***




Produced by Al Haines.





[Illustration: "PERCIVALE SAW A SHIP COMING TOWARD THE LAND."]




                             THE KNIGHTS OF
                            THE ROUND TABLE

                        _STORIES OF KING ARTHUR
                          AND THE HOLY GRAIL_


                                   BY

                          WILLIAM HENRY FROST



                ILLUSTRATED BY SYDNEY RICHMOND BURLEIGH



                                NEW YORK
                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
                                  1897




                          COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY
                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS



                             TROW DIRECTORY
                    PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
                                NEW YORK




                           BY THE SAME AUTHOR

                Each 1 vol., 12mo, Illustrated by SIDNEY
                       R. BURLEIGH. Price, $1.50

                     THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE
                        THE COURT OF KING ARTHUR
                         THE WAGNER STORY BOOK

                                   To
                               MY FATHER
                           John Dudley Frost




                               *CONTENTS*


                              *CHAPTER I*

On Glastonbury Tor


                              *CHAPTER II*

How We Discovered Camelot


                             *CHAPTER III*

The Boy from the Forest


                              *CHAPTER IV*

The Queen's Robing-Room


                              *CHAPTER V*

"Camelot, that is in English Winchester"


                              *CHAPTER VI*

The Boat on the River


                             *CHAPTER VII*

The Giants' Dance


                             *CHAPTER VIII*

On the Edge of Lyonnesse


                              *CHAPTER IX*

The Siege Perilous


                              *CHAPTER X*

Gawain


                              *CHAPTER XI*

Lancelot


                             *CHAPTER XII*

Bors


                             *CHAPTER XIII*

Percivale


                             *CHAPTER XIV*

Galahad


                              *CHAPTER XV*

The City of Sarras


                             *CHAPTER XVI*

Stories of Strange Stones


                             *CHAPTER XVII*

"And on the Mere the Wailing Died Away"


                            *CHAPTER XVIII*

The Abbess and the Monk


                             *CHAPTER XIX*

"Rexque Futurus"




                        *LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS*


"Percivale saw a ship coming toward the land."... _Frontispiece_

Glastonbury Tor

"As he played a storm began to rise"

The abbot's kitchen

"The city and the fortress of the rabbits"

"Kay's horse galloped back alone" (missing from book)

The Tower of London

The Round Table at Winchester

Winchester Cathedral

Stonehenge

St. Michael's Mount

The Land's End

"The bright spot on the road grew smaller and smaller" (missing from
book)

"A pasture where a hundred and fifty bulls were feeding"

"Through woods where there were scarcely any paths to follow"

"He saw the water before him and a ship"

"'Knight,' she said, 'what are you doing here?'"

"'It was King Evelake's shield'"

"'I cut off my hair and wove it into a girdle'"

The Dove with the golden censer

The Cheesewring

St. Joseph's Chapel, Glastonbury Abbey

"The two great waves broke upon each other"

The Choir, Glastonbury Abbey

"On toward the gold and the purple in the west"




                       *SOME OLDER STORY-TELLERS*


There is really no need, perhaps, for me to tell you that all these
stories have been told before.  But, though you know it already, I like
to say it again, because I can never say often enough how grateful I am
to those who told the world first of Arthur, of Guinevere, of Lancelot,
and of Gawain; of Galahad, of Percivale, and of Percivale's sister; of
the Siege Perilous and of the Holy Grail.  If you do not now count Sir
Thomas Malory a dear friend, as I do, learn to do it, and you will be
the better for it. I do not know who made those wonderful tales the
Mabinogion, but I know who gave them to us in our own language--Lady
Charlotte Guest.  I wish that I knew whom to thank for "The Romance of
Merlin" and for the story of "Gawain and the Green Knight." And there
were many other noble story-tellers of the old time who passed away and
left us no knowledge of themselves and not even their names to call them
by.  But they left us their stories, and if anything from us can reach
them where they are, surely gratitude can, and that they must have from
every one of us who loves a story. And the great poet of our own days,
Lord Tennyson, must have it too, for teaching us how to read their
stories.

Some time you may read these tales and others as they wrote them, and
you cannot read them without thinking what a great and marvellous thing
it was that they, who lived no longer than other men, could give delight
to the people of so many centuries.  But some of these stories are not
easy to find, and some are not easy to read, when you have found them. I
have tried to tell a few of them again in my own way, hoping that thus
some might have the stories and know them, for whom the older books
might be hard to get or hard to understand.




