CHAP. VI.
it is snapped in twain in the conflict with PelHnorc; but it is of
course brought back to him in the form of Excalibur, by a maiden
who answers to Thetis or to Hjordis.^ Arthur, riding with Merhn
along a lake, becomes "ware of an arm clothed in white samite that
held a fair sword in the hand." This is the fatal weapon, whose
scabbard answers precisely to the panoply of Achilleus, for while he
wears it Arthur cannot shed blood, even though he be wounded.
Like all the other sons of Helios, Arthur has his enemies, and Kino:
Rience demands as a sign of homage the beard of Arthur, which
gleams with the splendour of the golden locks or rays of Phoibos
Akersekomes. The demand is refused, but in the mediaeval romance
there is room for others who reflect the glory of Arthur, while his own
splendour is for the time obscured. At Camelot they see a maiden
with a sword attached to her body, which Arthur himself cannot
draw. In the knight Balin, who draws it, and who " because he was
poorly arrayed put him not far in the press," we see not merely the
humble Arthur who gives his sword to Sir Kay, but Odysseus, who in
his beggar's dress shrinks from the brilliant throng which crowds his
ancestral hall.^
On the significance of the Round Table we must speak elsewhere. The Round It is enough for the present to note that it comes to Arthur with the the Sau bride whose dowry is to be to him as fatal as the treasures of the '^'^^• Argive Helen to Menelaos. In the warning of Merlin that Guinevere " is not wholesome for him " we see that earlier conception of Helen in which the Attic tragedians differ so pointedly from the poets of the IHad and the Odyssey. As Helen is to be the ruin of cities, of men, and of ships, so is Guinevere to bring misery on herself and on all around her, as of Brynhild it is said, " Luckless thou camest to thy mother's lap, born for the sorrow of all folk." Dangers thicken round Arthur, and he is assailed by enemies as dangerous as Kirke and Kalypso to Odysseus. The Fay Morgan seeks to steal Excalibur, and succeeds in getting the scabbard, which she throws into a" lake, and Arthur now may both bleed and die.^ At the hands of another maiden he narrowly escapes the doom which Medeia and Deianeira
> " The Manks hero, Olave of Nor- way, had a sword with a Celtic name, Macabuin." — Campbell, Talcs of the West Highlands, i. Ixxii. It reappears as the sword Tirfing in the fairy tale. Keightley, Fai)y Mythology, 73. In some versions, as in " Arthur and Merlin," Excalibur is the sword fastened in the stone, the sword obtained from the fairy being Mirandoisa.
- The invisible knight who at this
stage of the narrative smites Sir Her- leus wears the helmet of Hades, and his action is that of the Erinys who W'anders in the air. ' Morgan has the power of trans- fonnation possessed by all the fish and water-gods, Proteus, Onncs, Thetis, &c.
