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Among the best liked stories of five or six hundred years ago were those

which told of chivalrous deeds—of joust and tourney and knightly

adventure. To be sure, these stories were not set forth in printed books, for

there were no printed books as early as the times of the first three King

Edwards, and few people could have read them if there had been any. But

children and grown people alike were eager to hear these old-time tales read

or recited by the minstrels, and the interest in them has continued in some

measure through all the changing years and tastes. We now, in the times of

the seventh King Edward, still find them far more worth our while than

many modern stories. For us they have a special interest, because of home

setting and Christian basis, and they may well share in our attention with

the legends of Greece and Rome.

In these early romances of chivalry, Arthur and his knights of the Round

Table are by far the most popular heroes, and the finding of the Holy Grail

is the highest achievement of knightly valour. The material for the Arthur

stories came from many countries and from many different periods of

history. Much of it is wholly fanciful, but the writers connected all the

incidents directly or indirectly with the old Briton king of the fifth century,

who was the model of knighthood, "without fear and without reproach."

Perhaps there was a real King Arthur, who led the Britons against the

Saxon invaders of their land, who was killed by his traitor nephew, and who

was buried at Glastonbury,—the valley of Avilion of the legends; perhaps

there was a slight historical nucleus around which all the romantic material

was crystallising through the centuries, but the Arthur of romance came

largely from the imagination of the early writers.

And yet, though our "own ideal knight" may never have trod the soil of

Britain or Roman or Saxon England, his chivalrous character and the

knightly deeds of his followers are real to us, if we read them rightly, for

"the poet's ideal was the truest truth." Though the sacred vessel—the Holy

Grail—of the Christ's last supper with His disciples has not been borne

about the earth in material form, to be seen only by those of stainless life

and character, it is eternally true that the "pure in heart" are "blessed," "for

they shall see God." This is what the Quest of the Holy Grail means, and

there is still many a true Sir Galahad, who can say, as he did,

"My strength is as the strength of ten,

Because my heart is pure,"

and who attains the highest glory of knighthood, as before his clear vision

"down dark tides the glory glides,

And starlike mingles with the stars."

We call these beautiful stories of long ago Stories of Chivalry, for, in the

Middle Ages, chivalry influenced all that people did and said and thought.

It began in the times of Charlemagne, a hundred years before our own King

Alfred, and only very gradually it made its way through all the social order.

Charlemagne was really a very great man, and because he was so, he left

Western Europe a far better place to live in than he found it. Into the social

life of his time he brought something like order and justice and peace, and

so he greatly helped the Christian Church to do its work of teaching the

rough and warlike Franks and Saxons and Normans the gentle ways of thrift

and helpfulness.

Charlemagne's "heerban," or call to arms, required that certain of his

men should attend him on horseback, and this mounted service was the

beginning of what is known as chivalry. The lesser nobles of each feudal

chief served their overlords on horseback, à cheval, in times of war; they

were called knights, which originally meant servants,—German knechte;

and the system of knighthood, its rules, customs, and duties, was called

chivalry,—French chevalerie.

Chivalry belongs chiefly to the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth

centuries,—to about the time between King Richard of the Lion Heart and

Prince Hal. There is no trace of ideas peculiar to it in the writings of the old

Anglo-Saxons or in the Nibelungen Lied of Germany. Geoffrey of

Monmouth, who died, it is said, in the year 1154, is about the earliest writer

who mentions customs that belong especially to chivalry. The Crusades, of

Geoffrey's century and of the one following, gave much opportunity for its

growth and practice; but in the fifteenth century chivalrous fashions and

fancies began to seem absurd, and later, perhaps partly through the ridicule

of that old-time book "Don Quixote," chivalry was finally laughed quite out

of existence.

The order of knighthood was given only after years of training and

discipline. From his seventh year to his fourteenth the nobleman's son was a

page at the court or in the castle of his patron, learning the principles of

religion, obedience, and gallantry. At fourteen, as a squire, the boy began a

severer course of training, in order to become skilled in horsemanship, and

to gain strength and courage, as well as the refinements and graces

necessary in the company of knights and ladies.

Finally, at twenty-one, his training was complete, and with elaborate and

solemn formality the squire was made a knight. Then, after a strict oath to

be loyal, courteous, and brave, the armour was buckled on, and the proud

young chevalier rode out into the world, strong for good or ill in limb,

strong in impenetrable armour, strong in a social custom that lifted him

above the common people about him.

When rightly exercised chivalry was a great blessing to the people of its

time. It offered high ideals of pure-minded, warm-hearted, courtly,

courageous Christian manhood. It did much to arouse thought, to quicken

sympathy, to purify morals, to make men truly brave and loyal. Of course

this ideal of character was not in the days of chivalry—ideals are not often

now—very fully realised. The Mediaeval, like the Modern, abused his

power of muscle, of sword, of rank. His liberty as a knight-errant

sometimes descended into the licence of a highwayman; his pride in the

opportunity for helpfulness grew to be the braggadocio of a bully; his

freedom of personal choice became the insolence of lawlessness; his

pretended purity and justice proved wanton selfishness.

Because of these abuses that crept into the system, it is well for the

world that gunpowder at last came, to break through the knight's coat of

mail, to teach the nobility respect for common men, roughly to end this age

of so much superficial politeness and savage bravery, and to bring in a more

democratic social order.

The books of any age are for us a record of how the people of that age

thought, how they lived, and what kind of men and women they tried to be.

