King Alfred of England | Page 2

romance and fable. Before arts and letters
arrived at such a state of progress as that public events could be
recorded in writing, tradition was the only means of handing down the
memory of events from generation to generation; and tradition, among
semi-savages, changes every thing it touches into romantic and
marvelous fiction.
The stories connected with the earliest discovery and settlement of
Great Britain afford very good illustrations of the nature of these
fabulous tales. The following may serve as a specimen:
At the close of the Trojan war,[1] Æneas retired with a company of

Trojans, who escaped from the city with him, and, after a great variety
of adventures, which Virgil has related, he landed and settled in Italy.
Here, in process of time, he had a grandson named Silvius, who had a
son named Brutus, Brutus being thus Æneas's great-grandson.
One day, while Brutus was hunting in the forests, he accidentally killed
his father with an arrow. His father was at that time King of Alba--a
region of Italy near the spot on which Rome was subsequently
built--and the accident brought Brutus under such suspicions, and
exposed him to such dangers, that he fled from the country. After
various wanderings he at last reached Greece, where he collected a
number of Trojan followers, whom he found roaming about the country,
and formed them into an army. With this half-savage force he attacked
a king of the country named Pandrasus. Brutus was successful in the
war, and Pandrasus was taken prisoner. This compelled Pandrasus to
sue for peace, and peace was concluded on the following very
extraordinary terms:
Pandrasus was to give Brutus his daughter Imogena for a wife, and a
fleet of ships as her dowry. Brutus, on the other hand, was to take his
wife and all his followers on board of his fleet, and sail away and seek
a home in some other quarter of the globe. This plan of a monarch's
purchasing his own ransom and peace for his realm from a band of
roaming robbers, by offering the leader of them his daughter for a wife,
however strange to our ideas, was very characteristic of the times.
Imogena must have found it a hard alternative to choose between such
a husband and such a father.
Brutus, with his fleet and his bride, betook themselves to sea, and
within a short time landed on a deserted island, where they found the
ruins of a city. Here there was an ancient temple of Diana, and an
image of the goddess, which image was endued with the power of
uttering oracular responses to those who consulted it with proper
ceremonies and forms. Brutus consulted this oracle on the question in
what land he should find a place of final settlement. His address to it
was in ancient verse, which some chronicler has turned into English
rhyme as follows:

"Goddess of shades and huntress, who at will Walk'st on the rolling
sphere, and through the deep, On thy third reign, the earth, look now
and tell What land, what seat of rest thou bidd'st me seek?"
To which the oracle returned the following answer:
"Far to the west, in the ocean wide, Beyond the realm of Gaul a land
there lies-- Sea-girt it lies--where giants dwelt of old. Now void, it fits
thy people; thither bend Thy course; there shalt thou find a lasting
home."
It is scarcely necessary to say that this meant Britain. Brutus, following
the directions which the oracle had given him, set sail from the island,
and proceeded to the westward through the Mediterranean Sea. He
arrived at the Pillars of Hercules. This was the name by which the Rock
of Gibraltar and the corresponding promontory on the opposite coast,
across the straits, were called in those days; these cliffs having been
built, according to ancient tales, by Hercules, as monuments set up to
mark the extreme limits of his western wanderings. Brutus passed
through the strait, and then, turning northward, coasted along the shores
of Spain.
At length, after enduring great privations and suffering, and
encountering the extreme dangers to which their frail barks were
necessarily exposed from the surges which roll in perpetually from the
broad Atlantic Ocean upon the coast of Spain and into the Bay of
Biscay, they arrived safely on the shores of Britain. They landed and
explored the interior. They found the island robed in the richest drapery
of fruitfulness and verdure, but it was unoccupied by any thing human.
There were wild beasts roaming in the forests, and the remains of a race
of giants in dens and caves--monsters as diverse from humanity as the
wolves. Brutus and his followers attacked all these occupants of the
land. They drove the wild beasts into the mountains of Scotland and