"King Arthur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and V. C. and Colonel Kinloch? Where could a girl have found finer company than with my Knights of King Arthur? And do you dare to insinuate that I could have been content away from the regiment, that made me their daughter after ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... profess to be historical. All of it that is not frankly fictitious, as in any prose romance about the past, is meant to emphasize tradition rather than history. King Alfred is not a legend in the sense that King Arthur may be a legend; that is, in the sense that he may possibly be a lie. But King Alfred is a legend in this broader and more human sense, that the legends are the ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... was, yet quite in keeping with the surroundings. More exhilarating still was the extreme punctiliousness with which the old gentleman raised the handle of his foil to his chin after he had made his point, and saluted his antagonist as if he had been some knight of King Arthur's table. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... lingered not long in Innsbruck. They did not fail, however, to visit the tomb of Maximilian in the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross, and gaze with some admiration upon the twenty-eight gigantic bronze statues of Godfrey of Bouillon, and King Arthur and Ernest the Iron-man, and Frederick of the Empty Pockets, kings and heroes, and others, which stand leaning on their swords between the columns of the church, as if guarding the tomb of the dead. These statues reminded Flemming of the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... national vanity, which seeks for remote antecedents of greatness; under the guise of the Chronicle of Brittany, Geoffrey undertook to do this. Polydore Virgil distinctly condemns him for relating "many fictitious things of King Arthur and the ancient Britons, invented by himself, and pretended to be translated by him into Latin, which he palms on the world with the sacred name of true history;" and this view is substantiated by the fact that the earlier writers speak of Arthur as a prince and a warrior, of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... a Copy. As I suppose this was done by A. T.'s order, I have written to acknowledge the Gift, and to tell him something, if not all, of what I think of them. I do not tell him that I think his hand weakened; but I tell him (what is very true) that, though the main Myth of King Arthur's Dynasty in Britain has a certain Grandeur in my Eyes, the several legendary fragments of it never did much interest me; excepting the Morte, which I suppose most interested him also, as he took it up first of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... pedigree, as some say, from one Ulfo, that was the son of a bear. [3653]E tenui casa saepe vir magnus exit, many a worthy man comes out of a poor cottage. Hercules, Romulus, Alexander (by Olympia's confession), Themistocles, Jugurtha, King Arthur, William the Conqueror, Homer, Demosthenes, P. Lumbard, P. Comestor, Bartholus, Adrian the fourth Pope, &c., bastards; and almost in every kingdom, the most ancient families have been at first princes' bastards: their ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... know Little Lord Fauntleroy? And do you know about Sir Lancelot, and the Holy Grail, and King Arthur and his Round Table, and the Lady Rowena, and Ivanhoe, and all those? ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... game used at sea, when near the line, or in a hot latitude. It is performed thus: A man who is to represent king Arthur, ridiculously dressed, having a large wig made out of oakum, or some old swabs, is seated on the side, or over a large vessel of water. Every person in his turn is to be ceremoniously introduced to him, and to pour a bucket of water over him, crying, hail, king Arthur! if during this ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... beyond the weapons buried with him in his barrow. Legend, however, like a busy gossip, had stepped in and supplied points upon which history was silent. Traditions of the neighborhood explained the menhirs as twelve giants turned into stone by the magic powers of good King Arthur, who, in defiance of the claims of the isle of Avalon, was supposed to be buried in a hitherto unexplored chamber of the large green mound that stood near. Sometimes, so the story ran, the giants whispered to one another, and any one who came there alone at daybreak on May morning might glean ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... from Landerneau, also, on the banks of the Elorn, is the Avenue of the Chateau de la Joyeuse Garde, celebrated as being the rendezvous of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Nothing now remains but the ruins of a subterranean vault and a romantic Gothic Gateway of the twelfth century, covered with ivy and creeping shrubs. The whole surroundings are beautiful and romantic; undulations, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... and many others, possess a commanding interest to him who has familiarised himself with their history. All places too connected with the memory and half fabulous history of king Arthur—the grand forms of Welch scenery ennobled and glorified by the fine old romancers, Norman or English, or by the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... flight. At