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Updated: June 18, 2025
Cardinham, the other almost certain Arthurian locality in Cornwall, is about five miles east of Bodmin, and is identified with the Caradigan where Arthur sometimes held court. It is a large, lonely earthwork, in a field near a farmhouse.
It is to this rich repository that Mr. Tennyson has resorted for his material. He has shown, as we think, rare judgment in the choice. The Arthurian Romance has every recommendation that should win its way to the homage of a great poet. It is national: it is Christian.
Some of the great stories of the world, like "The Niebelungenlied," "The Arthurian cycle," Beowulf, and a few others may be used, or the life of a great man or woman may be told, and listened to with interest, provided there is plenty of romance in the life, and the book which contains the story is attractive in appearance and tempts one to read it at first glance.
The unaccustomed splendour of the dinner, too, had diverted her attention, for she was easily pleased with such things, and altogether she was in a more comfortable frame of mind than she had been on the previous evening, and was inclined to indulge in a pleasant talk with Mr. Fraser upon various subjects, mostly classical and Arthurian.
The stuff of Boiardo and Ariosto is the same: that old mediæval stuff of the Carolingian poems, coloured, scented with Arthurian chivalry and wonder. The knight-errantry of the Keltic tales is cleverly blended with the pseudo-historical military organization of the Carolingian cycle.
The work takes its place in literature, obscuring the Arthurian work of Dryden, as Milton's achievement of Paradise Lost obscured the Italian work on the same subject which preceded it.
But then there are all those mountains and things named after him, "from the top of Pengwaed in Cornwall to the bottom of Dinsol in the North"; and, there is the Arthurian Legend, with such great vitality that it drove out the national Saxon legends from England, and quenched the Charlemagne legend in France, and made itself master of the mind of western Europe in the Middle Ages; I imagine there would have been an Arthur.
Of this number are the tales of Pwyll, of Bramwen, of Manawyddan, of Math the son of Mathonwy, the Dream of the Emperor Maximus, the story of Llud and Llewelys, and the legend of Taliessin. To the Arthurian cycle belong the narratives of Owen, of Geraint, of Peredur, of Kilhwch and Olwen, and the Dream of Rhonabwy.
The little people of story and legend have a much wider area of distribution than those of real life, and it is the object of this section to give some idea of their localities and dwellings. Imperfect as such an account must necessarily be, it will yet suffice I trust in some measure to show that, like the England of Arthurian times, all the world is "fulfilled of faëry."
Doubtful though it is that the table is the actual one that figures in the Arthurian legends, yet it is certainly of great antiquity, and has been frequently referred to by more than one writer of mediaeval days. It has been conjectured that it may be nothing more than the wheel of fortune which Henry III commanded to be made for the castle.
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