Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut, Wace [books to get back into reading txt] 📗

but which are absent from Geoffrey's pages. Gawain, for instance, who is "valiant and of very great moderation," declares that jesting and the delights of love are good, and that for the sake of his lady a young knight performs deeds of chivalry.[8] In addition to these changes, which are to be attributed to his personal bent and surroundings, Wace also makes it clear that he was conversant with stories of Arthur quite independent of the _Historia_. Fables about Arthur he himself says that he had heard, as we have seen, and from these he adds to Geoffrey's narrative two that bear unmistakable signs of a Celtic origin, and that were destined to become important elements in later romance; for he gives us the first literary record of the famous Round Table, [9] and the first definite mention in literature of the "hope of Britain." [10]

Wace is not to be regarded as one of the great contributors to our knowledge of Arthurian legend, but without a familiarity with his work, later French romance can scarcely be appreciated, so important is his place as a delicate transformer of the story, the harsher elements of which he veiled with the courtliness familiar to him, while he diffused throughout it the indefinable spirit of French romance; and this he did with the naive simplicity and grace that were his by birth and temperament.


II.--LAYAMON


To Wace we owe still another debt, for the _Roman de Brut_ served as the direct source for one of the greatest members of the Arthurian literature of any period. This is the _Brut_, written in the first half of the thirteenth century, after the year 1204, by Layamon, an English priest of the country parish of Lower Arnley in Worcestershire.

"There was a priest in the land, who was named Layamon; he was son of Leovenath--may the Lord be gracious to him!--he dwelt at Ernley, at a noble church upon Severn's bank,--good it there seemed to him--near Radestone, where he books read. It came to him in mind, and in his chief thought, that he would tell the noble deeds of the English; what they were named, and whence they came, who first possessed the English land, after the flood that came from the Lord.... Layamon began to journey wide over this land, and procured the noble books which he took for pattern. He took the English book that Saint Bede made; another he took in Latin, that Saint Albin made, and the fair Austin, who brought baptism in hither; the third book he took, and laid there in the midst, that a French clerk made, who was named Wace, who well could write; and he gave it to the noble Eleanor, who was the high King Henry's queen. Layamon laid before him these books, and turned over the leaves; lovingly he beheld them--may the Lord be merciful to him!--pen he took with fingers, and wrote on book-skin, and the true words set together, and the three books compressed into one. Now prayeth Layamon, for love of the Almighty God, each good man that shall read this book and learn this counsel, that he say together these soothfast words, for his father's soul, who brought him forth, and for his mother's soul, who bore him to be man, and for his own soul, that it be the better. Amen!" [11]

With these words Layamon introduces us to his book and to himself; in fact they contain the sum total of our information about his life. But they put us at once into sympathy with the earnest, sincere student, who wrote, not like Geoffrey and Wace, for the favour of a high-born patron, but for the love of England and of good men and his few hardly-won and treasured books. Of these books Wace's _Brut_ received the lion's share of his attention, and he made little or no use of the others that lay before him.

He followed Wace's poem in outline, but he succeeded in extending its 15,300 verses to 32,241, by giving a free rein to his fancy, which he often allowed to set the pace for his pen. For Layamon in his retired parish, performing the monotonous and far from engrossing duties of a reading clerk,[12] lived in reality a stirring life of the imagination. Back in the Saxon past of England his thoughts moved, and his mind dwelt on her national epic heroes. Not only in his language, which belongs to the period of transition from Anglo-Saxon to Middle English, but in his verse [13] and phraseology, he shows the influence of earlier Anglo-Saxon literature. The sound of the _Ode on Athelstane's Victory_ and of _Beowulf_ is in our ears as we read his intense, stirring lines. Wars and battles, the stern career of a Saxon leader, the life of the woods and fields attracted him far more than the refinements of a Norman court, and by emphasising the elements that were most congenial to himself he developed an entirely different picture from that presented by either Geoffrey or Wace. Writing with intense interest, he lives and moves and has his being among the events that he is narrating, and is far too deeply absorbed in his story to limit himself to the page that he has before him. Given a dramatic situation, the actors become living personalities to him, and he hears impassioned words falling from their lips in terse phrases such as he never found in the lines of Wace. Uther Pendragon, in a deadly battle against the Irish invaders under Gillomar and Pascent, slays Gillomar, then overtakes Pascent:--

"And said these words Uther the Good: 'Pascent, thou shalt abide; here cometh Uther riding!' He smote him upon the head, so that he fell down, and the sword put in his mouth--such meat to him was strange--so that the point of the sword went in the earth. Then said Uther, 'Pascent, lie now there; now thou hast Britain all won to thy hand! So is now hap to thee; therein thou art dead; dwell ye shall here, thou, and Gillomar thy companion, and possess well Britain! For now I deliver it to you in hand, so that ye may presently dwell with us here; ye need not ever dread who you shall feed.'" [14]

