Page:The mythology of ancient Britain and Ireland (IA mythologyofancie00squiiala).pdf/88

 place in which it was kept is but vaguely pictured by Sir Thomas Malory, the thirteenth century Norman-French romance called the Seint Greal preserves all the characteristics which most strike us in Taliesin's poem. It is surrounded by a great water; it revolves more swiftly than the wind; and its garrison shoot so stoutly that no armour can repel their shafts, which explains why, of the men that accompanied Arthur, 'except seven, none returned from Caer Sidi.'

'The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force'; this is the spiritualised meaning of the Celtic myth, and in this has lain the lasting inspiration of the story which attracted Milton so strongly that it was almost by chance that we did not have from him a King Arthur instead of Paradise Lost. In our own times it has enchanted the imagination of Tennyson, while Swinburne, Morris, and Matthew Arnold have also borne witness to the poetic value of a tradition which is as national to Britain as the Veda to India, or her epic poems to Greece.