Читать книгу Arthurian Torso - Charles Williams - Страница 9

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Geoffrey had written, in a general way, as if he were writing history; that is, he had presented his book in the shape of an arranged and continuous record of past times. It was not the yearly annals of the chroniclers on the one hand, nor did it pretend to be romance on the other. His two most famous successors in the tale allowed themselves more freedom. One was[12] an Anglo-Norman clerk, born in Jersey, named Wace, who lived from about 1100 to about 1175, and about 1155 ‘published’ his Geste de Bretons or (as others more usually called it) Roman de Brut. The prestige of the fabulous Trojan Brutus was still very strong; the Britons were still derived from a city more ancient than Rome or Byzantium. Arthur, in his blood, drew from a deeper fount than any imperial house could; one might even imagine that the final fall of his glory was not entirely without a dim relation to that other overthrow of Troy. Fifty or sixty years after his Brut, an English priest in Worcestershire produced another, which he frankly professed to found on Wace. Both were in verse; the 15,000 lines of Wace become 30,000 in Layamon. But the style of the two poets was very different. Wace carried on the culture and medieval splendour of Geoffrey. Layamon wrote under the poetic influence of older poets, of the Anglo-Saxons. Wace is busy with courts and progresses; Layamon with heroes and fighting. There is in Layamon something not unlike dialogue and exclamations; where Wace gives silk and the polish of steel, Layamon gives cloth and the weight of steel. It is, however, not with their style but with their story that we are concerned.

They both follow Geoffrey, but with added detail, the most important addition being the invention of the Round Table itself. The birth of Arthur is told by both in the same manner as in Geoffrey; though in Layamon Merlin is introduced to Uther by means of a hermit. The hermit lived away to the west, in a wilderness, in a deep forest; he had dwelled there many winters, and Merlin often came to him there. The hermit, coming back from Uther, saw Merlin standing under a tree and ran to him; when they had embraced, Merlin (so wise as he was) spoke of the hermit’s errand and forestalled him in revealing Uther’s desire. He went on to prophesy of Arthur: ‘All shall bow to him that dwells in Britain; gleemen shall sing of him well; noble poets shall eat of his breast; men shall be drunk on his blood. . . . This word is secret; neither Ygearne or Uther knows yet that such a son shall come from Uther Pendragon; he is yet unbegot that shall govern all the people.’

Both the hermit and the forest are among the first—if they are not the very first—appearances in English, certainly in this myth, of those two images. Both, in various measure and in varied shapes, and under changing names, were to haunt the myth. The birth of Arthur was presently, by a dextrous twist, to be made canonical, or almost so, as near so as could be without involving Ygearne in a love too much like Guinevere’s or Iseult’s. Merlin was to know of even holier beings than hermits. And this western forest was to expand on all sides until presently it seemed as if Camelot and Caerleon and even Carbonek were but temporary clearings within it. But in Layamon Merlin goes on to Uther; the transformations are accomplished and the child born. In Layamon also, and first, the elves take charge of him. ‘They enchanted the babe with strong magic; they gave him might to be the best of knights; they gave him a second boon, to be a rich king; they gave him a third, to live long; they gave him good virtue, so that he was the most generous of living men. These things the elves gave; well throve the child.’ This again is one of the earliest relations of the king’s person to faerie. He never came quite to belong to it; he was 41 always to be of this world, and it was fortunate, for that most serious of all quests in which his companionship, if not he, were to be involved, is not at all of faerie kind. Yet faerie hovered for centuries behind his shoulder, or indeed in his scabbard. Morgan le Fay was his sister, less explicable than that other sister who began as Anne and ended as Morgause, but was always the wife of King Lot and the mother of Mordred and Gawaine and the rest of the princes of the house of Orkney. At Badon, in both Wace and Layamon, the king wore a sword forged in Avalon, almost a faerie place—forged ‘with magic craft’, says Layamon, who calls it Caliburen, but Wace names it Excalibur. Layamon adds that his helmet was called Goswhit, and his shield Pridwen, on which was engraved in tracings of reddish gold, the image of the blessed and glorious Mary. Both poets add that the name of his spear was Ron.

It is Layamon who tells us of his cry when he is called to the throne by the bishops and lords: ‘Lord Christ, God’s Son, be to us now in aid that I may in life hold God’s laws.’ Both praise him with different phrases at this moment. Wace says that he was fifteen, tall and strong for his years, worthy of praise and glory; haughty to the haughty, mild to the mild. He was one of Love’s lovers; he was above all other princes in courtesy and prowess, valour and largesse. Layamon adds that he was ‘a father to the young, a comforter to the old, a judge to the foolish. He had no cook that was not a good champion, nor knight’s servant that he was not good thane. The king held all his folk together with great bliss.’

