Prince Arthur of Connaught

“ And Arthur took a golden comb, and scissors, whereof the loops were of silver, and he combed his hair. And Arthur enquired of him who he was. “For my heart warms unto thee, and I know that thou art come of my blood. Tell me, therefore, who thou art.” “I will tell thee,” said the youth, “I am Kilhwch, the son of Kilydd, the son of Prince Kelyddon, by Goleuddydd, my mother, the daughter of Prince Anlawdd.” “That is true,” said Arthur. “Thou art my cousin. Whatsoever boon thou mayest ask, thou shalt receive, be it what it may that thy tongue shall name.” ”

“ And on King Arthur’s side there came the King of Ireland and the King of Scotland, the noble prince Sir Galahaut, Sir Gawain and his brothers Sir Agravain and Sir Gaheris, Sir Ewaine, Sir Tor, Sir Perceval, and Sir Lamoracke, Sir Lancelot also and his kindred, Sir Lionel, Sir Ector, Sir Bors and Sir Bedivere, likewise Sir Key and the most part of the Table Round. The two queens also, Queen Guinevere and the Queen of Orkney, Sir Gareth’s mother, came with the king. So there was a great array both within and without the castle, with all manner of feasting and minstrelsy. ”

“ He is said to have lived in the sixth century, and to have maintained a stubborn contest against the Saxon Cerdic, but the "Saxon Chronicle" is suspiciously silent as to his warfare and as to his existence. Indeed, the Welsh bards of the earliest period do not assert that he was a contemporary, and it is more than doubtful whether he is an historic personage. It is worthy of remark that the fame of Arthur is widely spread; he is claimed alike as a prince in Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Cumberland, and the lowlands of Scotland ”

“ It must not be concealed that the very existence of Arthur has been denied by some. Milton says of him: "As to Arthur, more renowned in songs and romances than in true stories, who he was, and whether ever any such reigned in Britain, hath been doubted heretofore, and may again, with good reason." Modern critics, however, admit that there was a prince of this name, and find proof of it in the frequent mention of him in the writings of the Welsh bards. But the Arthur of romance, according to Mr. Owen, a Welsh scholar and antiquarian, is a mythological person. ”

“ The birth of Prince Arthur, in 1850, has been already mentioned. He was a magnificent child, and the Queen took all a mother's pride in his beauty and his rapid growth. When Lady Canning was in waiting she tells us of many private visits by the Queen to her in her room to talk about politics and to show the beauty of the latest new baby; and of Prince Arthur in particular she wrote on September 1st, 1850: "The children ... are grown very nice and pretty. ”

“ Modred, retreating rapidly into Cornwall, is at last brought to bay on the river Camel, and is slain in a battle in which “well-nigh all the captains that were in command on both sides rushed into the press with their companies and fell.” And “even the renowned King Arthur himself was wounded deadly, and was borne thence unto the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds, where he gave up the crown of Britain unto his kinsman Constantine, son of Cador, duke of Cornwall, in the year of the incarnation of our Lord five hundred and forty-two.” ”

“ The great hero of the struggle between the Britons and the Saxons was King Arthur, but it was not until many many years after the time in which he lived that all the splendid stories of his knights, of his Round Table, and of his great conquests began to take the form in which we know them. Indeed, in the earliest Welsh tales the name of Arthur is hardly known at all. When he is mentioned it is merely as a warrior among other warriors equally great, and not as the mighty emperor that we know. The Arthur that we love is the Arthur of literature, not the Arthur of history. ”

“ Arthur is resisted by Mordred the usurper from arriuing in his owne land, they ioine battell, Gawaine is slaine and his death lamented by Arthur, Mordred taketh flight, he is slaine, and Arthur mortallie wounded, his death, the place of his buriall, his bodie digged vp, his bignesse coniecturable by his bones, a crosse found in his toome with an inscription therevpon, his wife Guenhera buried with him, a rare report of hir haire, Iohn Lelands epitaph in memorie of prince Arthur. ”

“ King Arthur is filled with astonishment when he is informed that no one of high or low degree can point out his lodging-place, any more than if he were in Caesarea, Toledo, or Crete. "Upon my word," he says, "I know not what they may say, but to me this seems a marvellous thing. Perchance it was a phantom that appeared in our midst. Many a knight has been unhorsed, and noble men have pledged faith to one whose house they cannot find, or even his country or locality; each of these men perforce must fail to keep his pledge." Thus the King spoke his mind, but he might as well have held his peace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is of more importance is the fact that before any “matter of Britain” is heard of as a great romantic theme, a writer appeared who, by means of an orderly narrative embodied in an apparently sober chronicle, aroused an interest in Arthur’s life and deeds such as no mere romance could ever have succeeded in doing. He was Geoffrey of Monmouth, and it is in his History that we get our first full-length portrait of Arthur as a great, and actual, “king of Britain.” ”

“ The paramount chief of early Britain, whose prowess and conquests form the prime epic theme of Geoffrey and of Layamon, appears as the king of no known realm, numbering among his retainers heroic figures drawn from the uttermost limits of the mythical world. Exalted, as a world conqueror, to a level with Alexander and Charlemagne, he becomes, like them, largely lost to sight among the crowd of fabulous characters called up around him by the professional romancers. The Arthur of the romances [96] is no more than a primus inter pares. ”

“ Item in the castle of Dover ye may see Gawaine’s scull, and Cradok’s mantle: at Winchester the Round Table: in other places Launcelot’s sword and many other things. Then all these things considered, there can no man reasonably gainsay but that there was a king of this land named Arthur. For in all places, Christian and heathen, he is reputed and taken for one of the nine worthy, and the first of the three Christian men. And also, he is more spoken of beyond the sea, more books made of his noble acts, than there be in England, as well in Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and Greekish, as in French. ”

“ Meanwhile, those of King Ryence’s Court ran immediately to the Duke of Umber where he lay upon the earth, and they straightway unlaced his helm for to give him air. And first they thought that he was dead, and then they thought that he was like to die; for, behold! he lay without any life or motion. Nor did he recover from that swoon wherein he lay for the space of full two hours and more.
Now whilst the attendants were thus busied about Duke Mordaunt of North Umber, King Arthur sat his horse, very quietly, observing all that they did. ”

“ As each man told the feats of Arthur he contributed those details that appealed most to his own fancy and each was apt to think of the hero as a man of his own time, dressing and speaking and living as his own kings and princes did, with the result that when we come to the twelfth century we find Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his History of the Kings of Britain, describing Arthur no longer as a half-barbarous Briton, wearing rude armor, his arms and legs bare, but instead as a most Christian king, the flower of mediæval chivalry, decked out in all the gorgeous trappings of a knight of the Crusades. ”

“ The Arthurian kingdom had no geography,—it was a “no man’s land,” which defied all cartography, and the bounds of which could be extended by each romantic writer at his will. It is true that British tradition, and the bards and chroniclers who had sought to give it literary form, associated Arthur’s name with well-known localities in Great Britain; but, even there, the “champion of Britain” had no settled capital or court. London, the chief city of the Norman kings, claimed him as her own ”

“ God has willed that he shall be England's king, and he that holdeth out longer against the will of God that man shall we slay."
Then rich and poor alike kneeled before Arthur, hailed him as king, and craved his pardon for their long delay. He forgave them freely, and taking the sword between his hands, laid it upon the altar before the archbishop. This done, he was made a knight by the worthiest warrior there, and thus taken into that noble fellowship of chivalry which he was destined by his valor and virtue to so richly adorn. ”

“ For the first time Arthur now let Accolon know against whom he had been fighting. The fallen knight cried aloud for mercy, when he learned that he had nearly slain the King, and said to all the knights and men that were then there gathered together, "O lords, this noble knight that I have fought withal, which I sorely repent of, is the best man of prowess, of manhood, and of honour in the world, for it is King Arthur himself, the liege lord of us all, and with mishap and with misadventure have I done this battle with the king and lord in whose power I am." ”

“ Then, all at once, as it has always seemed to me, without any reason, half the people in King Arthur's court went mad. The first and the worst of them was Mordred, King Arthur's nephew, Gawain's brother. He was always all but mad with jealousy and envy and hatred of all who were greater than himself. And now he thought that nothing less could please him than to overthrow King Arthur and to be King of England.
"There are some people who cannot think of any better way of helping themselves than by doing all the harm that they can to those who stand in their way. ”

“ Men went forth from the church in great joy, for now they had a king they loved, and they felt that the land was safe from civil strife and the griefs of war.
When Arthur in his palace at London had received the homage of all the lords and princes from the lands south of Humber, he appointed his officers. Sir Kay he made seneschal or steward, and Sir Baudwin was made constable, and Sir Ulfius he named chamberlain of his court. ”

“ King Arthur is a personage who has had hard measure dealt out to him. That there was such an individual one can hardly doubt. There is a good deal of evidence towards establishing his existence. He was chief king over all the Britons from Cornwall [Pg 118] to Strathclyde (i.e. the region from the Firth of Clyde to Cumberland) . He was constantly engaged, first in one part, then in another, against the Saxons; but his principal battles were fought in Scotland. ”

“ Geoffrey can claim, beyond any question, to be the literary father of King Arthur himself as a romantic hero. But the Arthurian legend, as it emerged from mediæval romance and as we know it in its modern presentment by the poets, contains so much more than the story of Arthur that the French romantic scribes who brought Tristan and Lancelot and Perceval into Arthur’s court must be regarded as the first artistic fashioners of a purely poetic “matter of Britain.” ”

“ His fame has been made imperishable by mighty pens, and many a mountain fastness holds his [3] name and gives it forth to the world; many a towering rock preserves his story; many a frowning height perpetuates his deeds; many a wild torrent proclaims his name. So by a hundred contrivances does the memory of King Arthur endure, and he looms, a giant, behind the mist of ages. Six hundred localities in the British Isles alone, it has been computed, cherish traditions of King Arthur, and his praise is sung by a multitude of voices, and in every region where Celtic influence has been felt. ”

“ He figures largely in the Welsh Triads and in the Mabinogion under the name of Gwalchmei, and in the story of Arthur’s wars as told by Geoffrey he is the king’s most powerful lieutenant. Originally a mythical hero, he was probably the centre of a cycle of traditional stories as old as, if not older than, anything fabled or sung of Arthur. [109] No other knight of the Arthurian court is the hero of so many episodic romances and poems, while there is no more prominent figure in Arthurian literature generally. ”

“ Few heroes owe less to reality than Arthur. Neither Gildas nor Aneurin, his contemporaries, speak of him; Bede did not even know his name; Taliessin and Liwarc'h Hen gave him only a secondary place. In Nennius, on the other hand, who lived about 850, the legend has fully unfolded. Arthur is already the exterminator of the Saxons; he has never experienced defeat; he is the suzerain of an army of kings. Finally, in Geoffrey of Monmouth, the epic creation culminates. Arthur reigns over the whole earth; he conquers Ireland, Norway, Gascony, and France. ”