Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/140

Arthur when his arms had been crowned by the completest success abroad, found himself beset by treachery at home. His nephew Mordred seduced Arthur's queen Guenevere and raised a rebellion against him. Arthur thereupon turned homewards, and at his approach Guenevere fled from Mordred and hid herself in a convent; while Mordred, after being long chased from place to place, was at length brought to bay at Camlan (Cambula) ‘in Cornwall’ (Geoffrey).

Then took place that last and fatal battle of Camlan, which has left its echo in all the subsequent Arthurian romance. The later writers imagined the field, in the words of Malory, ‘upon a down beside Salisbury not far from the seaside.’ And the story went on to tell how Arthur, finding himself wounded to death, gave his sword Excalibur to Sir Bedevere, and bade him throw it into the water. And when he threw it ‘there came an arm and a hand out of the water and met it and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished. And then the hand vanished away.’ Anon came ‘a little barge with many fair ladies in it, and among them a queen.’ The barge came to take Arthur to the vale of Avalion, where men said that he still waited and (as they said of Charlemagne and of Frederick Barbarossa) would one day return, would once more place himself at the head of his countrymen, and lead them to victory. Avalion, once the mythical paradise of the Celts, came to be identified with Glastonbury, and in the middle ages men showed the inscription which had stood over the place where Arthur lay, and which expressed the history and the hope which in popular belief attached to his name—

We have here given the generally accepted and what may be called the orthodox theory of the historic Arthur. It is impossible to give the variants upon this which the speculations of different writers have suggested. One very important theory must not, however, remain unmentioned. According to this view Arthur was not a king in South Britain, or rather South Wales, as later writers, from Geoffrey downwards, have always supposed, but a king of the North Britons of southern Scotland and of Cumbria. The sites of all his battles, say these theorists, can be identified with places which lie in the region which now forms the south of Scotland and the English border. Thus Glein, they say, is Glen in Ayrshire (or it may be in Tweeddale). Dubglas, in Linnuis, far from being, as Geoffrey imagined, in Lincolnshire, is Douglas in Lennox, a stream which falls into Loch Lomond; Coit Celidon is a wood on the banks of the Carron in Upper Tweeddale; Castle Guinnion is found in Wedale; Leogis, instead of being Caerleon, is (they say) at Dumbarton, that is to say, upon the Leven which flows from Loch Lomond into the Clyde. Treuroit may be identified with a place on the banks of the Forth near Stirling, where, we remember, Arthur's round table is still preserved. Agnet, or Mynyd Agnet, is a name for Edinburgh; and, finally, Badon Hill is not Bath on the English Avon, nor yet Badbury in Dorset, but Bowdon Hill, in Linlithgow, on the Scottish Avon. The history of Nennius, it is urged, is almost exclusively concerned with the doings of the invaders in the north of the island; his account ends with the accession of Ida to the Northumbrian throne.

The arguments by which this theory is supported may be studied to best advantage in Mr. W. F. Skene's ‘Four Ancient Books of Wales,’ and in Mr. Stuart Glennie's ‘Arthurian Localities.’

If this theory should ever be established, the life of Arthur would form part of an epoch in history of which the memory has now been almost completely lost. For it must be noticed that the foes against whom the British king fought were Angles and not Saxons; and, in fact, the Angles did not come into Northumbria until after the death of Arthur. The armies over which Arthur gained his victories, then, supposing these victories to have lain in the north, were not those of the ultimate founders of the Northumbrian kingdom, but an earlier body of Saxon or Frisian invaders, whose very existence was at one time unsuspected by historians. Among the few traces which these Frisians have left behind them is Dumfries, the fort of the Frisians, as opposed to Dumbarton, the fort of the Britons. We have seen that, according to Mr. Skene, one of Arthur's victories was gained at Dumbarton.

[The bibliography of the historic Arthur is small, but that of the mythic Arthur is almost infinite. Among Welsh poems of uncertain date he is mentioned by several anonymous ones published in the ‘Myvyrian Archaiology,’ as well as in the ‘Historic Triads.’ Gildas, in his ‘Historia,’ as we have seen, without mentioning the name of Arthur, refers to one or two events which are connected with his history. Nennius's ‘Historia Britonum’ is our one authority who possesses any degree of trustworthiness, save, perhaps, the ‘Annales Cambriæ,’ where Arthur is only twice spoken of. The mythical history of Arthur begins (in literature) with the ‘Historia Britonum’ of Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose contemporary, William of Malmesbury, adds one or two minor 