King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
by Unknown.
INTRODUCTION
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table! What magic is in the words! How they carry us straight to the days of chivalry, to the witchcraft of Merlin, to the wonderful deeds of Lancelot and Perceval and Galahad, to the Quest for the Holy Grail, to all that "glorious company, the flower of men," as Tennyson has called the king and his companions! Down through the ages the stories have come to us, one of the few great romances which, like the tales of Homer, are as fresh and vivid to-day as when men first recited them in court and camp and cottage. Other great kings and paladins are lost in the dim shadows of long-past centuries, but Arthur still reigns in Camelot and his knights still ride forth to seek the Grail.
"No little thing shall be
The gentle music of the bygone years, Long past to us with all their hopes and fears."
So wrote the poet William Morris in _The Earthly Paradise_. And surely it is no small debt of grat.i.tude we owe the troubadours and chroniclers and poets who through many centuries have sung of Arthur and his champions, each adding to the song the gifts of his own imagination, so building from simple folk-tales one of the most magnificent and moving stories in all literature.
This debt perhaps we owe in greatest measure to three men; to Chretien de Troies, a Frenchman, who in the twelfth century put many of the old Arthurian legends into verse; to Sir Thomas Malory, who first wrote out most of the stories in English prose, and whose book, the _Morte Darthur_, was printed by William Caxton, the first English printer, in 1485; and to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who in his series of poems ent.i.tled the _Idylls of the King_ retold the legends in new and beautiful guise in the nineteenth century.
The history of Arthur is so shrouded in the mists of early England that it is difficult to tell exactly who and what he was. There probably was an actual Arthur, who lived in the island of Britain in the sixth century, but probably he was not a king nor even a prince. It seems most likely that he was a chieftain who led his countrymen to victory against the invading English about the year 500. So proud were his countrymen of his victories that they began to invent imaginary stories of his prowess to add to the fame of their hero, just as among all peoples legends soon spring up about the name of a great leader. 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 mediaeval chivalry, decked out in all the gorgeous trappings of a knight of the Crusades.
As the story of Arthur grew it attracted to itself popular legends of all kinds. Its roots were in Britain and the chief threads in its fabric remained British-Celtic. The next most important threads were those that were added by the Celtic chroniclers of Ireland. Then stories that were not Celtic at all were woven into the legend, some from Germanic sources, which the Saxons or the descendants of the Franks may have contributed, and others that came from the Orient, which may have been brought back from the East by men returning from the Crusades. And if it was the Celts who gave us the most of the material for the stories of Arthur it was the French poets who first wrote out the stories and gave them enduring form.
It was the Frenchman, Chretien de Troies, who lived at the courts of Champagne and of Flanders, who put the old legends into verse for the pleasure of the n.o.ble lords and ladies that were his patrons. He composed six Arthurian poems. The first, which was written about 1160 or earlier, related the story of Tristram. The next was called _erec et enide_, and told some of the adventures that were later used by Tennyson in his _Geraint and Enid_. The third was _Cliges_, a poem that has little to do with the stories of Arthur and his knights as we have them. Next came the _Conte de la Charrette_, or _Le Chevalier de la Charrette_, which set forth the love of Lancelot and Guinevere. Then followed _Yvain_, or _Le Chevalier au Lion_, and finally came _Perceval_, or _Le Conte du Graal_, which gives the first account of the Holy Grail.
None of these stories are to be found in the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who had written earlier in Latin, nor in any of the so-called chronicles. It was Chretien who took the old folk-tales that men had been telling each other for centuries and put them into sprightly verse for the entertainment of his lords and ladies. He fashioned the stories according to the taste of his own gay courts, and so Arthur and his Queen Guinevere, Lancelot, Perceval and the other knights became far more like French people of the twelfth century than like Britons of the sixth. And in introducing the Holy Grail, that sacred and mystic cup that was supposed to hold drops of the blood of Christ and to have been carried to England by Joseph of Arimathea, Chretien added to the Arthurian legends an old religious story that had had nothing to do with Arthur originally.
From this point in its history that st.u.r.dy ancient English oak, the original story of Arthur and his knights, an account mainly of warlike adventures, sent forth four new branches that have now become part and parcel of the parent legend. These four branches are the story of Merlin, the story of Lancelot, the story of the Holy Grail, and the story of Tristram and Iseult. Some of the writers who came after Chretien took one of these stories, some another, each enlarging his theme according to his own taste, until each story was the center of a large number of new and romantic offshoots. Practically all of them, however, were bound together by the thread that led from the court of the great King Arthur at Camelot.
The story of Merlin, that man of magic, is the least important of the four branches, though Merlin is still an intensely interesting figure in the story of Arthur that we read to-day. The story of Lancelot was to prove very important; starting as a romance that had very little connection with Arthur, it became with Malory and Tennyson the real center of interest of the plot. The story of the Holy Grail proved almost equally important. In the earliest accounts of this Perceval was the knight chosen above all others to reach the Grail Castle, but Perceval was too rough and worldly a knight to suit the taste of the monks who wrote out the legends and so they created Galahad to take his place as their own ideal of perfection. And into these adventures are woven some of the tales of Sir Gawain, among them the delightful story of Gawain and the Little Maid with the Narrow Sleeves. To the legend of Perceval, Wolfram von Eschenbach, a Bavarian, added the story of the son of Perceval, or Parzival, as he calls him, the story of Lohengrin, the famous Swan-knight. Tristram and Iseult, the fourth of the branches, though less connected with Arthur than either Lancelot or the Holy Grail, became immensely popular with poets and remancers because of its great love story, and is to be found told again and again in widely varying forms all through the Middle Ages.
