1821.] Welch Antiquities.-Origin of King Arthur.

the works of some other, as one of the recorded occurrences of a different place, or a previous period. Nay, not a few of these incidents would likewise, on due investigation, be found mere disguised copies of the grotesque allegories of à faded mythology.

Mr. Hume, the leading historian of England, had a fine genius, and a chaste clear style. But, though comparatively learned, he was yet none of those whom "too much learning makes mad." Patient investigation, or profound research, in ancient his tory at least, was not his fort. It is manifest that he was but very superficially versed in this branch of literature. Here he often chose to guess rather than examine, and sometimes to disguise his ignorance under the mask of ridicule. Treating, for example, the Britons under their Druids, and again the Saxons under theirs, as "Barbarians," he intimates that the battles of the kites and crows, were as worthy of historical narrations as those of the Britons and Saxons.

This reproachful epithet of "barbarians," was applied by the old Egyptians to even the Greeks, and by these afterwards, as long as ever they well durst, to even the Romans; and then by the Greeks and Romans to all mankind, themselves alone excepted. Strabo is very bold,' and denounces all who even in his own day did not express themselves in Greek, for barbarians.' And on this head even Eusebius is often very supercilious. Much in the specious and supercilious fashion mentioned, Mr. Hume generally excuses himself the task of describing the various institutions, and of appreciating the character, national or individual, of either the Britons or Saxons, especially those of the former. And, in so declining it, he perhaps has acted wisely enough. He was utterly unfurnished for such a task. Scarcely an atom did he possess of the vast and various body of preparatory knowledge indispensable to such an undertaking.

Indeed, the whole subject (I mean jointly that character and those institutions) must have, to him, appeared a labyrinth for which he had no clue; land and sea, of which he had neither map nor chart, peopled GENT. MAG, December, 1821.

6

505

with monsters and abounding with perils; a bleak, barren, inhospitable country, promising little comfort, and forbidding all approach; in short, a region, as if in nubibus,' affording neither easy access nor firm footing. If Mr. Lingard also had attentively perused Sozomen, he would perhaps have discovered, that his beloved St. Dunstan was but the pitiful echo of Apelles, an Egyptian monk, of, I think, the fourth century; who yet possibly was himself but such another echo of some anterior phantom, fool, fanatic, or charlatan. And if Mr. Pratt had looked into Pausanias, he might, with good luck to help him, possibly have gleaned, in the Phocies' of this author, a new version of the Beth Gellert legend.

Nor is the spiteful ditty, "Taffy was a Welchman," original. It is a stupid, clumsy, humdrum, doggerel translation of an old Greek epigram, to be found in Athenæus; whence, like almost all the rest, even the pithy nastiness of it has been (I had nearly said, verbatim) borrowed. After so many critiques and detections, however, let me now practise a compensating piece of self-denial.

What patriotic Welchman but, if he thought that, consistently with truth he could, would gladly retain to his nation, the famous King Arthur, in the character of a substantial human personage, a man of real flesh and blood; clasp the hero to his bosom; and, on occasion, exhibit him, in a strain of pompous panegyric, to the world, as the darling object of the national pride and glory, of even our domestic and individual boast, and of no small foreign envy, as well as admiration? And yet, I fear, that the fainous King Arthur is but a fiction. This reluctant humble confession' of mine, therefore, is my aforesaid and just-promised piece of self-denial. For, in attempting to reduce, in such an instance, the more dilated of our darling and dazzling national prepossessions, within the narrower limits of sober truth and reason, I, of course, am self-denyingly subjecting my own also, to some degree of retrenchment and contraction. But no friend of Arthur shall have cause long to complain of me; for, of a king, as you shall see, I shall presently dub him—a Deity!

I know

I know not how far the following remarks, many of them purely conjectural, relative to Arthur, might be thought warrantable. By the Latin writers of the middle age, his name is generally spelt Arturus' and Arcturus.' I am inclined to resolve the name Arthur into Aur' and 'Thor' or 'Thaur.' 'Aur' (18), with its various modifications or substitutes, in many of the old eastern languages, means light,' especially the light of the sun,' and, as the grand source of this, the sun' itself. Horus, a god of Egypt, may have been little more than what was called Aur' in the Phoenician or Hebrew. Thor,' or 'Thaur,' is of more difficult interpretation. I here observe, in passing, that our present points and accents in all the dead languages, being at tempts made in ages gone by, to exhibit and fix a pronunciation, even then already long irretrievably lost, and referrible now to no sufficient standard, can be of little authority, though they need not be wholly discarded.

·

By the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, and their cognate ancient languages, the words Tor, Thor, Thur, Thaur; Sur or Saur, Shur or Shaur;' also Tzor, Tzur, and Tzaur,' (whence Tyre, and perhaps even Zurich, each a house,' as it were, or 'habitation, built on a rock,'—' a city built on a hill,')-their variously spelt, pointed, and pronounced equivalents, and their different modifications and substitutes, have all seemingly a near mutual affinity. And when we have mentioned looking around; taking a view or survey; an ox or bull; and the zodiacal sign or constellation Taurus; a high bill, rock, or mountain; a tower, city, or fortress ; we shall have indicated some of the principal of their leading meanings. To me there seems to be more or less affinity between all these

(to which I am inclined to add,

w,

local Welch expression have here belped them out at all in any one instance? We often designate the far-famed capital of the neighbouring county, "Caernarvon â'r cyrn hirion: Caernarvon with the long horns;" from its loftily-turreted aspect at a distance. By a rude sort of metaphor, a tower may be called a horn; a country, eminence, or fortress, a city or town, having respectively one or more towers, may be reckoned an ox or bull, of which they are the horns. The like also may well be said of a country turreted, as it were, or peaky, with high rocks, or with either natu ral or even artificial high hills or mountains. More strictly speaking, indeed, these are the borns only of the bull. But if, by a common figure in language, we speak more compendiously, putting a part for the whole, they will each be the bull itself. Each of them from serving (which will justify our etymology) to afford an extensive prospect round about; and again the beast, from which the metaphor concerning them is borrowed; and therefore yet again the zodaical constellation, of which that beast is the earthly type; may respectively be, with propriety, denominated Tzur, Tzaur; Shur, Shaur; Tor, Thaur; Taur, Taurus.'

