The Lost Land of King Arthur

Renan has very finely remarked that in Celtic literature woman is more tenderly and delicately portrayed than in the writings and songs of any other race. Love is “a mystery, a kind of intoxication, a madness, a giddiness,” and woman is superbly idealised until she seems in our eyes an ethereal, radiant, half-spiritual or even angelic creature. The romances are “dewy with feminine sentiment,” and the chivalric conception of the heroine is so pure and beautiful that Percivale’s sister, or Geraint’s wife, appears “as a sort of vague vision intermediate between man and the supernatural world.” Even faithless Guinevere—is she not so rarely beautiful, are not her spell and witchery so strong, that, while hating her sin, we hesitate to join in her condemnation, and have no heart to approve such passionate denunciation as was spoken by the king in his hour of gloom?27 The vision of Guinevere flashes upon us as she was when Lancelot led her from Cameliard to the king’s court at Camelot, when she went a-Maying with her maidens, and when she was the cynosure of all eyes among the spectators of the tournament. There was something daring on the part of the old chroniclers in making King Arthur’s danger issue from the best of knights and the most lovely of women—the two nearest to him, and bound to him by the most sacred ties of love and honour. Still more strange is it that, deep as their sinning was, we have so little blame—or rather, let us say, resentment—for Lancelot and Guinevere. This is not because Arthur has not the strongest claim upon our sympathy, or because for one moment he fails to win our admiration; it is only because Lancelot and Guinevere also have strong human claims upon us, and so far have won our regard that we cannot withhold our compassion also. Were not the knights themselves reluctant to condemn? The romance brings out the fact conspicuously that it was not the noblest, but the meanest, of the knights who revealed the wrong to the king; nor was it the gallant men who willed that Guinevere should die at the stake for her infidelity. And in the end do we not pity mournful and repentant Lancelot in his lonely castle, or when paying that noblest of tributes to his dead master? And does not even a deeper feeling extend to the desolate woman who wore out her life in the Almesbury convent?

What ingredient of historic fact there may be in the record that the Ambresbyrig of the Saxons, and the Caer Emrys of the “Mabinogion” was the queen’s retreat, the faithful alone must decide. All that impartial and not too credulous historians can do is to pronounce the place as not unlikely, not impossible, and not unfitting as her abode and as the scene of her last acts of restitution and repentance. Almesbury is a British earthwork of forty acres, the stronghold of Ambrosius Aurelianus, Dux Britanniarum, of Roman lineage, but the champion of the Britons against the Saxon horde. Religious associations both early and late cling to this ancient place, and long after Guinevere was dust a Benedictine monastery, founded by Queen Elfrida, continued the religious traditions of the earlier era; and the fact that Almesbury was the customary retreat of royal ladies who wished to withdraw from the world confirms the character of the place as depicted in Malory’s chronicle. Guinevere gave herself up to lamentation among the nuns, “and never creature could make her merry”; Sir Lancelot’s visit only strengthened her resolution to make amends for the past, and prompted him also to seek, too late, perfection in righteous living. While in a hermitage himself there came to him the vision of the queen’s end, and taking her corpse to Glastonbury, he performed for it the last rites, and then delivered himself over to death. His resting-place was Joyous Gard, which, in his grief he had called Dolorous Gard; the queen was laid by her husband’s side in the island-valley. But at Llanilterne, near Cardiff, a huge quoin stone may be seen with an almost undecipherable Hic jacet, and popular tradition declares that this is Guinevere’s monument. “Through this knight and me,” said the queen, when Sir Lancelot and she met in the Almesbury convent, “all the wars were wrought, and the death of the most noble knights of the world: for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain; therefore, wit thou well, Sir Lancelot, I am in such a plight to get my soul’s health; and yet I trust, through God’s grace, that after my death for to have the sight of the blessed face of Jesu Christ, and at the dreadful day of doom to sit on his right side: for as sinful creatures as ever was I are saints in heaven.” When next the “falsely true” knight saw the queen he was in his monk’s habit and she was “wrapped in seared cloths of reins, from the top to the toe, in thirty fold”; then, on foot, he followed her to her tomb, recalling “her beauty, her bounty, and her nobleness.” The next scene is at Joyous Gard itself, with Sir Lancelot smiling as he lies dead, and a hundred torches burning about him; while Sir Ector de Maris delivers the noblest of tributes to the courtliest knight, the truest friend, the meekest man, the sternest foe, and “the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman.”

From Camelot to Almesbury is a far journey, and that journey marks the two extremes of Arthurian history from the happiest to the saddest, from the height of power and the plenitude of peace to the final desolation and unavailing regret. The bridge which connects Camelot with Almesbury is made up of the greatest achievements and the deepest tragedies of Arthur’s reign. It is a bridge of ascent and descent, its highest point marked by the puissance of the Table Round and Galahad’s achievement of the quest of the Grail, its lowest part dipping into the eternal gloom which followed the last battle in the west—a gloom from which the Britons were destined never to emerge. That gloom falls over Almesbury, but Camelot is still left in the light.

Never was, and never can be, such a fairyland as “many-tower’d Camelot.” Its crystal dykes, its slope street, its weird white gate, and its spires and turrets without number, are a poet’s dream. It was the city of enchanters, built by fairy kings, a city which had no beginning, was raised by no human hands, and can have no end—

“A city of shadowy palaces,And stately, rich in emblem and the workOf ancient Kings who did their days in stone,”

a city of pure delights, of calm and innocence, of splendour and contentment.

“Out of bower and casement shyly glancedEyes of pure women, wholesome stars of love;And all about a healthful people steptAs in the presence of a gracious king.”

Where, indeed, could be this new Eden save in the imagination of the romancer who conceived a fitting scene for King Arthur’s Court? It is like the fairy gold which vanishes whenever a hand reaches out to touch it. The “Camaletic Mount” is one of Nature’s hallowed places, a place of wondrous stillness and magic charm, a place to regard as the stronghold of romance, and yet not the place that poets have sung. One can easily imagine the Lady of Shalott prisoned here in her bower, and seeing all the moving world as shadows in a mirror; and one can deem the scene appropriate for the meeting of Lancelot and the Lily-maid who lifted up her eyes and lov’d him with that love which was her doom. It is not well to inquire more deeply and more closely into the past of Camelot, but to heed the poet’s warning—

“Never seek to beholdWhere the crystal streams ran in the City of Gold.”

Better to people it with the phantoms of Arthur’s Court than to discover that the cavemen of the Mendips made it an abode. “The people can telle nothing ther, but that they have hard say that Arture much resorted to Camalot,” wrote Leland, and that suffices. Camelot is purely ideal, and it is enough to find a real Camelot which faintly recalls the place which Arthur’s eulogists deemed fitting for his Court. Such cities, which had no beginning, have no end, and Camelot will last as long, and prove as indestructible, as Fairyland itself.

“The thrushes sang in the lone garden there—Clanging of arms about pavilion fair,Mixed with the knights’ laughs; there, as I well know,Rode Lancelot, the king of all the band,And scowling Gawaine, like the night in day,And handsome Gareth, with his great white handCurl’d round the helm-crest, ere he join’d the fray.”

CHAPTER VIII

OF ST. KNIGHTON’S KIEVE AND THE HOLY GRAIL

“The war-worn champion quits the world—to hideHis thin autumnal locks where monks abideIn cloistered privacy.”—Wordsworth.“Hither came Joseph of Arimathy,Who brought with him the Holy Grayle (they say),And preacht the truth: but since it greatly did decay.”Spenser.

About a mile from Tintagel, along the hilly road leading to Boscastle, and passing the wonderful little Bossiney cove with its elephant-shaped rock, there is a small rapid stream which winds through the Rocky Valley and falls like a torrent at low tide into the sea. The Rocky Valley, with its three huge boulders, its narrow walk now leading to the side of the stream and now mounting far above it, and ending only where the iron cliffs beetle above the roughest of bays, is one of the most sublime spectacles that Nature has to display in that enchanted region. The scenery is a mixture of dark and frowning heights standing out with precipitous sides, and of green and gentle undulations, amidst which sparkles ever and anon the tinkling sinuous brooklet. But it is not so much the valley, despite its manifold charms, as the little stream, which has a special interest for the pilgrim. By devious ways its course may be traced back through a rushy channel which lies deep and almost hidden between two sets of well-wooded hills until suddenly the traveller hears the sound of a sharp splashing from an unseen cataract. The walk now leads upward to a small gate; passing through the opening we descend once more a steep embankment and find ourselves at the water-edge. It is a haunted, sequestered spot, shut in by the hills, overcast by shadows, the one sound the sound of the leaping stream. This is St. Knighton’s Kieve, once regarded with a species of holy awe in Cornwall and believed, like most natural wells or “basins,” to be under the special protection and influence of a saint. The superstition is an old one, and slowly dying out, though the belief in holy wells, fairy wells, and wishing wells is one of the most pleasing and least harmful of all ancient fancies. Every spring was of yore regarded more or less as a miracle; every torrent had its tutelary genius.

The Kieve is a natural bowl into which the flashing cascade plunges from the rocks above. The water has worn its way through a narrow rocky crevice and drops through a natural bridge thickly overgrown with fern and moss. The dark Kieve receives the torrent, and the water spreads out again and dimples in the shallow bed, gliding smoothly and almost silently through the luxurious plantation. Now and then we catch its gleam among the lush foliage, and a mile or more beyond may be seen the deep blue of the sea into which it pours its tiny tribute. Below the edge of the Kieve is a flat slab, and the stream is broken as it shoots down; on one side is a bulging black rock which looks darker by contrast with the shining waters. The trees form a screen through which the light passes more dimly, and this secluded half-hidden spot is perceived to be a fitting scene for the stories it has inspired.

The Kieve as a place for complete retirement would, with many disadvantages, possess the one strong and desirable advantage of being difficult to discover without those written instructions as to the winding path which are now placed in the visitor’s hands. For, lying a mile or more beyond the beaten track, it can be found only after a confusing journey through the thick brush and weeds of the valley, over rudely constructed bridges, up steep and slippery embankments, and finally through the doorway which is kept closed and locked against all comers save those who have begun the search from the right and legal road.

If we were to adhere strictly to Malory’s narrative we should say that the quest for the Holy Grail began at Camelot. Local tradition, however, is privileged to depart from written records, and it happens that in this case the scene is transferred to this spot near King Arthur’s birthplace. We are asked to believe that the knights, standing with bowed heads in the Kieve, undertook the search for the Holy Vessel of the Last Supper, brought by Joseph of Arimathæa to this land, the Cup that had been hidden and lost, and was destined to be discovered only by the pure and perfect knight. The king, standing on the bridge of rock above the torrent, watched his reverent followers in the stream below laving their brows in its waters, listening to the music of the fall, and, full of the inspiration of the scene, making their solemn vows, and with a firm desire after righteousness setting forth upon the quest. Lancelot and Bors, Perceval and Galahad, when in the wild woods far distant or among the ruined chapelries, when tormented by doubts and wrestling with foes, might be expected to recall that cool and shady gathering-place, to see in a vision the flashing cascade, to dream of the crystalline brightness of the plunging water, and with renewed hope and courage to continue their hard task.

Some such sequestered place the poet of “Sir Galahad, a Christmas Mystery,” may have had in mind when he pictured the lonely knight struck with awe by hearing a voice which said that the great Quest would be achieved by him alone—

“FollowingThat holy Vision, Galahad, go on.”

To this very spot, too, if legend be true, the knights who had failed returned.

The story of the Holy Grail is too profound and complex a study to be treated in these pages save in the most superficial and limited manner. Volumes have been and still can be devoted to the subject, and yet not exhaust all that is to be told of this world-legend with its infinite variations and its numberless phases and meanings. Like a river of many obscure sources, most of which are now partly known, thanks to the perseverance of the most devoted and painstaking of exploring scholars, it gathers in volume upon the way, and to trace it backward or onward involves an equally long and tortuous journey. The primary form of the legend, the actual beginning of the Grail romance cycle, remains a mystery and seemingly undiscoverable. The oldest poems on the subject, those of Christien de Troyes and Robert de Borron, were founded upon a model, or models, absolutely untraced. That it was a primitive Celtic tradition admits of no doubt, but when Walter Map incorporated the legend into the Arthurian story in the thirteenth century there were Latin, German, and French originals for him to work upon. In one chief version of the narrative Perceval is the supreme figure; in the other Galahad, Perceval, and Bors all achieve a measure of success, the first named being the absolute victor and the others being admitted to partial triumph. The Christian element in the cycle is distinct almost throughout, and the many versions have one point in common—the sanctity of the Grail, its connection with the Saviour, or with John the Baptist, and its continued miraculous power proceeding from this connection. But the Celtic originals would be free from traces of Christian symbolism. In Malory we find the Holy Vessel in the possession of King Pelleas, nigh cousin to Joseph. When the king and Sir Lancelot went to take their repast a dove entered the window of the castle, and she bore in her bill a little censer of gold from which proceeded a savour as if all the spicery of the world had been there. The table was forthwith filled with good meats and drinks by means of the Grail, “the richest thing that any man hath living,” as King Pelleas declared. Whether the Grail was a chalice which received the blood of the crucified Lord; whether, as others have affirmed, it was the dish on which the head of John the Baptist had lain; or whether it was a miraculous stone which fell from the crown of the revolting angels made for Lucifer, the belief in its reality in early times must have been sincere and ineradicable. It was said to have sustained Joseph during an imprisonment of forty-two years; the fisherman king, Pelleas, needed no food while it was in his keeping. This is set forth in Wolfram’s “Parzival”—

“Whate’er one’s wishes did command,That found he ready to his hand.”

Wolfram von Eschenbach, to whom both Germans and English owe so much, found a collection of badly joined fables which he turned into an epic, making Parzival (Perceval) the hero and the Grail quest the central incident. Wolfram knew nothing of Joseph of Arimathæa; but Mr. Alfred Nutt has pointed out that the Joseph form of the Grail story and the Perceval form may really form one organic whole, or the one part may be an explanatory after-thought. Whether the Christian element was influenced by Celtic tradition, or whether the Christian legend was superimposed upon the Celtic basis, is the subtle point which few care to say is decided. The suggestion has been thrown out that the Grail legend may even be of Jewish origin, and that in singing of their Holy City whose walls should be called “salvation,” whose gates “praise,” and whose “stones should be laid in fair colours,” they supplied the germ from which in mediæval ages the Grail-myth sprang. The Grail was an article of strong belief with the Templars who worshipped the head of John the Baptist, which was reported to have been found in the fourth century, to have kept an Emperor from dying at Constantinople, and to have provided nourishment for all who were engaged upon religious crusades. The idea of the Holy City seems again to recall the aspiration of the Templars, and the Sarras of romance may have been none other than Jerusalem. Mr. Nutt has been able to adduce Celtic parallels for all the leading incidents in the romance of the Grail, while the many inconsistencies in the versions are explained by the fusion of two originally distinct groups of stories. It is, as Mr. Nutt aptly says, the Christian transformation of the old Celtic myths and folk-tales which “gave them their wide vogue in the Middle Ages, which endowed the theme with such fascination for the preachers and philosophers who use it as a vehicle for their teaching, and which has endeared it to all lovers of mystic symbolism.”

Four of Malory’s “Books” treat of the quest of the Holy Grail and of the adventures of the knights who undertook it. These “Books” supply the spiritual and religious leaven of the romance. Only by stainless and honourable lives, not by prowess and courage, so the knights were taught, could the final goal be reached. Success in the tournament and in war was achieved by inferior means. Hardihood and skill were of no avail where the Grail was the prize. “I let you to wit,” said King Pelleas, “here shall no knight win worship but if he be of worship himself and good living, and that loveth God; and else he getteth no worship here, be he ever so hardy.” Sinful Lancelot was fated to test this truth. Struggle manfully as he would, victory was not for him, though, as the old hermit told Sir Bors, “had not his sin been, he had passed all the knights that ever were in his days”; but “sin is so foul in him that he may not achieve such holy deeds.” The devoted knights might speak of Lancelot’s nobleness and courtesy, his beauty and gentleness, but the quest was not for him. His expiation was severe. Of the hundred and fifty knights—“the fairest fellowship and the truest of knighthood that ever were seen together in any realm of the world—whom King Arthur reluctantly allowed to seek for the Grail, only one, the virgin Galahad, could enter the Castle of Maidens and deliver the prisoners, could hear the voices of angels foretelling his triumph, could find the Grail, and could be crowned in the holy city of Sarras, the ‘spiritual place.’” It was in this city that Joseph had been succoured; it was here that Perceval’s sister was entombed; it was here by general assent that the pure Galahad was proclaimed king; and it was here that the Grail remained. “And when he was come for to behold the land, he let make about the table of silver a chest of gold and of precious stones, that covered the holy vessel; and every day in the morning the three fellows (Perceval and Bors with Galahad) would come before it, and say their devotions.” At the year’s end Galahad saw a man kneeling before the Grail; he was in the likeness of the bishop: it was Joseph. The saint told the virgin knight that his victory had been complete and his life perfect. “And therewith,” runs the beautiful chronicle, “he kneeled down before the table and made his prayers; and then suddenly his soul departed unto Jesus Christ, and a great multitude of angels bare his soul up to heaven that his two fellows might behold it; also, his two fellows saw come from heaven a hand, but they saw not the body, and then it came right to the vessel and took it, and the spear, and so bare it up to heaven. Since then was there never a man so hardy for to say that he had seen the Sancgreal.”

We turn instinctively to Tennyson for the poetisation of this incident. No one has worked on the legends so wondrously as he, no one has added more to their moral significance or to their mysticism. His paraphrase of the prose of Malory, his additions to the details, and his glorification of the vision, rank among the greatest triumphs of his peculiar art.

With what feelings is one likely to read his Holy Grail, and, standing near the broken and gleaming torrent of St. Knighton’s Kieve, try to imagine that the marvellous quest which ended in Sarras began at this spot?

CHAPTER IX

OF CAMELFORD AND THE LAST BATTLE

“O’er Cornwall’s cliffs the tempest roar’d,High the screaming sea-mew soar’d;On Tintagel’s topmost towerDarksome fell the sheeting shower;Round the rough Castle shrilly sungThe whirling blast, and wildly flungOn each tall rampart’s thundering sideThe surges of the tumbling tide:When Arthur ranged his red cross ranksOn conscious Camlan’s crimson banks.”Wharton, The Grave of King Arthur.“On Trinitye Mondaye in the morneThis sore battayle was doomed to be;Where many a knight cry’d ‘Well-a-waye!’Alacke, it was the more pittie.”Percy Reliques.

Sheer over the bleak Cornish hills, fifteen miles from Launceston, lies a small white-looking town with a precipitous highway along which the principal houses and one or two poor-looking public buildings are ranged. It is a town without a church, and, except on market day, without the signs of stirring life and business; a remote and isolated little place which nevertheless once had its own Parliamentary representative and not unfittingly chose “Ossian” Macpherson as its member. This is Camelford, and the ride by coach from Launceston is not uninteresting or uninstructive. The desolate aspect of the land, the poverty-stricken appearance of the few tiny villages passed on the way, the barrenness of the hills, the scantness of the population, all serve to reveal the history, past and present, of this portion of England where only the hardiest of the race could live, and live somewhat precariously. The land itself yields little; there are no rivers upon which a boat could be used, and the line of rough hills which form the spine of the county pent the people as within a prison. Even now, Camelford and half a score of like places seem shut out of the world. The stream of life is sluggish, luxuries are scarcely known, the habits of the villagers are primitive, and yet the Cornishmen retain that rugged independence for which they have at all times been noted. In old times the county produced a race of heroes and giants who preserved their liberties and were among the last to be subdued by English rulers. Both modern and ancient history, legends and facts, bear testimony to the constant struggle which prevailed in this part, and had there been no “giants” in Cornwall, neither its traditions nor its history would be what they are. Queen Elizabeth said that the further she travelled west in her dominions the more convinced she was that the wise men came from the east. In a sense this was grossly unjust, for the Cornishmen, though they may have seemed a little uncouth, were by no means an uncultured race, and their literature proves how early they had their thinkers and their scholars, their bards and their chroniclers. Taciturnity on the part of this people need not be taken as a sign of unintelligence; rather is it proof to the contrary, for the Cornishman thinks for himself; he has his own opinions, and sturdily maintains them. A certain aloofness is discernible, and this is characteristic of a race which has so many claims to a distinct record of its own. In the character, bearing, and habits of the men of to-day may be found considerable corroboration of the truth which underlies the myths and legends of antiquity. If Camelford is now commonplace, with its market, its commercial inn, its linen-drapers’, ironmongers’, and greengrocers’ shops, there may yet be found within and around it much to charm and much to kindle the enthusiasm of the lover of romance. Here and there are the relics over which the antiquary gloats, and now and then a name is heard or seen which at once revives olden memories, or suggests with more or less distinctness a real connection with the last of the British race. It is not a little remarkable that while not a trace of the fourteenth century Charity Chapel remains, the sites of camps and the scenes of battles of much remoter date are still to be found. Signs of British occupation are not lacking, and one entrenchment known as Arthur’s Hill takes us right back to the time of the great king. Mere names may, however, in most cases count for nought, and the fact that hills, tarns, and fords bear the classic designation and are reputed to have had connection with Arthurian deeds is not equivalent to tangible proof of the truth of the stories. Camelford is chiefly noted to-day for being the principal town within access of the slate quarries, and of being within easy and convenient distance of some of the most imposing and enchanting scenery of the north Cornwall coast. From a few points of vantage a glimpse of the sea may be caught, and the lanes branch off to famed Pentargon Bay, Trebarwith Strand, Black Pit, St. Knighton’s Kieve, and Tintagel—all Arthurian haunts.