So we have seen that a British chieftain, winning a great battle in the year 500, became in time celebrated throughout Europe as the greatest king of romance. So far it was mainly the French who had made him famous. Layamon, an English priest, had written a poem in English concerning Arthur shortly after 1200, and told of the founding of the Round Table, but it was to be a considerable time yet before any English writer was to attempt what the French had already done. Chaucer told none of the Arthurian stories, though he placed the scene of his _Wife of Bath"s Tale_ at King Arthur"s court. An unknown English poet wrote _Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight_ somewhere between 1350 and 1375. It is not until we come to the _Morte Darthur_ of Sir Thomas Malory, finished in 1469 or 1470, that we reach the next great step in the history of the legends since the time of Chretien de Troies. But in Malory"s story Arthur steps forth resplendent, the kingly figure that we have to-day.
Little is known concerning Sir Thomas Malory. He seems to have been a knight and country gentleman of Warwickshire, a member of Parliament in the reign of Henry VI, and later a soldier on the side of Lancaster in the Wars of the Roses. As a result of the victory of the party of York he had to retire from public life when Edward IV came to the throne, and lived quietly at his Warwickshire estate. He was familiar with life at court and with men-at-arms and he knew how popular the stories of King Arthur were becoming in England. So, being a man of education, he set to work to make a collection of the legends, using as his chief sources the French romances.
Malory showed considerable originality in carrying out his plan. He made Arthur the central figure, taking the story of Merlin as an introduction to the birth of Arthur, instead of as a separate legend, and ending his account soon after the death of the king. He omitted a number of the older legends that had little to do with Arthur, many of them good stories, such as that of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He made the England of his Arthur something like the England he knew, and his people became real and living instead of fanciful figures out of a far-distant past. His descriptions are vivid and lively and his style so engaging that his work of the fifteenth century is much read to-day. Three characters stand out from all the rest, Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere, and these three became in all stories and poems subsequent to Malory"s time the main figures of the legends.
Matthew Arnold attributed to Homer three great epic traits, swiftness, simplicity, and n.o.bility. It is these three characteristics that have made the _Morte Darthur_ so deservedly famous.
With the printing of Malory"s book by the first English printer, William Caxton, in 1485, we come to the end of the Middle Ages in literature.
Ma.n.u.scripts written out laboriously by monks and clerks were now to give way to the printed page. The age of Elizabeth was less than a century away, one of the golden ages of the poets. Yet few of the Elizabethans touched on the story of Arthur. The main exception was Edmund Spenser, who made Prince Arthur the hero of his great poem _The Faerie Queene_, but Spenser"s Arthur and his knights and ladies have little in common with the figures in the old romances.
The succeeding centuries, great as they were in English writers of genius, paid little attention to Arthur. Milton and Dryden made little use of the legends. Stories of ancient chivalry lost their vogue, novels were becoming popular and the poets chose themes closer to their own times and point of view. Not until the nineteenth century did Arthur come into his own again. Then the Victorian poets turned to him for inspiration. William Morris wrote _The Defence of Guenevere_, and a host of lesser poets tried their hands on similar themes. Swinburne told the story of _Tristram of Lyonesse_ and the _Tale of Balen_, and James Russell Lowell composed his beautiful poem _The Vision of Sir Launfal_.
Matthew Arnold wrote _Tristram and Iseult_. In 1850 Richard Wagner, the great German composer, produced his opera _Lohengrin_, and followed it with _Tristan und Isolde_ and _Parsifal_. These tell the old stories in somewhat new form, and follow the early French romances rather than Malory.
But the true descendant of Chretien de Troies and Malory was Alfred Tennyson. The great work of this poet"s life was his _Idylls of the King_, one of the finest achievements of English literature. He owed his inspiration chiefly to Malory. "The vision of Arthur as I have drawn him," Tennyson said to his son, "had come upon me when, little more than a boy, I first lighted upon Malory." He covered almost the entire field of the legends. The _Idylls of the King_ are _The Coming of Arthur_, _Geraint and Enid_, _Merlin and Vivien_, _Lancelot and Elaine_, _The Holy Grail_, _Pelleas and Ettarre_, _Balin and Balan_, _The Last Tournament_, _Guinevere_, and _The Pa.s.sing of Arthur_.
Tennyson gives to the stories far more allegory, far more philosophy than the early poets gave them. His age was interested in philosophy and so, as was the case with each of the earlier poets, Tennyson handled the legends after the fashion of his own times. In his pages we see the characters as actual men and women, subtly drawn, concerned with right and wrong far more than with mere knightly adventures. Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere hold the center of the stage, and it is the fate of these three that provides the great moving motive of the poems.
