Grieve not, wise one! Better is it for every man
that he should avenge his friend than he should much
lament.
To each one of us shall come the end of life in the world;
let him who may earn glory ere his death. No better thing
can brave knight leave behind when he lies dead.
In the Alliterative Morte Arthure there follows a vow made by King Arthur:
‘Here I make myn avowe,’ quod the kynge than,
‘To Messie and to Marie, the mylde qwenne of heven,
I sall never ryvaye ne racches uncowpyll
At roo ne rayne-dere, that rynnes appone erthe;
Never grewhownde late glyde, ne gossehawke latt flye,
Ne never fowle see fellide, that flieghes with wenge;
Fawkon ne formaylle appon fiste handill,
Ne yitt with gerefawcon rejoyse me in erthe;
Ne regnne in my royaltez, ne halde my Rownde Table,
Till thi dede, my dere, be dewly revengede;
Bot eveer droupe and dare, qwylls my lyfe lastez,
Till Drighten and derfe dede hafe don qwate them likes!’21
My father’s initial thought for a rendering of the king’s vow to deny himself all forms of his principal pleasure reads thus:
Arthur’s vow
I will never hunt with hounds nor with hawk
Nor feast nor hear harp nor bear crown
[? nor sit at] the Round Table till I have avenged Gawain.
It needs no discussion to see that if my father did not have the Alliterative Morte Arthure open in front of him, at the very least he had read this passage very recently, when he sketched out an initial version of Arthur’s lament for Gawain and his vow of self-denial.
I have already observed (see here) that the conception of a great sea-battle off Romeril in The Fall of Arthur was derived from the alliterative poem. From the outlines given above other features of this nature can be added. From the Morte Arthure come the ebbing of the tide, hindering Arthur from landing (see here, here), and Gawain’s taking a boat with a few companions and then wading ashore (see here, here). Gawain’s slaying of the King of Gothland in the fighting on land is from the same source (see here, here) – but in the finished poem this is placed earlier, in the course of the sea-battle (IV.202–3). Among other details are the name of Gawain’s sword, Galuth (IV.197–200), and the golden griffon on his ship’s banner (IV.144) and his shield (see here, here).
It remains now to return to the second of the two outlines and the tantalizing notes that follow Arthur’s lament for Gawain, which are all that exist to give any idea of how my father saw the conclusion of The Fall of Arthur at about the time when he abandoned it.
Beneath the drafting for Arthur’s lament and vow is written:
Mordred is driven off and retires east. Arthur goes west. Lancelot … [?? the body of Gawain]. In the margin is written, presumably referring to Mordred: for lack of support all the east is held by him. At the foot of the page is jotted in pencil: Begin Canto V with Gawain’s body being borne to Camelot.
On another page are the following notes, written very rapidly indeed: in my transcript several words are scarcely more than guesses.
Strong sun. Arms of Arthur move first. Rumour of Mordred’s attack. A little cloud in the East. Mordred comes unexpectedly out of a forest upon the Plain of Camlan. Iwain and Errak. Marrac and Meneduc. Idris and Ailmer.
Mordred has Saxons Frisians Irish Picts and Paynims [i.e. Pagans] with perilous weapons (see here). Arthur borne back. Mordred issues last. Arthur and Mordred slay one other. The cloud [?gathers] to darkness. All grows dark.
Arthur retires into the west. Rumour of Mordred’s advance.
Mordred issues from forest.
Battle of Camlan. Arthur and Mordred slay one another.
Cloud [?gathers]. Arthur dying in the gloom. Robbers search the field.
[Excalibur >] Caliburn and the lake. The dark ship comes up the river. Arthur placed upon it.
Lancelot has no news. On a grey day of [?? rain] he sets sail with Lionel and comes to Romeril where the crows are still over Romeril. As he rides along the empty roads the Queen comes down out of Wales and meets him. But he only asks where is Arthur. She does not know.
He turns from her and rides ever west. The hermit by the sea shore tells him of Arthur’s departure. Lancelot gets a boat and sails west and never returns. – Eärendel passage.
