Yet besides all these strange knights, Arthur commanded a being who is without any reasonable doubt a god or ruler of the subjective realm—‘Gwynn ab Nudd, whom God has placed over the brood of devils in Annwn, lest they should destroy the present race. He will never be spared thence.’ Whatever each one of us may think of this wonderful assembly of warriors and heroes who recognized in Arthur their chief, they are certainly not beings of the ordinary type,—in fact they seem not of this world, but of that hidden land to which we all shall one day journey.[293] But to avoid too much conjecture and to speak with a degree of scientific exactness as to how Arthur and these companions of his are to be considered, let us undertake a brief investigation into the mythological character and nature of the chief one of them next to the great hero—Gwynn ab Nudd. Professor J. Loth has said that ‘nothing shows better the evolution of mythological personages than the history of Gwynn’;[294] and in Irish we have the equivalent form of Nudd in the name Nuada—famous for having had a hand of silver; and Nuada of the Silver Hand was a king of the Tuatha De Danann. The same authority thus describes Gwynn, the son of Nudd:—‘Gwynn, like his father Nudd, is an ancient god of the Britons and of the Gaels. Christian priests have made of him a demon. The people persisted in regarding him as a powerful and rich king, the sovereign of supernatural beings.’[295] And referring to Gwynn, Professor Loth in his early edition of Kulhwch says:—‘Our author has had an original idea: he has left him in hell, to which place Christianity had made him descend, but for a motive which does him the greatest honour: God has given him the strength of demons to control them and to prevent them from destroying the present race of men: he is indispensable down there.’[295] Lady Guest calls Gwynn the King of Faerie,[296] the ruler of the Tylwyth Teg or ‘Family of Beauty’, who are always joyful and well-disposed toward mortals; and also the ruler of the Elves (Welsh Ellyllon), a goblin race who take special delight in misleading travellers and in playing mischievous tricks on men. It is even said that Gwynn himself is given to indulging in the same mischievous amusements as his elvish subjects.
The evidence now set forth seems to suggest clearly and even definitely that Arthur in his true nature is a god of the subjective world, a ruler of ghosts, demons, and demon rulers, and fairies; that the people of his court are more like the Irish Sidhe-folk than like mortals; and that as a great king he is comparable to Dagda the over-king of all the Tuatha De Danann. Arthur and Osiris, two culture heroes and sun-gods, as we suggested at first, are strikingly parallel. Osiris came from the Otherworld to this one, became the first Divine Ruler and Culture Hero of Egypt, and then returned to the Otherworld, where he is now a king. Arthur’s father was a ruler in the Otherworld, and Arthur evidently came from there to be the Supreme Champion of the Brythons, and then returned to that realm whence he took his origin, a realm which poets called Avalon. The passing of Arthur seems mystically to represent the sunset over the Western Ocean: Arthur disappears beneath the horizon into the Lower World which is also the Halls of Osiris, wherein Osiris journeys between sunset and sunrise, between death and re-birth. Merlin found the infant Arthur floating on the waves: the sun rising across the waters is this birth of Arthur, the birth of Osiris. In the chapter on Re-birth, evidence will be offered to show that as a culture hero Arthur is to be regarded as a sun-god incarnate in a human body to teach the Brythons arts and sciences and hidden things—even as Prometheus and Zeus are said to have come to earth to teach the Greeks; and that as a sixth-century warrior, Arthur, in accordance with the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, is an ancient Brythonic hero reincarnate.
The Literary Evolution and the Antiquity of the Brythonic Fairy-Romances
After the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the ancient fairy-romances of the Brythons began to exercise their remarkable literary influence as we see it now in the evolution of the Arthurian Legend. And in this evolution of the Arthurian Legend we find the proof of the antiquity of the Brythonic Fairy-Faith, just as we find in the old Irish manuscripts the proof of the antiquity of the Gaelic Fairy-Faith.
