1895-96. J WALES AND ITS LITEKATURE. 71 



refused to accept legendary accounts of Welsh greatness which could not 

 bear the strong and searching light of honest and impartial investigation. 



Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have obtained particular 

 celebrit}' in Welsh literature. Lord Tennyson has, in his Idylls of the 

 King, woven into chaste and musical verse the tales of x'\rthur and his 

 Knights. The common tradition is that Arthur was the son of Meirig ab 

 Tewdrig, or of Uthyr- Wonderful — a prince of the Silurian Britons ; 

 that about the year 517 A.D. he was summoned to assume the leadership 

 of his people against the foes of his country ; that he was successful 

 in many battles ; that his career as a warrior came to a close in the 

 battle of Camlan in 542 ; and that his remains were interred at Glaston- 

 bury. Legendary exaggerations have gathered round Arthur to an 

 almost incredible extent. Skene, who has thoroughly examined the 

 four oldest Welsh MSS. that are extant, has this statement to make 

 regarding Arthur : " It is very remarkable how few of these poems 

 contain any notice of Arthur. If they occupied a place, as is supposed, 

 in Welsh literature subsequent to the introduction of the Arthurian 

 Romance, we should expect these poems to be saturated with him 

 and his knights, and his adventures ; but it is not so. Out of so large a 

 body of poems there are only five which mention him at all, and then it 

 is the historical Arthur, the Guledig to whom the defence of the wall 

 was entrusted, and who fights the twelve battles in the north and finally 

 perishes at Camlan." Stephens has no confidence in the truthfulness of 

 the eulogies that have been bestowed on Arthur. His distinct language 

 is, " Arthur, an insignificant chieftain in the sixth century, grew into a 

 valorous warrior in the eighth, and by the twelfth had become warrior of 

 the whole civilized world." Arthur is confessedly a Kymric hero. 

 Nothing can be more apparent to the student of Cambrian litera- 

 ture than that the bards were among the last persons in Europe to 

 admit the credibility of the Arthurian tales. We must, therefore, seek 

 the first traces of the Arthur of Romance among the Kymry of Armorica. 

 The people of Armorica, and of ancient Gaul generally, are supposed to 

 have been the same people as the Colonists of Britain ; and this would 

 seem to be the reason why, during times of distress, the Britons fled 

 there for refuge. The Kymry, who left their native land on these 

 occasions, carried with them the histories of their ancestors. Many of 

 these were the Kymry of Cornwall, which, next to Wales, formed their 

 last resting point ; and these would very naturally exalt the actions of 

 their countryman Arthur. The dialect of the Britons bears a closer 

 resemblance to that of Cornwall than to the language of the Principality. 

 Rhys of Tewdwr (1077, A.D.), is reported to have brought from Brittany 

 -the bardic system of the Round Table to Wales. The conclusion is, 