Guinevere watching afar sees his silver banner vanish under the moon. Thus she came utterly to grief. She fled to Wales from the men of the east, but though grief was her lot it is not said that she mourned more for others than for herself. But so ended the glory of Arthur and the prowess of the ancient world, and there was a long darkness over the land of Britain.
Other hastily pencilled notes tell a little more of Lancelot and Guinevere.
Lancelot came too late hearing of Camlan, and meets Guinevere, but his lord loving all his love went to him. His love for Guinevere had no more power. In [?? pain] they parted cold and griefless. [?? She is alone.]
Lancelot parts from Guinevere and sets sail for Benwick but turns west and follows after Arthur. And never returns from the sea. Whether he found him in Avalon and will return no one knows.
Guinevere grew grey in the grey shadow
all things losing who at all things grasped.
..... gold .... and was laid in dust
as profitless to men as it proved of old.
With these papers are found on a separate sheet seventeen lines of alliterative verse in typescript, and from this fact and from the mention of Avalon in line 15 it is obvious that this is the ‘Eärendel passage’ referred to in the second outline above.
The moon mounted the mists of the sea,
and quivering in the cold the keen starlight
that wavered wan in the waiting East
failed and faded; the foam upon the shore
was glimmering ghostly on the grey shingle,
and the roaring of the sea rose in darkness
to the watchers on the wall.
O! wondrous night
when shining like the moon, with shrouds of pearl,
with sails of samite, and the silver stars
on her blue banner embroidered white
in glittering gems, that galleon was thrust
on the shadowy seas under shades of night!
Eärendel goeth on eager quest
to magic islands beyond the miles of the sea,
past the hills of Avalon and the halls of the moon,
the dragon’s portals and the dark mountains
of the Bay of Faery on the borders of the world.
The first seven lines were later hastily altered by my father thus, largely for metrical improvement.
The moon was fallen into misty caves,
and quivering cold the keen starlight
wavered wanly in the waiting East
failed and faded; the foam upon the shore
was glimmering ghostly upon grey shingle,
and the roaring sea rising and falling
under walls of stone.
On another page is a pencilled text of verses in the primary stage of composition, with deletions and substitutions, of exceptional difficulty, but of the utmost interest in relation to the ‘Eärendel pasage’ just given.
The grave of Gawain under grass lieth
by the sounding sea, where the sun westers.
What grave hath Guinever The grey shadow
her gold in [?ground] [(struck out:) gleams like]
her gold in silence unseen gleameth.
Britain nor Benwick did barrow keep
of Lancelot and his lady.
No [(struck out:) grave hath Arthur]
No mound hath Arthur in mortal land
under moon or sun who in ...........
beyond the miles of the sea and the magic islands
beyond the halls of night upon Heaven’s borders
/>
[(struck out:) the] dragon’s portals and the dark mountains
of the Bay of Avalon on the borders of the world.
up[on] Earth’s border in Avalon [sleeping >] biding.
While the world w....eth
till the world [??awaketh]
In the penultimate line the verb is not waiteth and seems not to be watcheth. Beneath the verses is written: The tomb
*
The departure of Arthur
Among the scanty and enigmatic notes that I have given on see here there is so little that refers to the departure of Arthur after his mortal wounding in the battle of Camlan that must one look to other writings in the attempt to interpret them.
Of the departure of Arthur we have only these sentences (see here): Arthur dying in the gloom. Robbers search the field. Caliburn and the lake. The dark ship comes up the river. Arthur placed upon it. And subsequently we read that Lancelot sailed into the west following Arthur, but never returns, and Whether he found him in Avalon and will return no one knows.
I have given on see here Malory’s account of Arthur’s departure. In this he was following the stanzaic Morte Arthur fairly closely, rather than the French Mort Artu (see here). The most curious point, in relation to my father’s notes, concerns the place and nature of Arthur’s departure. In Le Morte Arthur it is said of the king and the knights Bedivere and Lucan that ‘all night they in the chapel lay by the sea side’, and Malory has ‘not far from the sea’. In Le Morte Arthur Arthur orders Bedivere to cast Excalibur ‘in the salt flood’, and when Bedivere finally obeys the command ‘into the sea he cast it’: here Malory used the word ‘water’ (see here), but Bedivere reports to the king that he saw wawes (waves). In the Mort Artu, however, the water is specifically a lake, as in my father’s note: Caliburn and the lake. In Malory the vessel in which Arthur departed was ‘a lytyll barge’, in Le Morte Arthur it was ‘a riche shyppe with maste and ore’.
