among the stories of world-wide renown, not the least stirring are those that have gathered about the names of national heroes. the æneid, the nibelungenlied, the chanson de roland, the morte d'arthur,—they are not history, but they have been as national anthems to the races, and their magic is not yet dead.

in olden times our forefathers used to say that the world had seen nine great heroes, three heathen, three jewish, and three christian; among the christian heroes was british arthur, and of none is the fame greater. even to the present day, his name lingers in many widely distant places. in the peninsula of gower, a huge slab of rock, propped up on eleven short pillars, is still called arthur's stone; the lofty ridge which looks down upon edinburgh bears the name of arthur's seat; and—strangest, perhaps, of all—in the franciscan church of far-away innsbrück, the finest of the ten statues of ancestors guarding the tomb of the emperor maximilian i. is that of king arthur. there is hardly a country in europe without its tales of the warrior-king; and yet of any real arthur history tells us little, and that little describes, not the knightly conqueror, but the king of a broken people, struggling for very life.

more than fifteen centuries ago, this country, now called england, was inhabited by a celtic race known as the britons, a warlike people, divided into numerous tribes constantly at war with each other. but in the first century of the christian era they were conquered by the romans, who added britain to their vast empire and held it against attacks from without and rebellions from within by stationing legions, or troops of soldiers, in strongly fortified places all over the country. now, from their conquerors, the britons learnt many useful arts, to read and to write, to build houses and to make roads; but at the same time, they unlearnt some of their own virtues and, among others, how to think and act for themselves. for the romans never allowed a briton any real part in the government of his own country, and if he wished to become a soldier, he was sent away from britain to serve with a legion stationed in some far-distant part of the empire. thus it came about that when, in the fifth century, the romans withdrew from britain to defend rome itself from invading hordes of savages, the unhappy britons had forgotten how to govern and how to defend themselves, and fell an easy prey to the many enemies waiting to pounce on their defenceless country. picts from scotland invaded the north, and scots from ireland plundered the west; worst of all, the heathen angles and saxons, pouring across the seas from their homes in the elbe country, wasted the land with fire and sword. many of the britons were slain; those who escaped sought refuge in the mountainous parts of the west from cornwall to the firth of clyde. there, forgetting, to some extent, their quarrels, they took the name of the cymry, which means the "brethren," though the english, unable to understand their language, spoke of them contemptuously as the "welsh," or the "strangers."

for a long time the struggle went on between the two races, and nowhere mere fiercely than in the south-west, where the invaders set up the kingdom of wessex; but at last there arose among the britons a great chieftain called arthur. the old histories speak of him as "emperor," and he seems to have been obeyed by all the britons; perhaps, therefore, he had succeeded to the position of the roman official known as the comes britanniæ, whose duty it was to hasten to the aid of the local governors in defending any part of britain where danger threatened. at all events, under his leadership, the oppressed people defeated the saxons in a desperate fight at mons badonicus, perhaps the little place in dorsetshire known as badbury, or, it may be, bath itself, which is still called badon by the welsh. after that victory, history has little to say about arthur. the stories tell that he was killed in a great battle in the west; but, nowadays, the wisest historians think it more probable that he met his death in a conflict near the river forth.

and so, in history, arthur, the hero of such a mass of romantic story, is little more than a name, and it is hardly possible to explain how he attained to such renown as the hero of marvellous and, sometimes, magical feats, unless on the supposition that he became confused with some legendary hero, half god, half man, whose fame he added to his own. perhaps not the least marvel about him is that he who was the hero of the britons, should have become the national hero of the english race that he spent his life in fighting. yet that is what did happen, though not till long afterwards, when the victorious english, in their turn, bent before their conquering kinsmen, the normans.