last Arthur overthrew and slew Hoel, who was his major natu, and became unquestioned rex universalis Britanniae, but incurred the censure of the Church for killing Hoel. From this sin Gildas himself at length absolved him. But King Melvas carried off King Arthur's queen, and it was only after a year that Arthur found her at Glastonbury and laid siege to that place. Gildas and the abbot, however, arranged matters, and the queen was given up. It is most proper to add in this place that probably ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Two additional illuminations follow; in the first of which Gawayne is seen approaching the Grene Chapel, whilst his enemy appears above, wielding his huge axe; and in the second Sir Gawayne, fully equipped in armour, is represented in the presence of king Arthur and queen Guenever, after his return to ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... what he had done; for Tom began to kick and jump about so much that he felt very uncomfortable, and at last threw him up again into the sea. A large fish swallowed Tom the moment he fell into the sea, which was soon after caught, and bought for the table of King Arthur. When they opened the fish in order to cook it, every on was astonished at finding such a little boy, and Tom was quite delighted to be out again. They carried him to the king, who made Tom his dwarf, and he soon grew a great favorite at court: for by his tricks and ...
— The History of Tom Thumb, and Others • Anonymous
... of thoughts and ideas that filled my mind. I had been plunged into a new world, and floundered about in it pretty hopelessly, I can tell you. The days of knight-errantry had come over again, and chance, mightier even than King Arthur, had commanded me to serve a sweet lady in distress. But I had had no training, no preliminary squireship, in which I could learn how things were done by watching brave and accomplished knights do them. I had lived among the parts of speech, not among the facts of life. I could ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... may presume, the object of all teachers, leaders, legislators, spiritual pastors, and masters. He who writes tales such as this, probably also has, very humbly, some such object distantly before him. A picture of surpassing godlike nobleness,—a picture of a King Arthur among men, may perhaps do much. But such pictures cannot do all. When such a picture is painted, as intending to show what a man should be, it is true. If painted to show what men are, it is false. The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the yet unprinted MSS. in English, and, on the other, to re-edit and reprint all that is most valuable in printed English books, which from their scarcity or price are not within the reach of the student of moderate means.[6] Those relating to KING ARTHUR will be the Committee's first care; those relating to our Language and its Dialects the second; while in due proportion with these, will be mixed others of general interest, though with no one special common design. The Committee hope that ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... as Shakespeare's historical plays have stamped upon the English mind the figures of Hotspur or Richard III., which have been thus set up in permanent type for all subsequent ages. At any rate portraits of this kind have not been modernised to suit the taste of a later age, as has been done with King Arthur in Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King.' And when work of this sort has been finely executed, the question whether the details are untrustworthy or even fictitious is immaterial, particularly in cases where the precise facts can never be recovered. We do not know exactly ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... on many a lordly tomb, Where Death is mock'd by trophies fair; I pierce the dim aisle's hallow'd gloom; King Arthur sleeps ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... written AVALLON, AVOLLON, AVILION and AVELION), in Welsh mythology the kingdom of the dead, afterwards an earthly paradise in the western seas, and finally, in the Arthurian romances, the abode of heroes to which King Arthur was conveyed after his last battle. In Welsh the name is Ynys yr Afallon, usually interpreted "Isle of Apples," but possibly connected with the Celtic tradition of a king over the dead named Avalloc (in Welsh Afallach). If the traditional derivation is correct, the name is derived ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... faint colour crept back to her cheek. "Do you know that you have been to myriads—King Arthur, Barbarossa—the King who would come in his own good time and put the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... of the Middle Ages has some points of light, always around a man. The great Frederic Barbarossa stands for Germany, as does William Tell for Switzerland, as Ivan the Great for Russia, as the Cid for Spain, as King Arthur for England and Charlemagne ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... which times, we are told, "Men and wymmen coulde love togyders seven yeres, and no licours lustes were betwene them, and thenne was love, trouthe, and feythfulnes; and lo in lyke wyse was used love in King Arthur's dayes."