Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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THE AUGUSTA Seminary Annual. Vol. V. Staunton, Va., May, 1895. No. i. Tennyson ' s Idyls of the King. Ghe .-HE Arthurian legends on which the Idyls of the King are -J based, have been compared to the beautiful princess in the familiar stor} ' , The Sleeping Beauty, who lay in her cas- tle for a hundred years until the fated fairy prince should come and awaken her. To extend the comparison, Tennyson was that prince, who doing what so many others had thought of, but had never attempted, cut through the shrubs and trees all around the castle and wakened everything therein to life, beauty and action. To study the sources of the legends, we must go back to the beginning of the sixth century. There lived then a bard and prophet named Myrdhinn, who cherished the hope that his king and friend, Aurelianus, would return after death to restore peace and prosperity to the Celts, then driven into Wales by Saxons. With this king, Aurelianus, was confounded his son and valiant successor, Arthur Myrdhinn ' s pupil. But all of Mj dhinn ' s hopes were shattered by the bloody battle of Arderidd, where Celts fought Celts, destroying their own race to the advantage of the Saxons. Alter the final defeat of the Celts, they still held to every tradition which could in any way ease their disappoint- ment or foster their pride, and Myrdhinn ' s prophecy of a great king who would arise like the dawn from his mysterious retreat was one of the chief of these traditions. The historical account of this time gives that Vortigern, chief of the Celts, summoned

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Daily News Printing Company, Staunton, Va. 1895-

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2 ' The Azigiisia Seminary Animal. to his aid in fighting the Picts and Scots, Hengist, a leader of the Saxons. The latter conquered not only the Picts and Scots but the Celts themselves, and a line of Saxon kings was established, from whom Queen Victoria can trace her descent. But the Celts could not bring themselves to admit their humiliation, and in their stories and songs substituted for real history the prophecies of Myrdhinn concerning Arthur. The bard himself retained an important position in the story as the wizard, Merlin — the lyatin- ized form of the name Myrdhinn as these legends grew into a fiction, if not stranger at least more agreeable than truth, the character of the real Arthur was made more beautiful and noble by being invested with the virtues of various other Welsh heroes. He was surrounded by Knights who were to imitate his virtues, to honor King and conscience, to lead pure lives, to redress wrong and to love faithfully one maiden only. Some of the Britons emigrating to Armorica or Brittany in north-western France, carried these stories with them and the po- etic and imaginative Armoricans were much delighted by them. They became popular at once and were related from house to house by story-tellers, who supplied in France the place of the minstrels or gleemen in England and the rhapsodists of the an- cient Greeks. The people having ceased to believe in the stories concerning Charlemagne, these British legends were substituted and had become so popular at the time of the Norman invasion of England in 1066, that they were carried by them back into that country. Marie, daughter of Louis VII. and Elinor, and Count- ess of Champagne, when living in England at the court of Henry II., employed Chrestien de Troyes to compile and revise these legends. This he did, surrounding Arthur with knights and chivalric barons. His most successful poems were Eancelot, Tristan, and Perceval, and the story of the latter ' s search for the Holy Graal was introduced into the series by de Troyes. His whole poem which was partially completed after his death by two minor poets, consisted of sixty-three thousand lines. The real importance of his work lies in the fact that it represents the so- cial, moral and political ideal of his time and that it exercised a great influence on the life of that and the following age, as well as on all succeeding literature. Back to these romances we can trace some of the noblest of the aims and ideals of the Middle