Welsh Journals

Llantwit and Langton may well have continued into the fifth century. Both Webster and Rivet stress the possibility of survival into the sub- Roman period: there may well prove to be continuity of estates (as in parts of Gaul) even when the villa site was abandoned. MICHAEL G. JARRETT. Cardiff THE QUEST FOR ARTHUR'S BRITAIN. Edited by Geoffrey Ashe. Pall Mall Press, 1968. Pp. xi, 282; 200 illustrations. 70s. ( £ 3-50). 'The Quest for Arthur's Britain' sets out, so we are told on the dust jacket, to examine 'what the romancers have said about Arthur' and to discuss 'the origin of the Arthurian legend as a theme of European culture Within these terms of reference the book must be judged a success. Strictly it falls into two separate sections: a literary, historical and quasi-historical consideration of Arthur (and what is unfortunately referred to as the 'Arthurian period') written largely by Mr. Ashe, and summaries of archaeological sites produced by the archaeologists responsible for their excavation. The range of the two sections and the factual material upon which each is based is therefore very different. Mr. Ashe begins the work with two very attractively presented chapters, 'The Visionary Kingdom' and 'The Arthurian Fact'. The first deals with the development of the legendary life of Arthur from the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth to Thomas Hardy; the second covers the rather more historical aspects of the two centuries following the Barbarian Conspiracy of 367. The sources, necessarily of varying quality, are tackled with skill giving rise to a balanced account of what may be inferred, if not what is proven, and ending with the modest policy statement that 'some such person existed. Or at any rate, it is much easier to suppose that he did than he did not'. After the archaeological core, Mr. Ashe takes up the narrative again with a chapter entitled 'Extending the Map', based largely upon Arthurian folklore, followed by 'Life in the Arthurian Age’­an attempt, not altogether satisfactory, to paint in the backcloth. The last two chapters, 'Arthur and English History' and 'The New Matter of Britain', round off the story by looking briefly at the relevant events of the sixth and seventh centuries and finally by examining twentieth-century attempts to develop or exploit the Arthurian theme. Taken together, these chapters form a cohesive whole ranging widely, and sometimes irrelevantly, over the entire field of Arthurian studies past and present, but by the very nature of the evidence the historical element is based more on inspired inference than fact.