6
By some Lyonnesse is identified with Léonnois in Brittany, but as Mr. Aldis Wright has pointed out, the continuous references in the romance to “riding” from Lyonnesse to other parts of Cornwall shows that Lyonnesse and Cornwall were on the same land.
7
A. J. C. Hare’s
8
“Il est donc constant que la chevalerie prit naissance en Bretagne,” says Emile Souvestre, “et y brilla de tout son éclat; que les premiers poémes chevaleresques furent écrits en langue celtique. Les monuments, les traditions,
9
Bamborough Castle, says Professor Burrows, was the centre of the Kingdom of Bryneck, or Bernicia. “In founding it the Angles encountered a determined opposition at the hands of a British chief named Arthur. Whether he is the same as the Arthur of South-Western Britain, or whether the exploits of one have been transferred by legend to the other, is still under dispute.”
10
According to Villemarqué the name of Lancelot is a translation of that of the Welsh hero Maël, who exhibits the fullest analogy with the Lancelot of the French romances.
11
“Arthur’s seat” may be but an adaptation of the Gaelic Ard-na-said, or “the height of the arrows.”
12
Arthur’s career has been thus conveniently summarised: “At the age of fifteen he succeeded his father as King of Damnonium. He was born in 452, had three wives, of whom Guinevere was the second, and was betrayed by the third during his absence in Armorica. Mordred concluded a league with Arthur’s great foe, Cedric the Saxon; and at the age of ninety, after seven years’ continual war, the famous king was defeated at Camelford in 543.” Fuller compares him to Hercules in (1) his illegitimate birth, (2) his arduous life, and (3) his twelve battles. Joseph Ritson, whose antiquarian researches are noted for their fullness and originality, came to the conclusion that though there were “fable and fabrication” in the hero, a real Arthur lies behind the legendary hero. He appeared when the affairs of the Britons were at their worst after Vortigern’s death, checked the ravages of the Romans, and kept the pillaging Saxons at bay. Professor Montagu Burrows, in his commentaries on the history of England, argues that the Cymry of Arthur’s time were a band of Romano-Britons who produced leaders like Cunedda to take command of the native forces left by the departing Romans. They remained more British than Gaelic, but were gradually driven, with their faces to the foe, into Wales and the Welsh borderland. “The Arthurian legends,” he continues, “embody a whole world of facts which have been lost to history in the lapse of time, and form a poetry far from wholly fictitious.” Renan declares that few heroes owe less to reality than Arthur. “Neither Gildas nor Aneurin, his contemporaries, speaks of him; Bede did not know his name; Taliesin and Llwarc’h Hên gave him only a secondary place. In Nennius, on the other hand, who lived about 850, the legend has been 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.”
13
Ashmole, in his