ARTHURIANA:

OR,

ESSAYS ON THE ARTHURIAN ROMANCE-CYCLE AS THE FORMAL MATERIAL OF

THE NEW POESY.

ESSAY I.

ARTHURIAN LOCALITIES.

THEIR

HISTORICAL ORIGIN, CHIEF COUNTRY,
AND FINGALIAN RELATIONS;

WITH A MAP OF

ARTHURIAN SCOTLAND,

BY

JOHN S. STUART GLENNIE, M.A.,

FELLOW OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES;

OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, ETC.;
BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

"Sopra la Scozia ultimamente sorse,
Dove la Selva Calidonia appare,

Gran cose in essa già fece Tristano,
Lancilotto, Galasso, Artù, e Galvano;

.

Restano ancor di più d'una lor pruova
Li monumenti e li trofei pomposi."

ARIOSTO, Orlando Furioso, c. IV. ss. 51-2-3

EDINBURGH:

EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.

1869.

[All Rights Reserved.]

BIBLI

HERTFORD:

PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN.

PREFACE.

THE germ of the Essay now contributed to the Early English Text Society's Edition of the Romance of Merlin, was a paper written in the autumn of 1866, and published under the title of A Journey through Arthurian Scotland, in Macmillan's Magazine for December, 1867. In this article, I was, I believe, the first to show that Southern Scotland and the English Border is the chief country of Arthurian localities, and to pointout the relation of this district to that of the Fingalian topography of Scotland. I refrained, however, from any affirmation as to whether this district was, or not, the original birthland of Arthurian tradition.

But in the summer of last year, 1868, Mr. Skene published his edition of The Four Ancient Books of Wales, in the introduction and notes to which he showed that a large proportion of these poems belonged to the North, and that the historical Arthur was a leader of the Northern Cymry, or the tribes of Southern Scotland and the English Border. Combining, therefore, Mr. Skene's critical results with my own humbler topographical researches, I now for the first time endeavour to prove, after a regularly conducted scientific method, that the district thus indicated is not only the chief country of Arthu