There belonged, it may be held, to that bliss the most important new invention which these poets supplied—the making of the Round Table itself. The image may have come, and probably did come, from more ancient sources. Wace mentions its making, but only briefly: ‘it was ordained that when this fair fellowship sat to meat, their chairs should be alike high, their service equal, none before or behind his companions; and none could brag that he was exalted above any, for all alike were gathered round the board, and none was alien at the breaking of 42 Arthur’s bread.’ Layamon, however, gives a whole story. Arthur held Christmas court in London, during which jealousy and envy broke out in the household; there were high words, blows, and eventually a great and bloody tumult, which the king himself in arms suppressed. He who began it was condemned to be thrown into a marsh; his male kindred to be beheaded; his nearest women folk to have their noses cut off. Anyone who in future causes a similar brawl is to be torn by wild horses; so stern a judge to the foolish was the king. All the court swear on holy relics against any further outbreak. After this a man of Cornwall proposed that he should make for the king a great table, at which sixteen hundred men and more might be seated, within and without: ‘there shall the high be equal with the low’. The king assented. The Table took four weeks to make, and when on the next day the court was assembled, ‘all they one by one were seated, the high and the low’. ‘It is not all sooth nor all falsehood that minstrels sing, but this is sooth of Arthur the king.’

Arthur’s marriage takes place in both poems, though in Wace the queen is called Guinevere, in Layamon Wenhaver. In both she comes of Roman blood. Wace has the more princely description; she is ‘fair in face, courteous, delicate in person and motion, of a royal bearing, very sweet and of a ready tongue’. Arthur is said, in general, to love her wondrous well, but the single phrase has to serve. Even Wace, with his Love’s lover, does not care to develop the theme, except that both he and Layamon follow Geoffrey in declaring that love encouraged chivalry and chastity. No knight could offer love to any lady till he had proved his worth; then he might, ‘and his friend was the more chaste as he was brave’. The phrase suggests—as we might from other sources suppose, and those not only Christian or doctrinal but imaginative and poetic—that chastity was more than a negation of lust; it was a growing, heightening, and expanding thing. It was a state of spiritual being, and its spiritual expression was not at all inconsistent with marriage. It is to be remembered that chastity might be either married or 43 virginal. Certainly the officials of the Church tended to stress the more austere type, but certainly also from the beginning there was a wider validity in the whole. But that lies more closely in Galahad and his companions on the quest.

It is against chastity and loyalty that the queen and Mordred offend. In both poems the queen’s passion for Mordred is named. It is put forward as a fact and must be taken as a fact, for there has been no preparation. ‘She had set her love,’ says Wace, ‘on her husband’s sister’s son.’ ‘The queen came to Mordred,’ says Layamon, ‘who was to her dearest of men.’ Her end is alike in both: at York she hears of Mordred’s defeat at Winchester; she is highly troubled and full of remorse. ‘Better were the dead than those who lived, in the eyes of Arthur’s queen.’ ‘Woe was to her awhile that she was alive!’ She escaped at night, accompanied by two lords, to the convent at Caerleon, where she had once been crowned. There she took the veil. ‘Never again was fair lady heard or seen, never again found or known of men.’ ‘Nor for many years after did any man know if she were dead or if she were sunk in the water.’

As for the king, he was terribly wounded in the last battle, and had himself carried to Avalon to be healed of his wound. In both poems he commits the kingdom to the charge of Constantine, son of Cador Earl of Cornwall, to keep until he should come again. Layamon causes him to add that he will go to ‘Argante the queen, fairest of maidens, an elf most fair’, who will make him whole with healing draughts. Wace gives the date—it was the year 642 of the Incarnation. Both say that Merlin prophesied the return. Wace holds that his words were doubtful, and that men have always doubted. ‘Earl Constantine took the land into his charge and held it as he was bidden; nevertheless, Arthur came not again.’ But Layamon ended the tale on a higher note.

‘Then was fulfilled what Merlin said once—that there should be much care of Arthur’s departing. The Britons believe that he is alive, and dwells in Avalon with the fairest of all elves, and ever they 44 expect when Arthur shall return. Never was any man born, of any lady chosen ever, who knew so much more of truth, to say more of Arthur. But of old while there was a wise man called Merlin; he said with words—and sooth were the things he said—that an Arthur should yet come to help the English.’