Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and UsesFergusson, James
History
Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and Uses
Fergusson, James
Megalithic monuments
I am afraid to lay much stress on the fact of one of the circles at
Penrith and the hill opposite Shap bearing Arthur's name, because in
the last few years we have seen two hard-headed sober-minded Scotchmen
proving, to their own satisfaction, that Arthur was born north of the
Tweed--that all his battles were fought and all his exploits performed
in the northern portion of the island. Even Ganora--the faithless
Guinevere--if not a Scotchwoman, was at all events buried in Miegle
churchyard under a stone, which some pious descendant sculptured some
centuries later.[160] Even here, however, I fancy I can perceive
a difference between the two cases. In the middle ages the Scotch
had historians like Boece and Fordun, who recorded such fables for
the edification of their countrymen, and with proper patriotism
were willing that their country should have as large a share of the
world's greatness or great men as they could well appropriate. They
were followed by an educated class throughout the country, who were
actuated by the same motives, and did exactly what Stukeley and his
followers did with English monuments. They found Druids who had no
temples, and remains which they supposed to be temples with no priests;
so, putting the two together, they made what they fancied was a perfect
whole out of two incongruous halves. So the Scotch, having a rich
repertory of fables on the one hand, and on the other having hills
without names and sculptured stones without owners, joined the two
together, and went on repeating in the same manner their inventions
till, from dire reiteration, they took the likeness of fact.
The case was, if I mistake not, very different in Cumberland. The boors
of that land had no literature--no learning, and none of that ardent
patriotism which enabled the Scotch poets and pedants to manufacture
a quasi history for themselves out of other people's doings. It is
difficult to fancy the inhabitants of Cumberland troubling themselves
with Arthur and his affairs, and wishing to apply his name to
their hills or antiquities, unless some ancient tradition had made
it probable, and, "valeat quantum," these names may therefore be
considered as suggesting a real connexion between the place and the man.
Owing to the extreme brevity of the record in Nennius,[161] there are
few things about which greater discrepancy of opinion exists even among
the believers in Arthur than the localities of his battles. Taking
them in the order in which they are mentioned, the first is said to
have been fought on the river Glem of Glein, which the editors of the
'Monumenta Historica Britannica' suggest may be a river of that name
in Northumberland. The river indicated is so small a brook that it is
difficult to fancy its name should be attached to so important an event.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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