[Illustration: Glastonbury Tor]


                    *THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE*



                              *CHAPTER I*

                          *ON GLASTONBURY TOR*


It was when we were making a journey in the South of England one summer
that we found ourselves in the midst of the old tales of King Arthur and
of the Holy Grail.  "We" means Helen, Helen's mother, and me.  We
wandered about the country, here and there and wherever our fancy led
us, and everywhere the stories of King Arthur fell in our way.  In this
place he was born, in that place he was crowned; here he fought a
battle, there he held a tournament.  Everything could remind us, when we
knew how to be reminded, of the stories of the King and the Queen and
the knights of the Round Table.

It was I who told the stories and it was Helen who listened to them.
Sometimes Helen's mother listened to them too, and sometimes she had
other things to do that she cared about more.

One day we had been riding for many hours on the crooked railways of the
Southwest, where you change cars so often that after a little while you
cannot remember at all how many trains you have taken.  And late in the
afternoon, or perhaps early in the evening, we saw from the window of
the carriage a big hill, lifting itself high up against the sky, with a
lonely tower on the top of it.  And that was Glastonbury Tor.

There was no time to try to see anything of Glastonbury that night after
dinner, and we were too tired.  But that big hill looked so inviting
that we decided that we would see it the next day and climb up to the
top of it, before we did anything else.  I was a little disappointed
with Glastonbury, as we walked through the streets on our way to the
Tor. The place looked much too prosperous to please me, and not at all
too neat.

I cheered up a little when we came to the Abbot's Kitchen.  It stands in
the middle of a big field, with a fence around it, and we had to borrow
a key from a woman who kept it to lend so that we could go in and see
it.  We even spared a little time from the Tor to see it in. The Abbot's
Kitchen belonged to the old abbey of Glastonbury.  It is a small, square
building, with a fireplace in each corner.  It is still in such good
repair that it is hardly fair to call it a ruin, but it is a part of old
Glastonbury, and we carried back the key feeling glad that we had
borrowed it.

It was a good, stiff climb up the side of the Tor, and we stopped more
than once to look back at the town behind us and below us.  It looked
prettier from here.  Down there in the streets there was the noise of a
busy modern town.  The ways were muddy and there were rather frowsy
women and children about some of the doors.  But up here we were out of
sight and hearing of all that.  From here the town looked quiet and
peaceful and beautiful--just its roofs and chimneys and towers showing
through the wide, green masses of the trees, and the sound of a church
chime, that rang every quarter of an hour, came to us softened and
mellow.

"Down there," I said, "we saw nothing but Glastonbury--to-day's
Glastonbury--but here we can see Avalon.  That is Avalon down there
below us, the Island of Apples, the happy country, the place where there
was no sorrow, the place where fairies lived, the place where Joseph
brought the Holy Grail and where he built his church.  A wonderful old
place it was, and it was a wonderful abbey that grew up where Joseph
first made his little chapel.  Our old friend St. Dunstan, who pinched
the devil's nose, was the abbot there once.  So was St. Patrick.  When
he came to Glastonbury he climbed up to the top of this hill where we
are now and found, where this old tower is, the ruins of a church of St.
Michael.  They used to have a way of building churches to St. Michael on
the tops of high hills.  St. Patrick rebuilt this one and afterwards it
was thrown down by an earthquake.  I don't know whether St. Patrick
built this tower that is here now or not.

"Did I say that fairies used to live here? Another abbot of Glastonbury
found that out. He was St. Collen, and he must have lived when there was
no church of St. Michael here on the top of the Tor.  St. Collen was one
of those men who think that they cannot serve God and live in comfort at
the same time. When he had been abbot of Glastonbury for a time he
thought that he was leading too easy a life, so he gave up his post and
went about preaching.  But even that did not please him, so he came back
here and made a cell in the rock on the side of Glastonbury Tor, and
lived in it as a hermit.

"One day he heard two men outside his cell talking about Gwyn, the son
of Nudd.  And one of them said: 'Gwyn, the son of Nudd, is the King of
the Fairies.'

"Then Collen put his head out of the door of his cell and said to the
two men: 'Do not talk of such wicked things.  There are no fairies, or
if there are they are devils.  And there is no Gwyn, the son of Nudd.
Hold your tongues about him.'

"'Hold your own tongue about him,' one of the men answered, 'or you will
hear from him in some unpleasant way.'

"The men went away, and by and by Collen heard a knock at his door, and
a voice asked if he were in his cell.  'I am here,' he answered; 'who is
it that asks?'

"'I am a messenger from Gwyn, the son of Nudd, the King of the Fairies,'
the voice said, 'and he has sent me to command you to come and speak
with him on the top of the hill at noon.'

"Collen did not think that he ought to mind what the King of the Fairies
said to him, if there really were any King of the Fairies, so he stayed
in his cell all day.  The next day the messenger came again and said
just what he had said before, and again St. Collen stayed in his cell
all day.  But the third day the messenger came again and said to Collen
that he must come and speak with Gwyn, the son of Nudd, the King of the
Fairies, on the top of the hill, at noon, or it would be the worse for
him.

