The Lost Land of King Arthur by J. Cuming Walters

Author:J. Cuming Walters [Walters, J. Cuming]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

“Swept the dust of ruin’d Rome

From off the threshold of the realm, and crushed

The Idolaters, and made the people free.”

Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle ]

THE ROCKY VALLEY, TINTAGEL

[To face p. 150

To this race Caerleon and Camelot became cities of magic splendour and magnificence, and the courts and camps of Arthur surpassed in strength and riches the luxurious home of Cæsar. The land was strewn with relics of Arthur’s power; the downs and plains were the scenes of his momentous victories; the hills were his chairs and footstools; the old encampments were the scenes of famous tourneys; the dark woods suggested the scenes of strange adventures for the knights; the holy wells, the rivers, and the places where Nature was brightest and most beautiful, were all associated with leading events and enterprises in the history of the king and his noble retinue. Particularly did the Cymri insist upon the successive and overwhelming defeats by Arthur of the Saxons, their traditional and most hated foe. And in their vauntings they gave Arthur the mastery of half Europe, claimed that the Roman Emperor became his vassal, and that upon his head the Pope himself placed a crown.

Arthur fought twelve great battles against the Saxons, the dates varying from 457 to 604. [21] Either names have been mixed, or the chroniclers have monstrously departed from fact, or else we must conclude that the British warrior was actually king of the greater part of England, Wales, and Scotland, for his victories extend from Cornwall to Lincoln, and from Caerleon in Wales to the Scotch Lowlands. The twelfth and greatest of his victories was at Mount Badon, where “in one bout,” we are told, “Arthur vanquished eight hundred and forty-one,” and “no man overthrew them but himself alone.” The identity of Mount Badon, where “our good Arthur broke once more the Pagan” has long been a matter of dispute. It has been contended that Bath was none other than Mons Badonicus, and that the actual battlefield was a spot known as Banner Down; but the claim has almost entirely been abandoned now that so much evidence is forthcoming in favour of another site. Bath seems to have been fixed upon as a likely place not only on account of its veritable antiquity and its early occupation by the Romans, but because it appeared to be a sort of translation or corruption of the word Badon. But this is an etymological blunder, for, as has been pointed out, a sixth century word cannot be elucidated in this free manner with the help of a word which had no existence until the tenth century. The authorities are now fairly well agreed that Badon must be identified with Badbury Rings, but again a difficulty arises, for there are two places called Badbury, not very far from each other, one in Wiltshire and the other in Dorset. There is also a Caer Badon in Berkshire which at least two historians have favoured as the scene of Arthur’s crucial contest with Cerdic.

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