[4] ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... fashion; the mush, which they call "polenta," forms an accompaniment of meat stews, thus affording all the elements of a "perfect ration." American cooks should employ cornmeal far more than they do. Mush in particular has the advantage possessed by King Arthur's bag-pudding, what cannot be eaten at night may be served "next morning fried." While fried food is, as a rule, not good at breakfast for any save one who has hard manual labor or physical exercise to perform, an exception may be made of fried mush and fried eggs, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... carvings and quaintly pictured windows, preaching of still remoter days; the outlandish names of streets and courts and byways that stand as a record and a memorial, all these centuries, of Danish dominion here in still earlier times; the hint here and there of King Arthur and his knights and their bloody fights with Saxon oppressors round about this old city more than thirteen hundred years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy old stone coffins and sculptured ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... on board ship in warm climates, in which a person, grotesquely personating King Arthur, is drenched with buckets of water until he can, by making one of his persecutors smile or laugh, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... faith, was born in this place. This city is well situated on the river Usk, navigable to the sea, and adorned with woods and meadows. The Roman ambassadors here received their audience at the court of the great king Arthur; and here also, the archbishop Dubricius ceded his honours to David of Menevia, the metropolitan see being translated from this place to Menevia, according to the prophecy of Merlin Ambrosius. "Menevia pallio urbis Legionum induetur." "Menevia ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... readers; in the present century Malory's book has been many times re-edited for them, and it is to Sir Thomas Malory, rather than to Tennyson, Swinburne or Morris, that many English men and women of to-day owe their earliest acquaintance with King Arthur ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... fascinating performance, carried over almost to grotesqueness just to show it was not done for mere delight in the frank naturalism of the functions with which it deals. That Mark Twain had made considerable study of this frankness is apparent from chapter four of 'A Yankee At King Arthur's Court,' where he refers to the conversation at the famous ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... Romance of the Death of King Arthur; now first printed, from a Manuscript in the Library of Lincoln Cathedral. Seventy-five Copies ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... be printed, but chiefly in little touches all through his prefaces. For example, in his preface to the Morte d'Arthur he answers with a certain whimsical gravity the allegations of those who maintain that there was no such person as King Arthur, and that "all such books as been made of him be but feigned and fables." He recounts with assumed sincerity the evidence of the chronicles, the existence of Arthur's seal in red wax at Westminster Abbey, of Sir ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... twilight, and talked, and talked, and talked, as only true lovers can talk, be they Strephon and Daphne in life's glad morning, or grey-haired Darby and Joan; and lastly they went down to the hike, and rowed about in the moonlight, and talked of King Arthur's death, and of that mystic sword, Excalibur, 'wrought by the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... unless he is ever reaching out toward an ideal that lies beyond his grasp. Tennyson put this truth in the mouth of the ancient sage who tells the youthful and ambitious Gareth who is eager to enter into the service of King Arthur of the ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... of Florent, in the first book of Gower's "Confessio Amantis;" or perhaps from an older narrative from which Gower himself borrowed. Chaucer has condensed and otherwise improved the fable, especially by laying the scene, not in Sicily, but at the court of our own King Arthur. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... upstairs had broken his heart, ruined his life, and practically compared him to Roland Bean, and his pride should have built up an impassable wall between them, but—she had cake and cocoa. In similar circumstances King Arthur ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Huon of Bordeaux Merlin comes with King Arthur to Oberon's death-bed; Arthur introduces him as his nephew, the son of Ogier the Dane ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... one of King Arthur's knights—Sir Percival, I think—that once, riding through a forest, he found a lion fighting with a serpent. He drew his sword and helped the lion, for he thought it was the more natural beast of the two. To me Laputa ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... of gray stucco gently curves along the canyon side, while a high lattice on the other shows dim outlines of the hills beyond. In the wall are arches with gates so curved as to leave circular openings, through which we get glimpses of the sea. It makes me think of King Arthur's castle at Tintagel. In the lattice there is a wicket gate. There is something very alluring about a wicket gate—it connotes a Robin. Unfortunately, my Robin can only appear