IX AT GEOFFREY'S WINDOW

Among all the golden doors in the Great Palace of English Literature about which we are coming to know something, and through some of which we have already passed, there was one golden window on the stairway of the palace. This window on the stairway of the palace looked out upon a busy town and down upon the windings of the river Wye, and off upon hills and upon the ruins of a wonderful old abbey called Tintern Abbey, about which, some six hundred years later, an English poet called William Wordsworth was to write a poem called "Tintern Abbey." Wordsworth wrote "We Are Seven," and also this little poem about a butterfly:
I've watched you now a full half-hour, Self-poised upon that yellow flower; And, little Butterfly! indeed I know not if you sleep or feed. How motionless! Not frozen seas More motionless! and then What joy awaits you, when the breeze Hath found you out among the trees And calls you forth again. This plot of orchard ground is ours;[Pg 76] My trees they are, my Sister's flowers; Here rest your wings when they are weary; Here lodge as in a sanctuary! Come often to us, fear no wrong; Sit near us on the bough! We'll talk of sunshine and of song, And summer days when we were young; Sweet childish days that were as long As twenty days are now.

But the golden window at which Geoffrey sat was in Monmouth, and he was called Geoffrey of Monmouth. That was some seven hundred years ago. No doubt the little town was very busy even in 1137 when Geoffrey sat at his window and wrote his famous chronicle called British History.

Before Geoffrey began to write down his marvelous stories, other stories and poems were written. In King Alfred's time, when the home of English literature was shifted from the north to the south, two fine battle songs were written. They were the "Song of Brunanburh" and the "Song of the Fight at Maldon." These were written in the tenth century. "The Charge of the Light Brigade," composed some eight hundred years later by the poet Tennyson, is like these old songs in its short, rapid lines and in its thought. Every one should learn these lines from the poem Alfred Tennyson wrote:

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Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!" he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
"Forward the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismayed? Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

But we have been long enough away from that golden window by which Geoffrey of Monmouth sat and wrote his immortal stories. Geoffrey was called a chronicler. And what he was supposed to be doing was jotting down accurately historical events year after year. Some of the chronicles written in this way have become the chief sources of English history. Among the men who wrote these chronicles were William of Malmesbury and Matthew Paris. And between them came Geoffrey himself.

It will never be known, unless it should prove possible to roll time back some seven hundred [Pg 78]years, just what Geoffrey did see from his window as he looked out upon the busy town of Monmouth, or all that went on in his nimble mind. In any event it is plain that he had the best of good times inventing or retelling stories in his chronicle. There is to be found the story of King Lear and his three daughters, Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia—Lear, the hero of Shakespeare's play, "King Lear," written over four hundred years later. There, too, is the story of Ferrex and Porrex. Geoffrey had a nimble quill pen with which to follow his nimble wit. He writes of Julius C?sar and of how he came to Great Britain. What Geoffrey of Monmouth says may be ridiculous enough in the light of history, but there it is, and there is C?sar himself, not only looking upon the coast of Britain but actually standing upon it. We become familiar, too, with many names known in stories about King Arthur. Perceval is one of these. And Uther Pendragon, who was the father of King Arthur, is another.

One of the marvelous facts about Geoffrey is that when he looked out of that golden window he could see so much farther than just Monmouth. He could see all the way to the sea, and on its shores that beautiful city Tintagel, where Queen Igraine, the mother of Arthur, lived. But in Geoffrey's chronicle she was called Igerna. A name is sometimes like a long, long journey, not only in its romance, but also because it takes you to other lands and other people, and passes, even[Pg 79] as the road upon a long journey, through many changes.

Geoffrey saw from his golden window not only Tintagel, that beautiful South Welsh city by the sea, but also a little village in North Wales called Beddgelert. This little village is set down in the midst of mountains like a lump of sugar in the bottom of a deep cup. Outside this little village is a hill called Dinas Emrys. Geoffrey looked northward out of his golden window in Monmouth, and what do you think he saw? He saw the magician, Merlin, the youth who had never had a father. And this lad was quarreling with another lad in Caernarvon, a Welsh city thirteen miles away from the little village of Beddgelert.

Now Vortigern had been attempting to build a tower on Dinas Emrys, but whatever the workmen did one day was swallowed up the next.

Then some wise men said to Vortigern: "You must find a youth who has never had a father. You must sacrifice him and sprinkle the foundations with his blood."

So Vortigern sent men to find a boy who had never had a father and who should be brought him that they might kill him. When Vortigern's messenger reached Caernarvon, thirteen miles away from Beddgelert and the hill Dinas Emrys, they found two boys playing games and quarreling about their parentage. And one of them,[Pg 80] Dabutius, was accusing the other, Merlin, of having no father. They took him to Vortigern.

And Vortigern said, "My magicians told me to seek out a lad who had no father, with whose blood the foundations of my building are to be sprinkled to make it stand."

"Order your magicians," answered Merlin, "to come before me and I will convict them of a lie."

