The compositions attributed to the oldest Welsh bards have come down to us in MSS which date from the twelfth to the end of the fourteenth century; the best known of them are four in number, and these were edited long ago, with translations, by the late Dr W. F. Skene under the title of The Four Ancient Books of Wales.[47] It is unnecessary here to touch upon controversial questions affecting the antiquity and the genuineness of the poems contained in these MSS. Many of them are, plainly enough, not much older than the date of the compilation of the particular MS in which they are found. Others, however, as plainly contain what Matthew Arnold,[48] speaking of the prose Mabinogion, calls “a detritus of something far older,” and it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that some of them refer to historical events and personages of the sixth and seventh centuries, while others contain mythological matter derived from a much remoter age. Here, the references to Arthur in these poems alone concern us. They are strangely few in number, and tantalisingly brief. In The Black Book of Carmarthen he is mentioned five times, in The Book of Aneirin only once. He is the central figure in a remarkable poem in The Book of Taliesin, and his name occurs in one other poem in that MS; in the poetry of The Red Book of Hergest nothing is heard of him, except in a poem called ‘Gereint, son of Erbin,’ which is also found in The Black Book. Three of the references in The Black Book are of the briefest character. In one poem[49] the bard tells us that he “has been where Llacheu, the son of Arthur, was slain,” and that is all; in another, evidently a late poem, we hear of “Arthur’s host,” or “retinue” (teulu Arthur)[50]; while in a stanza, already alluded to, in “The Songs of the Graves,” we are told that his grave is unknown. In the solitary passage in which his name occurs in The Book of Aneirin he is a standard of comparison,—a certain warrior is described as being “an Arthur in the exhaustive conflict”[51]; the second of the two poems in which he is mentioned in The Book of Taliesin refers, without comment or description, merely to “Arthur’s steed.”[52]
There remain to be noticed the three poems which, alone, contain anything more than such casual allusions as those we have just cited. Two of them are in The Black Book, and one would seem to bring us into touch, though but remotely, with the historical “Arthur the warrior,”—the dux bellorum of Nennius, who may have held “the place of the imperator himself, when Britain ceased to be part of the dominions of Rome.”[53] This latter poem is called ‘Gereint filius Erbin,’[54]—a title identical with that of the prose romance which is the Welsh collateral of Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec,—and, although Gereint is its hero, Arthur is introduced as a war-leader of seemingly higher rank. “At Llongborth,” the bard sings,
“saw I of Arthur’s
Brave men hewing with steel,
(Men of the) emperor, director of toil.
At Llongborth there fell of Gereint’s
Brave men from the borders of Devon,
And, ere they were slain, they slew.”
Where “Llongborth,” or “Ship’s port,” was, we do not know, but the whole poem appears to refer to an actual battle in which Gereint’s deeds had left a profound impression upon his bardic eulogist. The association, in this poem, of Arthur with Gereint brings us, for the first time, into the company of one of the knights who, in later romance, belong to the goodly fellowship of the Round Table. In the second Black Book poem we are introduced to two others who figure prominently in the romances,—Kei, or “Kay the seneschal,” and Bedwyr, or Bedivere, “the latest-left of all” King Arthur’s knights. This poem is cast in the form of a dialogue between Arthur and the keeper of a castle who is called Glewlwyd of the Mighty Grasp, and who appears in the Welsh prose stories as one of Arthur’s chief “porters.” Arthur seeks entrance to the castle, and Glewlwyd, apparently, will not open the gates without satisfying himself as to the number and the credentials of his followers. Arthur, thereupon, proceeds to name them and to recount their achievements. They are a weird company, bearing strange names reaching back to the remotest regions of primitive Welsh myth. Among them are Mabon, the son of Modron, “Uther Pendragon’s man”; Manawyddan, the son of Llŷr, “profound in counsel,” who “brought home a pierced buckler from Tryvrwyd”[55]; Mabon, son of Mellt, “who stained the grass with gore”; Llwch Llawynawc, Angwas the Winged, Arthur’s son Llacheu, and others.[56] But the two doughtiest among the champions Arthur has around him are Bedwyr and Kei. Bedwyr, like Manawyddan, fought at Tryvrwyd, and “by the hundred they fell” before him there; “nine hundred to watch, six hundred to attack,” continues the bard, was the measure of Bedwyr’s prowess. Still mightier was “the worthy Kei.” “Vain were it to boast” against him in battle; “he slew as would an hundred,—unless it were God’s doing, Kei’s death would be unachieved.” Kei, we are further told, “slew nine witches”; he went “to Mona to destroy lions,” and he fought against a mysterious monster called “Palug’s Cat.” Capable as he was of all this, it is not surprising to hear that Kei’s drinking powers were equal to those of four men. Of the deeds of Arthur himself the poem tells us nothing.
A still more remarkable poem,—the last that remains to be noticed,—in which certain strange deeds of Arthur are commemorated, is found in The Book of Taliesin under the name of ‘Preiddeu Annwvn,’ or ‘The Spoils of Hades.’ It refers to various expeditions made by Arthur and his men, in his ship Pridwen to certain mysterious regions oversea. Definite names enough are given to the different places visited—Caer Sidi, Caer Rigor, Caer Vandwy, and so on,—but the places themselves remain quite unidentified. “Three freights of Pridwen,” sings the bard, “were they who went with Arthur” on these expeditions; “seven alone were we who returned” therefrom. One of the exploits achieved in the course of these voyages was, apparently, the rape of a cauldron belonging to the King of Hades, and the whole poem, according to Rhys,[57] “evidently deals with expeditions conducted by Arthur by sea to the realms of twilight and darkness.”