Continent. Soon story-tellers and poets in other lands began to
write stories about Arthur too, and from then till now there has
never been a time when they have not been read. So to the Welsh
must be given the honor of having sown a seed from which has
grown the wide-spreading tree we call the Arthurian Legend.

Geoffrey begins his story long before the time of Arthur. He
begins with the coming of Brutus, the ancient hero who conquered
Albion and changed its name to Britain, and he continues to about
two hundred years after the death of Arthur. But Arthur is his
real hero, so he tells the story in very few words after his
death.

Geoffrey tells of many battles and of how the British fought, not
only with the Saxons, but among themselves. And at last he says:
"As barbarism crept in they were no longer called Britons, but
Welsh, a word derived either from Gualo, one of their dukes, or
from Guales, their Queen, or else from their being barbarians.
But the Saxons did wiselier, kept peace and concord amongst
themselves, tilling their fields and building anew their cities
and castles. . . . But the Welsh degenerating from the nobility
of the Britons, never after recovered the sovereignty of the
island, but on the contrary quarreling at one time amongst
themselves, and at another with the Saxons, never ceased to have
bloodshed on hand either in public or private feud."

Geoffrey then says that he hands over the matter of writing about
the later Welsh and Saxon kings to others, "Whom I bid be silent
as to the kings of the Britons, seeing that they have not that
book in the British speech which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford,