It may be added that an earthwork with double lines of circumvallation in the neighbouring valley of the Tay, now known as Barry Hill, is designated by tradition as Mordred’s Castle, not the only instance in which testimony of this nature has been found to throw light upon Arthurian history.
It is impossible to dissociate the place of Arthur’s death from that of his supposed burial. According to the well-known story which we owe to Geoffrey of Monmouth, the king was desperately wounded on the Camel, and thence conveyed to Glastonbury, where we must suppose he died; for there, in confirmation of Geoffrey’s account, was his grave found, or said to have been found, after the lapse of 647 years. The circumstantial report of the finding and identification of the grave on the spot indicated by the story gives verisimilitude to the legend, and demands for it serious criticism. In the first place, there is reason to believe, as I have shown, that though there was a great battle on the Camel, Arthur was not in it, and though he died in battle, it was not on the Camel. If Arthur concluded his career, not on the Camel but the Forth, the question of sepulture at Glastonbury may be dismissed as a fabrication. On the other hand, if the burial in this place can be maintained, then we must abandon the Scottish localisation of the last battle, and may accept the statement of the unveracious Geoffrey that it was fought on the Cornish river. It behoves us, therefore, to examine the Glastonbury story as one upon which much turns. The tradition that Arthur, mortally wounded on the Camel, was conveyed alive to Glastonbury may be at once discarded. Such a transporting of a desperately wounded man must be regarded as impracticable. He was within easy reach of his Cliff Castle at Tintagel and of his fortified camp of Kelliwick (assuming this to have been Kelly Rounds), and would probably, if moved at all, have been deposited in one or the other. On the other hand, if he was killed outright the removal of the body to Glastonbury by way of the Camel and the sea would be neither impossible nor unlikely.
Glastonbury was one of the earliest seats of Christianity in this island, and no doubt was reverenced as such in the time of Arthur. The tumulus and the churchyard were at this time competing as receptacles for the dead—the tumulus as a heathen, the churchyard as a Christian place of rest. A tumulus was raised over a Saxon chief in the time, and with the permission, of Ambrosius. Christian burial was probably practised at Glastonbury at as early a date. Giraldus Cambrensis, together with a monk of Glastonbury quoted by Leland, professed themselves to have been witnesses of the opening of Arthur’s grave. There are two accounts as to the finding of this—one that it was sought for by order of Henry II., who had learned from the British Bards that Arthur was buried between two pyramids at Glastonbury; the other that it was found accidentally in this situation in digging to bury a monk who had selected this spot for his interment. The pyramids undoubtedly existed before the alleged discovery of Arthur’s grave; for they were described by William of Malmesbury in the reign of Henry I. They displayed some inscription, apparently Saxon, and an ecclesiastical effigy, but no mention of Arthur.
So circumstantial is the statement of Giraldus, who represents himself as an eye-witness of the exploration, that if in any essential respect he departed from the truth, whether by way of addition or otherwise, we can scarcely suppose that the falsehood was unintentional. Though there are differences, as I shall presently show, relating to the date of the alleged exploration, preponderating evidence places it in the time of Henry II., in whose interest it has been suspected that a fraud was devised to gratify the king and serve a political purpose. Henry as a Norman might, it has been thought, desire to rehabilitate Arthur as, like himself, an enemy of the Saxons. Priests were deceivers ever: here they may have had both the motive and the means for deception. But it must be allowed that if the ecclesiastical explorers lied they lied so much like truth that if any exception be taken to their report it is only that it comes up too exactly to what might have been expected. The story, as told by Giraldus, is as follows. On digging between the pyramids in the monks’ cemetery a leaden cross was found at a depth of seven feet, which bore this inscription in rude letters:
HIC JACET SEPULTUS INCLYTUS REX ARTHURIUS IN
INSULA AVALLONIA, CUM WENNEVEREIA UXORE
SUA SECUNDA
Camden gives what professes to be a facsimile of the inscription, which ‘was formerly written and preserved in the monastery of Glastonbury.’ The lettering has the appearance of great antiquity, but suspicion attaches to the mention of the name of the place in connection with the interment. Avallonia, or Avalon, is of course Glastonbury—probably in Arthur’s time an island in a swamp. As to its place, the body speaks for itself. It may be necessary to say whose it is; it is not necessary to say where it is; nor is it usual on tombstones or coffins to give their address.