Thus, in his intention, never fulfilled, my father had abandoned the conclusion of the alliterative Morte Arthure, where it is told of Arthur’s death (see here) that after the battle of Camlan he was carried, as he desired, to Glastonbury and entered ‘the Ile of Aveloyne’, where he died. He was now following the story derived in essentials from the Mort Artu. But it is difficult to interpret the ‘lake’ in his notes; as is also the ship that ‘comes up the river’.
It doesn’t seem that the ancient evidences concerning the battle of Camlan shed any light on my father’s conception here. The earliest record is found in a chronicle of the tenth century known as the Annales Cambriae, the Annals of Wales, which has an entry under the year 537 Gueith Camlann (the Battle of Camlan) ‘in which Arthur and Medraut fell.’ Geoffrey of Monmouth said that the battle took place in Cornwall, on the river Cambula, but gave no other indication. In fact, it is not known where Camlan of the Annales Cambriae was, not even whether it was in Cornwall; but it came to be identified with the Cornish river Camel.22
The river that bore Arthur away in my father’s note must derive ultimately from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Cambula. But the apparent incongruities in these notes are best explained, I think, on the supposition that they represent his ideas in an unformed state: glimpses of scenes which were not as yet coherent and unified: the chapel by the sea, Excalibur cast into the sea – or lake, the river which brings the mysterious ship on which Arthur departs.
It is in any case abundantly clear that he would have nothing to do with the ending of the story of Arthur himself in the Mort Artu, in the stanzaic Morte Arthur, and in Malory (see here): the burial of his body at the hermitage to which it had been brought on the night following his departure in the ship – in the words of the hermit to Bedivere in Le Morte Arthur,
Abowte mydnyght were ladyes here,
In world ne wyste I what they were,
This body they brought uppon a bere
And beryed it wyth woundys sore.
But Malory’s actual words about the burial of Arthur at the hermitage chapel near Glastonbury are curious.
‘Sir,’ seyde sir Bedyvere, ‘what man ys there here entyred that ye pray so faste fore?’
‘Fayre sunne,’ seyde the ermyte, ‘I wote nat veryly but by demynge [guessing]. But thys same nyght, at mydnyght, here cam a numbir of ladyes and brought here a dede corse and prayde me to entyre [bury] him. And here they offird an hondred tapers, and they gaff me a thousande besauntes.’
‘Alas!’ seyde sir Bedyvere, ‘that was my lorde kynge Arthur, which lyethe here gravyn [buried] in thys chapell.’
Thus of Arthur I fynde no more wrytten in bokis that bene auctorysed, nothir more of this verray sertaynté of hys deth harde I never rede, but thus was he lad away in a shyp wherein were three quenys .....
Now more of the deth of kynge Arthur coude I never fynde, but that thes ladyes brought hym to hys grave ..... But yet the ermyte knew nat in sertayne that he was veryly the body of kynge Arthur; for thys tale sir Bedwere, a knyght of the Table Rounde, made hit to be wrytten.
It seems plain that Malory was very sceptical of the strange story that he found in his sources.
But in respect of Arthur’s destination in the barge, or ship, his last words to Bedivere in Malory’s tale, already cited on see here, must be recalled: ‘For I muste into the vale of Avylyon to hele me of my grevous wounde. And if thou here nevermore of me, pray for my soule!’ Malory was echoing Arthur’s words in Le Morte Arthur, here in response to the cry of Bedivere ‘lord, whedyr are ye bowne?’ [Whither are you bound?]:
I wylle wende a lytelle stownde [while]
In to the vale of Aveloune,
A whyle to hele me of my wounde.
This reference to the vale of Avalon is absent from the Mort Artu. In The Fall of Arthur it was of course to Avalon that the king was going. But where was Avalon?