It is a terrible thing to be convicted of a lie, and of course the magicians did not wish to come. But King Vortigern made them come and ordered them to sit down before Merlin.

Merlin spoke to them after this manner: "Because you are ignorant what it is that hinders the foundations of the tower, you have told the King to kill me and to cement the stones with my blood. But tell me now, what is there under the foundations that will not suffer it to stand?"

To this they gave no answer, for they were frightened.

Then said Merlin, "I entreat your Majesty would command your workmen to dig into the ground, and you will find a pond which causes the foundations to sink."

This the King had done, and a pond was found there.

Then said Merlin to the King's magicians, "Tell me, ye false men, what is there under the pond?"

But they were afraid to answer.

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Merlin turned to King Vortigern and said, "Command the pond to be drained, and at the bottom you will see two hollow stones, and in them are two dragons asleep."

The King had the pond drained, and he found all just as Merlin said it would be. And as the King sat on the edge of the drained pond out came the two dragons, one red and one white, and, approaching each other, they began to fight, blowing forth fire from their nostrils. At last the white dragon got the advantage and made the red dragon fly to the other end of the drained pond.

When King Vortigern asked Merlin to explain what this meant, Merlin burst into tears.

Then commanding his voice, he spoke: "In the days that are to come gold shall be squeezed from the lily and the nettle, and silver shall flow from the hoofs of bellowing cattle. The teeth of wolves shall be blunted and the lion's whelps shall be transformed into sea-fishes."

And unto this day nobody knows exactly what Merlin meant, or what Geoffrey thought he meant, although there has been much guessing.

Geoffrey must have been very fond of looking out of his window and seeing Merlin, for many a story he tells about him. There is the story of how Merlin helped to remove the stones of the Giants' Dance from Ireland. Giants of old had brought them from the farthest coast of Africa.[Pg 82] They were mystical stones and had value to heal and cure men. When these stones were found too heavy to be lifted by human hands, Merlin found a way, nevertheless, to lift them. Then the stones of the Giants' Dance were carried across the sea and placed in England at Stonehenge. It is an exciting story Geoffrey tells about the Giants' Dance, yet I fear we know no more really how the big stones got to Stonehenge than we know about the ribs of our solid earth. Certainly those stones were set up in Stonehenge even before men began recording history or Geoffrey of Monmouth sat in his golden window.

And there is the story of the 40,060 kings who never existed—which is more almost than ever did exist. And of the coming of St. Augustine to England, bringing with him the gentle religion of Christ.

It would be very nice if all this about Merlin and the dragons and the Giants' Dance were what might be called true history. Alas, it is not! In the first place, Geoffrey tells stories which vary greatly from what was actually known to be history. Then, too, this chronicle is full, as you have seen, of miraculous stories of one sort or another. And there are other reasons, also, why these delightful stories of Geoffrey of Monmouth must be taken with a pinch of salt.

But it is because Geoffrey did sit at his window in the little town of Monmouth, writing these[Pg 83] stories which have to be taken with a pinch of salt, that English story-telling began to grow. Geoffrey's imagination was to English story-telling what the sunlight is in making a tulip grow. Story-telling grew out of the Chronicles, the so-called historical literature. The men of Geoffrey's time said that "he had lied saucily and shamelessly." No doubt he had. Yet these same men could not help reading the stories he told, for they were so interesting that all men read them. What he had done was to take several Welsh legends, put them together cleverly, as a carpenter joins a delicate bit of woodwork, translate these Welsh legends into Latin and call the work a Chronicle. Not only was it read in England, but it was read all over the continent of Europe, too. It had great success.

Geoffrey Gaimer put these stories into French. The stories traveled to France. Once there, other legends were added, and when Geoffrey's Chronicle turned up again in England it came back as the work of Wace, a Norman trouveur, or ballad-singer. But Geoffrey's stories were too good to let drop even after they had been through so many hands. An English priest in Worcestershire by the name of Layamon, translating the French poem which Wace had made out of Geoffrey's prose stories, retold the stories in English poetry. That was in 1205, after Geoffrey had died.

Geoffrey of Monmouth must have been very[Pg 84] happy as he sat in his sunny, golden window and heard about the tales he had written there. He must have chuckled many a time over what the world had made out of his nimble story-telling wits. English literature could not be at all the same, in either prose or poetry, if it were not for that golden palace door over which was written Welsh or that window upon the stairway where Geoffrey sat.

But it was the Normans who brought the taste for history with them to England in 1066, when they conquered the land which had been King Alfred's land. It was some time before the Normans became what we call English in their feeling. Probably the Normans would never have become so strongly English in feeling if English patriotism, even after the conquest of 1066, had not remained very much alive. The English had written down in English some of the proverbs of their former King Alfred. The parents of the chronicler, William of Malmesbury, were both English and Norman. And, strangely enough, Layamon's "Brut" is not unlike the poetry of the cowherd C?dmon, the first of the great English singers, the first of English poets.

Perhaps this very hour the sun is shining down upon that golden window of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and laughing for joy because the man who "lied so saucily" was the first of the great English story-tellers.