The Lost Land of King Arthur. Walters John Cuming
now divided into the counties of Hereford, Monmouth and Glamorgan. Brecknock and Radnor may have been added, and it is certain that Arthur had supreme dominion over Cornwall and part of Somerset and Devon. Any “kings” of these places, such as Erbin, father of Geraint, must have been tributary to him. Tacitus has left us an account of the valour, the determination, and the warrior qualities of the Silures, who had Iberian blood in their veins. It was after the Roman and Saxon invasions that they removed their seat of Government from London to Siluria, Arthur having his court at Caerleon. The Britons were a Christian race, for that religion had been introduced among the Latinised Brythonic tribes before the end of the second century. This race prevailed over the Goidels and Ivernians in the territory, and on the recall of the Roman legions one of the Brythons succeeded the Dux Britanniarum and thus became the head of the Cymry (or Cambroges, “fellow-countrymen”). Saxon Cerdic and his son Cymric for twenty years found it impossible to break through the forest districts west of the Avon, which formed the outwork of the British forces; and we may almost take it for granted that at one time the whole of the west country was in Arthur’s power, a line from Liddlesdale in the north to the southern extremity of Lyonnesse, taking in Cumberland, Wales (and perhaps Staffordshire and Shropshire), Devon and Cornwall, roughly marking the boundary. But his reported excursions north of the Trent and to the east counties would also lead to the inference that for some time the tribe overran the major part of the country. Hence we can account for the large number of scattered memorials of the monarch found in all parts of the land, though superstition may have attached his name to many places where he was absolutely unknown. Arthur’s Seats, or Quoits, abound. They are to be found both in North and South Wales, and the name seems to have been given to any rock or commanding situation which in the popular fancy was fit to bear it. In Anglesey, in the wooded grounds of Llwyliarth a seat of the Lloyd family, a rocking stone, the famous Maen Chwf, is called Arthur’s Quoit. Cefn Bryn ridge in Glamorganshire, an imposing elevation, is crowned with a cromlech, together with numerous cairns and tumuli. The cromlech, known as Arthur’s Stone, is a mass of millstone grit fourteen feet long and seven feet two inches deep, and rests upon a number of upright supporters each five feet high. In the Welsh Triads this cromlech, which is near the turnpike road from Reynoldstone to Swansea, is alluded to as “the big stone of Sketty,” and it ranks as one of the wonders of Wales. Another such stone is to be found in Moccas parish, Herefordshire, the cromlech in this case being eighteen feet long, nine feet broad, and twelve feet thick, and supported originally by eleven upright pillars. The colossal king was to have colossal monuments. Brecknockshire has several imposing memorials of Arthur. Five miles south of Brecon rise the twin peaks of the mountain range, and they are designated Arthur’s Chair. A massive British cromlech adjoining the park of Mocras Court is called Arthur’s Table. On the edge of Gossmoor there is a large stone upon which are impressed marks resembling four horse-shoes. Tradition asserts that these marks were made by the horse King Arthur rode when he resided at Castle Denis and hunted on the moors. Between Mold and Denbigh is Moel Arthur, an ancient British fort, defended by two ditches of great depth. At Rhuthyn (Ruthin) in the vicinity King Arthur is said to have beheaded his enemy Huail (Howel), to whom Gildas refers. The record might be extended indefinitely, though no valid argument can be based upon any of the facts. The indiscriminate use of Arthur’s name often shows an extravagance of imagination and a reckless disregard of what is appropriate. Between Mold and Ruthin, for instance, is Maen Arthur, a stone which popular fancy has adjudged to bear the exact impression of the hoof of the king’s steed. There is something like substantial reason for believing that the British hero was connected with Monmouth, Cardiff, and even with Dover, and either the Arthur of the Silures or another British chief seems to have reached Carlisle—that is, if the chronicles did not confuse Cardoile with Carduel. The Cumbrian Arthur figures in two ancient ballads, “The Marriage of Gawaine,” and “The Boy and the Mantle,” while Scott’s poem of Arthur and his Court at Carlisle is, of course, too well known to need more than a reference. In the time of Baeda Carlisle was known as Lugubalia, which name by corruption became Luel. The British prefix Caer, a stone fort, made the name Caer-Luel, and as such it was long known. It gradually degenerated into Carliol, and finally became Carlisle. That the ancient city should have become confused with Caerleon is natural and explicable. Yet Arthur’s connection with a portion of the north is strongly insisted on. Where Wigan now stands he fought a famous battle. Pendragon Castle in Westmoreland claims him as its founder; and passing by easy stages we find ourselves confronted with a Northumbrian Arthur. From this point the transition to Scotland itself is extremely easy, the lowland part of that country being claimed as the veritable Cameliard.
