Oct. 19, 1883.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



239 



THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTH. 



By Edwabd Clodd. 



ITTIDESPREAD as a myth may be, it takes depth of 

 VV root according to the more or less congenial soil 

 where it is dropped. That about Tell found favourable 

 home in the uplands and the free air of Switzerland ; with 

 us, S. George, falling on times of chivalry, had abiding 

 place, as also, less rugged of type than the Swiss marks- 

 man, had Arthur, the " Blameless King," who, if he ever 

 existed, is smothered in overgrowth of legends both native 

 and imported. 



For such cycle of tales as gathered round the name 

 of Arthur, and on which our youthhood was nourished, 

 is as mythical as the wolf that suckled Romulus 

 and Remus. Modern criticism and research have 

 thoroughly sifted the legendary from the true, and if 

 the past remains vague and shadowy, we at least 

 know how far the horizon of certainty extends. The 

 criticism has made short work of the romancing chronicles 

 which so long did duty for sober history, and has shown 

 that no accurate knowledge of the sequence of events is 

 obtainable until late in the period of the English invasions. 

 Save in scattered hints here and there, we are quite in the 

 dark as to the condition of this island during the Roman 

 occupation, whilst for anything that is known of times 

 prior to this, called for convenience " prehistoric," we are 

 dependent upon unwritten records preserved in tomb.s and 

 mounds. The information gathered from these has given 

 us some clue to what manner of men they were who con- 

 fronted the first Aryan immigrants, and, enriched by 

 researches of the ethnologist and philologist, enabled us to 

 trace the movements of races westwards, until we find old 

 and new commingled as one English-speaking folk. 



All or any of which could not be known to the earlier 

 chroniclers. When Geoffry of Monmouth set forth the 

 glory and renown of Arthur and his court, he recorded 

 and embellished traditions six hundred years old, without 

 thought of weighing the evidence or questioning the credi- 

 bility of the transmitters. Whether there was a king of 

 that name who ruled over the Silures, and around whom the 

 remnant of brave Kelts rallied in their final struggle against 

 the invading hordes, and who, wounded in battle, died at 

 Glastonbury, and was buried, or rather sleeps, as the legend 

 has it, in the Vale of Avilion, " hath been," as Milton says, 

 " doubted heretofore, and may again, with good reason, for 

 the Monk of Malmesbury and others, whose credit hath 

 swayed most with the learned sort, we may well perceive to 

 have known no more of this Arthur nor of his doings than 

 we now living." 



Tlie comparative mythologists say that he is a myth pure 

 and simple ; a variant of Sigurd and Perseus ; the winning 

 of his famous sword but a repetition of the story of the 

 Teutonic and Greek heroes; the gift of Guinevere as fatal 

 to him as Helen to Menelaus ; his knights but reproductions 

 of the Achaian hosts. Much of wliich is doubtless true. But 

 the romance corresponded to some probable event ; it fitted 

 iu with the national traditions. There were struggles 

 between the Kelts and subsequent invaders — Romans, 

 Angles, Saxons, Jutes. There were brave chieftains who 

 led forlorn hopes or fought to the death in their fastnesses. 

 There were, in the numerous tribal divisions, petty kings 

 and queens ruling over mimic courts, with retinues of 

 knights bent on chivalrous, unselfish service. Tliese 

 were the nuclei of stories which were the (larly 

 annals of the tribe, the glad theme of bards and 

 minstrels, and from whicli a long line of poets, 



to the latest singer of the " Idylls of the King," have 

 drawn the materials of their epics. The fascination which 

 such a cycle of tales had for the people, especially in days 

 when the ballad was history and poetry and all literature 

 rolled into one, was so strong, that the Church wisely im- 

 ported an element which gave loftier meaning to the 

 knightly life, and infused religious ardour into the camp 

 and court. To the stories of Tristram and Gawayne already 

 woven into the old romance, she added the half-Christian, 

 half-pagan, legend of the knights who left the feast at the 

 Round Table to travel across land and sea that they might 

 free the enslaved, remove the spell from the enchanted, 

 and deliver fair women from the monsters of tyranny and 

 lust, set forth on what in her eyes was a nobler quest — to 

 seek and look upon the San Graal, or Holy Vessel used by 

 Jesus at the Last Supper, and into which Joseph of 

 Arimathea collected the blood and water that streamed 

 from the side of the crucified Jesus. This mystic cup, in 

 which we have probably a sacrificial relic of the old British 

 religion imported into the Christian incident with which it 

 blended so well, floated, according to Arthurian legend, 

 suddenly into the presence of the King and his Round 

 Table knights at Camelot as they sat at supper, and was as 

 suddenly borne away, to be henceforth the coveted object 

 of knightly endeavour. Only the baptised could hope to 

 behold it ; to the unchaste it was veiled ; hence only they 

 among the knights who were pure in heart and life vowed 

 to go in quest of the San Graal, and return not until they 

 had seen it. So to Sir Galahad, the "just and faithful," 

 Tennyson sings how the sacred cup appeared, 



" Sometimes on lonely mountain meres 

 I find a magic bark ; 

 I leap on board : no helmsman steers : 

 I float till all is dark. 

 A gentle sound, an awful light ! 

 Three angels bear the holy Grail ; 

 With folded feet, in stoles of white, 

 On sleeping wings they sail. 

 Ah, blessed vision! blood of God I 

 My spirit beats her mortal bars, 

 As down dark tides the glory slides, 

 And, star-like, mingles with the stars." 



Whilst in such legends as the Arthurian group the grain 

 of truth, if it exists, is so imbedded as to be out of reach, 

 there are others concerning actual personages, notably 

 Cyrus and Charlemagne, not to quote other names from 

 both "profane" and sacred history, in which the fable can 

 be separated from the fact without difficulty. Enough is 

 known of the life and times of such men to detach the 

 certain from the doubtful, as, e.t/., when Charlemagne is 

 spoken of as a Frenchman and as a Crusader before there 

 was a French nation, or the idea of Crusades liad entered 

 the heads of Most Christian Kings; and as in the legends 

 of the infancy of Cyrus, which are of a type related to 

 like legends of the wonderful round the early years of the 

 famous. 



This, however, by the way, since, leaving illustration of 

 the fabulous in heroic story, it will be interesting to trace 

 it through such a tale of pathos and domestic life as the 

 well-known one of Llewellyn and his faithful hound, 

 Gellert. 



Whose emotions have not been stirred by the story of 

 Llewellyn the Groat going out hunting, and missing his 

 favourite dog ; of his return, to bo greeted by the creature 

 with more than usual pleasure in his eye, but with jaws 

 besmeared with blood ; of the anxiety with which Llewellyn 

 rushed into the house, to find the cradle where had lain 

 his beautiful boy upset, and the ground around it soaked 

 with blood ; of his thereupon killing the dog, and then 

 seeing the child lying unharmed beneath the cradle, 



