In this edition a few slight changes and corrections have been made in the text. The “Additional Notes” at the end of the book (pp. [138]-[140]) supply a few omissions apparent in the first edition, some of which were pointed out to the author by his reviewers.

W. L. J.

July 1914.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Introductory[ 1]
CHAP.
I. The Earliest Arthurian Records[ 11]
II. Arthur in Welsh Legend and Literature[ 37]
III. Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Chroniclers [ 60]
IV. Romance[ 95]
V. Arthur in English Literature[ 116]
Additional Notes[ 138]
Bibliography[ 141]
Index[ 143]

KING ARTHUR IN HISTORY
AND LEGEND

INTRODUCTORY

“It is notoriously known through the universal world,” writes Caxton in his preface to Malory’s Morte Darthur, “that there be nine worthy” kings “and the best that ever were,” and that the “first and chief of the three best Christian and worthy” is King Arthur. Caxton, however, finds it a matter of reproach that so little had been done in his own country to perpetuate and honour the memory of one who “ought most to be remembered amongst us Englishmen tofore all other Christian kings.” Thanks mainly to Caxton’s own enterprise, and to the poets who have drawn their inspiration from Malory’s book, there is no longer any cause to accuse Englishmen of indifference to Arthur’s name and fame. No literary matter is more familiar to them than “what resounds in fable or romance of Uther’s son.” And yet nothing is more “notoriously known” than that authentic historical records of the career of this “most renowned Christian king” are distressingly scanty and indeterminate. An old Welsh bard, who sings of the graves of departed British warriors, and has no difficulty in locating most of them,[1] tells us that “unknown is the grave of Arthur.”[2] Would that this were indeed the sum of our ignorance! To-day, as of old, Arthur remains but a shadowy apparition, clothed in the mists of legend and stalking athwart the path of history to distract and mystify the sober chronicler. A Melchisedec of profane history, he has “neither beginning of days nor end of life.” Neither date nor place of birth can be assigned to him any more than a place of burial, while undiscovered yet is the seat of that court where knights, only less famous than himself, sought his benison and behest. It is only romantic story-tellers, like the authors of the Welsh Mabinogion, who venture upon such positive statements as that “Arthur used to hold his court at Caerlleon upon Usk.”[3] Geoffrey of Monmouth is, indeed, even more precise and circumstantial than the professed retailers of legend, for he actually gives the reasons why Arthur settled his court at Caerlleon, or the City of Legions—a “passing pleasant place.”[4] That, of course, is only Geoffrey’s way, and illustrates the genius for invention which makes his so-called History a work unique of its kind. The “matter of Britain” is, much more than the “matter of France,” or even the heterogeneous “matter of Rome the great,” the despair of the historian.[5] But it is, for that very reason, the paradise of the makers and students of romance; and, as a result, the mass of Arthurian literature of all kinds which exists to-day,—prose and verse romances, critical studies of “origins,” scholarly quests along perilous paths of mythology and folk-lore,—is ponderous enough to appal the most omnivorous reader. The Arthurian legend has indeed been of late, both in Europe and in America, the subject of so much mythological, ethnological and philological speculation as to tempt the unsophisticated lover of mere literature to say, when he contemplates the mounting pile of printed critical matter, that Arthur’s sepulchre, wherever his mortal remains may lie, is at last well on the way to be built in our libraries.

There is nothing in literary history quite like the fascination which Arthurian romance has had for so many diverse types of mind. Poets, musicians, painters, religious mystics, folk-lorists, philologists—all have yielded to it. For some people the study of Arthurian nomenclature is as engrossing a pursuit as the interpretation of ‘The Idylls of the King’ is for others, while there are those who derive as much pleasure from investigating the symbolic meanings of the story of the Grail as lovers of music do from listening to the mighty harmonies of Parzival or Tristan und Isolde. All this only makes us wonder the more why so obscure and elusive a figure as the historical British Arthur should have become the centre of a romantic cycle which presents so many varied and persistent features of interest. Even in Caxton’s time, as in our own, there were sceptics “who held opinion that there was no such Arthur, and that all books as been made of him be but feigned and fables.” This is not surprising, when it is remembered that even when Geoffrey of Monmouth, some three centuries before, gave to the world his astonishing record of Arthur’s achievements, a few obstinate critics had their doubts about the whole matter, and one of them—the chronicler, William of Newburgh—roundly denounced Geoffrey for having, by his “saucy and shameless lies,” made “the little finger of his Arthur bigger than the back of Alexander the Great.”[6] Caxton’s way with the sceptics is ingenuous and short, but it is curious to note how his preface to the Morte Darthur succeeds, in its own quaint and crude fashion, in suggesting what are still the main problems of constructive Arthurian criticism. It will not do, he says in effect, to dismiss summarily all Arthurian traditions as so many old wives’ tales. They are too widespread and persistent not to have some basis of solid fact underlying them: besides, the people who believe them, love them, and write of them, cannot all be credulous fools. Caxton, in particular, cites the case of the “noble gentlemen” who “required him to imprint the history of the noble king and conqueror, king Arthur,”—one of whom “in special said, that in him that should say or think that there was never such a king called Arthur might well be aretted great folly and blindness.” This gentleman—of whom one would gladly know more—was evidently both an antiquary and a student of letters, and could give weighty reasons for the faith that was in him. First of all, Arthur’s grave, so far from being unknown, might be seen “in the monastery of Glastingbury.” Again, reputable authors like Higden, Boccaccio, and “Galfridus in his British book,” tell of his death and recount his life; “and in divers places of England many remembrances be yet of him, and shall remain perpetually, and also of his knights.” His seal, for example, “in red wax closed in beryl,” could be seen in the Abbey of Westminster; Gawaine’s skull and Cradock’s mantle were enshrined in Dover Castle; the Round Table was at Winchester, and “in other places Launcelot’s sword and many other things.” Caxton appears to speak in his own person when he goes on to re-inforce all this by mentioning the records of Arthur that remained in Wales, and “in Camelot, the great stones and the marvellous works of iron lying under the ground, and royal vaults, which divers now living have seen.” Moreover, Arthur’s renown was well established in all places, Christian and heathen, so much so that he was “more spoken of beyond the sea,” and “more books made of his noble acts,” than in England. “Then all these things alleged,” he concludes, “I could not well deny but that there was such a noble king named Arthur, and reputed one of the nine worthy, and first and chief of the Christian men.” Hence he decided in all good faith, “under the favour and correction of all noble lords and gentlemen, to enprise to imprint” the Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table. And, in view of Ascham’s famous denunciation of the book as containing but “open manslaughter and bold bawdrie,” and of Tennyson’s sensitiveness to the touch of

“the adulterous finger of a time