Arthur

a British chieftain of the sixth century. The name of King Arthur is the most famous of any in British traditions. He is the central figure in the legendary history of the island. So many stories grew up about his name that, when effort was made to separate fact from fiction, doubt arose whether King Arthur himself were a real hero or only an invention. It is beyond reasonable question, however, that such a king lived and won victories, reverence, and affection. Arthur is held to have been prince of the Silures, a tribe of Britons, in South Wales. He was the son of Uther, called Pendragon. He came to the sovereignty about 510. He overcame the Saxons in twelve battles. He then reigned in peace for about twenty years, until his nephew Modred revolted. Arthur was mortally wounded in the battle of Camlon, Cornwall. He was taken by sea to Glastonbury, and there died and was buried. About 1150, by command of Henry II, the grave said to be Arthur's was opened. In it were found the monarch's bones and his sword. Upon a leaden cross let into the stone were the words, "Here lies buried the famous King Arthur, in the island Avalonia."

These are the accepted facts of Arthur's life and death--all that are known. As to the traditions, they are almost innumerable, many of them being still current among the peasants of Somersetshire and Devonshire, England. That they centered around this one figure may be due less to the real character of Arthur than to the fact that the people were ready for a hero. The hope and confidence Arthur's victories and just reign had inspired were quenched in his defeat and death, but this hero worship softened the disappointment. Among his people in the mountains of Wales, and across the channel where many Britons had fled from the encroaching Saxons, the stories of Arthur's prowess were told and retold. The vivid imaginations of these primitive people endowed him with every beauty, and credited him with every noble deed of which they heard or which they could invent.

Stories of supernatural occurrences, readily believed in that superstitious age, were interwoven with the other tales until this "hero of a vanquished race" became a demigod. In these stories, Arthur's birth and death are shrouded in mystery. One oft repeated tale was that, as an infant, he had come in from the sea riding on a great wave. At the time of his election to the sovereignty, a miracle had pointed to him as king. Miracles attended his coronation. The wisdom ascribed to him as a ruler was only equaled by his power as a warrior. Tennyson's Lancelot says to Arthur, "The power of God descends upon thee in the battlefield," and it is evident that a widespread belief existed that Arthur received supernatural aid in combat. The knights of Arthur's Round Table shared in his glory. Their deeds of prowess against the Saxons and in single combat against those who wronged the innocent and wrought evil in the land, are only second to those of Arthur himself. Their loyalty to their king and his influence over them is a marked feature of the legends. In the "last great battle of the west" Arthur was wounded and borne away, but it was long believed that the prophecy was to be fufilled, "He passes and is healed and cannot die." As the peasants of the Hartz Mountains long expected Barbarossa's return, so Arthur's people in Wales and Brittany believed that he would come again to reign over his people.

It is impossible to appreciate fully or even to conceive the influence which this "ideal knight" has had in the development of the race. Some little idea of it may be obtained by tracing the Arthurian legends and their offshoots in literature. In the history of civilization there are instances, and this is one, where the ideal is a more real thing than the real itself. For a thousand years these stories furnished important literary material. As early as the eighth century, Nennius, a British monk, wrote in Latin an account of the wars of Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century wrote a Latin History of the Kings of Britain, claiming to get his material from a "very old book in the British language," brought from Brittany. In this he told the tale of King Arthur. Wace wrote it in French. Layamon, an English priest, had Arthur in mind when he wrote his Brut.

While the age of chivalry was in full flower, the stories and ballads of King Arthur and his knights were told and sung in courts and castles throughout all Europe. In the fifteenth century, Sir Thomas Malory wrote the story in English prose, which he called Morte d'Arthur, or the Death of Arthur. Dante, Ariosto, and Tasso in far away Italy, and Hans Sachs, the shoemaker poet of Nuremberg, used the King Arthur legends freely. Spenser's pictures of knightly courtesy and maidenly need in the Faerie Queene are drawn from the tales of the Round Table. Their influence may be traced in the writings of Chaucer, Scott, Schiller, Shakespeare, Dryden, Milton, and many others. Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the Mabinogeon, or Welsh Tales, in 1838-49, created a new interest in these early romances, which has extended to America. Lowell has probably given us the most popular example of a poem inspired by these stories. His Sir Launfal is clearly one of Arthur's Knights. Of all the poets, Tennyson has given the legends their most fitting expression. His Idylls of the King would seem to be their final setting. Not until the world grows older and changes its way of looking at things, not until the language of Tennyson becomes antiquated, will there be an opportunity even for a master mind to rewrite the doings of Arthur and the knights who sat at his table, fought by his side, and rode their rides of knightly daring.

See Tennyson; Brittany; Geoffrey Of Monmouth; Malory; Mabinogeon; Idylls Of The King; Brut

King Arthur is more than a shadow; his name is carved upon the corner-stone of our civilization.--J. Loughran Scott.

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.--Milton.

King Arthur is the embodiment of those higher qualities that marked the ambition of the people.