Chapter XXXV: Gilds of Norfolk (3)

The scenery now begins to lose those romantic features down to this point so noticeable in this valley. Larger towns and numerous manufacturing villages disturb the once pastoral quietude. Keeping to the bank of the river we pass Mirfield, and shortly reach Dewsbury, where Paulinus, the first Archbishop of York, preached in the early part of the seventh century--“Paulinus hic prædicavit et celebravit, A.D. 627.” Some years ago there was an old cross commemorating this event. And here in the Calder, I doubt not, the great Apostle of the North baptized hundreds of converts. The ancient Saxon parish of Dewsbury contained an area of 400 square miles. Travel we on and we come to Wakefield, in the meadows close to which was fought one of the most sanguinary battles in the Wars of the Roses. On Wakefield bridge, which spans the Calder, there is a lovely little chapelle, recently restored, thought to have been originally erected in the reign of Edward III., and said to have been rebuilt by Edward IV. to commemorate the death of his father, the Duke of York, and the young Earl of Rutland, the beautiful boy so ruthlessly slain there by Lord Clifford. The Calder, flowing on past the villages of Heath and Stanley, eventually loses itself in the Aire at Castleford. Hence the distich:

“Castleford lasses must needs be fair,
Since they wash themselves both in Calder and Aire.”

Near the border hills, some of the tributary brooks that join the Calder are streams of rare beauty, and flow through regions of sylvan wildness, than which there are none finer in Derbyshire or Devon. If the traveller had to turn aside and wander up one of these glens he would soon leave behind him the din of trade, and find himself in ravine-like woodland solitudes. One of the loveliest and loneliest of these brooks is Turvin, born on the bleak summit of Blackstone Edge, and which precipitates itself in narrow winding channels through many a clough and forest dell. When the shadows of the gloaming steal over the world, it is an eerie sight to watch the mists of autumn as they creep up the gorge and curl round the rocks, and the spectator may almost realise that he is gazing upon some weird and enchanted land. About the middle of last century this glen was the haunt of a gang of coiners who for many years succeeded in eluding and defying the officers of the law. That these daring men carried on their nefarious practices was a fact well known to everybody in the locality, and it is to be feared they were secretly encouraged, as they were assuredly screened, by their neighbours and relatives. Something like a feeling of awe, tradition says, was felt by the cottagers on the distant hills, when they heard in the stillness of night the stroke of the sledge-hammer as the coiners plied, almost defiantly plied, their desperate work. At last some of the ringleaders were captured, tried, and hung. The rest of the gang still at large took their revenge by murdering the excise officer who had been instrumental in bringing the culprits to justice. Other captures were made and more murder followed. But in the end, after a twenty years’ lease of successful defiance, this band of reckless coiners was broken up.

Speaking of Blackstone Edge and the glens leading therefrom down to Calder dale, we are reminded of the impression this mountain with its wild passes and rugged roads had on Taylor, the Water Poet, who crossed over in 1639, and this is what he says: “When I left Halifax I rode over such ways as were past comparison or amendment, for when I went down the lofty mountain called Blackstone Edge, I thought myself in the land of break-necke, it was so steep and tedious.” Over this mountain, but in the opposite direction, wearily paced De Foe when on his way to take refuge in Halifax, perhaps resting a little while by the riverside before he climbed the steep ascent of Skircote. Whilst staying in Halifax he is said to have written part of “Robinson Crusoe.”

Fair features in woman are not irremediably spoiled by accident of cut and scar, or through waste of fever and pain: the lovely lines survive, and the soul beneath breathes unspeakable subtle beauty in smile of the eye and play of emotion on the eloquent face. Such is it with fair Calder dale--a region of poetry and romance, of legendary rock and historic hall, of mountain and glen, of shaw and burn, of daisied meadow and ferny dell. From the spot where I write, looking out at the antique lattice, I see the long sweep of the valley with its wide openings and gorge-like ravines stretching through the heart and the solitude of the everlasting hills, and though smoke blackens and mill mars the landscape, there is a loveliness about the contour of high heath-clad cliff, about the green waving woods musical with bird carol and summer breeze, about the sun-bright waters winding and narrowing miles away to a silver streak, which the accidents of trade and material civilisation have very far from irretrievably ruined.

F.

The Legend of King Arthur in Somerset.

BY MRS. C. G. BOGER.

_PART III.--HIS BURIAL-PLACE AT GLASTONBURY._

(_Concluded from p. 19._)

“Not great Arthur’s tomb, nor holy Joseph’s grave
From sacrilege had power their sacred bones to save;
He who that God in man to his sepulchre brought,
Or he which for the faith twelve famous battles fought.”
DRAYTON’S _Polyolbion_.