To Tennyson we owe the most nearly perfect version of the story that dates back to a dim and legendary England. What verse more beautiful than his to tell of chivalry?
"Then, in the boyhood of the year, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere Rode thro" the coverts of the deer, With blissful treble ringing clear.
She seem"d a part of joyous Spring: A gown of gra.s.s-green silk she wore, Buckled with golden clasps before; A light-green tuft of plumes she bore Closed in a golden ring."
In beauty and dignity and human interest Tennyson gives us the great world of Arthurian legend in its most perfect form.
Malory"s _Morte Darthur_ was not Tennyson"s only source for the stories of his Idylls. The adventures of Geraint he took from the _Mabinogion_, a collection of mediaeval Welsh tales translated with great charm and accuracy by Lady Charlotte Guest, and published in 1838. Also, though to a very limited extent, he drew some of his incidents from the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the other early writers of chronicles.
The great panorama of stories that we group together under the t.i.tle of _King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table_, when they are told in prose, are usually taken from Malory"s book, the _Morte Darthur_, condensed in size, for Malory was frequently verbose, and related in more modern English. In this volume we have used as a basis the version prepared by Sir James Knowles, which is an abridgment of Malory"s work as it was printed by Caxton, with a few additions from Geoffrey of Monmouth and other sources. To this we have added the story of Sir Gawain and the Maid with the Narrow Sleeves, which comes originally from the poem of _Perceval_ by Chretien de Troies.
The stories seem naturally to group themselves into four divisions, The Coming of Arthur and the Founding of the Round Table, The Adventures of the Champions of the Round Table, Sir Galahad and the Quest of the Holy Grail, and The Pa.s.sing of Arthur. Into these come all the great characters of the legends and all the surpa.s.sing adventures of the king and his knights.
The story of how a half-barbarous British Chieftain became the greatest king of mediaeval chivalry is a romance in itself. To him poets and chroniclers of all lands added one valorous knight after another, one amazing adventure on top of another, until the result was the greatest collection of legends that have gathered about any king in history. The story of the origin and growth of these world-famous legends is told in a most delightful book, _The Arthur of the English Poets_, by Howard Maynadier, and those who wish to get the historical background of King Arthur should turn to its pages.
Those who love brave and knightly deeds, those who love the gorgeous trappings of mediaeval romance, come to the story of Arthur and his Round Table, of Lancelot and Perceval and Galahad and Gawain, of Guinevere and Elaine, and of the Quest for the Holy Grail, and there shall be found the glories that you seek. The king and his knights ride out from Camelot. Here shall you join them on their great adventures!
RUPERT S. HOLLAND.
THE COMING OF ARTHUR AND THE FOUNDING OF THE ROUND TABLE
I
MERLIN FORETELLS THE BIRTH OF ARTHUR
King Vortigern the usurper sat upon his throne in London, when, suddenly, upon a certain day, ran in a breathless messenger, and cried aloud--
"Arise, Lord King, for the enemy is come; even Ambrosius and Uther, upon whose throne thou sittest--and full twenty thousand with them--and they have sworn by a great oath, Lord, to slay thee, ere this year be done; and even now they march towards thee as the north wind of winter for bitterness and haste."
At those words Vortigern"s face grew white as ashes, and, rising in confusion and disorder, he sent for all the best artificers and craftsmen and mechanics, and commanded them vehemently to go and build him straightway in the furthest west of his lands a great and strong castle, where he might fly for refuge and escape the vengeance of his master"s sons--"and, moreover," cried he, "let the work be done within a hundred days from now, or I will surely spare no life amongst you all."
Then all the host of craftsmen, fearing for their lives, found out a proper site whereon to build the tower, and eagerly began to lay in the foundations. But no sooner were the walls raised up above the ground than all their work was overwhelmed and broken down by night invisibly, no man perceiving how, or by whom, or what. And the same thing happening again, and yet again, all the workmen, full of terror, sought out the king, and threw themselves upon their faces before him, beseeching him to interfere and help them or to deliver them from their dreadful work.
Filled with mixed rage and fear, the king called for the astrologers and wizards, and took counsel with them what these things might be, and how to overcome them. The wizards worked their spells and incantations, and in the end declared that nothing but the blood of a youth born without mortal father, smeared on the foundations of the castle, could avail to make it stand. Messengers were therefore sent forthwith through all the land to find, if it were possible, such a child. And, as some of them went down a certain village street, they saw a band of lads fighting and quarreling, and heard them shout at one--"Avaunt, thou imp!--avaunt! Son of no mortal man! go, find thy father, and leave us in peace."
At that the messengers looked steadfastly on the lad, and asked who he was. One said his name was Merlin; another, that his birth and parentage were known by no man; a third, that the foul fiend alone was his father.
Hearing the things, the officers seized Merlin, and carried him before the king by force.
But no sooner was he brought to him than he asked in a loud voice, for what cause he was thus dragged there?
"My magicians," answered Vortigern, "told me to seek out a man that had no human father, and to sprinkle my castle with his blood, that it may stand."
"Order those magicians," said Merlin, "to come before me, and I will convict them of a lie."