Stories of the Days of King Arthur Read online

  Produced by David Widger

  STORIES OF THE DAYS OF KING ARTHUR

  By Charles Henry Hanson

  With Illustrations By Gustave Dore

  PREFACE.

  No other merit or importance is claimed for this book than that of acompilation; but it is, so far as the writer is aware, the most completeepitome of the Arthurian Legends that has yet been prepared for the useof young readers. More than one modernized version of the work of SirThomas Mallory has been published; but every student of the legends willbe aware that there were many of which Mallory, in the compilation ofhis narrative, took no account; and the substance of several of thesehas been embodied in the present work. For the story of Merlin, recoursehas been had to the version of the old romance given by Ellis in his"Early English Metrical Romances." The quaint story of Sir Gawaine andthe Green Knight is adapted from the edition of that legend which isincluded among the publications of the Early English Text Society; whileto Lady Charlotte Guest's "Mabinogion" the writer is indebted for thestory of Geraint and Enid, and also for the romance of Ewaine and theLady of the Fountain.

  It is obvious that in a single volume of the bulk of the present therecould not be included more than a selection from the great mass oflegends which during several centuries accumulated round the mightythough shadowy figure of Arthur. The aim of the writer has been to makechoice of such of these stories and traditions as were most likely tocaptivate the imagination or excite the attention of the boy-readers ofthis generation; to cast them, so far as possible, into the shape of aconnected narrative and regular sequence of events; and to preserveso much of the quaint style of Mallory as is consistent with perfectclearness. Whether these objects have been attained, it must be left forcritics and readers to pronounce; but the compiler ventures to believethat the book will be found a serviceable introduction to the study ofthe romances themselves, and of Mallory's famous prose version ofthem; while it will also assist young readers in the comprehension andappreciation of the Poet Laureate's noble series of poems on ArthurianLegends. In the romances, both in their prose and metrical form, thereare occasional allusions and episodes which make them unfit to be placedin the hands of juvenile readers. It is scarcely necessary to say thatin the present work nothing of this kind has been retained.

  The attempt to blend in the same book fragments of the original Cymrictraditions with others which in the course of ages had received fromforeign adapters so many changes and modifications that they seem atfirst sight to belong to a totally different stock, is perhaps a boldone. The reader will not fail to note that in the stories epitomizedfrom the "Mabinogion," and in "Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight,"personages and incidents alike are ruder, simpler, more poetical thanin the other chapters. There is much more liberal employment ofsupernatural agencies; there are fewer traces of those ideas andinstitutions of chivalry which to the romancers of the Middle Ages werethe very refinement of civilization, the highest development of thesocial system. But though this contrast be perceptible, it is notso much so, perhaps, as to mar the continuity of the book; and it isinstructive, because it enables the reader to view side by side somelegends in a form approximating to that in which they were current amongthe people who claimed Arthur as their hero, and others in the shapethey assumed under the hands of Norman, Breton, and French _trouveres_and romancers.

  No schoolboy now-a-days needs to be told that the Arthur of the legendsis to all intents and purposes a fictitious personage. That there wasa great chieftain among the Britons of the name of Arthur, who roseto preeminence by his military prowess during the sanguinary struggleswhich resulted in the English Conquest, may be regarded as certain; butas to the extent of his dominions, the duration of his reign, and eventhe chief scenes of his exploits, all is doubtful. It is partly froman unwillingness to commit too great a trespass on historical fact, andpartly from a desire to omit tedious and monotonous records of fighting,that the compiler has dismissed with a brief reference the episode ofArthur's Continental invasion and conquest of the Roman Empire, whichoccupies considerable space in Mallory's work, and is the subject ofmore than one of the metrical romances. The Quest of the Holy Grail hasbeen briefly treated because of the mystical nature of the subject.

  STORIES OF THE DAYS OF KING ARTHUR.