Now, the Jewish feast of Purim occurs, I think, some time about the vernal equinox. Here Schindler may be consulted, under the root (Pur.) The later Jews, I fear, have sadly paganised this feast. It should, of course, be a feast thankfully (towards God I mean) commemorative of their ancient providential national escape from the snare laid for their lives by the bloody-minded Haman. But the later Jews have seemingly made of this character a sort of Egyptian Typhon; and, at that feast, indulged in rejoicings for the defeat of his plots against their nation, in a very

authorities, Jalcut, as quoted by Cas

heathenish fashion. See, among other סור סר תור טיר טורטר,Words

שור tell, under the Chaldaic root .צור,ציר,צר, שור,שרה שור or שרשיר

Lexicographers, as indeed they well may, seem now and then, when they attempt the connection, at some loss how to connect, readily, ideas to first apprehension, thus discordant and impracticable; or which at least denote little in common, nor are even analogous. Would an ordinary

(Shur). What more heathenish could they have done, in the way of rejoicing, had they been superstitious Egyptians rejoicing for the mystic discomfiture, by their Osiris or Horus, the deified sun, at or not far from that equinox, of the Typhonic Ass of the North, otherwise called the Great

Bear,

1821.] Bayham Abbey and Penshurst Place, Kent.

park, at a few miles distance from Tunbridge Wells. It was built in the reign of William the Conqueror, and passed successively through the families of Penchester, Pulteney, Devereux, and Fitzwalter, until it was forfeited to the Crown in the reign of Edward VI. by the attainder of Sir Ralph Vane. The youthful Monarch bestowed it as a mark of his peculiar favour and esteem on Sir William Sidney (Chamberlain and Steward of the household of Henry VIII.) in the possession of whose descendants this splendid gift has ever since remained. On the death of Sir William Sidney, the estate descended to his son Sir Henry, the bosom friend of Edward VI. and the father of the gallant Sir Philip Sydney. This illustrious hero, whose untimely death was a source of so much grief to the Court of Elizabeth, and to the whole British nation, was born here in 1554, on which memorable occasion an oak was planted in the park. From him the domain came into the possession of his brother Sir Robert Sidney, after. wards created by James I. Lord Sidney, Viscount Lisle, and Earl of Leicester. Peushurst was also the birthplace and residence of the celebrated Lady Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland (the Sacharissa of Waller), and of the Earl of Leicester's son, the patriotic Algernon Sidney, who was beheaded in the reign of Charles II. on a charge of being concerned in the Rye House Plot. The house is extensive and commodious, and is a specimen of the union of the Saxon and Gothic orders of architecture. It bears evident marks of antiquity, and some of its outer courts are in ruins; but the whole edifice has, within the last few years, undergone a thorough repair, and received several material improvements, under the inspection of its present proprie tor, Sir John Shelley Sidney, bart. The interior is spacious and magnificent, though the splendour of its decorations is now rather faded from the effects of time. Many of the rooms are ornamented with fine pic

He was mortally wounded at the battle of Zutphen in Guelderland, between the Flemish and British, September 22, 15S6. His noble act of self-forbearance

in the hour of intense suffering, and his exemplary humanity to the dying soldier, will ever endear his memory to posterity.

tures and family portraits by Titian, Guido, Corregio, Teniers, Holbein, Vandyke, Hemskirk, Janssen, Lely, Luders, and Kneller. Among those particularly worthy of observation, are, an elegant picture of Charles 1. on horseback, by Vandyke, and portraits of the Earls of Leicester, Sir Philip Sidney, the Countesses of Sunderland and Pembroke, and Algernon Sidney. Some fine old specimens of antient tapestry are also to be seen in some of the apartments. The park is thickly studded with trees, among which we now in vain look for the oak planted to commemorate the birth of Sir Philip Sidney. The gar dens are spacious and beautiful, and extend from the house to the banks of the Medway.

The other places in the vicinity of the Wells, which merit the attention of the visitor, are Eridge Castle and Park, the noble domain of the Earl of Abergavenny; Knowle, the seat of the Duchess of Dorset; Bounds; Somerhill; and the ruins of Wayfield Palace.

Mr. URBAN,

YOUR

L.

Nov. 20. 7OUR Correspondent W. Wright, of Henrietta-street, having observed in page 316 of your Magazine for October, that the Pedigree inserted in vol. XC. i. 588 (and which was communicated to me by a gentleman who resides in the vicinity of Spilsby), is incorrect; it may not be improper to state that I have been lately informed of its inaccuracy in some respects, and particularly so with regard to the father of Serjeant Selby. My former Letter to you comprised various observations relative to the Selby family and estates. I could add some remarkable circumstances; but I should not be justified in communicating them to the publick: I shall, therefore, only say, that a gentleman whose name I am not at liberty to mention in your Magazine, will probably ere long be adjudged to be entitled to the Selby estates; the value of which is much more than your Correspondent J. A. represents. For not only Wavendon (which he esti mates at about 3000l. per annum), but several other manors are enumerated in the will of Thomas James Selby, esq.; and I understand he purchased some land after his will was made.

R. U. REVESBY