The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland/Chapter 8

by Charles Squire

Chapter VIII
The Arthurian Legend

But the Gaelic myths, vital as they are, have yet caused no echo of themselves in the literatures. of the outside world. This distinction has been left for the legendary tales of the Britons. The Norman minstrels found the stories which they heard from their Welsh confrères so much to their liking that they readily adopted them, and spread thein from camp to camp and from court to court, wherever their dominant race held sway. Perhaps the finer qualities of Celtic romance made especial appeal to that new fashion of 'chivalry' which was growing up under the fosterage of poetry and romance by noble ladies. At any rate the Matière de Bretagne, as the stories of the British gods and heroes, and especially of Arthur, were called, came to be the leading source of poetic inspiration on the Continent. The whole vast Arthurian literature has its origin in British Celtic mythology.

We find the names of its chief characters, and can trace the nucleus of their stories, in Welsh songs and tales older than the earliest outburst of Arthurian romance in Europe, Arthur himself has, as we have tried to show in a previous chapter, several of the attributes and adventures of Gwydion son of Dôn, while the figures most closely connected with his story bear striking resemblance to the characters which surround Gwydion in the fourth 'branch' of the Mabinogi,^[1] a result probably due to the same type of myth having been current in different localities and associated in different districts with different names. Arianrod, who is said to have been the wife of a little-known and perhaps superseded and halfforgotten Sky-god called Nwyvre ('Space'), seems to be represented in Arthur's story by Gwyar, the consort of the Heaven-god Llûdd, and from comparison with later romance we may fairly assume that Gwyar was also Arthur's sister. In Gwalchmai and Medrawt, the good and evil brothers born of their union, we shall probably be right in recognising similar characters to Arianrod's sons, the gods of light and darkness, Lleu (Llew) and Dylan. This body of myth has passed down almost intact into the mediaeval Arthurian cycle. The wife of King Lot (Llûdd) is sister to Arthur; Lleu's counterpart, Gwalchmai,^[2] appears as Sir Gawaine, certain descriptions of whom in Malory's Morte Darthur are hardly comprehensible except as a misunderstood fragment of a mythology in which he appeared as a 'solar hero'; Modrawt has scarcely changed at all, either in name or character, in becoming Sir Mordred; while the stately figure of Math, ruler of the children of Dôn, is paralleled by the majestic Merlin, who watches over, and even dares to rebuke, his protégé, Arthur.

We are upon uncertain ground, however, in attempting to discover in the Arthurian cycle the other personages of the Mabinogian stories. Professor Rhys, in his Studies in the Arthurian Legend (1891), has devoted great ingenuity and learning to this task, but his identifications of Pwyll, of Rhiannon, of Prydéri, of Arawn, of Gwyn, and of Amaethon with characters in the inediaeval romances, whatever may happen to them in the future, cannot at present be considered as otherwise than hazardous. The transformations of Brân seem less open to doubt. The name of King Brandegore may probably be resolved into Brân of Gower, and of Sir Brandiles into Brân of Gwales (Gresholin Island); he is perhaps King Ban of Benwyk, and Bron, who brought the Grail to Britain; as Balan, he is brought into contact with Balin, who seems to be the Gallo-British Bělěnos; while Uther Pendragon himself may have been originally Brân's 'Wonderful Ilead' (Uthr Ben) which lived for eighty-seven years after it had been severed from its body. But there can be little question as to other personages who surround Arthur both in the earlier and later legends. Myrddin as Merlin; March as King Mark; Gwalchaved as Sir Galahad; Kai as Sir Kay; and Gwenhwyvar as Guinevere have obviously been directly taken over from Welsh story.

But here we are confronted with a notable exception. It is of Sir Lancelot, King Arthur's peerless knight and the lover of Queen Guinevere, that no trace can be found in earlier legend. He is not heard of till the latter part of the twelfth century, when he appears as a knight who was stolen in infancy, and brought up by, a water-fairy (whence his title of Du Lac),^[3] but thenceforward he supersedes in popularity all the others of the Table Round. In his rôle of the lover of the Queen, he pushes his way into, and shatters, the older traditions. According to early story it was Melwas, the Cornish equivalent of the Welsh Gwyn ab Nûdd, who stole Gwenhwyvar, and Arthur himself who recaptured her. But in the Morte Darthur, though Melwas, whose name has become 'Sir Meliagraunce,' is still the abductor of Queen Guinevere, it is Sir Lancelot who appears as her deliverer. Nor can Sir Mordred, or Medrawt, another traditional rival of Arthur's, hold his own against the new-comer.

