erson as Arthur in reality was at one time a
not very uncommon opinion among men who could call themselves
scholars, though of late it has yielded to probable if not certain
arguments. The two most damaging facts are the entire silence of Bede
and that of Gildas in regard to him. The silence of Bede might be
accidental, and he wrote _ex hypothesi_ nearly two centuries after
Arthur's day. Yet his collections were extremely careful, and the
neighbourhood of his own Northumbria was certainly not that in which
traditions of Arthur should have been least rife. That Gildas should
say nothing is more surprising and more difficult of explanation. For
putting aside altogether the positive testimony of the _Vita Gildae_,
to which we shall come presently, Gildas was, again _ex hypothesi_, a
contemporary of Arthur's, and must have known all about him. If the
compound of scolding and lamentation known as _De Excidio Britanniae_
is late and a forgery, we should expect it to contain some reference
to the king; if it is early and genuine, it is difficult to see how
such reference could possibly be omitted.

[Sidenote: _The four witnesses._]

At the same time, mere silence can never establish anything but a
presumption; and the presumption is in this case rebutted by far
stronger probabilities on the other side. The evidence is here drawn
from four main sources, which we may range in the order of their
chronological bearing. First, there are the Arthurian place-names, and
the traditions respecting them; secondly, the fragments of genuine
early Welsh reference to Arthur; thirdly, the famous passage of
Nennius, which introduces him for the first time to probably dated
literature; fourthly, the curious references in the above-referred-to
_Vita Gildae_ of, or attributed to, Caradoc of Lancarvan. After this
last, or at a time contemporary with it, we come to the comparatively
detailed account of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the beginning of the
Legend proper.

[Sidenote: _Their testimony._]

To summarise this evidence as carefully but as briefly as possible, we
find, in almost all parts of Britain beyond the range of the first
Saxon conquests, but especially in West Wales, Strathclyde, and
Lothian, certain place-names connecting themselves either with Arthur
himself or with the early catalogue of his battles.[44] We find
allusions to him in Welsh poetry which may be as old as the sixth
century--allusions, it is true, of the vaguest and mos