now in the reign of the third norman king, henry i., there lived a certain welsh priest known as geoffrey of monmouth. geoffrey seems to have been much about the court, and perhaps it was the norman love of stories that first made him think of writing his history of the british kings. a wonderful tale he told of all the british kings from the time that brut the trojan settled in the country and called it, after himself, britain! for geoffrey's book was history only in name. what he tells us is that he was given an ancient chronicle found in brittany, and was asked to translate it from welsh into the better known language, latin. it is hardly likely, however, that geoffrey himself expected his statement to be taken quite seriously. even in his own day, not every one believed in him, for a certain yorkshire monk declared that the historian had "lied saucily and shamelessly"; and some years later, gerald the welshman tells of a man who had intercourse with devils, from whose sway, however, he could be freed if a bible were placed upon his breast, whereas he was completely under their control if geoffrey's history were laid upon him, just because the book was so full of lies.

it is quite certain that geoffrey did not write history, but he did make a capital story, partly by collecting legends about british heroes, partly by inventing stories of his own; so that though he is not entitled to fame as an historian, he may claim to rank high as a romantic story-teller who set a fashion destined to last for some three centuries.

so popular was his book that, not only in england, but, in an even greater degree, on the continent, writers were soon at work, collecting and making more stories about the greatest of his kings, arthur. by some it is thought that the normans took such delight in the knightly deeds of geoffrey's heroes that they spread the story in france when they visited their homes in normandy. moreover, they were in a good position to learn other tales of their favourite knights, for normandy bordered on brittany, the home of the bretons, who, being of the same race as the welsh, honoured the same heroes in their legends. so in return for geoffrey's tales, breton stories, perhaps, found their way into england; at all events, marvellous romances of king arthur and his round table were soon being told in england, in france, in germany and in italy.

now, to some it may seem strange that story-tellers should care to weave their stories so constantly about the same personages; strange, too, that they should invent stories about men and women who were believed actually to have existed. but it must be remembered that, in those early days, very few could read and write, and that, before printing was invented, books were so scarce that four or five constituted quite a library. those who knew how to read, and were so fortunate as to have books, read them again and again. for the rest, though kings and great nobles might have poets attached to their courts, the majority depended for their amusement on the professional story-teller. in the long winter evening, no one was more welcome than the wandering minstrel. he might be the knightly troubadour who, accompanied by a jongleur to play his accompaniments, wandered from place to place out of sheer love of his art and of adventure; more often, however, the minstrel made story-telling his trade, and gained his living from the bounty of his audience—be it in castle, market-place, or inn. most commonly, the narratives took the form of long rhyming poems; not because the people in those days were so poetical—indeed, some of these poems would be thought, in present times, very dreary doggerel—but because rhyme is easier to remember than prose. story-tellers had generally much the same stock-in-trade—stories of arthur, charlemagne, sir guy of warwick, sir bevis of southampton, and so on. if a minstrel had skill of his own, he would invent some new episode, and so, perhaps, turn a compliment to his patron by introducing the exploit of an ancestor, at the same time that he made his story last longer. people did not weary of hearing the same tales over and over again, any more than little children get tired of nursery rhymes, or their elders turn away from "punch and judy," though the same little play has been performed for centuries. as for inventing stories about real people, that may well have seemed permissible in an age when historians recorded mere hearsay as actual fact. richard iii., perhaps, had one shoulder higher than the other, but within a few years of his death grave historians had represented him as a hunchbacked deformity.

the romances connected with king arthur and his knights went on steadily growing in number until the fifteenth century; of them, some have survived to the present day, but undoubtedly many have been lost. then, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, the most famous of all the arthurian stories was given to the world in sir thomas malory's morte d'arthur. by good luck, the great printer who made it one of his first works, has left an account of the circumstances that led to its production. in the reign of edward iv., william caxton set up his printing-press (the first in england) in the precincts of westminster abbey. there he was visited, as he himself relates, by "many noble and divers gentlemen" demanding why he had not printed the "noble history of the saint grail and of the most-renowned christian king ... arthur." to please them, and because he himself loved chivalry, caxton printed sir thomas malory's story, in which all that is best in the many arthurian romances is woven into one grand narrative.

since then, in our own days, the story of arthur and his knights has been told in beautiful verse by lord tennyson; but for the originals of some of his poems it would be useless to look in malory. the story of geraint and enid, tennyson derived from a very interesting collection of translations of ancient welsh stories made by lady charlotte guest, and by her called mabinogion,[1] although not all welsh scholars would consider the name quite accurate.

[1] meaning the apprentices of the bards.

and now it is time to say something about the stories themselves. the arthur of history was engaged in a life-long struggle with an enemy that threatened to rob his people of home, of country, and of freedom; in the stories, the king and his knights, like richard coeur-de-lion, sought adventure for adventure's sake, or, as in the case of sir peredur, took fantastic vows for the love of a lady. the knights of the round table are sheathed from head to foot in plate armour, although the real arthur's warriors probably had only shirts of mail and shields with which to ward off the blows of the enemy. they live in moated castles instead of in halls of wood, and they are more often engaged in tournaments than in struggles with the heathen. in fact, those who wrote the stories represented their heroes as living such lives as they themselves led. just in the same way, dutch painters used to represent the shepherds in the bible story as dutch peasants; just so david garrick, the great actor of the eighteenth century, used to act the part of a roman in his own full-bottomed wig and wide-skirted coat.

it must not be forgotten that, in those far-away days when there were few who could even read or write, there was little that, in their ignorance, people were not prepared to believe. stories of marvels and magic that would deceive no one now, were then eagerly accepted as truth. those were the days when philosophers expected to discover the elixir of life; when doctors consulted the stars in treating their patients; when a noble of the royal blood, such as humphrey, duke of gloucester, could fall into disgrace because his wife was accused of trying to compass the king's death by melting a wax image of him before a slow fire.

of all the stories, perhaps the most mystical is that of the quest of the holy grail, and it has features peculiar to itself. nuns take the place of fair ladies; there are hermitages instead of castles; and the knights themselves, if they do not die, become monks or hermits. the reason for this change in scene and character is, that this is a romance in which the church was trying to teach men, by means of a tale such as they loved, the lesson of devotion and purity of heart.

the story sprang from certain legends which had grown up about the name of joseph of arimathea. it was related that, when our lord was crucified, joseph caught in a dish, or vessel, the blood which flowed from his wounded side. in later years, the pious jew left his home and, taking with him the precious vessel, sailed away on unknown seas until he came to the land of britain. in that country he landed, and at glastonbury he built himself a hermitage, where he treasured the sacred dish which came to be known as the saint grail. after joseph's death, the world grew more wicked, and so the holy grail disappeared from the sight of sinful men, although, from time to time, the vision of it was granted, as in the story, to the pure in heart.

in later days, legend said that where joseph's hermitage had stood, there grew up the famous monastery of glastonbury, and it came to have a special importance of its own in the arthurian romance. in the reign of henry ii., by the king's orders, the monks of glastonbury made search for the grave of king arthur, and, in due time, they announced that they had found it, nine feet below the soil, the coffin covered with a stone in which was inlaid a leaden cross bearing this inscription: "hic iacet sepultus inclitus rex arthurius in insula avalonia." some, however, suggested that the monks, less honest than anxious to please the masterful king, had first placed the stone in position and then found it!

one more feature of the tales remains to be mentioned: their geography. there is no atlas that will make it plain in all cases; and this is hardly wonderful, for so little was known of this subject that, even in the reign of henry viii., the learned lord berners was quite satisfied that his hero should journey to babylon by way of the nile! some of the places mentioned in the stories are, of course, familiar, and others, less well known, can, with a little care, be traced; but to identify all is not possible. caerleon, where king arthur so often held his court, still bears the same name, though its glory has sorely shrank since the days when it had a bishop of its own. camelot, where stood the marvellous palace built for the king by merlin, is perhaps the village of queen's camel in somersetshire. if it is borne in mind that the french call wales pays de galles, it is not difficult to see that north galis may well be north wales. gore is the peninsula of gower; liones probably the land south-west of cornwall, now sunk beneath the sea; and avalonia was the name given to one of the many small islands of the once marshy, low-lying shore of somersetshire, which became afterwards better known as glastonbury.

happily, it is neither on their history nor on their geography that the tales depend for their interest. as long as a story of adventure thrills; as long as gentleness, courtesy and consideration for the weak excite respect, so long will be read the tales of the brave times

"when every morning brought a noble chance,

and every chance brought out a noble knight."