But the relations with Tewdrig continued strained, and the condition of
affairs was worse when the king fell from his horse and broke his neck.
Kea, fearing lest this should be imputed to him, as occasioned by his
"ill-wishing," resolved on flight to Brittany. He went to Landegu,
_i.e._ Landege, the old name of the place, as we learn from Bishop
Stapleton's Register (1310). Here was a merchant about to send a cargo
of corn to Brittany, and Kea, with his companions, were permitted by
the merchant to depart in the grain ship.
He reached the Brittany coast at Cleder, and there he remained till the
discord broke out between Arthur and Mordred, when Kea returned to
Britain, and endeavoured, but in vain, to reconcile them. After the
death of Arthur, it was Kea who told Queen Gwenever some unpleasant
home-truths, and induced her to retire into a convent. Then, in 542, he
returned to Cleder, where he died shortly after at an advanced age. But
this story of his connection with Arthur and Gwenever is very
problematical, indeed impossible to reconcile with his history, if he
was converted in 433. In Brittany he is called S. Kay, or Kea, as in
Cornwall.
A little lower down the river is the wooded slope of Polgerran, and an
ancient chapel stands above it. Gerran, or Geraint, was King of
Cornwall, and married Enid, daughter of the Count-in-Chief of Caerleon.
Tennyson has revivified her charming story. After the death of Arthur,
he seems to have been elected Pendragon, or high king, over the
Britons, and his life was spent in fighting the Saxons along the
frontier from the Roman wall down to the Severn. S. Senan, of the
Land's End, was on good terms with him, and there is a story told in
the life of that saint concerning Geraint. The king had a fleet of six
score vessels in the Severn, and the fatal battle in which he fell was
at Langport on the Parret, whither at that time vessels could ascend.
His palace was at Dingerrein, in the parish of S. Gerrans in Roseland.
His tomb is shown at Carn Point, where he was said to lie in a golden
boat with silver oars, an interesting instance of persistence of
tradition in associating him with ships. When the tumulus was broken
into, in 1855, by treasure-seekers, a kistvaen was discovered and
bones, but no precious metal. As Geraint fell at Langport he would
hardly have been brought to Cornwall for interment. But there were two
other princes of Cornwall of the same name, who reigned later.
The long Restronguet Creek enters the estuary of the Fal where that
estuary becomes wide and a fine sheet of water. The peninsula is
Roseland, the old Rosinis--Moorland Isle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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