power, but all in vain, so that Drystan came to be styled one of “the Three stout Swineherds of the Isle of Britain.” Or take another instance, namely the statement that Arthur had not one wife Gwenhwyvar, Malory’s Guenever, but three wives in succession, all called Gwenhwyvar. This strange piece of information likewise comes from the Triads,[1] and I should be surprised to learn that it found its way into them from the French romances rather than from some far older source.
Speaking generally of the Arthur of Welsh literature, one may characterise him in few words:—His first appearance is found to conform itself with the role of a Comes Britanniæ, on whom it devolved to help the inhabitants of what was once Roman Britain against invasion and insult, whether at the hands of Angles and Saxons or of Picts and Scots: so we read of him acting for the kings of the Brythons as their dux bellorum. We next find his fame re-echoed by the topography of the country once under his protection, and his name gathering round it the legends of heroes and divinities of a past of indefinite extent. In other words, he and his men, especially Kei and Bedwyr, are represented undertaking perilous expeditions to realms of mythic obscurity, bringing home treasures, fighting with hags and witches, despatching giants, and destroying monsters. How greatly this rude delineation of the triumph of man over violence and brute force differs from the more finished picture of the Arthur of Malory’s painting, it would be needless to try to shew to any one bent on the pleasure of perusing the Morte Darthur. Such a reader may be trusted to pursue the comparison unassisted, in the fascinating pages of this incomparable book.
The more important editions of the Morte Darthur have already been mentioned in the foregoing introduction (see p. vii). But since Principal Rhys wrote it (for the same publishers’ large two-volume edition of 1893–4) many popular reprints and volumes of selections and adaptations from Malory’s romance have appeared. A convenient pocket-guide to the wider field it indicates may be had in Miss Jessie L. Weston’s Survey of Arthurian Romance (in Nutt’s “Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance and Folklore”). The best companion romance-book is The Mabinogion, also republished in “Everyman’s Library.”
1906.
- ↑ Triad i. 59, ii. 16, iii. 109: see the Myv. Arch., vol. ii. pp. 12, 14, 73.
