On Some Ancient Battle-Fields in Lancashire: And Their Historical, Legendary, and Aesthetic Associations. — John Shaqi
On Some Ancient Battle-Fields in Lancashire: And Their Historical, Legendary, and Aesthetic Associations.Hardwick, Charles
History
On Some Ancient Battle-Fields in Lancashire: And Their Historical, Legendary, and Aesthetic Associations.
Hardwick, Charles
Battles -- England; Great Britain -- History -- Anglo-Saxon period, 449-1066; Lancashire (England) -- History
The Arthur of romance is, in fact, the artistic creation of writers of a
later age, or, indeed, of later ages, than the conquest of Britain by
the Anglo-Saxons, and not of contemporary historians, bardic or
otherwise. The British chieftain who fought against Ida and his Angles
in the north of England, and whose territory, including that of
subordinate chieftains or allies, is believed at one time to have
extended from the Clyde to the Ribble, or even the Dee, with an
uncertain boundary on the east, is named Urien of Rheged, the district
north of the Solway estuary, including the modern Annandale. He is the
great hero of the Welsh bard Taliesin. Amongst his other qualities the
poet enumerates the following: "Protector of the land, usual with thee
is headlong activity and the drinking of ale, and ale for drinking, and
fair dwelling and beautiful raiment." Llywarch Hen, or the Old, another
Keltic poet, who lived between A.D. 550-640, incidentally mentions
Arthur as a chief of the Kymri of the South, thus, as Professor Henry
Morley puts it: "What Urien was in the north Arthur was in the south."
This may well account for the geographical discrepancies referred to by
Sir Edward Strachey. Llywarch Hen was present at the bloody battle in
which his lord, Geraint (one of the knights introduced into the
succeeding romances), and a whole host of British warriors perished. The
said bard likewise brought away the head of Urien in his mantle, after
his decapitation by the sword of an assassin. In the early English
metrical romance, "Merlin," a Urien, King of Scherham, father of the
celebrated Ywain, is mentioned as the husband of Igerna's third daughter
by her first husband, Hoel. Urien, of Rheged, is mentioned, however, in
the same romance as one of the competitors with Arthur for the crown of
Britain. In Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte D'Arthur," a "King Uriens of
Gore" is introduced. "Gore" is evidently the Peninsula of Gower, in
Glamorganshire, South Wales. These, however, are merely some of the
geographical discrepancies referred to by Sir Edward Strachey; but such
discrepancies, owing to the intermixture of several legends, under the
circumstances, are inevitable, and are in themselves evidences of the
lack of unity in the original sources from which the romance writers
drew their materials.
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