To begin once more with Caxton, the preface to the Morte Darthur states that of the “noble volumes made of Arthur and his noble knights” there “be many in Welsh.” Caxton was, here, either drawing upon his imagination or speaking with imperfect knowledge. It is true that Arthur figures largely in the Mabinogion, but when we come to examine closely even these tales, we find that he appears only in five out of the eleven[45] which are designated by that name in Lady Charlotte Guest’s well-known translation, while in the four tales—probably the oldest of all—to which alone the title of “mabinogion” is strictly applicable, he does not appear at all. Again, in the oldest Welsh poetry Arthur is the merest shadow, and even the mediæval Welsh poets, who might have been expected to drink deep of the wells of romance, mention him only in the most casual and perfunctory way. There is, however, just enough in these old Welsh poems and prose stories to indicate that a legend of Arthur existed in Wales from a very early period—certainly from a period long before the appearance of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History in the twelfth century. The traditions embodied in this literature are indeed vague and disconnected enough, for they are drawn from an age when the art of romantic “exploitation” had not yet been learnt; but they bear the unmistakable marks of a legendary growth indigenous to Wales itself. As such, they are of exceptional interest, and deserve a somewhat fuller notice than their actual range and extent would seem to warrant.

The earliest Welsh literature in which we read of Arthur may be divided into three distinct and well-marked groups. First come the few poems in the oldest Welsh MSS which mention him. The allusions to Arthur in these poems represent, probably, traditions derived from an earlier period than anything contained in the second group of writings to be noticed, the prose tales,—although, as will be seen, one or two of the poems and prose stories appear to refer to the same legends. Lastly, we have the Triads, which, according to Rhys, “give us the oldest account of Arthur.”[46]

The compositions attributed to the oldest Welsh bards have come down to us in MSS which date from the twelfth to the end of the fourteenth century; the best known of them are four in number, and these were edited long ago, with translations, by the late Dr W. F. Skene under the title of The Four Ancient Books of Wales.[47] It is unnecessary here to touch upon controversial questions affecting the antiquity and the genuineness of the poems contained in these MSS. Many of them are, plainly enough, not much older than the date of the compilation of the particular MS in which they are found. Others, however, as plainly contain what Matthew Arnold,[48] speaking of the prose Mabinogion, calls “a detritus of something far older,” and it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that some of them refer to historical events and personages of the sixth and seventh centuries, while others contain mythological matter derived from a much remoter age. Here, the references to Arthur in these poems alone concern us. They are strangely few in number, and tantalisingly brief. In The Black Book of Carmarthen he is mentioned five times, in The Book of Aneirin only once. He is the central figure in a remarkable poem in The Book of Taliesin, and his name occurs in one other poem in that MS; in the poetry of The Red Book of Hergest nothing is heard of him, except in a poem called ‘Gereint, son of Erbin,’ which is also found in The Black Book. Three of the references in The Black Book are of the briefest character. In one poem[49] the bard tells us that he “has been where Llacheu, the son of Arthur, was slain,” and that is all; in another, evidently a late poem, we hear of “Arthur’s host,” or “retinue” (teulu Arthur)[50]; while in a stanza, already alluded to, in “The Songs of the Graves,” we are told that his grave is unknown. In the solitary passage in which his name occurs in The Book of Aneirin he is a standard of comparison,—a certain warrior is described as being “an Arthur in the exhaustive conflict”[51]; the second of the two poems in which he is mentioned in The Book of Taliesin refers, without comment or description, merely to “Arthur’s steed.”[52]

There remain to be noticed the three poems which, alone, contain anything more than such casual allusions as those we have just cited. Two of them are in The Black Book, and one would seem to bring us into touch, though but remotely, with the historical “Arthur the warrior,”—the dux bellorum of Nennius, who may have held “the place of the imperator himself, when Britain ceased to be part of the dominions of Rome.”[53] This latter poem is called ‘Gereint filius Erbin,’[54]—a title identical with that of the prose romance which is the Welsh collateral of Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec,—and, although Gereint is its hero, Arthur is introduced as a war-leader of seemingly higher rank. “At Llongborth,” the bard sings,

