Stories from Le Morte DArthur and the Mabinogion | Page 2

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