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BY D. S. GREGORY, D.D.,
LL.D.
THOSE of the living whose
locks have been somewhat touched with the snow of years will readily
recall the sensation produced in the English- speaking world by the
publication of Tennson's "Idylls of the King." But probably only the
fewest know that back of this allegorical epic there is clearly
traceable a legendary growth perhaps the most remarkable in human
history.
The purpose here is to
sketch the course of this growth and development, of what is popularly
known as the Arthurian Romance, from its source to the latest and
completest embodiment. No better illustration could be furnished of the
way in which the popular heart cherishes and the popular imagination
touches, moulds, and supplements these masses of legendary lore.
The Welsh or Celtic
Starting Point.—Some of the raw material found embodied in Tennyson's
finished product may be traced back directly twelve hundred years or
more. Its first elements seem to have originated among the Welsh or Old
Britons, and to have taken shape as early as 700 A.D. To the same
people—.rich in imagination—have been traced the story of Queen Mab,
much of the English fairy mythology and of the material of Chaucer and
Spenser, and the legends that formed the ground-work of "King Lear" and
"Midsummer Night's Dream." About the middle of the tenth century,
Wennius, in his " History of the Britons," gathered and gave permanent
form to what was to figure so largely in later romance and poetry.
Brutus, grandson of AEneas the Trojan, the mythical founder of Britain,
and King Arthur, he of the Round Table, figured largely in the work of
Nennius. In fact, he sketches the mythical origin of the Britons and
Scots, the occupation of Britain by the Romans, the reign of Vortigem,
the successive settlements of the Saxons, and the twelve battles in
which King Arthur, in the sixth century, is said to have defeated the
Saxons.
The Anglo-Norman Stage.—
When the Norman came in with his new needs and notions, it became
necessary, in order to reach him, to put this romantic material into
suitable Latin and French forms. This marks the second stage in the
legendary growth.
It was about 1147 A.D.
that Geoffrey of 1'Ionmout/i sent out in Latin form his "History of the
Britons" ("Historia Britonum"). He was familiar with the works of Gildas
and Bede; and while meditating on their failure to give an account of
the origin of the Britons, of their early kings, and especially of
Arthur, Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, offered him "a very ancient book
in the British tongue, which, in a continued, regular story and elegant
style, related the actions of them all, from Brutus, the first king of
the Britons, down to Cadwallader, the son of Cadwallo." Geoffrey's book
purports to have been a translation of this. But however that may be,
his work revived the old legends of Nennius, added new elements, and
made what in that age was a great story out of the whole. He called it
"history," it is true, but it was in fact made up of the story of
Brutus, the story of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and the
story of Merlin drawn from Persian and Indian sources. The inspiring
influence of this beginning of English story-telling has remained as a
permanent source of literary inspiration.
Soon after Geoffrey's
work appeared it was given a French form, to meet the needs of the
plainer people, who did not know Latin, and of the Court, which was more
at home in the French tongue. Its legends were put into French verse by
Geoffrey Gaimar, about 1154. He drew the introductory portion directly
from a Latin work, itself a translation from the Welsh original that
Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, had given to Geoffrey of Monmouth. In the
history proper is found the story of Havelok the Dane.
Then came the most famous
of these early writers of romance verse, Master Wace, a native of Jersey
and a son of a Norman baron, who wrote about i i8o for Henry II.,
expanding the legends to more than fifteen thousand octo-syllabic lines.
His production had a wide circulation, and still exists in manuscript
and in printed form.
It was left to his
contemporary, Walter Mapes, or Map, to infuse a poetic soul into the
legendary mass, and greatly to enlarge it.
One of the new elements
now to be incorporated in the romance was the story of the Saint Greal.
The popularity of the romance literature at this time seems to have left
the priests and the Church almost without a hearing; hence arose out of
the demands of the situation "the original romances on the quest of the
Saint Greal, or Saint Graal, which are to be considered as forming a
distinct body of fiction from those relating to the Round Table."
According to the common account in the British romances, which appear to
be derived from the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus, the Saint Greal is
"the plate from which Christ ate His last supper, and which is said to
have been appropriated by Joseph of Arimathea, and to have been
afterward used by him to collect the blood that flowed from the wounds
of the Redeemer." Later it was brought to Britain and lost ; hence the
search for it. Some would trace the legend back to an original Welsh
book by the bard Tysilio; but the oldest verse romance on the subject
was probably that composed by Chrétien de Troyes about 1170 A.D., of
which fragments still remain. The monkish versions greatly enlarged the
original.
