Traditions, Superstitions and Folk-lore Part 21

The "mission" of these Pandemonium giants is precisely a.n.a.logous to that of the rest of the fraternity. Satan says to Beelzebub,--

Of this be sure, To do ought good never will be our task, But ever to do ill our sole delight, As being the contrary to His high will Whom we resist. If then His providence Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, Our labour must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil.

The trolls and giants of the Norse traditions are evidently but other forms of the common myth, notwithstanding the metamorphoses which they, in some respects, seem to have undergone. Dasent points out some kinder qualities which the giants occasionally exhibit. He says:--"One sympathises, too, with them, and almost pities them as the representatives of a simple primitive race, whose day is past and gone, but who still possessed something of the innocence and virtue of ancient times, together with a stock of old experience, which, however useful it might be as an example to others, was quite useless to help themselves."

Yet he regards them as the embodiment of "sheer brute force," which yields to the "slight and lissom foe" representing virtue and reason.

The "upstart aesir G.o.ds," to whom they are opposed, are described as endowed with "that diviner wrath which, though burning hot, was still under the control of reason." The trolls, on the contrary, are subject to wild paroxysms of merely brutal animal rage, which discloses their true parentage. The fact that their enemies, the aesir G.o.ds, were afterwards dethroned, and stigmatised, along with the cla.s.sical deities, as cacodaemons, and became a.s.sociated with the giants as evil spirits, will perhaps explain why some of the race have been endowed with attributes which do not pertain to the rest. It appears that they knew of their common destiny; that they sometimes suspended hostilities, and even intermarried; and looked forward with joint melancholy gloom to that, to them, awful day, "the twilight of the G.o.ds," when both should fall before the light of the Christian revelation.

The Venerable Bede, in describing the martyrdom of St. Alban, expressly states that the magistrate or judge "was standing at the altar, and offering sacrifice to devils," the said devils being the G.o.ds of the Romans. He afterwards informs us that, when the bishops Germanicus and Lupus were on a voyage to Britain, "on a sudden they were obstructed by the malevolence of demons, who were jealous that such men should be sent to bring back the Britons to the faith. They raised storms and darkened the sky with clouds." Their efforts were fruitless, nevertheless, as the piety of the bishops prevailed against them. The Old Nick of the English, literally the devil, is but one form of Odin dethroned.

Professor Henry Morley, in his "English Writers," says,--"Odin, under the name of Nikarr, from a root signifying stroke of violence, which appears in the Greek ???? victory; in the Latin _necare_ and Anglo-Saxon _naecan_, to kill; and in the English Knock; having been first cut up into Nickers, has become the Old Nick of more recent times."

Dasent speaks of the trolls "as more systematically malignant than the giants, and with the term were bound up notions of sorcery and unholy power." He justly adds,--

"But mythology is a woof of many colours, in which the hues are shot and blended, so that the various races of supernatural beings are shaded off and fade away almost imperceptibly into each other; and thus, even in heathen times, it must have been hard to say exactly where the giant ended and the troll began. But when Christianity came in and heathendom fell; when the G.o.dlike race of the aesir became evil demons instead of good genial powers, then all the objects of the old popular belief, whether aesir, giants, or trolls, were mingled together in one superst.i.tion, as 'no canny.' They were all trolls, all malignant, and thus it is that, in these tales, the traditions about Odin and his underlings, about the frost giants, and about sorcerers and wizards, are confused and garbled; and all supernatural agency that plots man's ill is the work of _trolls_, whether the agent be the arch enemy himself, or giant, or witch, or wizard."

Mr. Hunt appears to regard some of the giant traditions of Cornwall as having direct reference to the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.

There may be some truth in this, as the existence of such demi-giants as his Tom, who defeated giant Blunderbus by the skilful employment of the wheel and axle of his wagon, would seem to indicate. The wheel and axle, however, is an Aryan sun emblem, and one type of the "chark" or "fire-bringing" instrument, invented, according to the Greeks, by Prometheus. This unquestionably demonstrates its descent from the ancient solar myths. Conquered men driven to the caves and mountain fastnesses, and addicted to violence and cruelty, would soon be described figuratively by language which literally referred to older superst.i.tions; just as we now designate sanguinary savages as monsters, fiends, and even "devils incarnate." This, no doubt, offers the most probable interpretation of the Gog-Magog story, as well as of many others of its cla.s.s. Dasent says,--

"Between this outcast nomade race, which wandered from forest to forest, and from fell to fell, without a fixed place of abode, and the old natural powers and frost giants, the minds of the race which adored Odin and the aesir soon engendered a monstrous man-eating cross-breed of supernatural beings, who fled from contact with the intruders as soon as the first great struggle was over, abhorred the light of day, and looked upon agriculture and tillage as a dangerous innovation which destroyed their hunting fields, and was destined finally to root them out from off the face of the earth."