Where “Llongborth,” or “Ship’s port,” was, we do not know, but the whole poem appears to refer to an actual battle in which Gereint’s deeds had left a profound impression upon his bardic eulogist. The association, in this poem, of Arthur with Gereint brings us, for the first time, into the company of one of the knights who, in later romance, belong to the goodly fellowship of the Round Table. In the second Black Book poem we are introduced to two others who figure prominently in the romances,—Kei, or “Kay the seneschal,” and Bedwyr, or Bedivere, “the latest-left of all” King Arthur’s knights. This poem is cast in the form of a dialogue between Arthur and the keeper of a castle who is called Glewlwyd of the Mighty Grasp, and who appears in the Welsh prose stories as one of Arthur’s chief “porters.” Arthur seeks entrance to the castle, and Glewlwyd, apparently, will not open the gates without satisfying himself as to the number and the credentials of his followers. Arthur, thereupon, proceeds to name them and to recount their achievements. They are a weird company, bearing strange names reaching back to the remotest regions of primitive Welsh myth. Among them are Mabon, the son of Modron, “Uther Pendragon’s man”; Manawyddan, the son of Llŷr, “profound in counsel,” who “brought home a pierced buckler from Tryvrwyd”[55]; Mabon, son of Mellt, “who stained the grass with gore”; Llwch Llawynawc, Angwas the Winged, Arthur’s son Llacheu, and others.[56] But the two doughtiest among the champions Arthur has around him are Bedwyr and Kei. Bedwyr, like Manawyddan, fought at Tryvrwyd, and “by the hundred they fell” before him there; “nine hundred to watch, six hundred to attack,” continues the bard, was the measure of Bedwyr’s prowess. Still mightier was “the worthy Kei.” “Vain were it to boast” against him in battle; “he slew as would an hundred,—unless it were God’s doing, Kei’s death would be unachieved.” Kei, we are further told, “slew nine witches”; he went “to Mona to destroy lions,” and he fought against a mysterious monster called “Palug’s Cat.” Capable as he was of all this, it is not surprising to hear that Kei’s drinking powers were equal to those of four men. Of the deeds of Arthur himself the poem tells us nothing.

A still more remarkable poem,—the last that remains to be noticed,—in which certain strange deeds of Arthur are commemorated, is found in The Book of Taliesin under the name of ‘Preiddeu Annwvn,’ or ‘The Spoils of Hades.’ It refers to various expeditions made by Arthur and his men, in his ship Pridwen to certain mysterious regions oversea. Definite names enough are given to the different places visited—Caer Sidi, Caer Rigor, Caer Vandwy, and so on,—but the places themselves remain quite unidentified. “Three freights of Pridwen,” sings the bard, “were they who went with Arthur” on these expeditions; “seven alone were we who returned” therefrom. One of the exploits achieved in the course of these voyages was, apparently, the rape of a cauldron belonging to the King of Hades, and the whole poem, according to Rhys,[57] “evidently deals with expeditions conducted by Arthur by sea to the realms of twilight and darkness.”

The last two poems here referred to have several features in common with what is, probably, the oldest of the Arthurian prose tales in Welsh,—the story of Kulhwch and Olwen. That story also tells of the rape of a cauldron, belonging not, indeed, to the King of Hades, but to one Diwrnach, who lived across the sea in Ireland; Arthur went in quest of it, with a small retinue, in his ship Pridwen, and brought it home “full of Irish money.” The second of the two poems refers to “a speckled ox” (ych brych), and the acquisition of “a speckled ox” was one of the tasks imposed upon Kulhwch by Olwen’s father as part of the price to be paid for her hand. Again, nearly all the persons mentioned in The Black Book dialogue between Arthur and Glewlwyd figure also in Kulhwch and Olwen. So, where the oldest Welsh Arthurian poetry comes into contact with the oldest Welsh prose, the Arthur that we find dimly outlined in both is a purely mythical hero.

