None of the Anglo-Norman chroniclers ranks higher as a trustworthy historical authority than William of Malmesbury,—the first great successor of Bede, whom he calls his master and exemplar. In the first chapter of his History of the Kings of England—the first version of which was completed in 1125—we find the following passage referring to the Saxon invasions in the sixth century:—
“When he (Vortimer) died, the British strength decayed, and all hope fled from them; and they would soon have perished altogether, had not Ambrosius, the sole survivor of the Romans, who became monarch after Vortigern, quelled the presumptuous barbarians by the powerful aid of the warlike Arthur. This is the Arthur of whom the idle tales of the Britons rave even unto this day; a man worthy to be celebrated not in the foolish dreams of deceitful fables, but in truthful histories. For he long sustained the declining fortunes of his native land, and roused the uncrushed spirit of the people to war.”
Then follows a reference, based upon Nennius’s narrative, to the battle of Mount Badon. This passage, although somewhat confused in its account of the relative positions of Vortigern, Ambrosius and Arthur in the events of their time, is significant as indicating not only Arthur’s fame as a fabled British hero in William’s day, but the historian’s own regret at the absence of authentic information about a warrior so worthy of lasting commemoration. Another noteworthy reference to Arthur in William of Malmesbury’s history occurs in his account of the discovery in Pembrokeshire of the grave of Gawain, “Arthur’s noble nephew.”[42] Gawain, we are told, “was driven from his kingdom by the brother and nephew of Hengist,” and “he deservedly shared, with his uncle, the praise of retarding for many years the calamity of his falling country. The grave of Arthur is nowhere to be seen; hence ancient songs fable that he is still to come.” Here we have positive evidence that, long before Geoffrey’s time, Arthur’s “return” was sung of by British bards whose compositions, with the solitary exception of the stanza in ‘The Songs of the Graves,’ already referred to, appear to have been irretrievably lost.
Henry of Huntingdon is not so trustworthy a chronicler as William of Malmesbury, and his account of Arthur is, substantially, borrowed, with embellishments, from Nennius. Henry’s place in a review of Arthurian records is due not to his History, but to a letter, addressed to a friend named Warinus,[43] which singularly attests the interest then felt in the history of Arthur. That letter recounts how Henry, while on a journey to Rome in the year 1139, stopped at the abbey of Bec in Normandy and was there shown by the chronicler, Robert of Torigni, a “great book,” written by one “Geoffrey Arthur,” containing a history of the early kings of Britain. The book in question was, almost certainly, an early draft of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s famous Historia Regum Britanniæ. But it is curious to find that Henry’s abstract of the book, as given in the letter to Warinus, differs in one important respect—and that alone concerns us at this stage—from the text of Geoffrey’s History as given in all the MSS of that work in its final form. Geoffrey’s account of the “passing” of Arthur—an incident which offered to so imaginative a writer unrivalled opportunities of romantic decoration—is singularly devoid of ornament. Henry’s abstract of this part of the book which he found at Bec is, on the other hand, a highly-coloured piece of writing.
“When he (Arthur) was about to cross over the Alps, an envoy said unto him, ‘Modred, thy nephew, hath set thy crown upon his own head with the assistance of Cheldric, king of the English, and hath taken thy wife unto himself.’ Arthur, thereupon, seething over with wondrous wrath, returning into England, conquered Modred in battle, and after pursuing him as far as unto Cornwall, with a few men fell upon him in the midst of many, and when he saw that he could not turn back said, ‘Comrades, let us sell our death dear. I, for my part, will smite off the head of my nephew and my betrayer, after which death will be a delight unto me.’ Thus spake he, and hewing a way for himself with his sword through the press, dragged Modred by the helmet into the midst of his own men and cut through his mailed neck as through a straw. Natheless, as he went, and as he did the deed, so many wounds did he receive that he fell, albeit that his kinsmen the Britons deny that he is dead, and do even yet solemnly await his coming again. He was, indeed, the very first man of his time in warlike prowess, bounty and wit.”[44]
The vivid personal details of this narrative may be due to Henry’s own imagination, for it is well known that he, like Geoffrey, exercised that faculty largely in his treatment of history; but, even so, the passage is curiously significant in its bearing upon the martial fame of Arthur, and upon the belief in his “return” cherished by “his kinsmen the Britons,” in the first half of the twelfth century.
The review given in this chapter of the earliest Arthurian records,—all of which are in Latin,—as distinguished from Celtic song or fable, points clearly to the gradual growth, around the personality of a real British warrior of the sixth century, of a legend which by the twelfth century had assumed a form that arrested, though it might baffle, the leading historians of the day. Now, it so happened that the twelfth century was the seed-time of mediæval romance in Europe, and how effectively the legend of Arthur was thenceforth exploited for romantic purposes will be seen later on. It remains, however, for us, first, to give some account of what was known, or fabled, about Arthur among “his kinsmen the Britons” themselves, as recorded in their extant prose and poetry.
CHAPTER II
ARTHUR IN WELSH LEGEND AND LITERATURE
To begin once more with Caxton, the preface to the Morte Darthur states that of the “noble volumes made of Arthur and his noble knights” there “be many in Welsh.” Caxton was, here, either drawing upon his imagination or speaking with imperfect knowledge. It is true that Arthur figures largely in the Mabinogion, but when we come to examine closely even these tales, we find that he appears only in five out of the eleven[45] which are designated by that name in Lady Charlotte Guest’s well-known translation, while in the four tales—probably the oldest of all—to which alone the title of “mabinogion” is strictly applicable, he does not appear at all. Again, in the oldest Welsh poetry Arthur is the merest shadow, and even the mediæval Welsh poets, who might have been expected to drink deep of the wells of romance, mention him only in the most casual and perfunctory way. There is, however, just enough in these old Welsh poems and prose stories to indicate that a legend of Arthur existed in Wales from a very early period—certainly from a period long before the appearance of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History in the twelfth century. The traditions embodied in this literature are indeed vague and disconnected enough, for they are drawn from an age when the art of romantic “exploitation” had not yet been learnt; but they bear the unmistakable marks of a legendary growth indigenous to Wales itself. As such, they are of exceptional interest, and deserve a somewhat fuller notice than their actual range and extent would seem to warrant.
The earliest Welsh literature in which we read of Arthur may be divided into three distinct and well-marked groups. First come the few poems in the oldest Welsh MSS which mention him. The allusions to Arthur in these poems represent, probably, traditions derived from an earlier period than anything contained in the second group of writings to be noticed, the prose tales,—although, as will be seen, one or two of the poems and prose stories appear to refer to the same legends. Lastly, we have the Triads, which, according to Rhys, “give us the oldest account of Arthur.”[46]