"Then Collen took a flask and filled it with holy water and fastened it
at his waist, and at noon he went up the hill.  For a long time Collen
had been abbot of Glastonbury and for a long time he had been a hermit
and lived in his cell on the side of this very hill, but never before
had he seen the great castle that stood that day on the top of
Glastonbury Tor.  It did not look heavy, as if it were built for war,
but it was wonderfully high and graceful and beautiful. It had tall
towers, with banners of every color hung from the tops of them and lower
down, and there were battlements where ladies and squires in rich
dresses stood and looked down at other ladies and squires below.  And
those below were dancing and jousting and playing games, and all around
there were soldiers, handsomely dressed too, guarding the place.

"When Collen came near, a dozen of the people met him and said to him:
'You must come with us to our King, Gwyn, the son of Nudd--he is waiting
for you.'

"And they led him into the castle and into the great hall.  In the
middle of the hall was a table, spread with more delicious things to eat
than poor St. Collen, who thought that it was wicked to eat good things,
had ever dreamed of.  And at the head of the table, on a gold chair, sat
a man who wore a crown.  'Collen,' he said, 'I am the King of the
Fairies, Gwyn, the son of Nudd.  Do you believe in me now? Sit down and
eat with me, and let us talk together.  You are a learned man, but you
did not believe in me.  Perhaps I can tell you of other things that so
wise a man as you ought to know.'

"But St. Collen only took the flask of holy water from his side and
threw some of it upon Gwyn, the son of Nudd, and sprinkled some of it
around, and in an instant there was no king there and there was no
table.  The hall was gone, and the castle.  The dances and the games
were done, and the squires and the ladies and the soldiers all had
vanished.  The whole of the fairy palace was gone, and Collen was left
standing alone on the top of Glastonbury Tor.

"But Glastonbury has forgotten St. Collen, I suppose.  The old town is
prouder now of Joseph of Arimathaea than of anybody else--prouder than
it is of King Arthur, I think, though King Arthur--but I won't tell you
about that now.  You know how Joseph of Arimathaea buried the Christ in
his tomb after He was taken down from the cross.  After He had risen
again the Jews put Joseph in prison, because they said that he had
stolen the body. But Joseph had with him the Holy Grail, the cup in
which he had caught the blood of the Saviour, when He was on the cross.
It was the same cup, too, from which the Saviour had drunk at the Last
Supper.  It was a wonderful thing, that cup, and there are whole volumes
of stories about it.  The blood that Joseph had caught in it always
stayed in it afterwards, and the cup and the blood seemed to have a
strange sort of life and knowledge and the power of choosing.  One of
the wonderful things about the Holy Grail was that it could always give
food to any one whom it chose, and those who were fed by the Holy Grail
wanted no other food than what it gave them. And so Joseph wanted
nothing while he was in prison.

"At last the Emperor had Joseph let out of his prison.  And some one
asked him how long it had been since he was put there, and he answered:
'I have been here in this prison for nearly three days.'

"Then they all stared at one another and whispered and looked at Joseph,
and then they whispered together again.  'Why do you look at one another
and at me so,' said Joseph, 'is it not three days, almost, since they
put me here?'

"'It is wonderful,' said one of them; 'Joseph, you have been in this
prison for forty-two years.'

"'Can it be?' said Joseph; 'it seems to me like only three days, and
barely that, and I have never been so happy in my life as I have been
for these three days--or these--can it be--forty-two years?'

"And this was because he had had the Holy Grail in the prison with him.
Afterwards he came to England.  He brought the Holy Grail here to
Avalon, and the King of that time gave him some ground to build his
church on.  They say it was really the island of Avalon then, for it was
all surrounded by marsh and water, and there was an opening, a waterway,
out to the Bristol Channel.  And since it ceased to be an island the sea
has twice at least broken through and made it one again for a little
while.  But the last time was almost two hundred years ago.

"Well, when Joseph and those who were with him first came here, they
rested on the hillside and Joseph stuck the staff that he carried into
the ground.  It was not this hill where we are, but another, Wearyall
Hill.  And Joseph's staff, where he had set it in the ground, began to
bud, and then leaves and branches grew on it.  It struck roots into the
ground and became a tree.  It was a thorn-tree, the Holy Thorn they
called it, and always after that it blossomed twice a year, once in the
time of other thorn-trees and again at Christmas.  The tree was gone, of
course, long ago, but other trees had grown from slips of it, and they
say that descendants of it are still growing in Glastonbury gardens and
that they still bloom at Christmas.  I am sorry that