Mackenzie informs us that the Esquimaux with whom he conversed had a tradition that the English were giants, with wings, who could kill with a glance of their eye, and swallow at a mouthful an entire beaver.

If the European emigrants who have conquered North America from the Red Indian, and nearly extirpated his race, had been as superst.i.tious as their forefathers were some two or three thousand years ago, we should have had a similar cla.s.s of mixed myths resulting from their warlike contact. Indeed, we have, notwithstanding the influence of Christianity, some faint indications that the superst.i.tious element in this direction has not yet completely died out.

Many of these mythic giants are little more than degraded forms of the original Aryan personifications of the forces of Nature. Rivers have been deified, and so have mountains. Atlas was a giant, who held the earth on his shoulders. The one-eyed Cyclops, with the deformed Vulcan at their head, forging thunderbolts in a cave at Mount Etna, personify volcanic force. Giants were supposed to be buried alive at the base of such mountains as Etna, Stromboli, and Vesuvius, and their struggles to free themselves the cause of the earthquakes and other terrestrial convulsions to which the localities were specially subjected. The whirlpool and rock in the Straits of Messina, which cause no special alarm to modern navigators, created so much terror in the minds of ancient sailors, and made such havoc of their frail craft, that they became regarded as malicious demons, and were named Scylla and Charybdis. The noise of the furious waves, das.h.i.+ng upon the rocky cavernous coast, fancy likened to the howling of dogs and wolves. Hence the fable that a female monster, surrounded by troops of such animals, prowled about the neighbourhood, awaiting the opportunity of devouring mariners wrecked on the coast. The celebrated basaltic rock in the north of Ireland was called the "Giant's Causeway" simply because the early inhabitants, knowing nothing of geology, thought it a result of superhuman or demoniacal labour. The equally celebrated cave in Derbys.h.i.+re, doubtless, received the name of the "Devil's Hole" for a similar reason. Many of Mr. Hunt's Cornish giants live in the violently upheaved ma.s.ses of granite which receive the Atlantic tempests in their wildest fury. Some, indeed, having become more modernised, live in castles on the rocky mountains. Others of these myths have become entangled with the Tregeagle traditions, which, I have previously shown, embody much of the Teutonic "wild hunt" or "furious host" superst.i.tions.

The Rev. George W. c.o.x, in his "Mythology of the Aryan Nations,"

contends that the beings spoken of as Cyclops in the Iliad and the Odyssey, are personifications of distinct natural forces. The former he says "are manifestly the dazzling and scorching flashes which plough up the storm-clad heavens." In the latter the phenomenal features are of a very different character. Polyphemos is "the son of Poseidon (Neptune) and the nymph Thoosa; in other words he is emphatically the child of the waters, and of the waters only--the huge mists which wrap the earth in a dark cloud." The one-eyed monster, blinded by Odysseus, is the sun himself, shorn of his beams, glaring ghastly through the blackening mist. He says:--"This terrible being may be seen drawn with wonderful fidelity to the spirit of the old myth in Turner's picture of the overthrow of the troops sent by Cambyses to the shrine of the Lybian Ammon; and they who see the one-eyed monster glaring down on the devoted army, where the painter was probably utterly unconscious that he was doing more than representing the simoom of the desert, will recognise at once the unconscious accuracy with which the modern painter conveys the old Homeric conception of Polyphemos. In this picture, as in the storms of the desert, the sun becomes the one great eye of an enormous monster, who devours every living thing that crosses his path, as Polyphemos devoured the comrades of Odysseus. The blinding of this monster is the natural sequel when his mere brute force is pitted against the craft of his adversary. In his seeming insignificance and his despised estate, in his wayworn mien and his many sorrows, Odysseus takes the place of the Boots or Cinderella of Teutonic folk-lore; and as the giant is manifestly the enemy of the bright being whose splendours are for the time being hidden beneath a veil, so it is the representative of the sun himself who pierces out his eye; and thus Odysseus, Boots, and Jack the Giant-killer alike overcome and escape from the enemy, although they may be said to escape with the skin of their teeth."

