The Founder of the Arthurian Legend THE leg d of
King Arthur, which delighted the Middle Ages d, in the fifteenth-century version of Malory, was n a permanent place in our literature, was introduced to Western Europe by a learned Welsh clerk, Geoffrey of
Monmouth, in the Latin history which he dedicated to King Stephen and Robert of Gloucester, the natural son of Henry I, in or about the year 1136.
Geoffrey's work brought him fame in his own day, and has been much debated at intervals ever since. But he has had to wait till now for a competent editor, and has found him not in England or Wales but in America. It seems surprising, and yet it is true that, while so many of our early chronicles have been carefully edited in various series,
Geoffrey's History has been ignored. The book was thrice printed in the sixteenth century ; it was reprinted in 1844
by Dr. Giles, whose very imperfect text was copied ten years later by a German editor. Later scholars have been content to abuse Geoffrey as a romancer without troubling to edit
him. Now at last comes an American historian, Mr. Griscom, resolVed to deal fairly with Geoffrey and to present the first accurate text of the IIistory, based on the two earliest MSS. It is a very remarkable piece of work that does credit to American scholarship.
Geoffrey of Monmouth says that he translated part Of his History from a very old book in Welsh which was given to him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, and which covered
the period from Brut, first King of the Britons, to tadwallader, son of Cadwallon. As no such book has been identified, it
has become a habit with historians—who, like sheep, are apt to follow one another—to call Geoffrey a liar, and to assume that he invented all the details which cannot be traced to the Roman historians, to the sixth-century Gildus, the eighth-century Bede or the ninth-century Nennius. Mr. Griscom, approaching the subject with a more open mind, has thought it well to examine some of the early Welsh 'chronicles that exist in MS., and has found that they vary 'very widely and that some ut least of them are not mere translations from Geoffrey's Latin text but embody much
independent tradition. - He prints below his text of Geoffrey the corresponding portions of the oldest Welsh MS., preserved at Jesus College, Oxf6rd, and translated by Canon R. E. Jones, of New York. The -reader may see at a glance that this Welsh chronicle is not a translation from Geoffrey, and that the two are based on a common, original, which may s well have been that very old book belonging-to Archdeacon _Walter.
Mr. Griscom in his long and very thorough introduction -examines very fully the case against Geoffrey's veracity, and shows that one learned man after another has been
Misled by corrupt - texts ..into making unfounded charges against the old historian. He points out, for example, that
Professor Lieberrnann, no mean authority on Anglo-Saxon laws, based his denunciation of Geoffrey on a German rendering of a very faulty English version of one Welsh MS., and that . he not only did not examine any of the Welsh MSS. for himself, but ignored Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans' amended account of them.
Geoffrey of Monmouth unquestionably loved to embroider a tale, and his Latin is, very flowery, in agreeable contrast to the earlier chroniclers, except of course Bede. But it does not follow that he was a conscious or unconscious romancer. And in view of the thick darkness that enshrouds our early history from the close of the Roman period to the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons,. any ray of light such as may emerge from Geoffrey's ilistorY should be welcome. One : curious incident that he alone reports, in his description of a British attack on Roman London, is apparently confirmed by archaeological discovery. Geoffrey says that the men of North Wales took a body of Roman prisoners and beheaded them on the bank of a stream within the city, and that the stream has since been called " Galabroc." Now it is at least noteworthy, as the Royal Commission's recent volume on Roman London observes, that in the bed of the Walbrook —a name easily connected with " Galabroc "—which flowed across the City then as it does still a large number of skulls have been found, accompanied by very few bones. Geoffrey's statement would thus seem to embody an old British tradition. We may hope, therefore, that other confirmatory evidence may yet be found by digging.
It would be highly interesting if the story of King Arthur, which fills about a quarter of the History, could be related to such facts as we have. Geoffrey's account of Arthur's last fight, from which he was borne, mortally hurt, to the isle of Avallon, seems fantastic. The Kings of Norway and Dacia, he says, fought beside Arthur against the traitor Modred, with his Saxons, Plots and Scots, in the year 542. But there may be some kernel of truth in it, and Mr. Griscom with his scholarly text and his version of the corresponding Welsh chronicle has at last made the way clear for a study of the very engaging Geoffrey.
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