“When he (Arthur) was about to cross over the Alps, an envoy said unto him, ‘Modred, thy nephew, hath set thy crown upon his own head with the assistance of Cheldric, king of the English, and hath taken thy wife unto himself.’ Arthur, thereupon, seething over with wondrous wrath, returning into England, conquered Modred in battle, and after pursuing him as far as unto Cornwall, with a few men fell upon him in the midst of many, and when he saw that he could not turn back said, ‘Comrades, let us sell our death dear. I, for my part, will smite off the head of my nephew and my betrayer, after which death will be a delight unto me.’ Thus spake he, and hewing a way for himself with his sword through the press, dragged Modred by the helmet into the midst of his own men and cut through his mailed neck as through a straw. Natheless, as he went, and as he did the deed, so many wounds did he receive that he fell, albeit that his kinsmen the Britons deny that he is dead, and do even yet solemnly await his coming again. He was, indeed, the very first man of his time in warlike prowess, bounty and wit.”[44] The vivid personal details of this narrative may be due to Henry’s own imagination, for it is well known that he, like Geoffrey, exercised that faculty largely in his treatment of history; but, even so, the passage is curiously significant in its bearing upon the martial fame of Arthur, and upon the belief in his “return” cherished by “his kinsmen the Britons,” in the first half of the twelfth century. The review given in this chapter of the earliest Arthurian records,--all of which are in Latin,--as distinguished from Celtic song or fable, points clearly to the gradual growth, around the personality of a real British warrior of the sixth century, of a legend which by the twelfth century had assumed a form that arrested, though it might baffle, the leading historians of the day. Now, it so happened that the twelfth century was the seed-time of mediæval romance in Europe, and how effectively the legend of Arthur was thenceforth exploited for romantic purposes will be seen later on. It remains, however, for us, first, to give some account of what was known, or fabled, about Arthur among “his kinsmen the Britons” themselves, as recorded in their extant prose and poetry. CHAPTER II ARTHUR IN WELSH LEGEND AND LITERATURE