[See A.C.L. Brown, _The Round Table before Wace in Studies and Notes
in Philology and Literature_, VII. (Boston, 1900), 183 ff.; L.F. Mott,
_Publications of the Modern Language Association of America_, XX, 231
ff.; J.L. Weston, as above (p. xv.), pp. 883 ft.]




EXCURSUS III.--THE HOPE OF BRITAIN

(Wace, _Brut_, 13681 ff.; Layamon, 23080 ff., 28610 ff.)


The belief that Arthur would return to earth, which was firmly
established among the Britons by the beginning of the twelfth
century, does not in early records appear clothed in any definite
narrative form. In later sources it assumes several phases,
the most common of which is that recorded by Layamon that Arthur had
been taken by fays from his final battle-field to Avalon, the Celtic
otherworld, whence after the healing of his mortal wound he would
return to earth. Layamon's story conforms essentially to an early type
of Celtic fairy-mistress story, according to which a valorous hero, in
response to the summons of a fay who has set her love upon him, under
the guidance of a fairy messenger sails over seas to the otherworld,
where he remains for an indefinite time in happiness, oblivious of
earth. It is easy to see that the belief that Arthur was still living,
though not in this world, might gradually take shape in such a form as
this, and that his absence from his country might be interpreted as
his prolonged sojourn in the distant land of a fairy queen, who was
proffering him, not the delights of her love, but healing for his