Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History King Arthur and the Knights of the Round TableThe Project Gutenberg eBook of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table Author: Sir Thomas Malory Editor: Rupert Sargent Holland Release date: June 18, 2011 [eBook #36462] Most recently updated: January 7, 2021 Language: English Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36462 Credits: Produced by Peter Vachuska, Dave Morgan, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE *** Produced by Peter Vachuska, Dave Morgan, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net KING ARTHUR _and the Knights of the Round Table_ EDITED BY RUPERT S. HOLLAND GROSSET & DUNLAP _Publishers_ NEW YORK _Copyright, 1919, by George W. Jacobs & Company_ _Printed in the United States of America_ [Illustration: "This girdle, lords," said she, "is made for the most part of mine own hair, which, while I was yet in the world, I loved full well."] INTRODUCTION King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table! What magic is in the words! How they carry us straight to the days of chivalry, to the witchcraft of Merlin, to the wonderful deeds of Lancelot and Perceval and Galahad, to the Quest for the Holy Grail, to all that "glorious company, the flower of men," as Tennyson has called the king and his companions! Down through the ages the stories have come to us, one of the few great romances which, like the tales of Homer, are as fresh and vivid to-day as when men first recited them in court and camp and cottage. Other great kings and paladins are lost in the dim shadows of long-past centuries, but Arthur still reigns in Camelot and his knights still ride forth to seek the Grail. "No little thing shall be The gentle music of the bygone years, Long past to us with all their hopes and fears." So wrote the poet William Morris in _The Earthly Paradise_. And surely it is no small debt of gratitude we owe the troubadours and chroniclers and poets who through many centuries have sung of Arthur and his champions, each adding to the song the gifts of his own imagination, so building from simple folk-tales one of the most magnificent and moving stories in all literature. This debt perhaps we owe in greatest measure to three men; to Chrétien de Troies, a Frenchman, who in the twelfth century put many of the old Arthurian legends into verse; to Sir Thomas Malory, who first wrote out most of the stories in English prose, and whose book, the _Morte Darthur_, was printed by William Caxton, the first English printer, in 1485; and to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who in his series of poems entitled the _Idylls of the King_ retold the legends in new and beautiful guise in the nineteenth century. The history of Arthur is so shrouded in the mists of early England that it is difficult to tell exactly who and what he was. There probably was an actual Arthur, who lived in the island of Britain in the sixth century, but probably he was not a king nor even a prince. It seems most likely that he was a chieftain who led his countrymen to victory against the invading English about the year 500. So proud were his countrymen of his victories that they began to invent imaginary stories of his prowess to add to the fame of their hero, just as among all peoples legends soon spring up about the name of a great leader. As each man told the feats of Arthur he contributed those details that appealed most to his own fancy and each was apt to think of the hero as a man of his own time, dressing and speaking and living as his own kings and princes did, with the result that when we come to the twelfth century we find Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his _History of the Kings of Britain_, describing Arthur no longer as a half-barbarous Briton, wearing rude armor, his arms and legs bare, but instead as a most Christian king, the flower of mediæval chivalry, decked out in all the gorgeous trappings of a knight of the Crusades. As the story of Arthur grew it attracted to itself popular legends of all kinds. Its roots were in Britain and the chief threads in its fabric remained British-Celtic. The next most important threads were those that were added by the Celtic chroniclers of Ireland. Then stories that were not Celtic at all were woven into the legend, some from Germanic sources, which the Saxons or the descendants of the Franks may have contributed, and others that came from the Orient, which may have been brought back from the East by men returning from the Crusades. And if it was the Celts who gave us the most of the material for the stories of Arthur it was the French poets who first wrote out the stories and gave them enduring form. It was the Frenchman, Chrétien de Troies, who lived at the courts of Champagne and of Flanders, who put the old legends into verse for the pleasure of the noble lords and ladies that were his patrons. He composed six Arthurian poems. The first, which was written about 1160 or earlier, related the story of Tristram. The next was called _Érec et Énide_, and told some of the adventures that were later used by Tennyson in his _Geraint and Enid_. The third was _Cligès_, a poem that has little to do with the stories of Arthur and his knights as we have them. Next came the _Conte de la Charrette_, or _Le Chevalier de la Charrette_, which set forth the love of Lancelot and Guinevere. Then followed _Yvain_, or _Le Chevalier au Lion_, and finally came _Perceval_, or _Le Conte du Graal_, which gives the first account of the Holy Grail. None of these stories are to be found in the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who had written earlier in Latin, nor in any of the so-called chronicles. It was Chrétien who took the old folk-tales that men had been telling each other for centuries and put them into sprightly verse for the entertainment of his lords and ladies. He fashioned the stories according to the taste of his own gay courts, and so Arthur and his Queen Guinevere, Lancelot, Perceval and the other knights became far more like French people of the twelfth century than like Britons of the sixth. And in introducing the Holy Grail, that sacred and mystic cup that was supposed to hold drops of the blood of Christ and to have been carried to England by Joseph of Arimathea, Chrétien added to the Arthurian legends an old religious story that had had nothing to do with Arthur originally. From this point in its history that sturdy ancient Eng |