entirely upon Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, which Caxton printed in 1485,
supplemented in the case of _Enid and Geraint_, and _The Marriage of
Geraint_ by a translation of the Welsh _Mabinogion_ by Lady Charlotte
Guest.


THE STORY OF THE IDYLLS.--It is well to remember the events that led up
to Arthur's death. Guinevere's guilty love for Lancelot had been
discovered and revealed by Arthur's nephew, the traitor Modred. The
Queen fled the court and sought refuge with the nuns of Almesbury.
Lancelot fled to his castle in the north, where the King in vain besieged
him. Meanwhile Modred had stirred up a revolt, and leaguing himself with
the Saxon invaders, had usurped Arthur's throne. On his march southward
to resist his nephew, Arthur halts at the nunnery of Almesbury, and in
the Guinevere idyll the moving story of their last farewell is told.
Then the King advanced to meet Modred. The description of that "last
weird battle in the west" is given in _The Passing of Arthur_, and leads
up to the impressive line with which our present poem opens. Towards the
close of that fateful day, there came--

A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field
Of battle: but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Broke in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome,