Arthur

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Arthur, by Marquis of Bath
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Title: Arthur
A Short Sketch of His Life and History in English Verse of the First
Half of the Fifteenth Century
Author: Marquis of Bath
Editor: Frederick J. Furnivall
Release Date: October 10, 2005 [EBook #16845]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTHUR ***
Produced by David Starner, Joshua Hutchinson and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
The original text contained the letters
"yogh" and "thorn". They are represented in this ASCII text as
[Th]
[th] thorn (note that the text also uses "th")
[Gh] [gh] yogh
[P]
pilcrow (parragraph symbol).]
Arthur
A Short Sketch of His Life and History in English Verse of the First
Half of the Fifteenth Century
Copied and Edited From the Marquis of Bath's MS.
by

Frederick J. Furnivall, M.A., Camb.
Editor of De Borron's and Lonelich's "History of the Holy Graal,"
Walter Map's "Queste Del Saint Graal," Etc. Etc.
London:
Published for the Early English Text Society,
by Truebner
& Co., 60, Paternoster Row.
MDCCCLXIV
Contents
Preface
Arthur
Words
Notes
Preface
As one of the chief objects of the Early English Text Society is to print
every Early English Text relating to Arthur, the Committee have
decided that this short sketch of the British hero's life shall form one of
the first issue of the Society's publications. The six hundred and
forty-two English lines here printed occur in an incomplete Latin
Chronicle of the Kings of Britain, bound up with many other valuable
pieces in a MS. belonging to the Marquis of Bath. The old chronicler
has dealt with Uther Pendragon, and Brounsteele (Excalibur), and is
narrating Arthur's deeds, when, as if feeling that Latin prose was no fit
vehicle for telling of Arthur, king of men, he breaks out into English
verse,
"Herkene[th], [th]at loueth honour,
Of kyng Arthour & hys labour."
The story he tells is an abstract, with omissions, of the earlier version
of Geoffry of Monmouth, before the love of Guinevere for Lancelot
was introduced by the French-writing English romancers of the
Lionheart's time (so far as I know), into the Arthur tales. The fact of
Mordred's being Arthur's son, begotten by him on his sister, King Lot's
wife, is also omitted; so that the story is just that of a British king
founding the Round Table, conquering Scotland, Ireland, Gothland, and
divers parts of France, killing a giant from Spain, beating Lucius the
Emperor of Rome, and returning home to lose his own life, after the
battle in which the traitor whom he had trusted, and who has seized his

queen and his land, was slain.
"He that will more look,
Read on the French book,"
says our verse-writer: and to that the modern reader must still be
referred, or to the translations of parts of it, which we hope to print or
reprint, and that most pleasantly jumbled abstract of its parts by Sir
Thomas Maleor, Knight, which has long been the delight of many a
reader,--though despised by the stern old Ascham, whose Scholemaster
was to turn it out of the land.--There the glory of the Holy Grail will be
revealed to him; there the Knight of God made known; there the only
true lovers in the world will tell their loves and kiss their kisses before
him; and the Fates which of old enforced the penalty of sin will show
that their arm is not shortened, and that though the brave and guilty
king fights well and gathers all the glory of the world around him, yet
still the sword is over his head, and, for the evil that he has done, his
life and vain imaginings must pass away in dust and confusion.
Of the language of the Poem there is little to say: its dialect is Southern,
as shown by the verbal plural th_, the _vyve_ for five, _zyx for six, ych_
for I, _har (their), ham (them), for her_, _hem; hulle_, _dude_, [gh]ut_,
for hill, did, yet, the infinitive in _y_ (rekeny), etc. Of its poetical
merits, every reader will judge for himself; but that it has power in
some parts I hope few will deny. Arthur's answer to Lucius, and two
lines in the duel with Frollo,
"There was no word y-spoke,
But eche had other by the throte,"
are to be noted. Parts of the MS. have very much faded since it was
written some ten or twenty years before 1450, so that a few of the
words are queried in the print. The MS. contains a few metrical points
and stops,