The old romances of chivalry give us clear pictures of the knights and ladies

of the Middle Ages, and we shall lose the delight and the profit they may

give us, if we think only of the defects of chivalry, and close our eyes to the

really worthy motives of those far-off times, and so miss seeing what

chivalry was able to do, while it lasted, to make men and women better and

happier.

Before reading the Arthur stories themselves it is well to know

something about the way they have been built up, as one writer after

another has taken the material left by predecessors, and has worked into it

fresh conceptions of things brave and true. First there was the old Latin

chronicle of Nennius, the earliest trace of Arthurian fact or fancy, with a

single paragraph given to Arthur and his twelve great battles. This chronicle

itself may have been based on yet earlier Welsh stories, which had been

passed on, perhaps for centuries, by oral tradition from father to son, and

gradually woven together into some legendary history of Oldest England in

the local language of Brittany, across the English Channel. This original

book is referred to by later writers, but was long ago lost. Geoffrey of

Monmouth says it was the source of his material for his "Historia

Britonum." Geoffrey's history, in Latin prose, written some time about the

middle of the twelfth century, remains as the earliest definite record of the

legends connected with King Arthur.

Only a little later Geoffrey's Latin history was translated by Wace and

others into Norman French, and here the Arthur material first appeared in

verse form. Then, still later in the twelfth century, Walter Map worked the

same stories over into French prose, and at the same time put so much of

his own knowledge and imagination with them, that we may almost say that

he was the maker of the Arthur romances.

Soon after the year twelve hundred,—a half century after Geoffrey of

Monmouth first set our English ancestors to thinking about the legendary

old hero of the times of the Anglo-Saxon conquest—Layamon, parish priest

of Ernly, in Worcestershire, gave to the English language (as distinct from

the earlier Anglo-Saxon) his poem "Brut." This was a translation and

enlargement of Wace's old French poem having Arthur as hero. So these

stories of King Arthur, of Welsh or Celtic origin, came through the Latin,

and then through French verse and prose, into our own speech, and so

began their career down the centuries of our more modern history.

After giving ideas to generation after generation of romance writers of

many countries and in many languages, these same romantic stories were,

in the fifteenth century, skilfully brought together into one connected prose

narrative,—one of the choicest of the older English classics, "Le Morte

Darthur," by Sir Thomas Malory. Those were troublous times when Sir

Thomas, perhaps after having himself fought and suffered in the Wars of the

Roses then in progress, found some quiet spot in Warwickshire in which to

put together in lasting form the fine old stories that already in his day were

classics.

Malory finished his book in 1470, and its permanence for all time was

assured fifteen years later, when Caxton, after the "symple connynge" that

God had sent him (to use the quaint forms of expression then common),

"under the favour and correctyon of al noble lordes and gentylmen

emprysed to emprynte a book of the noble hystoryes of the sayd Kynge

Arthur and of certeyn of his knyghtes after a copye unto him delyuerd

whyche copye Syr Thomas Malorye dyd take oute of certeyn bookes of

Frensche and reduced it in to Englysche." This hard-headed business man,

—this fifteenth-century publisher,—was rather doubtful about the Briton

king of a thousand years before his day, and to those urging upon him the

venture of printing Malory's book he answered: "Dyuers men holde

oppynyon that there was no suche Arthur and that alle suche bookes as been

maad of hym ben fayned and fables by cause that somme cronycles make of

him no mencyon ne remember him noo thynge ne of his knyghtes."

But the arguments of those in favour of the undertaking prevailed,

greatly to the advantage of the four centuries that have followed, during

which "Le Morte Darthur" has been a constant source of poetic inspiration.

Generation after generation of readers and of writers have drawn life from

its chapters, and the new delight in Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," almost

of our own time, shows that the fountain has not yet been drained dry.

Malory's "Morte Darthur" is a long book, and its really great interest is

partly hidden from us by forms of expression that belong only to the time

when it was first written. Besides this, the ideas of what was right and

proper in conduct and speech—moral standards—were far lower in

Malory's day than they are now.

The purpose of this new little volume is to bring the old tales freshly to

the attention of young people of the present time. It keeps, as far as may be,

the exact language and the spirit of the original, chooses such stories as best

represent the whole, and modifies these only in order to remove what could

possibly hide the thought, or be so crude in taste and morals as to seem

unworthy of the really high-minded author of five hundred years ago. It

aims also so to condense the book that, in this age of hurry, readers may not

be repelled from the tales merely because of their length.

Chivalry of just King Arthur's kind was given up long ago, but that for

which it stood—human fellowship in noble purpose—is far older than the

institution of knighthood or than even the traditions of the energetic, brave,

true, helpful King Arthur himself. It links us with all the past and all the

future. The knights of the twentieth century do not set out in chain-armour

to right the wrongs of the oppressed by force of arms, but the best

influences of chivalry have been preserved for the quickening of a broader

and a nobler world than was ever in the dreams of knight-errant of old.

Modern heroes of the genuine type owe more than they know to those of

Arthur's court who swore:

"To reverence the King, as if he were

Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,

To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,

To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,

To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,

To honour his own word as if his God's,

To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,

To love one maiden only, cleave to her,

And worship her by years of noble deeds,

Until they won her."

"Antiquity produced heroes, but not gentlemen," someone has said. In

the days of Charlemagne and Alfred began the training which, continued in

the days of Chaucer and Sir Thomas Malory and many, many more, has

given to this our age that highest type of manhood, the Christian gentleman.

U. W. C.