The Marvellous History of King Arthur in Avalon and of the Lifting of Lyonnesse: A Chronicle of the Round Table
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The Marvellous History of King Arthur in Avalon and of the Lifting of Lyonnesse - Geoffrey of Monmouth
The Marvellous History of King Arthur in Avalon and of the Lifting of Lyonnesse
A Chronicle of the Round Table
Communicated by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Edited
With Introduction & Notes by
Geoffrey Junior and William John Courthope
Positronic Publishing
PO Box 632
Floyd VA 24091
ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-0299-2
First Positonic Publishing Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Table of Contents
Induction
Argument
Of the Island of Avalon—And of Queen Morgan La Faye
How Morgan La Faye Made King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table Pass the Time in Avalon
How Morgan La Faye Put King Arthur to Sleep, and How She Built a Lodestone Wall Round Avalon
Of the Apple-Tree of Ennui in Avalon, and How Morgan La Faye Looked upon the World Without
Concerning the Game of Loaves and Fishes in Avalon
How Morgan La Faye Made a Parliament to Be Called in Avalon
Of the Speech Made to the Parliament by Sir Artegall
Of the Speech Made to the Parliament by Sir Camball
Of the Speech Made to the Parliament by Sir Percival Called Plough-The-Sand
Of the Speeches Made to the Parliament by Sir Ector and Sir Marhaus
How Sir Cephalus Took off His Crown of Forgetfulness, and Heard the Breathless Chant of the Bulls and Bears
How Merlin Was Fetched out of His Cave, and King Arthur Was Awaked
Of the Things That Merlin Did to Morgan La Faye and the Round Table
How Merlin Wrought for the Lifting of the Land of Lyonnesse
How King Arthur Was Crowned Emperor in Lyonnesse
Induction
IF there is one quality on which I value myself as an antiquary, it is my love of truth and accuracy. Some of my order have been distinguished for vivacity of invention: for these I have little esteem. I could never have conceived such an original idea as to call into existence a fictitious commentator, to accredit the conjectures I have myself sometimes hazarded for improving the text of Shakespeare; still less has it ever occurred to me to produce a parchment of my own, which should be taken for the MS. of an ancient classic. I am, and I thank heaven for it, one of the most matter-of-fact men in the world. All my friends bear witness to what many of them consider my servile attachment to the truth; and not one of them but will trust my good faith in the following narrative, however astonishing may seem the things related.
On last All Souls Day I devoted myself for many hours to perfecting the transcript of a text on which I have been long engaged from a MS. of the famous Roman, Ogier le Danois,
the continuation of the gest of Raimbart, written in the fourteenth century. I wished to reproduce the writer’s text without a single error, and for the eleven hundredth time I had compared my copy with the original, counting each letter in each MS., a labour which I found so trying to my eyes, that it was with a sense of relief I lifted them from the beautiful parchment, with its exquisite illumination—representing Charlemagne’s son killing the son of Ogier with a chess-board,—and allowed myself, for a moment, to fall back in my arm-chair, forgetful of everything without me, and absorbed in the marvellous adventures recorded by the chronicler. Dreaming of the story I had pored over so many thousands of times, I seemed to be cast with Ogier on the lodestone island; I made acquaintance with the amiable horse Papillon; I passed into Avalon, and lived for two hundred years in the company of Morgan la Faye; after which I came back with Ogier to France, and watched him through all the adventures in which, as is well known, he anticipated the later experiences of Rip Van Winkle.
I was brought to myself by the sound of a voice which seemed to address me very distinctly:—
Whilst occupied on many and various studies, I happened to light upon the History of the Kings of Britain, and wondered that in the account which Gildas and Bede, in their elegant treatises, had given of them, I found nothing said of those kings who lived before the Incarnation of Christ, nor of Arthur, and many others who succeeded after the Incarnation—although their actions both deserved immortal fame, and were also celebrated by many people in a pleasant manner, and by heart, as if they had been written. Whilst I was intent upon these and such like thoughts, Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man of great eloquence, and learned in foreign histories, offered me a very ancient book in the British tongue, which, in a continued regular story and elegant style, related the actions of them all, from Brutus, the first King of the Britons, down to Cadwallader, the son of Cadwallo.
The words uttered were of course familiar to me, as being the opening sentences in the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, so that, on looking in the direction from which the voice proceeded, I found no difficulty in recognising the tall figure, robed in a Benedictine gown, which, standing opposite to me in the winking firelight, continued, in the somewhat Latin style that assured me of his identity:
"What I did with this book thou, my son,