from Friday to Monday, but I'm not complaining. Any one is fortunate who can count on romance two days out of ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... added, that, in historic eras, the mythopoeic fancy is not inactive. Stories of marvelous adventure clustered about the old Celtic King Arthur of England and the "knights of the Round-Table," and fill up the chronicles relating to Charlemagne. Wherever there is a person who kindles popular enthusiasm, myths accumulate. This is eminently true in an atmosphere like that which prevailed in the mediaeval ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... minute what Genevieve's George was. He was her knight, her Bayard, her thoroughly Tennysonian King Arthur. The basis of her adoration was that he should remain like that. You can see then what a staggering experience it was to have caught herself, even for a minute, in the act of smiling over him ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... read about King Arthur and Galahad and all them instead of reading the Scientific American, and about these fool horseless carriages and stuff——There never will be any practical use for ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Lilies, [novel]. Florida: its Scenery, Climate, and History. English Novel and Principles of Its Development. Science of English Verse. Boy's Froissart. Boy's King Arthur. Boy's ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... When good King Arthur ruled this land, He was a goodly king; He stole three pecks of barley-meal, To ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... Shakespeare. Had printing come earlier it would have been to a passive, indifferent populace; now it appeared in answer to the craving of a people thirsty to read of travel, invention, poetry; to consume the Tales of King Arthur, Sir John Mandeville's Travels, Sidney's 'Arcadia', Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The Elizabethans reflected in England the rebirth of literature and learning which was sweeping all Europe at the time. Printing was not the herald, nor yet the servant, of this wonderful age; ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... remember the oath which Arthur administered to his knights, when he bade them 'never to do outrage nor murder, and always to flee treason; also by no means to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asked mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore.' In a land where chivalry like this had ever taken root, either as an ideal or as an institution, the chapters of Machiavelli could scarcely have been published. The Italians lacked the virtues of knighthood. It was ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Charles of the French epics, we lay no stress on the story of his incest with his sister, Gilain, "whence sprang Roland." The House of Thyestes, whence Agamemnon sprang, is marked by even blacker legends. The scandal is mythical, like the same scandal about the King Arthur, who in romance is so much inferior to his knights, a reflection of feudal jealousies and hatreds. In places the reproaches hurled by the peers at Charles read like paraphrases of those which the Achaean princes ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... good fairies and brave knights went the way of all flesh with King Arthur's round table; and even if they were in existence, none of them would take the trouble to limp down so far to save such an unlucky ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... tale is too long, though I should like to tell of the three-leaved Herb of Life by which Sigmund made Sinfioti alive again. For this is the very soma-plant of India, the holy grail of King Arthur, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Middle Age. Nowhere has the impression of this delirium been conveyed as by Victor Hugo in Notre Dame de Paris. The [218] strangest creations of sleep seem here, by some appalling licence, to cross the limit of the dawn. The English poet too has learned the secret. He has diffused through King Arthur's Tomb the maddening white glare of the sun, and tyranny of the moon, not tender and far-off, but close down—the sorcerer's moon, large and feverish. The colouring is intricate and delirious, as of "scarlet lilies." The influence of summer ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... inquiries go. It is now quite certain that we are a second-rate lot, and came out of Cunningham or Clydesdale, therefore British folk; so that you are Cymry on both sides, and I Cymry and Pict. We may have fought with King Arthur and known Merlin. The first of the family, Stevenson of Stevenson, was quite a great party, and dates back to the wars of Edward First. The last male heir of Stevenson of Stevenson died 1670, L220, 10s. to the bad, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... supposed "moral dissoluteness" of the barbarians. On the contrary, we cannot but admire the deeply moral principles elaborated within the early village communities which found their expression in Welsh triads, in legends about King Arthur, in Brehon commentaries,(25) in old German legends and so on, or find still their expression in the sayings of the modern barbarians. In his introduction to The Story of Burnt Njal, George Dasent very justly sums up as follows the qualities of a Northman, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... capital