Saints, Mermaids & Phoenicians Contents
CornISH Legends
Saints, Mermaids & Phoenicians
ARTHUR
"There
is a place within
The winding shore of Severne sea
On mids of rock, about whose foote
The tydes turne - keeping play.
A towery-topped castle here,
Wide blazeth over all,
Which Corineus ancient broode
Tintagel Castle call."
Old Poet- Translated by CAMDEN
The
recorder of Cornish Folk-Lore Robert Hunt wrote the following in 1864.
"The scarcity of traditions connected with King Arthur is not a little remarkable in Cornwall, where he is said to have been born, and where we believe him to have been killed. In the autumn of last year (1863) I visited Tintagel and Camelford. I sought with anxiety for some stories of the British king, but not one could be obtained The man who has charge of the ruins of the castle was very sorry that he had lent a book which he once had, and which contained many curious stories, but he had no story to tell me." (1)
There are of course some legends connected with Arthur and indeed Hunt goes on to record some but was there such a person or is he a mythical being who appears at different times to different peoples? Algernon Herbert compared Arthur to the God Mars when writing of the Britons of the North who fought against Northumbrian Saxons ninety years after the date of Arthurs alleged death and who the Bards referred to as “The Warriors of Arthur”. (2) Briffault in his book “The mother says that Arthur is derived from the Welsh arrdhu, meaning “very black”
And
that he has concluded that “the Black One”, “Leader of Battles”, is
identical to the god Bran, “the Raven”, The leader in battle of the Celts in
every war which they have fought throughout the ages. (3)
A Edgar Macculloch of Guernsey wrote the following to the magazine Notes & Queries:
“In
Jarvis’s translation of Don Quixote,’ book ii. chap. v., the
following passage occurs “‘Have you not read, sir,’ answered Don Quixote,
‘the annals and histories of England, wherein are recorded the famous exploits
of King Arthur, whom, in our Castilian tongue, we always call King Artus; of
‘whom there goes an old tradition, and a common one, all over that kingdom of
Great Britain, that this king did not die, but that, by magic art, he was turned
into a raven; and that, in process of time, he shall reign again and recover his
kingdom and sceptre, for which reason it cannot be proved that, from that time
to this, any Englishmen has killed a raven?’
Macculloch
goes on, “My reason for transcribing this passage is to record the curious
fact that the legend of King Arthur’s existence in the form of a raven was
still repeated as a piece of folk-lore in Cornwall about sixty years ago. My
father, who died about two years since, at the age of eighty, spent a few years
of his youth in the neighbourhood of Penzance. One day he was walking along
Marazion Green with his fowling-piece on his shoulder, he saw a raven at a
distance, and fired at it. An old man who was near immediately rebuked him,
telling him that he ought on no account to have shot at a raven, for that King
Arthur was still alive in the form of that bird. My father was much interested
when I drew his attention to the passage which I have quoted above. Perhaps some
of your Cornish or Welsh correspondents may be able to say whether the legend is
still known among the people of Cornwall or Wales. (4)
Robert
Hunt took up the quest and in his Book says: “I have been most desirous of
discovering if any such legend as the above exists. I have questioned people in
every part of Cornwall in which King Arthur has been reported to have dwelt or
fought, and especially have I inquired in the neighbourhood of Tintagel, which,
is reported to have been Arthur’s stronghold. Nowhere do I find the raven
associated with him, but I have been told that bad luck would follow the man who
killed a Chough, for Arthur was transformed into one of these birds.
The tradition relative to King Arthur and his transformation into a raven, is fixed very decidedly on the Cornish Chough, from the colour of its beak and talons.
The “Talons and beak all red with blood’ are said to mark the violent end
to which this celebrated chieftain came." (5)
The
Old Cornwall Society Moto which surrounds the Chough emblem on the back of the
magazine says "Nynsyu marow Myghtern Arthur" which translates to
"King Arthur is not Dead"
The
fact that we are living at a time when the Cornish chough is returning to
Cornwall after a period of almost fifty years means that the legend of Arthur is
once again coming to the fore. (6)
John’s news, that Spielberg’s next film is to be about Arthur will also
raise the interest. I wonder however, which Arthur will be shown. Will it be the
Arthur of Tennyson, the Arthur of Myth, the Arthur of legend or even the Arthur
of History? There are so many to choose from.
British and European folklore is full of legends and myths of the Sleepers, or Guardians who sleep within the land until summoned or awakened - Arthur and Merlin being the most famous. In a letter written in 1139A.D, a Henry of Huntingdon describes Arthur's last battle which took place in Brittany and mentions that the Bretons say that he didn't die and that they are still waiting for his return. Indeed, E.K.Chambers in his “Arthur of Britain” says that Many of the tales concerning Arthur traceable to British sources reveal him as a species of culture hero….some Welsh legends connect him with those heroes who slumber beneath hollow hills, awaiting the signal to deliver their kingdoms from foreign enemies. (7)
The
question of Arthur’s historicity isn't nearly so interesting as historising
Arthur, why is it we feel obsessed with the question of how much history is
behind the king. Most people seem to find it disturbing
that one of the most important figures of the Middle Ages may never have
existed or if he did exist, he did not resemble what we have come to think of as
Arthur. Who was Arthur? Where did he come from?