Grimm relates a Norwegian legend, which clearly indicates that many of these gigantic monsters of the old mythologies were simply impersonations of elemental strife or powerful natural forces. Olaf, the saint and king, being anxious to build a very large church without taxing heavily his people, bargained with a giant or troll, who undertook the labour on condition that he should receive as his reward the sun and the moon, or, in default, the royal saint himself. When the immense structure was nearly completed, Olaf wandered about in sore dismay, wondering how the giant's demand could be met. Suddenly he heard a child crying in the inside of a hill or small mountain. On listening attentively, he overheard a giantess say to the child these words:--"Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ to-morrow, _Wind and Weather_, your father, will come home and bring with him the sun and the moon, or St. Olaf himself."

It appears that the simply calling an evil spirit by his name was sufficient to utterly annihilate him. So Olaf marched up with a bold front to the giant, and said,--"_Wind and Weather_, you have set the spire awry!" The giant suddenly fell from the top of the edifice, and was smashed to pieces. And further, each piece was found to have become converted into a flint stone!

Giants were introduced pretty freely, especially during the earlier period of modern English literature, into allegorical works both in prose and poetry. There is a forcible ill.u.s.tration of this in Stephen Hawe's "Pastime of Pleasure." Prince Graunde Amour, goes forth in search of adventures. False Report, a dwarf, deceives him, but he slays a giant with three heads, named Imagination, Falsehood, and Perjury. John Bunyan, too, has his Giant Despair, etc., and others will readily occur to the reader's mind. In the Arthurian romance of Sir Gawayne, that hero is said to have been endowed with "supernatural increase and decline of strength that _corresponded to the movement of the sun_." This is not without significance, as a personification of natural force. It corresponds, too, in a remarkable degree, with Mr. c.o.x's interpretations of some of the elder Greek myths.

Lord Bacon, in his "Wisdom of the Ancients," referring to what is called the allegorical theory, as a method of interpreting the ancient mythology, says,--"I freely and willingly confess that I am inclined to the opinion, that not a few of the fables of the antient poets contained from their very origin a hidden mystery and allegory, for who can be so obstinately blind to evidence, that, when he hears that after the extermination of the giants, Fame was brought forth as a posthumous sister to them, he does not immediately apply the story to these party murmurs and seditious rumours which are wont to spread themselves amongst a people for a while after the suppression of rebellions? Or when he hears that the giant Typhon cut away and carried off the sinews of Jupiter, and that they were stolen from him, and restored to Jupiter by Mercury; how can he but perceive immediately that this is to be referred to powerful rebellions, by which the sinews of kings, their revenue and authority, are cut out; yet not so but by mildness of address and wisdom of edicts, as it were by stolen means, the minds of subjects within a short time are reconciled, and the power of kings restored to them. Or when he hears that in that memorable expedition of the G.o.ds against the giants, the a.s.s of Silenus became by his braying an instrument of great value in dispersing these giants; must he not clearly see that this was imagined of those vast projects of rebels, which are mostly dissipated by light rumours and vain consternation?

There is also another not unimportant an indication of the existence of a hidden and involved sense; namely, that some of the fables are so absurd and senseless in their outward narration, that they seem to show their nature at first sight, and cry for exposition by means of a parable. Above all, one consideration has been of great weight and importance with me--that most of the fables of mythology appear by no means to have been invented by those who relate them, such as Homer, Hesiod, and the rest; for where it clearly made manifest to us that they proceeded from that age and those authors by whom they are celebrated, and thence transmitted to us, we should surely, I conjecture, not have been induced to expect anything great or lofty from such an origin as this. But he who considers the subject more attentively will discover that they are related to posterity as things already received and believed, not then for the first time imagined and offered to mankind.

And this it is which has increased their estimation in my eyes, as being neither discovered by the poets themselves nor belonging to their age, but a kind of sacred relics, the light air of better ages, which, _pa.s.sing through the traditions of earlier nations_, have been breathed into the trumpets and pipes of these Grecians."

The pa.s.sage of these giant traditions into the romances of modern chivalry may easily be traced. King Arthur himself was a hero of colossal proportions. He is still thought, as we have already seen, like Barbarossa and others, to lie entranced in the recesses of more than one mountain. He was attended by the magician Merlin, and he and his followers performed superhuman feats. He slew many giants of prodigious size, including Ritho, who had clothed himself in furs made from the beards of vanquished kings, and the Spanish giant, who had borne away Helena, the niece of Hoel, and fled with her to the top of St. Michael's Mount.