Arthur leads his men close to the hosts of Colgrim, the leader of the Saxon invaders:--

"Thus said Arthur, noblest of kings: 'See ye, my Britons, here beside us, our full foes,--Christ destroy them!--Colgrim the strong, out of Saxonland? His kin in this land killed our ancestors; but now is the day come, that the Lord hath appointed that he shall lose the life, and lose his friends, or else we shall be dead; we may not see him alive!....' Up caught Arthur his shield, before his breast, and he gan to rush as the howling wolf, when he cometh from the wood, behung with snow, and thinketh to bite such beasts as he liketh. Arthur then called to his dear knights: 'Advance we quickly, brave thanes! all together towards them; we all shall do well, and they forth fly, as the high wood, when the furious wind heaveth it with strength.' Flew over the [fields] thirty thousand shields, and smote on Colgrim's knights, so that the earth shook again. Brake the broad spears, shivered shields; the Saxish men fell to the ground.... Some they gan wander as the wild crane doth in the moor-fen, when his flight is impaired, and swift hawks pursue after him, and hounds with mischief meet him in the reeds; then is neither good to him nor the land nor the flood; the hawks him smite, the hounds him bite, then is the royal fowl at his death-time." [15]

Layamon lets his imagination display itself not merely in the dramatic speeches that he puts into the mouths of his actors; he occasionally composes a long incident, as in the story of the coronation of Constans,[16] of the announcement to Arthur of Mordred's treachery,[17] and in the very striking account of Arthur's election to the throne of Britain and his reception of the messengers who come for him. "Arthur sate full still; one while he was wan, and in hue exceeding pale; one while he was red, and was moved in heart. When it all brake forth, it was good that he spake; thus said he then, forthright, Arthur, the noble knight: 'Lord Christ, God's Son, be to us now in aid, that I may in life hold God's laws.'" [18] But in general Layamon's expansions of Wace are merely slight additions or modifications, sufficient in number, however, to go far in doubling the size of the volume. His great change is that which I have already mentioned, the spirit in which the story is conceived, and this is best illustrated, perhaps, in the person of Arthur himself. For Arthur is no knight-errant, but a grim, stern, ferocious Saxon warrior, loved by his subjects, yet dreaded by them as well as by his foes. "Was never ere such king, so doughty through all things." He stands in the cold glare of monarchy and conquest, and save in the story of his birth and of his final battle he is seldom, if ever, seen through the softer light of romance. But Layamon is the only source for the story of which we hear nothing in the later romances, and which is generally attributed to a Teutonic origin, that elves came to Arthur's cradle and gave him good gifts--to be the best of knights, a rich king, long lived, abounding in "virtues most good." Layamon, too, gives a truly Celtic version of Arthur's disappearance from earth. Two fairy maidens bear the wounded king in a boat from the battle-field over the sea to Argante, the queen of Avalon, who will make him whole again. "And the Britons ever expect when Arthur shall return." This story, and also Layamon's very important account of the establishment of the Round Table, which is vastly more complete than Wace's, bear unmistakable marks of a Celtic origin. Layamon, in fact, living as he did near the Welsh border, naturally shows familiarity with current Welsh tradition. His work has a high value in the vexed question of the origin and growth of Arthurian romance; for it proves the existence of genuine Welsh tradition about Arthur, and makes untenable the position of those critics who maintain that the Arthurian legend had an independent development only on the continent.

Layamon's contributions to our knowledge of the Arthurian material are, however, comparatively small, since he augmented his original in the main by passages inspired by his own imagination.[19] His additions may be called poetic rather than legendary. Partly because of its Saxon character his _Brut_ never attained wide popularity, and it had little effect upon the cycle; but it remains one of the most truly great literary achievements in the field of both Arthurian chronicle and romance.

Our three most important Arthurian chroniclers, Geoffrey, Wace, and Layamon, were all men of marked individuality and ability; each lives for us with as distinct a personality as if we had far more than our very imperfect knowledge of the details of his life. Geoffrey, a clever combiner, a highly gifted narrator and scholar, born at a happy hour, gave the Arthurian legend a definite literary form, brought permanently together independent elements of tradition, and contributed enormously to the popularity of the cycle. Wace, the professional author, the scrupulous antiquarian and naive poet, carefully refined the material of Geoffrey, and dressed it in the French costume of courtly life. Layamon, the intense and imaginative English priest, transformed it by the Saxon spirit, and divesting it of its courtly elegance, filled it with greater simplicity and force.


EXCURSUS I.--ARTHUR'S MAGIC POSSESSIONS


Arthur's magic possessions form a prominent element in Welsh tradition,