Kulhwch and Olwen, the most fantastic of all the Welsh prose tales dealing with Arthur, palpably embodies Arthurian traditions current in Wales at a very early date. “Almost every page of this tale,” writes Matthew Arnold,[58] “points to traditions and personages of the most remote antiquity, and is instinct with the very breath of the primitive world.” The tale relates of the wooing of Olwen, the daughter of one bearing the formidable name of Yspaddaden Pen Kawr, by Kulhwch, so called because “he had been found in a swine’s burrow,” but “nevertheless a boy of gentle lineage, and cousin unto Arthur.” Kulhwch, after being told by his stepmother that he “should never have a wife until he obtained Olwen,” is informed by his father that “that will be easy for him.” “Arthur is thy cousin,” the father says; “go, therefore, unto Arthur, to cut thy hair, and ask this of him as a boon.” The winning of Olwen,—hard enough though it appears in the story, which is mainly concerned with the long series of laborious tasks imposed upon Kulhwch as conditions of gaining her hand—is made “easy” through Arthur’s intervention. The hero starts by duly presenting himself at “the gate of Arthur’s palace,” and he there meets with the porter, Glewlwyd of the Mighty Grasp, who conveys to Arthur the news of his arrival. Arthur is introduced to us as the head of a court, keeping high state in his palace, or hall, which is called Ehangwen (Broad-White). When Kulhwch comes to ask his “boon” of him, Arthur replies, “Thou shalt receive the boon whatsoever thy tongue may name, as far as the wind dries, and the rain moistens, and the sun revolves, and the sea encircles, and the earth extends,—save only my ship; and my mantle; and Caledvwlch,[59] my sword; and Rhongomyant, my lance; and Wynebgwrthucher, my shield; and Carnwennan, my dagger; and Gwenhwyvar, my wife.” Kulhwch proceeds to ask for help in his quest not only from Arthur himself, but also from his knights and retainers, of whom a long and weird list is given. Kai and Bedwyr—an apparently inseparable pair—are first mentioned; then follows a series of strange and fantastic names, of most of which no other record remains in fable or folk-lore. Characters such as Taliesin, the chief of bards; Manawyddan, son of Llŷr; Gereint, son of Erbin; Gwynn, the son of Nudd, and some others, are heard of elsewhere. But what are we to make of beings like Sugyn, the son of Sugnedydd, “who could suck up the sea on which were three hundred ships, so as to leave nothing but a dry strand”; or, “Gilla of the Deer-Legs, the chief-leaper of Ireland,” who “would clear three hundred acres at one bound”; or, Gwevyl, the son of Gwestad, who, “on the day that he was sad, would let one of his lips drop below his waist, while he turned up the other like a cap upon his head”; or, Medyr, the son of Methredydd, who could from Cornwall “unerringly shoot the wren through the two legs” as far away as Ireland; and other weird people endowed with similar superhuman attributes? Arthur himself figures in the tale as a fairy king, having all these strange beings at his service, and giving them orders in the most direct and matter-of-fact way. One of his most useful henchmen, for example, is “Menw, the son of Teirgwaedd”—corresponding to the conventional enchanter of the universal fairy world—who could “cast a charm and an illusion over them, so that none might see them while they could see every one.” Other characters in the motley crowd are said to “come from the confines of Hell”; others are “attendants” and “huntsmen” of Arthur, while quite a large group figure as his “uncles” and “kindred on his father’s side.”

Among the many trials to which Olwen’s father submits Kulhwch is that of “getting Arthur and his companions to hunt the Twrch Trwyth.” “He,” says Yspaddaden, “is a mighty man, and he will not come for thee, neither wilt thou be able to compel him.” Kulhwch knew better, for he had already secured Arthur’s promise to help him to the utmost of his own and his companions’ resources. The hunting of the Boar (the porcus Troit) is one of the main features of the story; and, except perhaps Meleager’s adventure to the quarry of the Calydonian boar, there is no such swine-hunt in primitive literature. Many strange men and beasts and implements were required for the chase and despatch of Twrch Trwyth, and for the capture of “the comb and scissors” between his ears, which Yspaddaden wanted for the proper trimming of his unruly hair. Mabon, the son of Modron; Garselit, “the chief huntsman of Ireland”; Gwynn, the son of Nudd, “whom God has placed over the brood of devils in Annwn”; Gilhennin, “the king of France”; Drudwyn, “the whelp of Greid”; Du, “the horse of Môr of Oerveddawg”; “the sword of Gwrnach the Giant”;—all these, and many more such auxiliaries, had to be secured for the Boar’s capture. But Kulhwch is not dismayed; “my lord and kinsman Arthur,” he tells Yspaddaden, “will obtain for me all these things, and I shall gain thy daughter, and thou shalt lose thy life.”

The story of the hunt, with its many marvels, is chiefly remarkable for its minute topographical and personal detail,—the topography being indeed so precise as to make it all but possible to trace on a modern map the route taken by the hunters.[60] The Boar is finally driven into Cornwall, and thence “straight forward into the deep sea; and thenceforth it was never known whither he went.” “Then,” says the story-teller, “Arthur went to Gelli Wic, in Cornwall, to anoint himself, and to rest from his fatigues.” He had, however, to assist Kulhwch in one further enterprise,—the obtaining of “the blood of the witch Orddu, of Pen Nant Govid (the Head of the Vale of Grief), on the confines of Hell.” He did so by slaying the hag with his own hand, cleaving her in twain “with Carnwennan, his dagger.” After that Kulhwch goes boldly to Yspaddaden and asks, “Is thy daughter mine now?” “She is thine,” said he, “but therefore needest thou not thank me, but Arthur, who hath accomplished this for thee.”

Kulhwch and Olwen, it will be seen from this brief account of it, is in all essentials a fairy-tale, embodying a mass of fantastic, and even grotesque, folk-lore of an obviously pre-historic antiquity. It is to fairy-land, also, that we are transported in another of the Welsh tales, The Dream of Rhonabwy, composed probably during the latter half of the twelfth century. Both it and Kulhwch have much in common with the mythic tales of Ireland. “We possess a considerable number of Irish sagas, which betray the same characteristics as the two Welsh tales: fondness for enumeration, triadic grouping, bravura descriptive passages, and, notably in Bricriu’s Feast, a distinct semi-parodistic tone.” The Dream,—of which the central feature, the story of Owen and his ravens, must be very old,—is remarkable for a series of minutely detailed and richly coloured word-pictures of

Among the marvellous objects described are Arthur’s sword and mantle (called Gwenn), but the story-teller does not let his fancy play around them so freely as around most of the things he depicts. The sword was in the keeping of “Kadwr, earl of Cornwall,” whose duty it was to “arm the king on the days of battle.” “And the similitude of two serpents was upon the sword in gold. And when it was drawn from its scabbard, it seemed as if two flames of fire burst forth from the jaws of serpents.” Gwenn, the mantle, was “of diapered satin” with “an apple of ruddy gold at each corner thereof,” and “it was one of its properties that upon whomsoever it was put, he became lost to sight though he himself could see every one.” Arthur himself is, in this tale, constantly referred to as “the Emperor,” and he is first met with “sitting on a flat island” below the Ford of the Cross on the Severn, “with Bedwini the Bishop on one side of him, and Gwarthegydd, the son of Kaw, on the other.” Among his retainers are his “cousin” March (or Mark), the son of Meirchion, prince of “the men of Norway”; Edern, the son of Nudd, prince of “the men of Denmark”; Kai, “the fairest horseman in all Arthur’s Court”; and a host of others, many of whose names appear in the long catalogue given in Kulhwch and Olwen. Some of these names, such as Tristan, the son of Tallwch, and Peredur of the Long Lance, bring us into touch with the later developments of Arthurian romance.

The other three Mabinogion, so called, in which Arthur figures,—The Lady of the Fountain, Geraint, and Peredur,—will be noticed in a subsequent chapter, for these stories, whether they were directly based upon French originals or not, palpably belong to a period when the Arthurian legends had been, or were being, exploited for romantic purposes by French writers. The natural transition from such stories as Kulhwch and Olwen is to the Welsh Triads, the oldest group of which certainly contain traditions about Arthur as archaic as anything to be found in either the poems or the prose tales already reviewed. Here, only a few of the more significant allusions to Arthur contained in them need be quoted. Arthur is first mentioned in connection with Medraut’s, or Modred’s, treachery, and he is described—much as in Geoffrey’s Chronicle—as conducting a victorious campaign against the Romans. The final battle with the Romans, of which Geoffrey gives so elaborate an account, is said to take place “beyond Mount Mynneu,” and in it Arthur encounters, and slays with his own hand, the Roman Emperor himself.[62] Modred, who had been left in charge of Britain, hearing of the grievous slaughter of Arthur’s “best men” in this battle, revolts. Arthur returns, “and then took place the battle of Camlan between Arthur and Medraut, when Arthur slew Medraut, and Arthur himself was mortally wounded; and he was buried in a palace in the isle of Avallach.” In another Triad, Arthur is made responsible for one of “the Three Wicked Uncoverings” of the Isle of Britain, viz., the uncovering of “the head of Brân the Blessed from the White Mount” in London. The ‘mabinogi’ of Branwen, daughter of Llŷr, relates how the head of Brân had been buried, by his own command, in the White Mount, with its face towards France. While it remained undisturbed, this island would be secure from invasion,—hence the “wickedness” of Arthur’s “uncovering.” Another of the Triads speaks of Arthur as the husband of three wives, each called Guinivere,—“Gwenhwyfar, the daughter of Gwryd Gwent, Gwenhwyfar, the daughter of Gwythur, son of Greidawl, and Gwenhwyfar, the daughter of Ogrvan the Giant.” This strange statement, as Rhys points out, appears to have its parallel in the Irish story of Echaid Airem, where we hear of three women all bearing the name of Etáin, and “the three Gwenhwyfars are the Welsh equivalents of the three Etáins, and the article in the Triads must be held to be of great antiquity.”[63] One of the last records in this group of Triads has affinities both with the four ‘Mabinogion,’ properly so-called, and with one of the old Welsh poems cited in this chapter; it also contains a curiously interesting reference to a character who, in mediæval romance, appears as the hero of the most poetical of all the legends included in the Arthurian cycle. This Triad refers, mainly, to certain swine legends, and is entitled The Three Stout Swineherds of the Isle of Britain; but it mentions, besides swine, “Palug’s cat,”—hence its connection with ‘Preiddeu Annwvn,’ the poem from The Book of Taliesin already alluded to. The first of the “three swineherds” is Pryderi, the son of Pwyll, “Head of Annwn,” and his story is told in full in the ‘mabinogi’ of Pwyll, prince of Dyved. It is strange, however, to find that the second of these pre-eminent swineherds is Drystan, or Tristan, son of Tallwch,—the knightly Tristram of later romance. “The second” stout swineherd, so the record runs, “was Drystan, son of Tallwch, with the swine of March (Mark), son of Meirchion, while the swineherd went on a message to Essyllt (Iseult). Arthur and March and Kai and Bedwyr came, all four to him, but obtained from Drystan not even as much as a single porker, whether by force, or fraud, or theft.”

These four examples are quite sufficient to show that in the Triads, no less than in the oldest Welsh tales and poems dealing with Arthur, we come upon traditions handed down from a very remote age, which were all but incomprehensible to the mediæval scribes who garnered them, and are therefore preserved in a bewilderingly confused and disconnected form. They are the disjecta membra of a lost mythology, the legacy of pre-historic Celtic heathendom, which even the most learned and ingenious interpreters of primitive folk-lore and religion find it well-nigh impossible to restore into a coherent and intelligible whole.[64]

They, however, who would rob us of a historical and a chivalric King Arthur must, perforce, leave us an Arthur whose attributes as a presumed pagan deity do not prevent the unsophisticated from recognising in him an ideal prince of fairy-land. It is as such a prince that he appears against the setting of “old,” but not altogether “unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago,” in which he is presented in the early literature of Wales. It is as such a prince that one, at least, of the great English poets accepts him. To Spenser, Arthur, “taken from mother’s pap” and

was just the potent deliverer required to bring the Red Cross Knight and the rest of that questing company out of their various difficulties, and to establish, through a series of timely interventions, his right to the hand of the Fairy Queen.

In both Kulhwch and Olwen and The Dream of Rhonabwy, as also in the Triads, we find frequent mention of Cornwall as a district with which Arthur is intimately connected. It is to Cornwall that he retires to rest after the hunting of the boar; and it is to Cornwall that Kai, at the close of The Dream of Rhonabwy, bids all repair who “would follow Arthur.” His home, and his court, there is at a place called Kelli, or Gelli, Wic. In later Arthurian literature little, if anything, is heard of Kelli Wic; Caerleon-upon-Usk displaces it altogether as the scene of Arthur’s central court. But, with Geoffrey of Monmouth, two other Cornish localities are brought into dramatic connection with Arthur’s fortunes—viz., Tintagol, or Tintagel; and Dimilioc, or Damelioc. These places are unheard of in the Welsh Arthurian tales, but, according to Geoffrey, it was at Dimilioc that Uther besieged, and his men slew, Gorlois; and it was this siege that enabled Uther, in the semblance of Gorlois, to gain access to Igerne in her retreat at the castle of Tintagel, and so to become the father of “the most renowned Arthur.” It is a pity that no Cornish records have survived to throw some further light upon these momentous events. It is, however, very unlikely that Geoffrey would have incorporated them in his narrative, had there not been, in Cornwall as in Wales, traditions long current which associated the name of Arthur with some of the ancient strongholds of the country. No less significant, as indicative of the existence of a separate Cornish legend of Arthur, is that Geoffrey, with others, tells us that the last and fatal battle with Medrod took place on the river Camel in Cornwall. It is not, perhaps, easy to reconcile these traditions with the theory that Arthur’s life and achievements were confined to North Britain. But that theory is no less difficult to reconcile with the abundance, and the ubiquity, of Arthurian place-names in all the districts, except Ireland, that make up “the Celtic fringe.” “Only the Devil is more often mentioned in local association than Arthur.”[66] The precise significance of such association is perhaps, in both cases, equally indeterminable.

Investigators of Arthurian origins talk a good deal about Brittany. Unfortunately, there is no early Breton, any more than Cornish, literature to draw upon for any further information about a pre-historic, or a pre-romantic, Arthur. The lais of Marie of France are supposed to embody matter borrowed from Breton minstrels who sang before the flourishing of romance; but only one of her poems, ‘Lanval’—and that but remotely—has any connection with early Arthurian lore. It may be that “the Bretons” whom Wace mentions as “telling many a fable of the Table Round”[67] were Armorican Britons. We know for certain, at any rate, that a legend of Arthur, which included a belief in his “return,” had taken firm root in Brittany by the twelfth century.[68] There is, therefore, no difficulty about assuming that it was from the Bretons, rather than from the Welsh, that the Normans derived their first knowledge of Arthur, and so came to construct out of the stories connected with him the romantic cycle known as the matière de Bretagne. The controversy waged about the relative shares of Great and of Little Britain in supplying matter for the French romantic writers[69] is of no real consequence—everybody is agreed that that matter is to be ultimately traced to a Celtic, and a British, source. 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.”