In Pulci's "Morgante Maggiore," Orlando, one of Charlemagne's Paladins, slays the two giants, Pa.s.samont and Alabaster, and converts, or rather accepts of the miraculous conversion of, a third, Morgante, to Christianity.

The hero, Beowulf, the Geat, in the oldest Anglo-Saxon poem extant, is believed by Kemble and others to be a personified warrior form of Gautr, Odin's name in the Edda, as the G.o.d of abundance. The giant Grendel, whom he slew, was a malignant demon that carried desolation around. He is described as holding "the moors, the fen, and fastnesses." Professor Morley, in his English summary of the poem, says,--"Forbidden the homes of mankind, the daughters of Cain brought forth in darkness misshapen giants, elves, and orkens, such giants as warred long with G.o.d, and he was one of these." This giant is believed to have had his haunt at Hartlepool, on the coast of Durham. His mother, who was a kind of aquatic demon, was thought to occupy a "bottomless" pool, from which the town, in part, takes its name.

The King Arthur legend, which the Rev. John Whitaker locates at Manchester, notwithstanding its relatively modern Norman-French externals, still exhibits a strong flavour of the older traditions.

According to an episode in the "_Morte Darthur_," this Saxon champion, Sir Tarquin, or Torquin, was giant enough to conquer and capture three knights in one encounter. Indeed, he is sometimes described as the "Giant." There is a tradition yet extant in the neighbourhood, that the said Tarquin threw the huge stone, which lies by the roadside near Longford Bridge, from his residence at Knot Mill, to its present location, a distance of nearly two miles. The stone really is the pedestal of an ancient cross, similar to the many yet to be seen in various parts of Lancas.h.i.+re and Ches.h.i.+re. It presents, however, the peculiarity of two square mortise holes for the support of the upright shaft. These, popular tradition says, Tarquin expressly made for the insertion of his thumb and finger when engaged in hurling the ponderous ma.s.s as a "quoit" or plaything. It is likewise said to have been used, at some distant period, as a "plague-stone," and that the two holes were filled with vinegar or some other disinfectant. This story is not improbable. The sacred character of such a relic would add to the faith of the neighbouring inhabitants in the efficacy of the means adopted to avoid infection. It is said that provisions, etc., were left on or near the stone by the country people, and that the towns-folk deposited the understood price in one of the holes containing the vinegar, which was believed to render the coins innocuous as plague conductors. Sir Lionel of Liones, the first of the brothers of Sir Lancelot of the Lake, who succ.u.mbed to Tarquin's prowess whilst endeavouring to rescue the three captives referred to, tells us, "He never beheld so stout a knight, so handsome a man, and so well accoutered a hero." He lived in a plain, surrounded by a dense forest. His castle, John Whitaker says, was formed out of the ruins of the Roman fortress at Castlefield, Manchester. Sir Ector de Maris, another brother of Sir Lancelot, rambling in search of adventures, and hearing that "within a mile was a castle, strong and well ditched, and by it, upon the left hand, a ford; and that over this grew a fair tree, on the branches of which were hung the s.h.i.+elds of the many gallant knights who had been overcome by the owner of the castle; and at the stem was a basin of copper, with a Latin inscription, which challenged any knight to strike it, and summon the castellans to a contest. Ector came to the place, saw the s.h.i.+elds, recognised many that belonged to his a.s.sociates at the Round Table, and particularly noticed his brother's. Fired at the sight, he beat violently on the basin, and then gave his horse drink at the ford. And immediately a knight appeared on horseback behind him, and called him to come out of the water. He turned himself directly. He engaged the knight, was conquered, and taken prisoner by him." The story goes on to relate that--"The brother of both these unfortunate heroes, Sir Lancelot, whom we left sleeping before, in the forest adjoining to the castle, _had been carried from thence by enchantment_, and confined for some time." He, however, recovered his liberty, and "in the midst of a highway he heard that a knight dwelt very near, _who was the most redoubted champion that ever existed_, and had conquered, and now kept in prison, no less than sixty-four of King Arthur's knights. He hastened to the place. He came to the ford and tree, and let his horse drink at the ford, and then beat upon the basin with the end of his spear. This he did so long and so heartily, that he drove the bottom out; and yet no one answered. He then rode along the gates of the castle almost half an hour. At last he descried Sir Torquin coming upon the road with a captive knight. He advanced and challenged him. The other gallantly accepted the challenge, defying him and all his fellows.h.i.+p of the Round Table. They fought. The encounter lasted no less than four hours. Sir Lancelot at last slew his antagonist, took the keys of his castle, and released all the prisoners within it, who instantly repaired to the armoury there, and furnished themselves completely."

