On Good King Arthur

On a recent visit to Cornwall, and following on it, I had occasion to look a little more closely into a subject that fascinates me only as it has hundreds of much wiser men — the history and legend of King Arthur and the Round Table, including the additional legend of the Holy Grail. As far as I could make out, the wisest of them are now inclined to think that Arthur really was a man even if he was also a god. And it seems to me that in any case the god was never so great as the man. A Christian hero might have the name of a pagan deity j but it is remembered as the hero's name and not as the deity's. But even about such pagan deities there are points on which I confess I have never been clear j and, even where it is obvious that the stories are legends, it is not always easy to follow the scientific classification of them as myths. When an ancient Welsh bard informs me that one of King Arthur's knights had the accomplishment of drinking up the sea with several fleets on it, I cannot acquit him of exaggeration. But, if a modern German professor tells me that this must be a myth of the sun, I am again doubtful — first, because I am very doubtful about whether the sun does very often drink up a fleet with the sea to wash it downj and second, because I cannot get rid of a feeling that men do sometimes tell a tale simply because it is a good yarn, or even because it is a tall story.

I confess I have never been quite able to understand what was meant by saying that such-and-such a popular story is a solar myth or a culture myth or something else other than what it appears to be. I am not dear about what is precisely involved in saying, let us say, that the legend of Perseus and Andromeda is something concerned with the sun or moon or anything of the kind. Does it mean that all the people who told a story about a hero and a beautiful princess were thinking about the sun and moon, and not about the man and woman? This would seem to indicate an earnestness of astronomical interest, and a preference for serious scientific studies over lighter and more sentimental subjects, which is too rare in our experience of human nature. Does it mean that any people, or even any person, ever said deliberately, "I am now going to talk about the sun and the solar phenomena, and, to make it more clear and unmistakable, I will confine myself to describing a young man with wings on his shoes and a young woman chained to a rock"? Even that mental process is not very easy to imagine 5 but, even if somebody in the remote beginnings of things did have such a connexion of ideas, it is hardly an exact description of an idea that continued to exist on its own merits long after it was entirely disconnected. We can hardly call a thing a story about the sun if thousands of people continued to see the point of it without even knowing that the sun had anything to do with it. Obviously the story lived by its own strength j it lived solely because it was a good story and not because it was a solar mythj it lived for ages and ages after it had ceased to be a solar myth.

Historically speaking, the point about a popular legend is whatever it was that made it popular. It is that which we are considering when we are considering the thing itself and what it really is. Some natural comparison might conceivably be the origin in the sense of the first suggestion j but clearly it is not the explanation. It does not explain the popular legend for two reasons — first, that it does not explain the popularity j and second, that the popularity is already explained. It is plain a friori that no astronomy is needed to account for a romance about a hero and heroine 3 and it is plain in practical fact that people could enjoy the romance of the hero and heroine without troubling about the astronomy. To say that the story is an astronomical story, in the sense of a solar myth, seems to me an almost meaningless form of words. I take the particular solar theory, just as I take the particular Perseus myth, merely as one example out of many. I am well aware that there are almost as many mythological theories as there are myths j and the latest fashion refers rather to allegories of vegetation than allegories of the sun. Indeed, I believe that just now the sun is rather under a cloud. But there is the same difficulty in saying that the hero is the harvest as in saying that he is the sunshine — the difficulty that most people are interested in the hero because he is the hero, or, in other words, because he is heroic. No other explanation is needed 3 and all other explanations fail to explain. It is certain that it was the heroic idea that held the human heart through the agesj and it is most probable that it was the heroic idea that existed in the human mind from the start. It seems infinitely more likely that the human mind, if it was a human mind, had the vague idea of a hero or divinity at the beginning, and read that idea into certain external events like the sunrise or the springing of the seed. But in any case these material images cannot continue to explain when they have ceased to exist j and we cannot identify with them something that exists without them.

But if this identification is an illusion in the case of common pagan tales like that of Perseus, it is sheer ignorance of history and human experience when applied to vividly Christian visions like that of the Holy Grail. Those who are content with simply saying that the story of the Grail is that of some Celtic talisman, are talking nonsense of the most nonsensical sort. It is perfectly easy for any person of common sense to state the facts on which everything, including their own fancy, can really be said to rest. In all fairy-tales there is an idea of somebody going to seek for something, whether it be a golden apple or a hair in a giant's beard. It is not necessary to be learned or to prove that there is such a story in Welsh or Cornish or Breton folk-lore 5 it is natural to assume that there are hundreds of them. As the things so sought cover every conceivable variety, it is probable that some of them are concerned with something like a cup or platter. As they are all poems produced by the human soul, it is arguable that all of them have some remote relation to the thirst for the ideal in the human soul. The golden apple, though hardly appetizing, is none the less inspiring; and the giant, if not exactly a beauty, does in that sense draw us with a single hair. If there is such a Celtic fairy-tale about some visionary pot or pan or other hollow vessel, it is conceivable that somebody at some time did connect this old tale that he had heard with the legend of the Holy Grail. But to say that it was ever the same as the Grail, or the substance of it, or the point of it, is simply to be unable to see the point of anything. The legend of the Holy Cup obviously existed for reasons of its own; and they were the only real reasons. It is quite obviously concerned with Christian ideas about the sacraments, which counted for much more with everybody concerned than any pagan ideas about any pots and pans. We cannot say that the pagan idea grew into the Christian idea 5 for by itself it could never have grown into anything of the kind. In shortj there is a simple answer to such a suggestion 5 if anybody says "The Holy Grail was an old Celtic talisman/' it is quite sufficient to reply, "An old Celtic talisman was not the Holy Grail."

What is the matter with these modern critics is that they know more about dead things than about living things. They know more about the things in which a few people living in prehistoric Britain may have believed than about the things in which millions of people living all over Europe and America do at this moment believe. If they knew anything about the latter, they would know at a glance what was the real meaning of the real excitement about the Holy Grail. They would know that nobody could ever have been so much excited about the lingering memory of a particular Welsh fairy-tale. But they are doomed to be perpetually finding the small things and missing the big ones, and digging among the dead while denying all the broad daylight that lies upon the land of the living.