Pliny, Ovid, and other Roman writers. He
was also well versed in the Welsh language
and antiquities, as his various translations
from Taliessin, and other British poets,
fully show. At one time he was accused
of having invented the greater part of his
chronicle. But the tendency of modern
inquiry has been to come to the conclusion
that he really did avail himself of the
materials brought from Armorica by the
Archdeacon of Oxford.

It is not easy to extract much useful
or authentic history from this strange
chronicle. But to it we owe the fable of
Shakespeare's King Lear, that of Sackville's
Ferrex and Porrex, the most beautiful
episodes in Drayton's Polyolbion, and a
great variety of allusions in Milton and
other poets, as well as the first outline of
our earliest romances.

The geography of these romances is of a
painfully confused nature; nor would the
reader, probably, be grateful for any
attempt to clear it up within the limits of the
present paper.

Camelot is supposed to be Winchester;
though even this is by no means quite
certain. Lyonas or Lyonesse, is said by
some to have been a portion of Cornwall on
the coast, now covered by the encroaching
sea. Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall,
quoted in the notes to the Morte d' Arthur,
says, "the encroaching sea hath ravened
from it (Cornwall) the whole countrie of
Lionnesse, together with divers other
parcels of no little circuite. . . . Moreover,
the ancient name of St. Michael's Mount
was Caraclowse in Cowse, the Hoare Rocke
in the Wood; which now is at everie floud
incompassed by the sea, and yet at some
low ebbes, rootes of mightie trees are
discryed in the sands about it."

And Drayton makes the Mount begin to
tell

Strange things that in his days time's course had
   brought to pass,
That forty miles, now sea, sometimes firm foreland
   was;
And that a forest then, which now with him is flood,
Whereof he first was called the Hoar-Rock in the Wood.
                                                  POLYOLBION. Song 1.

It is, however, much more probable that the
Lyonesse, Lionnesse, or Leonnoys, of
romance is the country lying on the northern
coast of Brittany, of which the ancient city
of Saint Pol de Léon is the capital, and
whose inhabitants are still distinctively
called Léonnais.

Lancelot's castle of Joyous Garde is
pronounced to be Berwick-on-Tweed. Carlisle,
according to Froissart, is identical with
the Carduel of romance. But here, again,
it is much more credible that the names
of these places were taken from Brittany,,
even if (as is possible) they were afterwards
applied to English localities. For example,
near Landerneau in Finisterre there exist—
or existed, at least, a few years ago—some
vestiges of an ancient castle, which bear
the name of La Joyeuse Garde. And for
this name a monkish historian of the town
of Morlaix gives the following etymology:

In the sixth century, the coast of the
Léonais was much ravaged by Danish
pirates. Many inhabitants of the district
around Landerneau took refuge, with
their flocks and herds, within the thick
forest which in those days covered the
whole country around the bottom of the
Bay of Brest. They formed thus a sort of
camp on the spot where the castle now
stands, and lived in great anxiety and
continual fear.

One fine day there arrived in the Bay of
Brest, and disembarked on its shore, an
Irish saint, Thénénau by name, who had
come to preach the gospel in Armorica. The
refugees within the forest camp had placed
a sentinel near the coast to keep watch
and ward against intruders, and as soon
as ever this sentinel beheld the saint he
cried out (being miraculously enlightened
on the subject) that a servant of God was
come to deliver them from their apprehension
and misery. The saint was conducted
into the camp, and the forest resounded
with the shout, "Merbet a jod a eus er
goard;" which means "They are leading
a great cause of rejoicing into the guard."

From these words the castle, which was
erected on the site of the camp, was called
"Kastell joa eus goard; which the French,
as the Dominican chronicler tells us,
"Accoutumés à tordre le nez à nôtre Breton,
pour l'accomoder à leur idiome, traduisent
par Château de la Joyeuse Garde."

In Mr.Trollope's Summer in Brittany
there is mention of various curious legends
respecting King Arthur and the Knights
of the Round Table, which at the date of
the book—1840—still lingered in many
nooks and corners of that romantic country.
The "iron horse" has stamped out many
traces of old-world customs since that day.
Wherever railways are, the new replaces
the old, at a wonderfully increased rate of
progress. But in Morbihan and Finisterre
ancient legends and superstitions are deep-
rooted, and have by no means yet been all
extirpated.

But the immediate source from which