Probably we shall never solve this mystery. Some literary or social fashion of which all record is lost may have dictated Lancelot's prominence. It matters less, as it is not the core and centre of the Arthurian legend. What has given the cycle its enduring interest, as testified by its attraction for author, artist, and composer down to the present day, is not the somewhat commonplace love of Lancelot and the Queen, but the mystical quest of the Holy Grail. And here we can clearly trace the direct evolution of the Arthurian legend from the myths of the Celts.^[4]

Both in Gaelic and British mythology, prominence is given to a cauldron which has wondrous talismanic virtues. It was one of the four chief treasures brought by the Tuatha Dé Danann to Ireland; Cuchulainn captured it from the god Mider, when he stormed his stronghold in the Isle of Man; and it reappears in the Fenian stories. Its especial property in these myths was that of miraculous food-providing—all the men in the world, we are told, could be fed from it—and in this quality we find it on British ground as the basket of Gwyddneu Garanhir. But certain other such vessels of Brythonic myth were endowed with different, and less material, virtues. A magic cauldron given by Brân son of Llŷr to Matholwch, the husband of his sister Branwen, would restore the dead to life; in her cauldron of Inspiration and Science, the goddess Kerridwen brewed a drink of prophecy; while from the cauldron of the giant Ogyrvan, the father of Gwenhwyvar, the three Muses had been born.

In what is perhaps the latest of all these varying legends, the qualities of the previous cauldrons have been brought together to form the trophy which Arthur, in the early Welsh poem called 'The Spoiling of Annwn,' (see p. 50) is represented as having captured from the Other World King. 'Is it not the cauldron of the Chief of Annwn?' What is its fashion?' asks the bard Taliesin, and he goes on to describe it as rimmed with pearls, and gently warmed by the breath of nine maidens. 'It will not cook the food of a coward or one forsworn,' he continues, which allows us to assume that, like such vessels as the Dagda's cauldron or the basket of Gwyddneu Garanhir, it would provide generously for the brave and truthful. It was kept in a square fortress surrounded by the sea, and called by various names, such as the Revolving Castle (Cuer Sidi), the Underworld (Uffern), the Four-cornered Castle (Caer Pedryvan), the Castle of (?) Revelry (Caer Vedwyd), the (?) Kingly Castle (Caer Rigor), the Glass Castle (Caer Wydyr), and the Castle of (?) Riches (Caer Golud). This stronghold, ruled over by Pwyll and Prydéri, is represented as spinning round with such velocity that it was almost impossible to enter it, and was in pitch-darkness save for a twilight made by the lamp burning before its gate, but its inhabitants, who were exempt from old age and disease, led lives of revelry, quaffing the bright wine. Evidently, as may be ascertained from comparison with similar myths, it stood for the Other World, as conceived by the Celts.

This cauldron of pagan myth has altered strangely little in passing down through the centuries to become the Holy Grail which had been filled by Joseph of Arimathea with Christ's Blood. It is still kept in a mysterious castle by a mysterious king. In Malory's Morte Darthur this king is called Pelles, a name strangely like that of the Welsh Pwyll, and though in other versions of the Grail story, taken perhaps from variant British myths, the keeper of the mystic vessel bears a different name, he always seems to be one of the rulers of the Other World, whether he be called Bron (Brân), or Peleur (? Prydéri), or Goon (?Gwyn), or the Rich Fisher, in whom Professor Rhys recognises Gwyddneu Garanhir.^[5] It still retains in essence the qualities of the cauldron of the Chief of Annwn.' The savage cooking-pot which would refuse to serve a coward or perjuror with food, has been only refined, not altered, in becoming the heavenly vessel which could not be seen by sinners, while the older idea is still retained in the account of how, when it appeared, it filled the hall with sweet savours, while every knight saw before him on the table the food he loved best. Like its pagan prototype, it cured wounds and sickness, and no one could grow old while in its presence. Though, too, the place in which it was kept is but vaguely pictured by Sir Thomas Malory, the thirteenth century Norman-French romance called the Seint Greal^[6] 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.

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1. See Rhys, Studies in the Arthurian Legend, chap. i. ' Arthur, Historical and Mythical.'
2. In Welsh legend, Gwalchmai (the 'Hawk of May') has a brother, Gwalchaved (the Hawk of Summer'), whose name is the original of 'Galahad.'
3. See Miss J. L. Weston's The Legend of Sir Lancelot Du Lac. London, 1901.
4. The chief authorities for the study of the Grail legend in its relation to Celtic myth are Professor Rhŷs's Studies in the Arthurian Legend and Mr. Alfred Nutt's Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail.
5. Arthurian Legend, pp. 315–317.
6. Edited and translated by the Rev. Robert Williams, M. A. London, 1876.