blemishes in the character and mode of life of the Cymry. He describes them as wanting in respect to oaths, faith, and truth; as so indifferent to the covenant of faith that they went through the ceremony of holding forth the right hand on trifling occasions and to emphasise mere ordinary assertions; and, worse still, as not scrupling to take false oaths in legal causes. He says they habitually committed acts of plunder, theft, and robbery, not only against foreigners but against their own countrymen. They were addicted to trespassing and the removal of landmarks, and there were continual disputes between brothers. They were immoderate in their love of food and intoxicating drinks. Though the language of Giraldus is strong, and his strictures are severe, there can be no doubt that there is substantial truth in what he says, but by way of qualification it must be pointed out that he was a stern and imperious ecclesiastic, that he was looking at the condition of things from the point of view of the Norman-English government, so far as civil matters were concerned, and that he completely ignores the injustice that had been done by the conquest of the greater part of the south by Norman adventurers. What he meant by false swearing was almost a necessary result of a legal system which made an oath an incident of ordinary transactions, and which in judicial proceedings multiplied the number of compurgators to an unusual degree. Especial allowance must be made for this kind of perjury in the case of men who regarded the tie of blood as the strongest social bond, and in a time when a trial was not an inquiry into issues of fact to be decided by witnesses in our modern sense, but one depending on a complicated method of swearing and counter-swearing by rheithwyr, who came to regard themselves not as being charged with the duty of saying what they had actually seen or heard, but of standing by a

E

kinsman in trouble. So much, too, may be urged in extenuation of their trespassing and plundering. For in the early years of the conquest, at any rate, the men of the Norman lord were quite as ready to seize any cattle they could lay hands on as any Cymric youths; and many violent acts of the Welcherie were justifiable, because the cattle they carried off in their raids were looked on as being taken in lieu of those of which they had been despoiled. Their trespasses on and "ambitious seizures" of land in the occupation of invaders need from an impartial standpoint no justification; but the continued litigation about land among themselves, and the habits of forcible entry (as we should say) by one relative as against another, though easy to be explained as the consequence of the rules concerning succession to tir gwelyawg, must be condemned as a proof of those serious defects in the typical Cymric character, of which such striking illustration is afforded by the failure of the nation to effect any stable political combination.

But when every allowance is made, the Cymry proper, whom Giraldus describes, were a wild and turbulent race, dangerous neighbours, and impatient of settled control from any quarter,' a set of men very unlike the singularly law-abiding Welsh people of to-day." They were a quick impulsive race, wanting in moderation, indulging in extremes of conduct, and we readily follow Giraldus when, in ending his first book, he says that "this nation is

1 Read the adventures of Owain ab Cadwgan, in the Brut, s. a. 1106, and in following entries. See also Wynne's History of the Gwydyr Family, which shows how disorderly were the habits of a later day.

2 The comparative absence of crime in the distinctively Welsh counties has been noticeable for many years, and is often a topic of comment by judges of assize and chairmen of quarter sessions.

earnest in all its pursuits, and neither worse men than the bad, nor better than the good, can be met with."

1 This paper (much expanded and somewhat altered) forms one of the chapters in a book entitled The Welsh People written by Principal Rhys and myself, about to be published by Mr. Fisher Unwin.-D. B. J.

GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH.'

BY

PROFESSOR W. LEWIS JONES, M.A.

"Bet y march, bet y guythur.

Bet y gugaun cletyfrut.

Anoeth bid bet y arthur."

'A GRAVE for March, a grave for Gwythur, a grave for Gwgawn of the ruddy sword; not wise (the thought) a grave for Arthur," or as Matthew Arnold freely translates it in a well-known passage in his Study of Celtic Literature, “Unknown is the grave of Arthur." Would, indeed, that this were all that is unknown and unknowable of the storied British king! But he comes upon the scene even as he disappears from it-a shadowy apparition, clothed in the mist of legend, stalking athwart the path of history to distract and lead astray the sober chronicler, and to beckon the romancer and the poet to boundless realms of enchantment and adventurous quest. A Melchisedec of profane history, he has "neither beginning of days, nor end of life." Neither date nor place of birth can be assigned to him any more than a place of burial; and it is left to

Read before the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion at 20, Hanover Square, on Wednesday, the 8th of March, 1899; Chairman, Mr. Thomas E. Ellis, M.P.

* This is the translation given by Professor Rhys, Arthurian Legend, p. 19. It is worth noting that in this quotation from an undoubted twelfth century text, the Black Book of Carmarthen, we get one of the earliest literary references to the tradition as to Arthur's “return”, and it conclusively proves that this tradition existed in Wales—a fact which Zimmer and others question-as early at least as the twelfth century.

conjecture alone to locate that court where knights, only less famous than himself, sought his benison and behest. But all this uncertainty has but served to enhance the attraction which he had, and has, for makers and students of literature; and the immense mass of Arthurian literature extant to-day-romances, poems, critical studiesmay well make the most omnivorous reader quail before its solid bulk. The Arthurian legend has, of late especially, been the subject of so much philological, ethnological and mythological dissertation that one is tempted to say, in contemplating this huge accumulation of critical detail, that here at last is "the grave of Arthur". But when we turn to the poets, even to such extreme modernisers of the story as Tennyson, we feel that the spell continues to work, and are constrained still to follow the pale but deathless figure of the Celtic king as he moves among the shades of his forlorn fairyland.

To students of literature, pure and simple, the question of paramount interest in connection with Arthur is-Who made him for literary purposes the attractive and potent personality he is? Who drew, so to speak, the first fulllength literary portrait of him, and gave to poets and romancers without number something tangible and substantial to draw from, to enlarge, and to idealise? Literary histories generally tell us that the Arthur of romance was introduced to literature by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It matters little whether Geoffrey borrowed from a book that has been lost, or utilised popular traditions, or drew mainly upon his own imagination,-to him belongs the credit of what we may call the first literary exploitation of Arthur. The appearance of the Historia Regum Britanniae marks a real epoch in the history of medieval literature. Arthurian romance would probably have grown and flourished had Geoffrey's "History" never been written. There were