Long before 1066, Gildas gives the first recorded germs of the Arthurian story in his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, though they are hardly distinguishable as such. His failure to mention the name of Arthur, though treating of the whole period when Arthur is supposed to have lived, he himself being contemporary with the period, raises the very difficult question which we have already mentioned, Did the mighty Brythonic hero ever have an actual historical existence? Almost three hundred years later—a period sufficiently removed from Gildas to have made Arthur the supreme champion of the falling Brythons, granting that he did exist during the sixth century as a Brythonic chieftain—in the Historia Britonum, completed about the year 800, and attributed to Nennius, Arthur, for the first time in a known manuscript, is mentioned as a character of British history.[297] All that can be definitely said of the narrative of Nennius ‘is that it represents more or less inconsistent British traditions of uncertain age’.[297] That it is not always historical, many scholars are agreed. Dr. R. H. Fletcher says, ‘There is always the possibility that Arthur never existed at all, and that even Nennius’s comparatively modest eulogy has no firmer foundation than the persistent stories of ancient Celtic myth or the patriotic figments of the ardent Celtic imagination.’[298] Sir John Rhŷs also propounds a similar view.[299] Thus, for example, Nennius states that Arthur in one battle slew single handed more than nine hundred men; and, again, that the number of Arthur’s always-successful battles was twelve, as though Arthur were the sun or a sun-god, and his battles the twelve months of the solar year.[298]
Between Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth there is an intermediate stage in the development of the Arthurian Legend, during which the character of Arthur tends to become more romantic; but for our purpose this period is of slight importance. Thereafter, by means of Geoffrey’s famous Historia Regum Britanniae, written about 1136, the Arthurian Legend gained popularity throughout Western Europe. In this work Arthur ceases to be purely historical, and appears as a great king enveloped in the mythical atmosphere of a Celtic hero, and with him Merlin and Lear are for the first time definitely enshrined in the literature of Britain.[300] Arthur’s career is completely sketched in the Historia, from birth to his mysterious departure for the Isle of Avalon after the last fight with Modred, when fairy women take him to cure him of his wounds (Book XI, 1-2). Geoffrey, thus the father of the Arthurian Legend in English and European literature, was undoubtedly a Welshman who probably had natural opportunities of knowing the true character of Arthur from genuine Brythonic sources, though we know little about his life. His Historia, as the researches of scholars have shown, was the sum total in his time of all Arthurian history and myth, whether written or orally transmitted, which he could collect; just as Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur was a compendium of Arthurian material in the time of Edward IV.
There followed many imitations and translations of the Historia. The most important of these appeared in 1155, Le Roman de Brut or ‘The Story of Brutus’, by the Norman poet Wace. The Brut, though fundamentally a rimed version of the Historia, is much more than a mere translation: Wace has improved on it; and he gives a convincing impression that he had access to Celtic Arthurian stories not drawn upon by Geoffrey, for he gives new touches about Gawain, mentions the Britons’ expectation of Arthur’s return from Faerie, and the institution of the Round Table.[301]
Somewhere about the year 1200, Layamon, a simple-hearted Saxon priest, wrote another Brut, based upon the metrical one by Wace; and in the literature of England, Layamon’s work is the most valuable single production between the Conquest and Chaucer. The life of Layamon is very obscure, but it seems reasonably certain that for a long time he lived on the Welsh marches in North Worcestershire, in the midst of living Brythonic traditions, which he used at first hand; and, as a result, we find in his Brut legends not recorded in Geoffrey, or Wace, or in any earlier or contemporary literature. For our purposes the most interesting of many interesting additions made by Layamon are the curious passages about the fairy elves at Arthur’s birth, and about the way in which Arthur was taken by them to their queen Argante in Avalon to be cured of his wounds:—‘The time came that was chosen, then was Arthur born. So soon as he came on earth elves took him; they enchanted the child into magic most strong; they gave him might to be the best of all knights; they gave him another thing, that he should be a rich king; they gave him the third, that he should live long; they gave to him the prince virtues most good, so that he was most generous of all men alive. This the elves gave him, and thus the child thrived.’[302]
In the last fatal battle Modred is slain and Arthur is grievously wounded. As Arthur lies wounded, Constantine, Cador’s son, the earl of Cornwall, and a relative of Arthur, comes to him. Arthur greets him with these words:—‘“Constantine, thou art welcome; thou wert Cador’s son. I give thee here my kingdom.... And I will fare to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante the queen, and elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come [again] to my kingdom, and dwell with the Britons with mickle joy.” Even with the words, there approached from the sea that was, a short boat, floating with the waves; and two women therein, wondrously formed; and they took Arthur anon, and bare him quickly, and laid him softly down, and forth gan depart. Then it was accomplished that Merlin whilom said, that mickle care (sorrow) should be of Arthur’s departure. The Britons believe that he is alive, and dwelleth in Avalun with the fairest of all elves; and the Britons even yet expect when Arthur shall return.’[303]
During this same period, Giraldus Cambrensis (1147-1223) in his Itinerarium Cambriae (Book I, c. 8) collected a popular Otherworld tale. It is about a priest named Elidorus, who when a boy in Gower, the western district of Glamorganshire, had free passage between this world of ours and an underground country inhabited by a race of little people who spoke a language like Greek. This tends to prove that the Fairy-Faith was then flourishing among the people of Wales.