acting operetta for children "The Land of Nod," with words and music; a splendid story by Washington Gladden, "A Christmas Dinner with the Man in the Moon," the illustrations of which rival Dore's; "King Arthur and his Knights," by Sidney Lanier; one of Frank R. Stockton's inimitable FAIRY STORIES; the "Treasure Box of Literature," etc., etc.;—in all, thirty-three departments ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... brought the stones of Stonehenge from the most sequestered deserts of Africa, and placed them in Ireland; that every stone was washed with juices of herbs, and contained a medical power; and that Merlin, the magician, at the request of King Arthur, transported them from Ireland, and erected them in circles on the plain of Amesbury, as a sepulchral monument for the Britons treacherously slain by Hengist. This fable is thus delivered, without decoration, by Robert ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... King Arthur. An heroick poem. In twelve books. London, for Awnsham and John Churchill, and Jacob ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... to see the king when it pleased them, and they were put upon their honor only." Chandos's poet adds, "Many a dame and many a damsel, right amiable, gay, and lovely, came to dance there, to sing, and to cause great galas and jousts, as in the days of King Arthur." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... British Antiquities, have given out to the World, and written some things to that purpose, that Arthur some time King of Britain had both Knowledge of those parts (the New World) and some Dominion in them; for they find (as some report) that King Arthur had under his Government many Islands and great Countries towards the North and West, which one of some special Note hath interpreted to signify America, and the Northern parts thereof, and thereupon have gone about to entitle the Queen ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... Schofield's English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer; Lewis's Beginnings of English Literature; Ker's Epic and Romance; Saintsbury's The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory; Newell's King Arthur and the Round Table; Maynadier, The Arthur of the English Poets; Rhys's Studies in the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Of Christ, 517. king Arthur in the second yeere of his reigne, hauing subdued all parts of Ireland, sailed with his fleet into Island, and brought it and the people thereof vnder his subiection. The rumour afterwards being spread thorowout all the other Islands, that no countrey was able to withstand ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... trodden, or may even have been carried over by his faithful attendants, Pierre Porteret and Jacques, on his death journey from the land of the Illinois to the mission of Michilimackinac, which he did not reach alive— a journey, the latter part of which was like that of King Arthur borne in a barge by his faithful knight, Sir Bedivere, to his last resting-place, the Vale of Avalon. This portage, varying in length with the season from three to five miles, was the St. Joseph-Kankakee Portage. La Salle, Tonty, and Hennepin passed over it in 1679 on ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... forests. It means back of old times, don't it? King Arthur and his Round Table—I done a bit of reading, yer know." The old man took out pouch and pipe. "That's what drew us together, sonny, our ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... but utter whiteness held for sin, A man wellnigh a hundred winters old, Spake often with her of the Holy Grail, A legend handed down through five or six, And each of these a hundred winters old, From our Lord's time. And when King Arthur made His Table Round, and all men's hearts became Clean for a season, surely he had thought That now the Holy Grail would come again; But sin broke out. Ah, Christ, that it would come, And heal the world of all their wickedness! "O Father!" asked the maiden, "might it come ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Church, that they destroyed by thousands books, secular as well as sacred, if they contained but illuminated letters. Unable to read, they saw no difference between romance and a psalter, between King Arthur and King David; and so the paper books with all their artistic ornaments went to the bakers to heat their ovens, and the parchment manuscripts, however beautifully illuminated, to the binders and ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... renders it pearls, because Golius gives "small pearls," when it is evidently "coral." Richardson (Dissert. xlviii.) seems to me justified in finding the Pari (fairy) Marjan of heroic Persian history reflected in the Fairy Morgain who earned off King Arthur after ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... into the mists of antiquity, in the days when legend, handed down by word of mouth (can you hand things out of your mouth? Sounds rude), was the forerunner of history. His father's ancestors are supposed to be descended from King Arthur; hence the "Pendragon"; though, I suppose, if it's true, King Arthur must really have been married several times, as say the vulgar records of which Tennyson very properly takes no notice. There ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... swords had a golden hilt; but it is plain that