Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/714

652 tants of Cumbria and Stratliclydc are referred to by the contemporary Saxon chroniclers, and in the charters and proclamations of the Scottish kings, David I., Malcolm IV., and William the Lion. So late, indeed, as 1305, we find a recognition of the Cymry as a distinct element of the population of southern Scotland, in the enactment that &quot; the usages of the Bretts shall be abolished and no more used.&quot; And it is to Welsh that we must still look for the etymology of the names of the great natural features of that district of southern Scotland which would appear to have been the scene of the battles of the historical Arthur. From Welsh the names Tweed, Teviot, Clyde, Nith, and Annan, and the numerous Esks, Edens, and Levens, &c., are all derived. From Welsh, also, we explain Cheviot, and the names of the border hills. And where the emi nences of southern Scotland are not hills, fdls, laws, or knowes, they are pens, as in Wales or Cornwall. But if, as these various facts (and particularly the con nection in which Arthur is mentioned in contemporary, or approximately contemporary, histories and historical poems) lead us to believe, Arthur was a leader of those northern Cymry afterwards absorbed in the population of southern Scotland and the English border, then, in this district, we ought certainly to find localities which can be more or less clearly identified with those mentioned in the earliest historical notices of Arthur ; and localities also which, in their names or the traditions associated with them, commemorate his story. Now, it has been shown that such localities are not only found in the district thus defined, but arc found there in such numbers as can no where else be paralleled. And a very important verifica tion is thus obtained of what, from the scantiness of the earliest sources, might, if thus unsupported, be regarded as a mere hypothesis rather than a theory, with respect to the scene of the battles of the historical Arthur. Scotland, however, is but the northern extremity of a long line of country in which Arthurian localities arc found. What we may call the Arthur-land extends from the Forth and Clyde, or rather from the Grampians, in Scotland, to the Loire in France, and includes (besides the south of Scotland and the north of England) Wales, Somer setshire, Cornwall, and Brittany. It is certain that the scene of the battles of the historical Arthur of the Gth century could have been but a comparatively small area of this vast territory. There must, therefore, have been a migration of Arthurian traditions from the south to the north, or from the north to the south. And if, on quite independent grounds, we find it more probable that such migration of tradition was from the north to the south, rather than from the south to the north, it is evident that we shall have a still further verification of the hypothesis suggested by our examination of the earliest historical records. Now, considering these facts, Cymric migrations from, but not to, the north ; the northern descents of some of the southern dynasties; the upburst of Cymric literature (which belongs in the main to the mediaeval period) con temporaneously with the last struggles for, and final loss of, national independence; and the satisfaction, too great to be regardful of historical truth, which a conquered people would have in locally commemorating former victories and heroes of their race, we cannot but see conditions in the highest degree favourable to the importation from the north of the Arthurian traditions of Wales, the south-west of England, and the north-west of France. On the other hand, we not only find no conditions favourable to the importation of Arthurian traditions from the south into the north, but con ditions that would have been positively inimical to the pre servation of such traditions, and conditions, therefore, that would seem to make it impossible to explain the existence of Arthurian localities in the north, except on the hypothesis of the north having been the scene of actual Arthurian events. Such conditions are to be found in these facts : the absorption of the northern Cymry by a kindred race with whom they had never, save temporarily, been at war, viz., the Scots, a brother of whose king they had themselves voluntarily elected to the throne in 918, previously to their being regularly incorporated with the Scottish nationality after the treaty of 940 between Malcolm II. and their Saxon foe, Edmund of Wessex ; the preparation for this political incorporation in the 10th century by an ecclesias tical incorporation in the 8th century, through the sub version of the native Cymric Church by the opponent Irish or Columban Church of the Scots with its Gaelic language, whence followed the dying out of the Cymric language ; and, finally, the possession by the Scots, with whom the northern Cymry were thus incorporated, of a traditional and poetic literature of their own, which must certainly have greatly opposed the introduction, after their incor poration of the Cymry, of Cymric poetry and tradition, and been highly unfavourable to its preservation, if it had any other than a native historical origin. But yet, further, it is to be noted that Arthurian localities are, speaking gene rally, found in Scotland only where, in the Gth century, there was a Cymric population ; that that part of Scotland in which Arthurian localities are, speaking generally, not found, coincides with the ancient kingdoms of the Ficts and Scots, and is dotted all over with localities belonging to the other great cycle of Celtic tradition, the Fenian, Fingalian, or Ossianic ; and that, while Fingalian localities arc not found at all in the Arthurian district, Arthurian localities arc found in the Fingalian district, or in the ancient territory of the Picts, only in cases in which their being found in that territory is a strong indication of their having originated in such actual historical facts as they commemorate, ]

Additions to Historic Facts and Introduction of Mythological Elements.—From the Saxon invasions resulted two emigrations closely succeeding each other of Britons into French Brittany ; and the impenetrable forests and moun tains of Wales afforded a refuge where the more recent fugitives from Wessex or the north mingled with the earlier O O exiles from Kent, and hence the subsequent confusion of historic facts. Yortigcrn of Kent became in the legend the kinsman of Ambrosius of Wessex; the gaps in the history were filled up by mythic reminiscences, and to Arthur was assigned a celestial and miraculous parentage from Uthyr Penclragon, that is to say, Head of the Dragon. Under the form of a cloud this Celtic Jupiter became the father of Arthur, who in the same mythological order gave his name to two constellations, Arthur s chariot, i.e., the Great Bear, and Arthur s lyre. But the word for cloud in Welsh was Gorlasar. Now, whilst the legend was carried from place to place acquiring new force, the Celtic world had made a stand against Roman and Teu tonic ideas ; there was, as in Greece, a tendency to ex plain the earlier myths, no longer understood, into the gross elements of adultery and incest; bastardy was not censured, &c. Thus the Uthyr Pendragon of the Romances of the Round Table is a real Jupiter. The cloud becomes a man, Gorloes; and there is an Alcmene, Ygierne. In short, when Molicre has, with more genius than morality, diverted so many generations by his Amphitryon, he is striking an old Celtic and Welsh chord. Then Arthur is another Hercules. An advantage, from a national point of view, gained to the legend by Arthur s celestial and pagan origin, is that he becomes by it at once above and akin to all the Celtic chiefs. All the chiefs become his brethren ; their sons, who flock to fight under his banner, his beaux nevevx, though one, indeed, among them is the traitor Medrod of the Welsh legends. Mordred of the romances. So in dream was founded, 