In a succeeding adventure, a few days afterwards, Sir Lancelot encountered in the forest, at the entrance of a village, what the romance terms a "foul churl," who "dashed at him with a great club, full of iron spikes." Sir Lancelot, in return, drew his sword, and "smote him dead upon the earth." He proved to be the porter of a neighbouring castle, inhabited by "two great giants, well armed save their heads, and with two horrible clubs in their hands." Lancelot, nothing daunted, with his s.h.i.+eld, "warded off one giant's stroke, and clove the other with his sword from the head downward to the chest. When the first giant saw that he ran away mad with fear; but Sir Lancelot ran after him, and smote him through the shoulder, and shove him down his back, so that he fell dead." This victory released "a band of sixty ladies and young damsels,"

some of whom had been imprisoned by the giants during seven years.

A correspondent of the _Irish Times_, in a recent paper on "Legends of the Tichborne Family," says,--"The preservation of the Round Table, or what was shown as such by Henry VIII. to Charles of France, is due to them. This table is, I believe, shown in what are the remains of the ancient chapel or church of St. Stephen, Winchester. It is now riddled with Cromwell's bullets, having been unsuccessfully defended against him by one of the Tichbornes and Lord Ogle. Whether at such a table ever sat

The faultless king, That pa.s.sionate perfection,

matters little. Who would not now say with the bard,

I know the Round Table, my friend of old.

We know it through its offsprings, 'Elaine,' 'Enid,' 'Guinevere,' and a host of others. The table, with its twenty-four names, is the origin of our romance of romances--_la creme de la creme_--of legends!"

Mr. Timbs, in "Historic Ninepins," says, "the existing representative Round Table is of wood, and is preserved at Winchester, and hangs upon the interior eastern wall of the County Hall. The decorations of the table indicate a date not later nor much earlier than the reign of Henry VIII., and the figure of Arthur has been repainted within the time of living memory." King Edward III. founded an order in commemoration of the British warrior, and in 1344 entertained the knights at Windsor Castle at a Round Table two hundred feet in diameter.

Several circular mounds in various parts of England, including a remarkable one near Penrith, are by traditionary wisdom each honoured with the name of "King Arthur's Round Table." Bishop Percy tells us that the term "round table" is not a speciality of the King Arthur legends, but that it is common to all the ages of chivalry. In support of this he refers to Dugdale's description of a grand tournament given by Roger de Mortimer, at Kenilworth, in the reign of Edward the First. Dugdale says,--"Then began the Round Table, so called by reason that the place wherein they practised those feats was environed with a strong wall made in a round form." This is confirmed by an expression common with Matthew Paris, when describing jousts and tournaments. He styles them "_Hastiludia Mensae Rotundae_." Wace makes mention of the Round Table of Arthur in his metrical romance, but Geoffrey of Monmouth has no reference to it, either in his pretended "History," or in his "Life of Merlin." Nevertheless in the romance, the "Morte Darthur," it is expressly stated that Merlin made it "in token of the roundness of the world." It is evidently, like other circular forms, a sun type, or phallic symbol. Ellis, in his "Specimens of the Early English Romances,"

on the authority of the metrical one of which Merlin is the hero, says,--"The Round Table was intended to a.s.semble the best knights in the world. High birth, great strength, activity and skill, fearless valour, and firm fidelity to their suzerain were indispensably requisite for an admission into this order. They were bound by oath to a.s.sist each other at the hazard of their own lives; to attempt singly the most perilous adventures; to lead, when necessary, a life of monastic solitude; to fly to arms on the first summons; and never to retire from battle till they had defeated the enemy, unless when night interfered and separated the combatants." The number of knights belonging to the order appears to have varied at different times; but one hundred or upwards is most generally referred to. The table was originally constructed by the magician Merlin for Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father. It pa.s.sed from him to Leodigan, King of Carmalide, the father of Guenevere, the wife of Arthur. The famous round table formed part of the dower of the queen on her marriage with the popular hero.

