A Short History of England | Page 9

set sail as a missionary, and after long voyages
came to that litter of little islands which seemed to the men of the
Mediterranean something like the last clouds of the sunset. He came up
upon the western and wilder side of that wild and western land, and
made his way to a valley which through all the oldest records is called
Avalon. Something of rich rains and warmth in its westland meadows,
or something in some lost pagan traditions about it, made it persistently
regarded as a kind of Earthly Paradise. Arthur, after being slain at
Lyonesse, is carried here, as if to heaven. Here the pilgrim planted his
staff in the soil; and it took root as a tree that blossoms on Christmas
Day.
A mystical materialism marked Christianity from its birth; the very soul
of it was a body. Among the stoical philosophies and oriental negations
that were its first foes it fought fiercely and particularly for a
supernatural freedom to cure concrete maladies by concrete substances.
Hence the scattering of relics was everywhere like the scattering of
seed. All who took their mission from the divine tragedy bore tangible
fragments which became the germs of churches and cities. St. Joseph
carried the cup which held the wine of the Last Supper and the blood of
the Crucifixion to that shrine in Avalon which we now call Glastonbury;
and it became the heart of a whole universe of legends and romances,
not only for Britain but for Europe. Throughout this tremendous and
branching tradition it is called the Holy Grail. The vision of it was
especially the reward of that ring of powerful paladins whom King
Arthur feasted at a Round Table, a symbol of heroic comradeship such
as was afterwards imitated or invented by mediæval knighthood. Both
the cup and the table are of vast importance emblematically in the
psychology of the chivalric experiment. The idea of a round table is not
merely universality but equality. It has in it, modified of course, by
other tendencies to differentiation, the same idea that exists in the very
word "peers," as given to the knights of Charlemagne. In this the

Round Table is as Roman as the round arch, which might also serve as
a type; for instead of being one barbaric rock merely rolled on the
others, the king was rather the keystone of an arch. But to this tradition
of a level of dignity was added something unearthly that was from
Rome, but not of it; the privilege that inverted all privileges; the
glimpse of heaven which seemed almost as capricious as fairyland; the
flying chalice which was veiled from the highest of all the heroes, and
which appeared to one knight who was hardly more than a child.
Rightly or wrongly, this romance established Britain for after centuries
as a country with a chivalrous past. Britain had been a mirror of
universal knighthood. This fact, or fancy, is of colossal import in all
ensuing affairs, especially the affairs of barbarians. These and
numberless other local legends are indeed for us buried by the forests
of popular fancies that have grown out of them. It is all the harder for
the serious modern mind because our fathers felt at home with these
tales, and therefore took liberties with them. Probably the rhyme which
runs,
"When good King Arthur ruled this land He was a noble king, He stole
three pecks of barley meal,"
is much nearer the true mediæval note than the aristocratic stateliness
of Tennyson. But about all these grotesques of the popular fancy there
is one last thing to be remembered. It must especially be remembered
by those who would dwell exclusively on documents, and take no note
of tradition at all. Wild as would be the results of credulity concerning
all the old wives' tales, it would not be so wild as the errors that can
arise from trusting to written evidence when there is not enough of it.
Now the whole written evidence for the first parts of our history would
go into a small book. A very few details are mentioned, and none are
explained. A fact thus standing alone, without the key of contemporary
thought, may be very much more misleading than any fable. To know
what word an archaic scribe wrote without being sure of what thing he
meant, may produce a result that is literally mad. Thus, for instance, it
would be unwise to accept literally the tale that St. Helena was not only
a native of Colchester, but was a daughter of Old King Cole. But it

would not be very unwise; not so unwise as some things that are
deduced from documents. The natives of Colchester certainly did
honour to St. Helena, and might have had a king