How can we know? These are
basic, vital questions, ones not easily answered, and so it is much easier to
argue back and forth about whether an historical Arthur existed at all. Even as
early as the 12th century the argument was raging
William
of Malmesbury a historian living and working in Britain in 1125 A.D. wrote
"Gesta Regum Anglorum" (Deeds of the Kings of England), in
which he states,
"this
is that Arthur of whom the trifling of the Britons talks such nonsense, even
today; a man clearly worthy not to be dreamed of in fallacious fables, but to be
proclaimed in veracious histories as one who long sustained his tottering
country and gave the shattered minds of his fellow citizens an edge for
war." (8)
So
let us start to put some meat on the bones and see when and how the story of
Arthur developed.
Four of the earlies chronicerlers of British history were Gildas, with his “De Exidio Britannae”; Bede: “De Ecclesia Anglorum et Gentes”; Nennius: “Historia Brittonum”; and the Anonymous Annales Cambriae. The first two Gildas and Bede mention only one great hero of that time: "Their leader at this time was Ambrosius Aurelianus, a man of good character and the sole survivor of Roman race from the catastrophe"Both sources make no mention at all of anyone called 'Arthur'. So we will leave these sources for now and jump to the year1136AD. This was when the first known reference to the birth of Arthur was made by Geoffrey of Monmouth who published what was to become the most famous book on Arthur, "Historia Regum Britanniae" (History of the Kings of Britain), (9) in Latin. His work would be used as the standard text on British history for the next 600 years.
We
know little of Geoffrey’s early life, other than that he was born and lived in
Monmouth, in Wales and that he may have had one Breton parent.
When
he wrote his "History” some 850 years ago, it was the first continuous,
written account of the deeds of the British people. He claimed to tell the story
from sometime around 1100 BC, to the Saxons, defeat of Cadwallader in 689 AD.,
and felt that other historians had been unkind to the Britons. Geoffrey dared to
make the Britons co-equal in terms of antiquity and glory with the Romans and
the Greeks. The "History" was immediately and widely accepted as the
definitive account of the course of British history its chief impact was in
France where the Arthurian legend had
previously been seen as merely the heritage of barbarians and unworthy of a
cultured person's attention or interest. (10)
But more of this later.
Over
the generations, the "History" has been alternatively praised and
vilified, accepted and rejected. It has been called a triumph of the creative
imagination, suggesting that it is rather higher in literary merit than in
factual value. E.K. Chambers, the author of the seminal work of Arthurian
scholarship, "Arthur of Britain," says,
Safer,
perhaps, but does that mean that the "History" is all just lies and
clever fabrications? However, the known
sources he used are relatively few. Bede and Gildas and from reading of
the "History," we are aware of his dependence upon Nennius As for
other source materials, it may be that he also had the Anneles Cambriae available to him. This document does not give much in the way of
new information and Geoffrey tells us that he had access to another
document which is no longer available:
At a time when I was giving a good deal of attention to such matters, Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man skilled in the art of public speaking and well-informed about the history of foreign countries, presented me with a certain very ancient book written in the British language. This book, attractively composed to form a consecutive and orderly narrative, set out all the deeds of these men, from Brutus, the first King of the Britons, down to Cadwallader, the son of Cadwallo. At Walter's request, I have taken the trouble to translate the book into Latin, although, indeed, I have been content with my own expressions and my own homely style and I have gathered no gaudy flowers of speech in other men's gardens. If I had adorned my page with high-flown rhetorical figures, I should have bored my readers, for they would have been forced to spend more time in discovering the meaning of my words than in following the story. (12)
Here
we are told about a book given to Geoffrey which he claimed provided the factual
basis for his narrative, but of which no trace can be found today. He doesn't
tell us the title of the book or give us any other pertinent information except
to say that it was ancient and written in the British language. In using the
term "British," Geoffrey may have meant Cornish or Breton, languages
which stem from the original British, and not Welsh, as there are no known early
Welsh texts that would qualify as Geoffrey's original source.
A Breton historian, one M. Arthur de la Borderie, 1827-1901, may have found traces of such an early book in the late fourteenth century "Chronique de Saint Brieuc." The chronicle cites a "legenda sancti Goeznovii" or Legend of St. Goeznovious,
In
the preface to the Legend, the Breton writer, William, Chaplain to Bishop Eudo
of Leon, gives an amazing, capsulated history of King Arthur, and
uncannily prefigures the legend that would develop around him after the
publication of Geoffrey of Monmouth's "The
History of the Kings of Britain," in 1136. Here, Arthur is seen, not only
as a war leader, but as a king. He is seen as a victorious campaigner in Gaul as
well as in Britain, and, in a puzzling reference, he is said to have been
"summoned, at last, from human activity." There is also a
dedication in which certain references are made to the conquest of Albion
(England) by Brutus and Corineus and attributes the source to a work, now lost
to us, called the "Ystoria Britannica." Perhaps this was Geoffrey's
"very ancient book." Geoffrey also may have taken advantage of the
fact that his associate, Walter, was "well-informed about the history of
foreign countries" and learned much in conversations with him.
Robert Hunt Popular Romances of the West of England. Pub 1864.
A. Herbert, “Britannia after the Romans I, pp 85 –8
Briffault “The Mother”
Notes & Queries, Vol viii p. 618.
ibid 1. p.308-9
E.K.Chambers “Arthur of Britain” chap. vii, pp 205
William of Malmesbury: "Gesta Regum Anglorum"
Thorpe,
Lewis, trans., Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain,
Penguin Books, London, 1966
ibid 9
E.K.Chambers "Arthur of Britain" chap. vii, pp 147
ibid 9.