The manner in which traditions sometimes become interwoven with legends of more modern date is aptly ill.u.s.trated by the fact recorded in the "Vetus Ceremoniale" MS., and endorsed by Du Cange, "that the chivalrous order of the Knights of the Round Table was inst.i.tuted by King Arthur and the Duke of Lancaster." If Arthur ever lived at all, he lived in the fifth and sixth centuries. Geoffrey of Monmouth says, after being mortally wounded, "he gave up the crown of Britain to his kinsman, Constantine, the son of Cader, Duke of Cornwall, in the five hundred and forty-second year of our Lord's incarnation." Roger de Poictou, the first _Earl_ of Lancaster, flourished in the twelfth; and Henry, the first _Duke_, about a couple of centuries afterwards! But dates are little regarded by those who traffic in the "mythic lore" of the mysterious "olden time."

The Rev. G. W. c.o.x successfully shows that the princ.i.p.al materials of the Arthurian legends are identical with those which underlie the Hindoo, Grecian, Teutonic, and other Aryan myths. He contends that Arthur is another phase of Achilleus, or Sigurd, or Perseus. He says,--"Round him are other brave knights, and these not less than himself must have their adventures; and thus Arthur and Balin answer respectively to Achilleus and Odysseus in the Achaian hosts. A new element is brought into the story with the Round Table, which forms part of the dowery of Guinevere." This dowery he regards as the equivalent of, and as fatal to him as the treasures of the Argive Helen were to Menelaus. Referring to the "San Graeal," he says,--"This mystic vessel is at once a storehouse of food as inexhaustible as the table of the Ethiopians, and a talismanic test as effectual as the goblets of Oberon and Tristram. The good Joseph of Arimathea, who had gathered up in it the drops of blood which fell from the side of Jesus when pierced by the centurion's spear, was nourished by it alone through his weary imprisonment of two and forty years; and when, at length, having either been brought by him to Britain, or preserved in heaven, it was carried by angels to the pure t.i.turel, and shrined in a magnificent temple, it supplied to its wors.h.i.+ppers the most delicious food, and preserved them in perpetual youth. As such it differs in no way from the horn of Amaltheia, or any other of the oval vessels which can be traced back to the emblem of the Hindu Sacti." He afterwards adds,--"The myth which corrupted the wors.h.i.+ppers of Tammuz in the Jewish temple has supplied the beautiful picture of unselfish devotion which sheds a marvellous glory on the career of the pure Sir Galahad."

The Arthur of romance is in fact the creation of writers of a later age, or later ages, than the conquest of Britain by the Angles and Saxons, and not of contemporary bardic historians. The British chieftain, who fought against Ida and his Angles in the North of England, and whose territory is believed to have extended from the Clyde to the Ribble, with a varying boundary on the east, is named Urien. He is the great hero of the bard Taliesin. Amongst his other great qualities, the poet enumerates the following:--"Protector of the land, usual with thee is headlong activity and the drinking of ale, and ale for drinking, and fair dwelling and beautiful raiment." Llywarch Hen, or the old, another Keltic poet, born about the year 490, incidentally mentions Arthur as chief of the Cymry of the south, or, as Professor Morley puts it, "what Urien was in the north, Arthur was in the south." Llywarch Hen was present at the b.l.o.o.d.y battle in which his lord Geraint (one of the knights introduced into the succeeding romances), and a whole host of British warriors perished. The said bard likewise brought away the head of Urien in his mantle, after his decapitation by the sword of an a.s.sa.s.sin.

Amongst the kings and lords who attended Arthur's first feast at "Carlion," in Wales, was, according to Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte Darthur," "King Uriens of Gore, with four hundred knights with him."

The earliest of the written Arthurian romances are to be found in the History of the Britons ascribed to Nennius, but who he was, or when the work was compiled, is not known. Some ascribe it to the end of the eighth, others to the end of the tenth century. Geoffrey of Monmouth published his historical romance in the twelfth century. He, however, in his dedicatory epistle to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, acknowledges, somewhat regretfully, that he "found nothing said" about Arthur and several other of his mythical Kings in either Gildas or Bede. William of Malmesbury, in the first part of his history, speaks of this semi-mythic warrior in the following terms: "That Arthur, about whom the idle tales of the Bretons (nugae Britonum) craze to this day, one worthy not to have misleading fables dreamed about him, but to be celebrated in true history, since he sustained for a long time his tottering country, and sharpened for war the broken spirits of his people." This was most probably written a few years before the appearance of Geoffrey's work.