In my father’s poem it was emphatically not Glastonbury in Somerset. In the notes given on see here Sir Lancelot, returned to Britain from Benwick, rides westward; and ‘the hermit by the sea shore tells him of Arthur’s departure.’ Then ‘Lancelot gets a boat and sails west and never returns.’ It seems to me all but certain that this hermit was the keeper of the chapel ‘not far from the sea’ or ‘by the sea side’ (see here) to which Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere brought the wounded king, though he is not mentioned in Le Morte Arthur or Malory. On this view, he saw, and told what he saw to Sir Lancelot, the ship bearing Arthur away from the coast, out to sea, and certainly not in the direction of a hermitage near Glastonbury for burial.
The association of Arthur’s grave with Glastonbury can therefore be described briefly. The earliest written record is found in a work of the Welsh antiquary Giraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald of Wales, written near the end of the twelfth century. After observing that fantastical tales were told of Arthur’s body, as that it had been borne to a region far away by spirits and was not subject to death, he said that ‘in our days’ Arthur’s body had in fact been found, by the monks of the abbey of Glastonbury, buried deep in the ground in a hollowed oak in the graveyard. A leaden cross was fixed to the underside of a stone beneath the coffin, in such a way that an inscription on the cross was concealed. The inscription, which Giraldus had himself seen, declared that buried there was the renowned King Arthur together with Wennevaria in insula Avallonia [in the island Avallonia]. (He records also the curious detail that beside the bones of Arthur (which were of huge size) and of Guinevere was a perfectly preserved tress of her golden hair, but that when it was touched by one of the monks it fell instantly to dust.) The date of this event is recorded as 1191.
In the same passage Giraldus said that what was now called Glastonia was anciently called Insula Avallonia. This name, he explained, arose because the place was virtually an island, entirely surrounded by marshes, whence it was called Britannice (in the British [i.e. Celtic] language) Inis Avallon, meaning, he said, insula pomifera ‘island of apples’, aval being the British word for ‘apple’, for apple-trees were once abundant there. He adds also t
hat Morganis, who was a noble lady, akin to King Arthur, and ruler of that region, took him after the battle of Kemelen (Camlan) to the island which is now called Glastonia for the healing of his wounds.
*
There is no need to pursue further the ‘Glastonbury connection’ into the complex questions of what lay behind this very curious ‘discovery’ of King Arthur’s grave, and whether there were associations between Glastonbury and the legends of Arthur before 1191. It will however be clear how it came about that the author of the alliterative Morte Arthure could say (see here) that Arthur was taken to Glasschenberye, and yet entered the Ile of Aveloyne, and how the king could say to Bedivere, in the stanzaic Morte Arthur and in Malory, as he lay in the ship, that he will go to the vale of Avalon for the healing of his wound (see here).
But in The Fall of Arthur my father had no concern with Glastonbury in his reshaping of the legend. For him, beyond question, Avalon was an island in the remote West; but concerning its nature, in the notes that are appended to the poem, we learn nothing. There is a single, and mystifying, reference to Avalon in the poem itself (I.204). This is in a speech by Gawain in which he reminds King Arthur of his uncounted might in chivalric arms, ‘from the Forest’s margin to the Isle of Avalon’: which must mean that Avalon had become a part of Arthur’s dominion in the western seas, unless it is no more than a sweeping rhetorical suggestion of the extent of his power in East and West.
Of Arthur’s departure Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum, as already noted (see here), said no more than that for the healing of his wounds he was borne to the Isle of Avalon (in insulam Avallonis). But in another, later work of his, the Vita Merlini, a poem in Latin hexameters, he gave an account of Avalon and the coming there of King Arthur, as if in the words of the Welsh bard Taliesin. In this poem the isle is named (using the same etymology, aval ‘apple’, as did Giraldus) Insula pomorum que fortuna vocatur, ‘the Island of Apples, which is called the Fortunate Isle’: for in this blessed land all things are brought forth of themselves: there is no need of farmers to plough the fields, where corn and grapes appear without tending. ‘Thither after the battle of Camlan (post bellum Camblani) we took the wounded Arthur, and there we were received with honour by Morgen, who laid the king on a golden bed in her own chamber and looked long at the wound, saying at last that he could be restored to health if he were to stay with her for a long time and submit to her cure. Rejoicing therefore we committed the king to her and returning gave our sails to the following winds.’