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and deliverance to the poor Britons of the Border, who loved their 
wild hills and wooded dales, and fought for them with a 
tenacity as great, as has ever been displayed by their successors, on 
other occasions in later days. I need not remind you that at 
Penrith we have King Arthur’s table—of his connection with Tarn 
Wadling, which has now disappeared—or how, according to an 
early song— 
A long while 
He sojourned in merrie Carlisle. 
But beyond this it has been recently contended by one* who has 
explored the whole district from this to Edinburgh, with its Arthur’s 
Seat,. for traces of his hero—that his last great battle was fought on 
the rising ground of Arthuret, to the south of Longtown; that the 
Solway itself, as you may remember when next you listen to the 
lapping of its waters on the shore—the Solway itself was ‘the 
level lake,” into the waters of which, beneath the glories of the 
winter moon, the famous brand of the dying king, Excalibur, was 
thrown, and from which rose the mystic arm, that brandished it 
thrice, ere it disappeared, in token of the ultimate triumph of the 
genius of the Celtic race. 
Conjectural as this may be, the real connection of King 
Arthur with the district, I think, we need not doubt. And other 
struggles succeeded when he had past away. And now we have 
the contests of religion added to those of race: we find a Christian 
party contending against a pagan one, and as the result of a 
great and famous battle on the Liddell, ‘‘ which for generations,” 
we are told, “saddened the song of the Cymri,” we have a 
Christian bishop, S. Kentigern, known too, as S. Mungo the 
beloved—the young and zealous Christian missionary—appointed 
to bear rule over the district from Glasgow to beyond Carlisle 
He, too, has left his traces amongst us. The three great miracles 
he performed, you will find borne on the arms of the great com- 
mercial city of Glasgow, and amongst ourselves we have churches, 
and those the oldest in the district, as at Irthington and Cros- 
* Mr. Stuart Glennie in his ‘ Arthurian Localities,” and also 
Professor Veitch in his History of the Scottish Border, 
6 