WITH Arthur perished the bright gleam of hope for the British race, but the Saxons did not as yet advance farther westward, and it was not till the seventh century that Gladerhaf became Somerset. That he was buried at Glastonbury men knew, but the exact spot remained a secret from all, and so the record of Arthur’s life and labours became a myth on which the earliest and latest British poets alike have loved to dwell and idealise, till men scarce believed that he had any existence save in the realms of romance. Long years passed away. “The old order had changed and yielded place to new” more than once. The Britons had been avenged, for the Saxons had passed under the power of the Dane, and then rose again only to submit to the Norman. Yet the Saxons were never so crushed as the Britons had been, for the Teutons have a staying power and a power of combination that seem to have been denied to the Kelts. Only in Wales did the ancient race preserve their individuality. But a weird and troubled rule was that of the Norman father fighting against son, and brother against brother; and now it was in the year 1177 that Henry II., when on his journey to Ireland, to receive the submission of the princes of that country, passed through Pembroke, and was there entertained by some of the Welsh chieftains. Whilst there, “it chanced to him to heare sung to the harpe certaine ditties of the worthy exploits and actes of this Arthur by one of the Welsh bards, as they were termed, whose custom was to record and sing at their feasts the noble deeds of their ancestors, wherein mention was made of his death and place of buriall, designing it to be in the monks’ burial ground at Glastonbury, and that betwixt two pyramids there standing.”[79]

King Henry made this known to his cousin Henry of Blois, who was at once Abbot of Glastonbury and Bishop of Winchester, but no steps seem to have been taken in his time to ascertain its truth; and it was not till after his death that, in the reign of Richard, Henry de Soliaco, nephew of the late king and Abbot of Glastonbury, instituted a search, the result of which has been described by Giraldus Cambrensis, the historian of his time, who was present when the grave was opened.

“At the depth of seven feet was a huge broad stone, whereon a leaden cross was fastened: on that part that lay downward, in rude and barbarous letters (as rudely set and contrived) this inscription was written upon that side of the lead that was towards the stone:

‘Hic jacet sepultus Rex Arturius in Insula Avalonia.’

And digging nine foot deeper his body was discovered in the trunk of a tree, the bones of great bignesse, and in his scull perceived ten wounds, the last very great and plainly seene. His Queen Guinivere, that had been neare kinswoman to Cador, Duke of Cornwall, a lady of passing beauty, likewise lay by him, whose tresses of hair finely platted, and in colour like the gold, seemed perfect and whole untill it was touched, but then, bewraying what all beauties are, shewed itself to be duste.”

The cross of lead with the inscription, as it was found and taken off the stone, was kept in the Treasury, or Revester, of Glastonbury Church till the suppression thereof in the reign of Henry VIII.

The bones of King Arthur and Queen Guinivere his wife were translated into the great church, and “there in a faire Tombe of Marble his body was laid, and his Queen’s at his feete, which noble monument among the fatall overthrowes of infinite more were altogether raced” [razed].[80]

I scarcely know anything more pathetic than the old chronicler’s account of that tress of golden hair, the sole remains of the beauty that had captivated the heart of the great king and made his noblest knight to fall, and then the seeing it at a touch fall into dust. She who had mourned her sin at Amesbury, at last, by the loving hands of those who had witnessed her penitence, was borne to rest beside her rightful lord; and the golden tresses which, when she had last seen him in life, swept the dust at his feet, now, after more than six hundred years had passed away, faded into dust again when they had fulfilled their mission of testifying to the main facts of the Legend of Arthur.

Nearly a hundred years again had passed, when in the year 1276 King Edward I. and his Queen Eleanor kept the Festival of Easter at Glastonbury. It was during the abbacy of John of Taunton, a great benefactor to the Church in buildings, books for the library, and vestments, that this visit took place. So great were the privileges of this place that even the king himself was laid under some restraint while abiding in it. His deputy high marshal was not allowed to exercise his office; the king’s judges were held to have no authority; and even a man who had incurred the penalty of _læsa majestas_ was not allowed to be punished. The mausoleum of black marble was opened for their inspection; the king’s bones were seen of gigantic proportion, the thigh bone the width of three fingers longer than that of the tallest monk present. The tomb was ordered to be placed in front of the high altar; the skulls of the king and queen to remain outside for the adoration of the people.

Leland, who saw the tomb, says: “At the head of Arthur’s tombe lay Henricus Abbas (Henry of Blois?)[81] and a crucifix; at the feet lay a figure of Arthur; a cross on the tomb, and two lions at the head and two at the feet.”

And here the hero’s bones rested till the Tyrant King scattered all such precious relics to the winds. His body has _not_ been allowed to rest in peace, but his “name liveth for evermore.” Nor is Arthur’s fame confined to England alone, for amongst the figures that keep watch and ward round Maximilian’s tomb at Innspruck is one of the patriot king, and an exquisite photograph of him in armour, as he is there portrayed, faces the writer as this attempt to show the connection of Arthur’s most heroic deeds with her own native county is being penned.

It only remains to add that the authorities for the above remarks are, Gildas, Geoffry of Monmouth, William of Malmesbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, Mallory’s “King Arthur,” Leland, Drayton’s “Polyolbion,” Speed, and Camden, “The Greatest of the Plantagenets,” and “Our Ancient Monuments and the Land around Them,” by C. P. Haines-Jackson, and lastly oral legend.

The History of Gilds.

BY CORNELIUS WALFORD, F.S.S., _Barrister-at-Law_.

_PART IV._

(_Continued from p. 235._)