it was not unusual to represent a sword that possessed excellent qualities as being ornamented with gold, and the hilt is the part of the sword that naturally lends itself to ornamentation. Other examples of richly ornamented swords are King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, whose "pommel and haft were all of precious stones";[99] Roland's sword, Durendal, which had a golden hilt;[100] and the sword of Frothi II, which also had a ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... wholesome, and the man who lives by it is a man to be admired. The point of view may be higher in course of time, and the observer's horizon widened. The limitations of the mind which adopts the present standpoint may be found in 'A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.' Apart from its ethics, the book is a mistake, for a jest which could have been elaborated to tedium in a score of pages is stretched to spread through a bulky volume, and snaps ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... likeness or similarity, [122] would confuse death and sleep, because the appearance of the body is similar in death and in sleep. Legends of the type of Rip Van Winkle and the Sleeping Beauty, and of heroes like King Arthur and Frederick Barbarossa lying asleep through the centuries in some remote cave or other hiding-place, from which they will one day issue forth to regenerate the world, perpetuate the primitive identification of death and sleep. And the belief long prevailed that after ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... man in him, somewhat atrophied from long disuse, stirred him almost to the point of assault; then dignity whispered more prudent counsel in his ear, and Gerald was past the danger-zone and out in the passage. Mr. Carmyle turned to face Sally, as King Arthur on a similar but less impressive occasion must have ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... may be got out of the symphony to Purcell's duet in King Arthur, 'Sound a Parley ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... When good King Arthur ruled his land He was a goodly king; He stole three pecks of barley meal To make a bag-pudding. A bag-pudding the king did make, And stuff'd it well with plums; And in it put great lumps of fat, As big as my two thumbs. The king and queen did eat ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous
... in prison three-score knights And four that he did wound; Knights of King Arthur's court they be, And of ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... places, that wound through the woodland three-quarters of a mile to his house. And as he moved through the park, through sunlight and shadow of these great trees that were his, he felt like a knight of King Arthur, like some young knight long exiled, at last coming to his own. He longed with an unreasonable seizure of desire to come here to live, to take care of it, beautify it, fill it with life and prosperity as it had once been filled, surround it with cheerful faces of colored ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... genius—positive, definite, materialistic; the former were impregnated with all the dreaminess, the mystery, and the romantic spirituality of the Celt. The legends upon which they were based revolved for the most part round the history of King Arthur and his knights; they told of the strange adventures of Lancelot, of the marvellous quest of the Holy Grail, of the overwhelming and fatal loves of Tristan and Yseult. The stories gained an immense popularity in France, but they did not long retain their original character. ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... stable; a rude natural rock in Hope Dale is his chair; a chasm at Chatsworth is his leap; Blackstone Edge, in Lancashire, is his bed."[20] In fact, his name bids fair to overrun every remarkable object of the sort which has not been already appropriated to King Arthur or the Devil; with the latter of whom, at least, it is presumed, that, however ancient, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... his father spoke of Barbarossa and Timberio (sic) to keep him quiet; for the memory of the Moorish pirate and the mighty emperor is still alive here. The people of Capri are as familiar with Tiberius as the Bretons with King Arthur; and the hoof-mark of illustrious crime ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... ballad of "Sir Gawaine's Wedding." She would have silenced it, but feared to draw more attention on her charge, who had never heard the song, and did not know what was coming, but listened with increasing eagerness as she heard of King Arthur, and of the giant, and the secret that the King could not guess, ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to have been the first Earl of Warwick, and being one of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, it behooved him to have a cognizance; and Arth or Narth signifying in British the same as Ursus in Latin, he took the Bear for such cognizance. His successor, Morvidus, Earl of Warwick, in single combat, overcame a mighty ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Bern is the King Arthur of German story. Like his prototype of Britain, he has become the central figure of innumerable medieval tales and epics, a model of chivalry and martial prowess, distinguished everywhere by high deeds and mighty feats of ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... of traditions attached to personages about whose historical existence there can be but little doubt, and just because of the accretion of tradition round them their historical existence has oftentimes been denied. The most famous example in our history is of course King Arthur, and so great an authority as Sir John Rhys is obliged to resort to a special argument to account for the problems he is faced with. He argues, and argues strongly, for an historic Arthur—an Arthur who was the British successor ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... with a smile; "and yet they are very witty, and are much read at Court. The king likes especially the romance of Messeurs Iffven and Gaudian, which describes King Arthur and his knights of the round table. He has joked about it with the gentlemen ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... mountains, clad in the hazy purple of coming night,—with his face turned steadily down the long, long road, "the road that the sun goes down." Dauntless, reckless, without the unearthly purity of Sir Galahad though as gentle to a pure woman as King Arthur, he is truly a knight of the twentieth century. A vagrant puff of wind shakes a corner of the crimson handkerchief knotted loosely at his throat; the thud of his pony's feet mingling with the jingle of his spurs is borne back; and as ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... deciding whether the coins were those of British or Roman occupants. Taught by the Romans, the later Britons probably coined considerably. The oldest specimens known to be coined at Lincoln bear the name of King Arthur. Camden and Speed give several. At Horncastle, the oldest coin found was British, having on one side, amid mystic circles, the figure of a “horse rampant,” indicative of the reverence in which the horse was held by the Druids. {112a} Stukeley says, in his Diary, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Coch-Asaph) usurped the throne of the Straith-Cluid Britons; but the Cumbrians, who dwelt on the south side of the wall, were protected by Urien, lord of Rheged, a nobleman who had lived at the court of king Arthur, and whose great qualities are celebrated by the pens of Lhowarch-Hen, (his cousin-german,) Taliessin, and the author of the Triades. In the beginning of the usurpation of Morcant Mawr, St. Kentigern was obliged to fly into Wales, where he stayed some time with ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... is true of the Arthurian Legend and the story of the Holy Grail. Dante knew of King Arthur's fame, and mentions him in the Inferno. To Dante he was a Christian hero, and the historical Arthur may have been a Christian; but much in the story goes back to the pagan Celtic religion. We can find in Irish literature many references that indicate a belief in a self-sustaining, miraculous ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... men in their day and generation, and foremost in whatever was going on in the world, whether political or religious. To begin, there was Guy, Earl of Warwick, who lived somewhere in the times of the old dispensation, before King Arthur, and who distinguished himself, according to the fashion of those days, by killing giants and various colored dragons, among which a green one especially figures. It appears that he slew also a notable dun cow, of a kind of mastodon breed, which prevailed ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... referred to phallic principles in a number of the early chivalric societies of England. He states that the Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur had phallic emblems and other features similar to those of the Rosicrucians. The same author submits considerable evidence to indicate that the Order of the Garter is of much greater antiquity than is generally believed and that phallic principles were associated with it. A similar contention ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... that neither," said Dame Ursley, in the same tone; "let a man bear his folly gaily and his knavery stoutly, and let me see if gravity or honesty will look him in the face now-a- days. Tut, man, it was only in the time of King Arthur or King Lud, that a gentleman was held to blemish his scutcheon by a leap over the line of reason or honesty—It is the bold look, the ready hand, the fine clothes, the brisk oath, and the wild brain, that ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the distinguished American artist Howard Pyle undertook to retell and illustrate the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. His four-volume work has long been considered one of the outstanding ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... was as fierce as some of those told of King Arthur's knights. Long and sturdily the two champions fought, foot to foot, sword to scimitar, until their shields and armor were rent and hacked and the ground was red with their blood. Never had those hills seen so furious a fight by so well-matched champions, and during their breathing spells ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... him. Without too grossly admitting my ignorance, I tried to draw out from my mentor some further biographical facts that my imagination might work on during my stay. He thought that St. David was some relation to King Arthur, but just what the relation was, and whether he was only a relative by marriage, he didn't know. It wasn't very much information, but I was profoundly ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... dew (pronounced deo), god, are something like the Rakshases. They have wings, and have exceedingly long lips, one of which sticks up in the air, while the other hangs down. One of King Arthur's warriors, "Gwevyl, the son of Gwestad, on the day that he was sad, he would let one of his lips drop below his waist while he turned up the other like a cap upon his head" (Mabinogion, vol. II. ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... consist of a quadruple series of ramparts and ditches. The interior "ring" is faced with wrought masonry. The fortifications enclose an area of some 18 acres, and the crest of the hill is crowned by a mound locally known as King Arthur's Palace. The defensive works must originally have been of great strength, and are impressive even in their decay. The S. face of the hill is fashioned into a series of terraces, possibly with a view to cultivation. A ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... adventures and deeds of Sir Launcelot, fully and beautifully illustrated in Mr. Pyle's characteristic style, and uniform with his other two books, "The Story of King Arthur and His Knights" and "The Story of the Champions of the Round Table." This book takes up the adventures of the greatest of the Arthurian heroes, from the very beginning, and also that ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... things dead and gone—with the Puritan world of Miles Standish, the Revolutionary days of Paul Revere, the Dutch epoch of Rip Van Winkle; or with not even this comparatively recent national interest, it takes the child back to the strange folk of the days of King Arthur and King Robert of Sicily, of Ivanhoe and the Ancient Mariner. Thus when the child leaves school his literary studies do not connect helpfully with those forms of literature with which—if he reads at all—he is most likely to be concerned: the short story, the sketch, and the popular essay ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... moral purpose. He meant to shadow forth, under the figures of twelve knights, and in their various exploits, the characteristics of "a gentleman or noble person," "fashioned in virtuous and gentle discipline." He took his machinery from the popular legends about King Arthur, and his heads of moral philosophy from the current Aristotelian catalogue of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... of a wandering and good-for-nothing sailor-husband; a man prepared to act that most well-worn of melodramatic roles, the conjugal bully and blackmailer, the man who uses marital rights as an instrument for the worse kind of wrongs. Or, again, if we had the story of the fall of King Arthur told from the stand-point of Mordred, it would only be a matter of a word or two; in a turn, in the twinkling of an eye, we should find ourselves sympathising with the efforts of an earnest young man to frustrate the profligacies of high-placed paladins like Lancelot and ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... famous King Arthur there lived in Cornwall a lad named Jack, who was a boy of a bold temper, and took delight in hearing or reading of conjurers, giants, and fairies; and used to listen eagerly to the deeds of the knights of King ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... centuries. While the compositions of the Troubadours were almost exclusively lyrical songs, those of the Trouveurs were epic, or narrative poems, called romances. They gather about three great names,—King Arthur, Alexander the Great, and Charlemagne. It will be noted that the poet story-tellers thus drew their material from the heroic legends of all the different races that blended to form the French nation, namely, the Celtic, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... came posting in, spattered with mud and the sweat and lather of their horses. They were quite unknown to the people of Gisors, but seen for great men, as indeed they were. Richard of Anjou was the first of them, a young man of inches incredible to Gisors. 'He had a face like King Arthur's of Britain,' says one: 'A red face, a tawny beard, eyes like stones.' Behind him were three abreast: Roussillon, a grim, dark, heavy-eyed man, bearded like a Turk; Beziers, sanguine and loose-limbed, a man with a sharp tongue; ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... birds.[1224] The bird form of the soul after death is still a current belief in the Hebrides. Butterflies in Ireland, and moths in Cornwall, and in France bats or butterflies, are believed to be souls of the dead.[1225] King Arthur is thought by Cornishmen to have died and to have been changed into the form of a raven, and in mediaeval Wales souls of the wicked appear as ravens, in Brittany as black dogs, petrels, or hares, or serve their term of penitence as cows or bulls, or remain as crows till the day ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... must have taken place while the Romans yet ruled Britain. It was a noble scene for such an antique conflict, when man met man, foot to foot and hand to hand, with sword and spear. My mind was full of King Arthur and his Round-Table knights of the Pendragonship, and I doubted not that their mightiest fight had ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne |
