W. Howship Dickinson

“ Britanny and Wales, countries within touch of Cornwall, were, like it, occupied by Celts, a race gifted with more imagination than has been granted to the practical and hard-headed Saxon. The fictions of which Arthur is the centre, constructed chiefly in France, but to a lesser extent in Wales, were brought to England in the twelfth and later centuries, and replaced history by myth. ”

“ The Celts in the sixth century, and in Cornwall, though they must have had skill in stone-carving if some of the existing crosses are correctly attributed to this period, were probably not castle builders, unless the term ‘castle’ be applied to earthworks, as is indeed still the custom. If Arthur was the lord of Tintagel, as is indicated by an immemorial tradition, which we may, without violence to probability, accept, nothing remains of this his dwelling-place excepting the immortal ramparts which will be for ever associated with his name. ”

“ The last battle attributed to Arthur has obtained more prominence than the most famous battles of antiquity, has been connected with its supposed place by geographical particulars, has been enriched with romantic detail, made the subject of poetry, and so much glorified in English literature from Geoffrey to Tennyson, that it seems like sacrilege to hint that the only fight on the Camel of which we have sure information, took place long after Arthur’s death; and that if he and Mordred encountered, as there is reason to believe they did, the place of that event was not Cornwall but Scotland. ”

“ Avallonia, or Avalon, is of course Glastonbury—probably in Arthur’s time an island in a swamp. As to its place, the body speaks for itself. It may be necessary to say whose it is; it is not necessary to say where it is ”

“ Arthur, though unknown or unrecorded by the Saxon chroniclers of the invasion, who say nothing of what went on in the west and north, finds abundant mention among the Welsh bards and poets assigned to the sixth century, who speak of him by name, attribute to him great fame as a warrior, and briefly refer to certain details which connect him with places some of which can still be identified. ”

“ Arthur has been regarded as a somewhat shadowy character; it has even been doubted whether he was not wholly imaginary. Milton [3] thus expresses his uncertainty: ‘Who Arthur was, and whether any such person reigned in Britain, hath been doubted heretofore, and may again with good reason.’ It is said that Tennyson, who has partaken of Arthur’s immortality, doubted his existence; and so much has the Arthurian story been overlaid with romance that it is no easy matter to discover the historical facts which are concealed under the superstructure of fiction. ”

“ We may accept the statement of Nennius, who was apparently an historian of honest intentions, that Arthur was selected to command against the Saxons, and that in this capacity he fought many, perhaps twelve, battles. There must, it is certain, have been much fighting in the west and north as well as elsewhere, and we may give Arthur the credit of much of it, though details, if not entirely absent, are by no means explicit. ”

“ We may look upon Tintagel as the birthplace of Arthur, and believe that he was the son or putative son of a petty Cornish king. The exact fitness of Tintagel and Damelioc for the story of which they are the scene lends probability to it: not that we need accept the narrative precisely as related. Time, verbal transmission, and Celtic imagination have to be allowed for; but we may without undue credulity believe that Gorlois was slain at Damelioc and Arthur born at Tintagel. We may presume that Arthur remained in possession and occupation of the country of his nativity. ”

“ The Devil’s Dyke, The Devil’s Bridge, the Devil’s Jumps, the Devil’s Frying Pan, the Devil’s Post-Office, the Devil’s Punch-Bowl, are a few instances among many. Next to the Devil in bestowing names on localities comes Arthur. But the two names are distributed in a very different fashion: that of the Devil is scattered impartially, being placed at random wherever thought suitable; that of Arthur is limited to certain districts in which according to history or tradition the hero lived or moved. ”

“ Tintagel Castle has been from time immemorial known as King Arthur’s; Kelliwic, which is mentioned in the earliest records in connection with Arthur, may with probability be identified with Kelly Rounds [Pg 80] and placed near the estuary of the Camel; and Cardinam Castle, which credible though later tradition assigns to Arthur as a palace or residence, exists near Bodmin. Great interest, to my mind, attaches to these memorials. Military engineering is older than the corps of Royal Engineers; and it may be said that the most ancient history of our country is written in earth. ”

“ Of the latter variety Arthur, according to Geoffrey, conquers Ireland, Iceland and the Orkneys, subdues Norway, Dacia, Aquitaine and Gaul, bestows Normandy upon Bedver the butler, and establishes his court in Paris. He was crossing the Alps to attack Rome when he was recalled by the treachery of Mordred, to conclude his career on the Camel. Such inventions savour more of the twelfth century than the sixth, and mark Geoffrey as one whose statements are not to be accepted without concurrent testimony. ”

“ Romans from the island and the establishment of the Saxon polity. The west and the north, which were the seats of his exploits, were remote from what had been the centres of Roman learning, and it may be presumed that Arthur’s fighting men were only less illiterate than the Saxons with whom they contended. There may have been priests among them, for Christianity had already reached Ireland and touched the western extremity of England, but the priests, if priests there were, were probably more religious than literate. ”

“ It may be doubted whether in Arthur’s time the Saxons had reached Tintagel: it is clear that in the ninth century they were fighting on the Camel, apparently unsuccessfully, and that they never generally superseded the Celtic population much further to the west than the traditional territory of Arthur. That Arthur ever fought a great battle on this river is improbable; nor is it likely that the Saxons in his time got far enough to the west to assault his earthworks ”

