“Borne unto the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds,”--here, surely, are words never before used in a professedly historical narrative of a kingly hero wounded unto death. This touch, alone, is sufficient to attest the kinship of Geoffrey’s “history” of Arthur with the waifs and strays of Celtic romance. The circumstances of Arthur’s birth, as told by Geoffrey, were marvellous enough; like other saga-heroes, such as Finn and Cormac, he was born out of wedlock, through Merlin’s magical intervention. But what caught the imagination of poets and romancers even more was the fable of his “return.” “Some men say yet,” writes Malory, “that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place. And men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross. I will not say it shall not be so, but rather I will say, here in this world he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse, _Hic jacet Arthurus Rex quondam Rexque futurus_.” Later in the twelfth century an attempt was made, at the instance--so it is alleged--of Henry II to destroy the persistent belief in this “Celtic messiahship” by an announcement that the body of Arthur had been exhumed at Glastonbury by the monks of St Dunstan’s abbey.[82] It was, however, of no avail. A poet of the next generation, Layamon, tells us that “the Britons believe yet that Arthur is alive, and dwelleth in Avalon with the fairest of all elves, and ever yet the Britons look for Arthur’s coming.”