The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [200]
The tale of the "Sword of Maximus" is my invention. It follows the archetypal "seeking and finding" pattern of which the Quest of the Grail, which later attached itself to the Arthurian Legend, is only one example. The stories of the Holy Grail, identifying it with the Cup from the Last Supper, are twelfth-century tales modelled in their main elements on some early Celtic "quest" stories; in fact they have elements even older. These Grail stories show certain points in common, changing in detail, but fairly constant in form and idea. There is usually an unknown youth, the bel inconnu, who is brought up in the wilds, ignorant of his name or parentage. He leaves his home and rides out in search of his identity. He comes across a Waste Land, ruled by a maimed (impotent) king; there is a castle, usually on an island, on which the youth comes by chance. He reaches it in a boat belonging to a royal fisherman, the Fisher King of the Grail Legends. The Fisher King is sometimes identified with the impotent king of the Waste Land. The castle on the island is owned by a king of the Otherworld, and there the youth finds the object of his quest, sometimes a cup or a lance, sometimes a sword, broken or whole. At the quest's end he wakes by the side of the water with his horse tethered near him, and the island once again invisible. On his return from the Other-world, fertility and peace are restored to the Waste Land. Some tales figure a white stag collared with gold, who leads the youth to his destination.
[1] History of the Kings of Britain, translated by Sebastian Evans and revised by Charles W. Dunn (Everyman's Library, 1912)
[2] See Roman Britain and the English Settlements, R. G. Collingwood and J. N. L. Myres (Oxford, 1937); Celtic Britain, Nora K. Chadwick Vol. 34 in the series Ancient Peoples and Places, ed. Glyn Daniel (Thames and Hudson, 1963).
[3] Published by Collins, 1960. See also The Quest for Arthur's Britain, ed. Geoffrey Ashe (Pall Mall Press, 1968)
For further reference see Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages; A Collaborative History edited by R. S. Loomis (Oxford University Press, 1959); and The Evolution of the Grail Legend by D. D. R. Owen (University of St. Andrews Publications, 1968).
SOME OTHER BRIEF NOTES
Segontium, Geoffrey of Monmouth in the Vita Merlini tells us of cups made by Weland the Smith in Caer Seint (Segontium), which were given to Merlin. There is also another story of a sword made by Weland which was given to Merlin by a Welsh king. There is a brief reference in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 418 A.D. "In this year the Romans collected all the treasures which were in Britain and hid some in the earth so that no one afterwards could find them, and some they took with them into Gaul."
Galava. The main body of legend places King Arthur in the Celtic countries of the west, Cornwall, Wales, Brittany. In this I have followed the legends. But there is evidence which supports another strong tradition of Arthur in the north of England and in Scotland. So this story moves north. I have placed the traditional "Sir Ector of the Forest Sauvage" (who reared the young Arthur) at Galava, the modern Ambleside in the Lake District. I have often wondered if "the fountain of Galabes [Fontes galabes] where he (Merlin) wont to haunt" could be identified with the Roman Galava or Galaba. (In The Crystal Cave I gave it a different interpretation. The mediaeval romancers make "Galapas" a gaint -- a version of the old guardian of the spring or waterway.) The fostering of Arthur on Ector, and the lodging at Galava of Bedwyr, are feasible; we find in Procopius that, as in later times, boys of good family were sent away to be educated. As for the "chapel in the green," once I had invented a shrine in the Wild Forest I could not resist calling