About forty years afterwards, his countryman, Gerald, condemned Geoffrey's history as spurious. He had arrived at this conclusion in the following singular manner. One Melerius, a Welshman of Caerleon, had "an extraordinary familiarity with unclean spirits," and he was enabled, by "their a.s.sistance, to fortel future events.... He knew when anyone spoke falsely in his presence, for he saw the devil; as it were, leaping and exulting on the tongue of the liar.... If the evil spirits oppressed him too much the Gospel of St. John was placed on his bosom, when, like birds, they immediately vanished; but when that book was removed, and the History of the Britons by Geoffry Arthur was subst.i.tuted in its place, they instantly reappeared in great numbers, and remained a longer time than usual on his body and on the book!!" William of Newbury, too, some half a century after the publication of Geoffrey's work, repudiated it in the following emphatic manner:--"A certain writer has come up in our times to wipe out the blots on the Britons, weaving together ridiculous figments about them, and raising them with impudent vanity high above the virtue of the Macedonians and the Romans. This man is named Geoffrey, and has the by-name of Arturus, because he cloaked with the honest name of History, coloured in Latin phrase, the fables about Arthur, taken from the old tales of the Bretons, with increase of his own.... Moreover, in his book, that he calls the History of the Britons, how saucily and how shamelessly he lies almost throughout, no one, unless ignorant of the old histories, when he falls upon that book, can doubt." William concludes with the following emphatic sentence: "Therefore, as in all things we trust Bede, whose wisdom and sincerity are beyond doubt, so that fabler with his fables shall be straightway spat out by us all." Geoffrey's work was, as Professor Morley observes, "a natural issue of its time, and is, indeed, the source of one of the purest streams of English poetry." It was afterwards abridged, translated, versified, and paraphrased. New fancies were added, sometimes from Breton traditions, and sometimes from the fertile brains of more modern poets and writers of romance. The "Mort Artus," "The Quest of the Sangreal," and the "Lancelot of the Lake" stories were written by Archdean Walter Map, the friend of Gerald de Barri, commonly called Giraldus Cambrensis. Map flourished during the latter portion of the twelfth century. In 1485, Caxton printed a complete collection of the Arthur legends, "after a copy," as he says, "unto me delivered, which copy Sir Thomas Malorye did take out of certain books of French and reduced it into English." It is ent.i.tled, "A Book of the n.o.ble Hystoryes of King Arthur, and of certen of his Knyghtes, which book was reduced in to Englysshe by Sir Thomas Malory, Knight."

Some other giant traditions yet hold their ground in Lancas.h.i.+re and the neighbourhood. One at Worsley, near Manchester, the seat of the Earl of Ellesmere, appears to be but a duplication of the Tarquin legend.

Perhaps the immense tunneling, and the miles of underground ca.n.a.l in connection with the Bridgewater Trust collieries, and other results of Brindley's engineering skill, may have influenced the relatively modern vulgar mind in the transference of the locality of Tarquin's stronghold from Castlefield to Worsley. Or perhaps the second adventure of Sir Lancelot, when he encountered the "foul churl" and his giant masters, may have fastened itself upon this locality.

Dorning Rasbotham, 1787, visited the towns.h.i.+p of Turton, in Lancas.h.i.+re, for the purpose of inspecting what he described as the "_Hanging_ or _Giant's Stone_." He says:--

"The tradition of the common people is that it was thrown by a certain giant, upon a certain occasion (the nature of which they do not specify), from Winter Hill, on the opposite range, to this place; and they whimsically fancy that certain little hollows in the stone are the impression made by the giant's hand at the time he threw it; but I own I could not find out the resemblance which was noticed to me. It appears, however, to have long excited attention; for, though it is a hard grey moor-stone, a rude mark of a cross, of about seven inches by six, hath, apparently, at a very distant period of time, been cut upon the top of it. It is elevated upon another piece of rock; and its greatest length is fourteen feet, its depth in the thickest part five feet eight inches, and its greatest breadth upon the top, which is nearly flat, about nine feet. A thorough-going antiquarian would call this a Druidical remain."

Traditions of this cla.s.s are very common, especially in districts were huge rocks lay apparently unconnected with the general mountain ma.s.ses.

