Welsh Journals

GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH AND THE BRETON FAMILIES IN CORNWALL* THE reasons which prompted Geoffrey of Monmouth to choose Cornwall for the beginning and ending of his story of King Arthur have been often surmised, but so little is known about his life that no firm conclusions can be reached. There are, however, certain factual elements which, when brought together, suggest reasonable answers. One of these is the existence of certain manors in Cornwall which in the twelfth century formed an oft-forgotten annex to the honour of Gloucester, and another is the presence in Cornwall of a number of Breton families who had settled there after the Conquest. Before Geoffrey, there seems to have been no coherent life of Arthur, nothing more than fragmentary allusions in the lives of saints, or folk-tales of a semi-mythological character. Moreover these references present no clear topographical picture and Arthur's name is found associated with places as far apart as Dalriada in the north and Cornwall in the south. Geoffrey therefore started with a relatively free choice for the location of his story. Pre-Geoffrey traditions of Arthur existed both in Wales and in Brittany and since Geoffrey's name suggests that Monmouth was his home area, one might have expected to find him strongly influenced by Welsh tradition. Nevertheless, it is widely agreed that Geoffrey displays a marked bias in favour of the Bretons compared with his attitude to the Welsh. He may have been the son of one of the followers of the Breton Wihenoc to whom Monmouth had been granted by William the Conqueror and whose nephew, William fitz Baderon, held the fief at the end of the eleventh century. If so, he could have gained his knowledge of Welsh folk-lore through a Welsh mother or foster-mother, while still retaining patriotic Breton sympathies learnt from his father. Nevertheless, it would be surprising if this was the sole source of his extensive knpwledge of Breton names and history; contact with the professional class of conteurs (or minstrels) is more likely. Breton conteurs and trouveres travelled widely and were welcomed both in France and England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; but one suspects that they would have been found most frequently at the courts of the nobility and particularly among the entourage The text of a paper presented to the Tenth International Arthurian Conference at Nantes, August 1972.