“ Hair will last and retain its colour for an indefinite time. With regard to the male skeleton, the large recent wound on the head corresponds with the manner of Arthur’s death and the wounds of earlier infliction with the manner of his life. In the length of the tibiæ there is nothing impossible. But with regard to the skull the dimensions possible to humanity are so much exceeded that it is difficult to suppose that we are reading the honest report of an eye-witness. ”

“ Cardinham Castle, as it is called, though far inferior in size and distinctness to Killibury and Damelioc, is worth more notice than it has yet received. About five miles from Bodmin, on the edge of Cardinham Moor, lies Old Cardinham, now represented by a solitary farm-house. In a field behind the house stands an earthwork, of small extent but great natural advantage. It is situated, like Damelioc and Kelly Rounds, on high ground among hills which are higher than itself, but not near enough to command it without artillery. ”

“ To take first the insular part of the castle, which no doubt was the original place of retreat and defence, the site may be associated with that of many prehistoric fortifications of earth or stone, the remains of which are to be found on the Cornish coast. The ancient engineers habitually selected a precipitous peninsula, inaccessible from the sea, with a narrow neck, across which they made barriers to protect against attack from the landward side. Thus Tintagel Head was selected as a place of defence, if not by prehistoric engineers, certainly in accordance with prehistoric methods. ”

“ Of the remaining eight each has more than one position hypothetically assigned to it—always one in the lowlands of Scotland, where Arthurian names most abound, another generally in the north of England. It would be vain to pretend that we know enough of the particulars of the invasion to give us more than vague guidance as to the [Pg 27] movements of Arthur. It may be supposed that in his time the Angles were penetrating the island by the Humber and the Forth, and it is possible that he may have been concerned in the fighting which ensued. ”

“ Giraldus Cambrensis, together with a monk of Glastonbury quoted by Leland, professed themselves to have been witnesses of the opening of Arthur’s grave. There are two accounts as to the finding of this—one that it was sought for by order of Henry II., who had learned from the British Bards that Arthur was buried between two pyramids at Glastonbury; the other that it was found accidentally in this situation in digging to bury a monk who had selected this spot for his interment. The pyramids undoubtedly existed before the alleged discovery of Arthur’s grave ”

“ The Black Book of Caermarthen, which contains some of these remnants, of the greatest reputed antiquity, was written in the time of Henry II. But though all intermediate writings have perished or remain hidden, we are not to infer that none ever existed. It is clear that some of the bardic fragments refer to the sixth century; for example, that relating to the fight at Llongborth between Geraint and, as is supposed, Cerdric, in which Arthur is mentioned. ”

“ Proceeding in chronological order, the first historical record (for the bardic fragments can scarcely be so termed) relating to ‘Britain’s Isle and Arthur’s days’ is that of Gildas, a British priest of reforming tendencies, who was born, according to his own statement, in the year of the famous battle of Badon Hill, or Mons Badonicus, and received in consequence the addition of Badonicus to his name. ”

“ On the other hand, if the burial in [Pg 40] this place can be maintained, then we must abandon the Scottish localisation of the last battle, and may accept the statement of the unveracious Geoffrey that it was fought on the Cornish river. It behoves us, therefore, to examine the Glastonbury story as one upon which much turns. The tradition that Arthur, mortally wounded on the Camel, was conveyed alive to Glastonbury may be at once discarded. Such a transporting of a desperately wounded man must be regarded as impracticable. ”

“ Cadbury in Somersetshire, according to another hypothesis, has also been assigned as the place of this battle. The famous twelfth battle, which was between the British and Saxons, and resulted in the taking of Mons Badonicus or Badon Hill, has been placed at Bannesdown near Bath, at Badbury in Dorsetshire, and at Bouden Hill in Linlithgowshire. This great [Pg 25] battle, whatever may be the doubts as to its position, stands out as an indubitable historical fact, though Gildas and Bede have occasioned a certain ambiguity between Arthur and Ambrosius in regard to it. ”

“ From the time of the bards—not to limit that period to the sixth century—until the ninth century no records concerning King Arthur have come down to us. It is more likely that some were written, utilised, and lost, than that the historian of the ninth [Pg 17] century was guided only by oral tradition. ”

“ The great gateway on the mainland is entire; the keep and the lower court nearly so; while the relation of the three as parts of the same building, presumably built at the same time, is unmistakable. The buildings on the island are much as they are now.
I append what may also be of interest—a facsimile of as much of the 25-inch Ordnance Map as relates to Tintagel Castle. ”

“ Only the Devil is more often mentioned in local association than Arthur. That name, indeed, is almost ubiquitous, since it is to be found wherever local peculiarities exist which were not explicable to our forefathers save by infernal agency. ”

“ By the bards Arthur was represented as a military chief paramount in the country to which their knowledge extended; as a soldier of exceptional activity, and one who attracted the admiration of those who fought under him; as concerned in a variety of fights in a variety of places, most of which are not now to be exactly identified, but one of which was Kelliwic, a place of strength which will receive further notice ”

“ The island, which is bounded by lofty precipices, is connected with the mainland only by a narrow ridge, which rises steeply from the sea, traverses the chasm, and gives access to the island by a narrow path cut in the face of the cliff, which now, as in ancient days, might be defended by a few against many. ”

“ The palm between the eyes savours more of [Pg 45] imagination than observation. The space between the orbits in an ordinary skull on a level with the eyelids, where the distance is greatest, is at most 11⁄2 inch. One of the largest human skeletons known is that of the Irish Giant at the College of Surgeons, which measures 7 feet 7 inches in height. ”