“Dull days were those, till our good Arthur broke
     The pagan yet once more on Badon Hill,”—­

this victory is mentioned by Gildas, who wrote in the sixth century.  Gildas, however, though he mentions the occasion, does not give the name of the leader.  But Nennius, who wrote in the latter part of the eighth century, or early in the ninth, makes Arthur the chieftain, and adds an account of his great personal prowess.  Thus the Arthur legend has already begun to grow.  For the desperate struggle with the Saxons was vain.  As the highly gifted, imaginative Celt saw his people overwhelmed by the kinsmen of the conquerors of Rome, he found solace in song for the hard facts of life.  In the fields of imagination he won the victories denied him on the field of battle, and he clustered these triumphs against the enemies of his race about the name and the person of the magnanimous Arthur.  When the descendants of the Saxons were in their turn overcome by Norman conquerors, the heart of the Celtic world was profoundly stirred.  Ancient memories awoke, and, yearning for the restoration of British greatness, men rehearsed the deeds of him who had been king, and of whom it was prophesied that he should be king hereafter.  At this moment of newly awakened hope, Geoffrey’s ‘Historia’ appeared.  His book was not in reality a history.  Possibly it was not even very largely founded on existing legends.  But in any case the chronicle of Geoffrey was a work of genius and of imagination.  “The figure of Arthur,” says Ten Brink, “now stood forth in brilliant light, a chivalrous king and hero, endowed and guarded by supernatural powers, surrounded by brave warriors and a splendid court, a man of marvelous life and a tragic death.”

Geoffrey’s book was immediately translated into French by Robert Wace, who incorporated with the legend of Arthur the Round Table legend.  In his ‘Brut,’ the English poet-priest Layamon reproduced this feature of the legend with additional details.  His chronicle is largely a free translation of the ‘Brut d’Engleterre’ of Wace, earlier known as ’Geste des Bretons.’  Thus as Wace had reproduced Geoffrey with additions and modifications, Layamon reproduced Wace.  So the story grew.  In the mean time, other poets in other lands had taken up the theme, connecting with it other cycles of legend already in existence.  In 1205, when Layamon wrote his ‘Brut,’ unnumbered versions of the history of King Arthur, with which had been woven the legend of the Holy Grail, had already appeared among the principal nations of Europe.  Of the early Arthurian poets, two of the more illustrious and important are Chrestien de Troyes, in France, of highest poetic repute, who opened the way for Tennyson, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, in Germany, with his ‘Parzival,’ later the theme of Wagner’s greatest opera.  The names of Robert de Borron in France, Walter Map in England, and Heinrich von dem Tuerlin in Germany, may also be mentioned.