It was a stroke of genius
on the part of Mapes to seize upon the legend, incorporate it with the
Arthurian Romance proper, and dedicate it to Henry II. It was his task
to transform and elaborate the whole, and to add many new elements,
until his story by its supreme fascination left the priests again
without auditors.
When Mapes had completed
his work it embraced most of the factors that appear in Tennyson. He had
interwoven the story of the Saint Greal with the old Arthurian material
and the separate legends of Lancelot, Gawain, Percival and Tristan, so
as to make them all seem parts of one great cycle. This was naturally
and practically the closing of the Norman development of these legends.
The Early English
Stage.—With Magna Charta and the withdrawal from the Continent came the
full birth of the English nation. The new language, with its infections
levelled or being levelled, required that the legends should be given a
new form in order to reach the people.
Layarnon, a priest of
Ernley, on the western bank of the Severn, made the first essay toward
meeting this need, in his "Brut" or "Chronicle of Britain."
The new book, however,
was principally a translation of Wace's "Brut d'Angleterre," with large
additions from other sources. Its genealogy reaches back through Wace's
book to Geoffrey of Monmouth's " Historia Britonum," which Wace
translated and added to, and again to the Welsh or Breton original,
which was the starting- point. How large the additions made by Layamon
were appears from the fact that his work extended to 32,250 lines. It
appeared opportunely soon after 1200 A.D., opening to the imagination of
the English people the past history of the island, and furnishing a
common bond of interest for Saxon and Norman. It was adapted to the
common people, and how thoroughly English, or Saxon, they were in their
speech is shown by the fact that not more than fifty Latin and French
words are found in the entire production. It is everywhere touched with
the Anglo-Saxon spirit. The features that strike one are, the presence
of creative and poetic power of no mean order, and the generous
additions of purely imaginative elements without touch of fact or
history.
Almost a century
later—some time after 1297—Robert of Gloucester, a monk, produced his
metrical "Chronicle," by translating and versifying Geoffrey of
Monmouth's "History of the Britons." It is of little interest, except as
forming one more link in the succession by which the legends have,
through the activity of the popular imagination, connected themselves
with the present time.
It was reserved for the
close of the fifteenth century to give distinct artistic shaping to the
material that heretofore, except perhaps by Mapes, had been little more
than touched by the higher, creative imagination. Sir Thomas Malory,
knight—so the tradition runs— finished his epic, "Morte Darthur," about
the ninth year of King Edward IV., and took it to Caxton, the famous
printer, who published it in 1485. Caxton says that Malory "took his
work 'out of certain books of French, and reduced it into English.'" But
it is furthest possible from being a mere translation or compilation;
its special advance upon former treatments of the English legends is in
artistic construction. Although prose in form, it is epic and poetic in
matter and spirit.
To Tennyson was left the
needed final transformation and complete artistic embodiment of the
English legends, with the Brutus and other unessential parts dropped
out, in his epic, "The Idylls of the King." By Tennyson a new organic
idea is introduced, or, perhaps it is better to say, brought out of the
material by the intuition of a seer, and the whole becomes an
allegorical epic delineating "The War of the Soul with Sense." The
cycles in the movement of the deadly struggle appear, as the choicest of
the old material is wrought together with the poet's added lore and
genius, in an epilogue and eight idylls. It is not the purpose here to
trace these cycles, but merely to note the completion of the artistic
work of the national imagination, ending in the dropping out of nearly
all the fact and history.
This rapid survey has
perhaps sufficiently sketched an accessible line for the study of a
great legendary growth under the shaping imagination of a people.
The Arthurian Romance in
its present form came from the gathering up of many and heterogeneous
fragments of imaginative lore, to which a succession of men of genius
gave their successive additions and touches, for the purpose of catching
the fancy of many generations of hearers and readers - the final product
of Tennyson being pure fancy still. The final organic idea of Tennyson
was not in any way in the original, or in any of the forms given to it
later. In fine, the process of development, as seen in the Arthurian
Romance, is that of a people putting artistic ideas, by the work of its
men of genius, into an incoherent and impossible legendary mass,
replacing older fancy by newer, until the supreme genius came who sifted
the whole and transformed it into a creative literary product. |