As I have previously observed, striated boulders, brought from a great distance by what geologists term the "glacial drift," are especially regarded as _debris_ resulting from giant warfare or amus.e.m.e.nt. Many rocks of this cla.s.s lying to the south of Pendle Hill, near Great Harwood, I am informed, are still looked upon by the vulgar as stones which have been hurled by giants from the surrounding hills. If we regard them as the "frost giants" of the Scandinavian myths, it is by no means an inapt personification of the gigantic force exhibited by iceberg or glacier action.

A tradition in the neighbourhood of Stockport yet a.s.serts that on the site of a ruined building, with the remains of a moat, called "Arden or Hardon Hall," on the southern bank of the river Tame, an ancient castle once existed. John O'Gaunt is said to have slept in it. The tradition, moreover, further informs us that at some very remote period a huge giant occupied the same fortress, and that he and a colossal rival, on the Rother or Mersey at Stockport, carried on a long desultory warfare by throwing stones and shooting arrows at each other. The Arden monster, at length becoming disgusted at the tediousness of this ineffectual style of combat, a.s.sembled his retainers, attacked the Stockport giant in his stronghold, slew him, and utterly exterminated his followers.

May not this tradition have some remote connection with the struggles between the Christian Northumbrians and the Mercian pagans in the seventh century? The Mersey formed then the boundary line between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, as it now separates Lancas.h.i.+re from Ches.h.i.+re. Or, as John O'Gaunt is mixed up in some way with it, may not an old legend have become confounded with events attendant upon some of the insurrectionary movements of the early Norman barons, or of the Wars of the Roses? Stockport was once a strongly fortified position, and is yet considered one of the "keys of the county of Lancaster."

The giant and the ogre seem to have eventually pa.s.sed into the tyrant lord, who imprisoned in the dungeons of his strong castle captive knights who succ.u.mbed to his prowess, and fair maidens whom he had abducted. The magical or sorcery element, likewise, is still to be found clinging to similar modern stories; and, notwithstanding the more polished manners and elegant costume in which they are presented, they quite as much partake of the character of the nursery tales about champions and ogres of the "Jack, the Giant-killer" type, as modern gentlemen do of their savage aboriginal ancestry. Hallam, referring to the plundering barons of the "middle ages," and the legends engrafted upon their ferocious deeds, says:--"Germany appears to have been, upon the whole, the country where downright robbery was most unscrupulously practised by the great. Their castles, erected on almost inaccessible heights among the woods, became the secure receptacles of predatory bands, who spread terror over the country. From these barbarian lords of the dark ages, as from a living model, the romances are said to have drawn their giants and other disloyal enemies of true chivalry."

The giants, as I have shown, are evidently of an age much earlier than the mediaeval barons, but they and their doings may have furnished _nuclei_ around which the older myths may be said to have re-crystallised themselves. Hallam, again, when discussing the question of chivalry, refers to the connection of the relatively modern romances and the older traditions. He says:--

"The real condition of society, it has sometimes been thought, might suggest stories of knight errantry, which were wrought up into the popular romances of the middle ages. A baron, abusing the advantage of an inaccessible castle in the fastnesses of the Black Forest or the Alps, to pillage the neighbourhood and confine travellers in his dungeon, though neither a giant nor a Saracen, was a monster not less formidable, and could, perhaps, as little be destroyed without the aid of disinterested bravery. Knight errantry, indeed, as a profession, cannot rationally be conceived to have had any existence, beyond the precincts of romance. Yet there seems no improbability in supposing that a knight, journeying through uncivilised regions in his way to the Holy Land, or to the court of a foreign sovereign, might find himself engaged in adventures not very dissimilar to those which are the theme of romance. We cannot indeed expect to find any historical evidence of such incidents."

The disinterested chivalrous motive of the knight-errants of mediaeval romance appears to have intimate relations.h.i.+p to the unselfishness of the heroes of the Greek solar myths, whose toil was always undergone for the benefit of others rather than themselves. The knight-errants'

devotion to their "lady-loves," especially in some of its features, seems allied to the solar heroes' love for the dawn-G.o.ddesses.

If "giants" represent so many mythical characteristics it is not unlikely that something of the kind may be found in connection with their corporeal ant.i.theses, the dwarfs. Timbs, in his "Historic Ninepins," has the following pertinent remarks on this subject:--