The Knights of the Round Table: Stories of King Arthur and the Holy Grail

by William Henry Frost

"And the second trouble was a noise, a horrible scream, that was heard in every house in England on the eve of every May Day. It was so loud and so fearful that it frightened people half to death, and it went through them like a knife, and it chilled their blood and filled them with horror, and some of them went mad because of it.

"And the third trouble was that the King never could keep anything to eat in the house. No matter how much provision there was at night, it was all gone the next morning, and nobody could find out what became of it.

"Now, it occurred to King Lud that his brother Levelys was a very wise man, and that it would be worth while to go to France and see him and ask him if he could tell what ought to be done about all these troubles. So he got ready a fleet, very quietly, so that the Coranians should know as little as possible about it, and sailed toward France. And when his brother heard that he was coming he got ready a fleet too, and sailed from France to meet him. When they met they were very glad to see each other, and they got ready to talk about King Lud's troubles. Levelys was so wise that he knew just what Lud had come for, without being told, so he tried to find a way for them to talk without the Coranians hearing them. And he had a horn made of brass, and he thought that if they talked through that they could not be heard even by such ears as the Coranians had.

"But when they began to talk through it they found that whatever either of them said into it nothing would come out but angry and hostile words. Then Levelys knew that a demon had got into the horn. So he poured wine through the horn and drove the demon out. Then they found that they could hear through the horn much better. Levelys talked through the horn and told Lud that he would give him some insects that would kill the Coranians. He must put them in water and then he must call all the people of the island together and scatter the water over them. It would kill all the Coranians, he said, and it would not harm Lud's own people.

"As for the second trouble, that of the dreadful noise, Levelys said that it was caused by two dragons, that were fighting. 'When you go home,' he said, 'you must measure your island and find the exact middle of it. There you must dig a pit, and in the pit you must put a cauldron of the best mead, and you must cover the top of the cauldron with satin. Then you must watch till you see the two dragons flying in the air and fighting together. After a time they will grow weary with fighting and they will drop down upon the satin and sink into the cauldron. Then they will drink all the mead that there is in it and go to sleep. After that you must fold the covering of satin around them and bury them in the strongest place that you have.

"'And the third trouble,' Levelys went on, 'the disappearing of all your food, is caused by a great enchanter, who comes and carries it away. And the reason that nobody who watches ever sees him is that he casts spells over all of them and makes them sleep. But you yourself must watch, and you must have a cauldron filled with cold water beside you, and when you feel like sleeping you must get into the cauldron and the cold water will keep you awake.'

"When he had heard all this Lud went home. And the first thing that he did was to call all the people together, as his brother had told him. Then he sprinkled the water with the insects in it over all the people and it killed all the Coranians and did no harm to his own people.

"Then he measured the island and found that the very middle of it was in Oxford. You can measure it yourself, on the map, if you want to find out whether the middle of it is really in Oxford. I don't say that it is, only that that was what Lud found. But I suppose he must have been right about it, for the rest of the experiment worked perfectly. That is to say, he dug the pit and put the cauldron in the pit and the mead in the cauldron, and the satin over the cauldron, and waited to see the fight of the dragons. And the dragons came and fought and fell down into the cauldron and drank up the mead and slept, and Lud covered them with the satin and buried them in Snowdon, which is a great mountain in Wales. I am sorry that we cannot go to Snowdon at present, for I know that it must be worth seeing.

"And finally Lud made such a great feast that there was sure to be a good deal of it left, and then he sat up to see what would become of it. He put on his armor and sat down and waited, and by and by he began to hear such sweet music that he could scarcely help going to sleep. But he got into the cauldron of cold water which he had ready, and that kept him awake. And at last there came a great man, dressed all in armor and carrying a big basket. He began to put the food into the basket and Lud began to wonder how he could do it, for it seemed to him that there was a great deal more of it than the basket could ever hold. But the man put it all in and then started to go away with it. Then Lud stopped him and made him fight with him. And Lud beat him and would not grant him mercy till he promised to be Lud's servant and to restore the value of all that he had ever taken from him.

"Now we come to the second part of the story. To get to it we have to come down a good many years, to the time when Merlin, the great magician and wise man of King Arthur's court, was a boy. We almost always think of him as an old man, with white hair and a long, white beard. But he was a boy once, just like anybody else. And a wonderful thing about it was that he knew just as much more than anybody else in the world when he was a boy as he did when he was an old man.