the middle regions abides more or less in quantity, as it falls one half of the year; which, I suppose, heretofore supplied the knights’ and soldiers’ occasions; as there is no fountain, spring, or river-water within a thousand paces distance thereof. There were, it appears, moreover,” my author goes on to say, “two gates or portals, leading up to the castle itself; the one on the east, the other on the west side thereof; which” (he meant, I suppose, the latter) “conducts you by a stony causeway, now covered with grass, up and down the hill towards Tre-kynging,—that is to say, the King’s, Prince’s, or Ruler’s Tower.” Now there is a malice prepense in that videlicet of the worthy antiquaries. The Tre-kynging here spoken of by him, and in this invidious manner, is a somewhat dilapidated village at the foot of the castle hill. The only thing interesting about it, in my eyes, being, I confess, the detached portion of rock lying near it, and which goes, even to this day, by the name of “King Arthur’s Stone.” The tradition indeed asserts that “certain marks resembling the imprint of four horse-shoes upon it,” were “the result of a leap taken by the courser of the monarch,” at the period when the latter “resided at Castle Dinas,” and “was accustomed to hunt each morning over the Goss Moor,” which, when seated on the green encampment, one sees stretching like an impalpable pale blue mist “beyond.” It was here, perhaps, that
On a day, he sitting high in hall,
Before him came a forester of Dean,
The name is common enough in the neighbourhood—
Wet from the woods, with notice of a hart,
Taller than all his fellows, milky-white,
First seen that day: these things he told the king.
Then the good king gave order to let blow
His horn for hunting on the morrow morn!
Dilapidated as Tre-kynging is, however, our friend would see in it the remains of a royal city—perhaps even, despite all the received opinions upon the subject, of Camelot itself, for is not the river Camel “within walking distance?” (All antiquaries are not necessarily good pedestrians, but the present one seems to have been such.) His chain of argument, deduced from his own interpretation of the appellative above mentioned, is something like this—“Was it not the custom in early times for towns to spring up in the neighbourhood of the great man, the ‘chief ruler’s’ residence, who in fact gave the townspeople his protection in return for sundry other advantages? Even Blackstone, in his Commentaries, states so much of their origin. Well then, if having stated the signification of Tre-kynging to be what it is, I further add, from what particular study of what particular philology I do not choose to say, that Castle-an-Dinas means no other than ‘the Palace of the King,’ is not that, to say the least, a singular coincidence?” Now you see what I meant by calling that former interpretation of his invidious. Peace to his ashes, the amiable enthusiast! not less interested in the records of Lyonnesse than is Alfred Tennyson himself. Peace to his ashes, I say; for I find, on consulting his title page, that he must have been dead—become converted into a subject for antiquarian research himself—a hundred years and more ago now. Yet I think if he had been alive in these days—which you will observe is not my expression, but one of Carlyle’s, applied to his own peculiar Dry-as-dust—I could have helped him with some little additional information, or at all events, to some new suggestions, I do not say whether valuable or not, in this matter.
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Bedruthan Steps, near St. Columb. (See p. 532.)