According to no mean authority, we must leave England entirely and search in the North alone for the sites, not only of King Arthur’s battles, but for all the places connected with his exploits and his residence. Badon is then found in Linlithgowshire at Bowden Hill, and the great battle of Arderydd is located at Arthuret in Liddlesdale. The Scotch Merlin and the Scotch Lancelot are the king’s companions, and a Scotch Gildas is the historian. The resting place of Avalon is then found in the caverns of the Eildon Hills, and the voice to rouse him from his charmed sleep will echo through them and “peal proud Arthur’s march from fairyland.” As a curious fact it may be mentioned that nearly all the heroes of the “Four Ancient Books of Wales” are traced to Scotland, and admittedly in the Arthurian legend the British king was connected with as northern a place as the Orkneys by the marriage of his sister to the king of those islands. Of King Arthur, the Scotch ballad rudely tells that when he ruled that land he “ruled it like a swine.” The story of the king was the diversion of James V., who may have known that Drummelziar on the Tweed could boast of a Holy Thorn like Glastonbury, that there was an Arthur’s Oven on the Carron near Falkirk, and that Guinevere’s sepulchre was at Meigle in Strathmore. Edinburgh, or Agnet, is positively represented as the site where the Castle of Maidens stood, and the lion-shaped Arthur’s Hill is supposed to confirm the tradition that here the king abode and made his name.11 His tomb is pointed out in Perthshire, and all the machinery of the romances is claimed as of Scotch origin and invention. The names of localities are traced, and by transporting Arthur boldly to the Lowlands we account more easily for his rapid incursions into Northumberland and of the country north of the Trent, if we cannot for his equally rapid journeys to Dover and Almesbury and Winchester.
Are not the interchangeability of names and the duplication of persons and places susceptible of a very simple explanation? Caerleon, or Carduel, was confused with Carlisle, each in itself a fitting and likely place for Arthurian exploits; the historians were grievously misled as to Winchester and the part it occupied in the romances; and we know now that various contradictions simply arose from the confusion in the minds of the chroniclers, who never seemed to have been quite certain whether Caledonia and Calydon were not one and the same, whether Camelot was inland or by the sea, whether Joyous Gard was a few days’ or a few months’ journey from Cornwall, whether Camelot was in England or in Wales, whether Arthur’s “owne castell” at Tintagel could be reached by “riding all night” from London, or whether Lyonnesse was Cornwall or Brittany. A hundred topographical complexities meet us wherever we look, and the sole conclusion of the matter is that Geoffrey and his successors inextricably mixed Scotch, Welsh, and Armoric details both in regard to the stories and the localities. The historians made no effort to be consistent in their allusions, to reconcile contradictory statements, or to account for abrupt changes of scene from the South-West to the North. While they endeavoured to concentrate Arthur’s kingdom in South Wales and Cornwall they made occasional sweeps to Berwick and Edinburgh, and annihilated the distance between Dover and Carlisle. To add to the confusion there were names, especially in the Lowlands of Scotland and in the West of England, of the same derivation, and, as Mr. Glennie has demonstrated, it is as easy to discover a Caledonian Caerleon, Avalon, or Camelot as it is to discover any of them in the district once called Cameliard. The unravelling of the skein, which became more and more entangled as new hands developed the romances, is now almost an impossibility. Arthur’s own name was changed, and it has been affirmed that he is still confused with Arthurius of Gwent, and with others of like name who were distinct persons. The conclusion of the whole matter must be that names in the romances are a source of error and confusion; that different significances were attached to them by the chroniclers themselves, and that if the truth be ever established totally new meanings may be expected.
Let me here give one
“Arthur’s seat” may be but an adaptation of the Gaelic Ard-na-said, or “the height of the arrows.”