"FACTS" THAT ARE FICTIONS.

Auckland Star, 2 September 1933, Page 8 (Supplement)

"FACTS" THAT ARE FICTIONS.

HOKATIXJS AND THE BRIDGE. BLOW TO COLUMBUS. Many incidents which have by most people been accepted as historically true are nothing but romantic fiction. That Horatius kept the bridge is a story which in our childhood days we all accepted as accurate, yet Horatius no more kept the bridge that Jack climbed tho beanstalk and robbed the giant of his harp. Then there is Magna Cliarta. Popular tradition has it that it was this charter which gave us freedom of the Press, freedom from arrest without a cause, and so on. It has nothing to do with the Constitution. It was almost entirely a matter between the Sovereign and the great lords. The only connection in which the people were mentioned was in the protection of their transfer as serfs. The assertion that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492 is another fiction. As far back as the year 999 a Norseman, called Leif Ericsson, sailing from Norway to Iceland, blown leagues out of his course, reached an unknown land, which he called Vinland, 'or Wineland, and it was a part of America. King Arthur is a king of fable. From the cradle to tho grave his life is a tale of phantasy —from the hour when, as a naked babe cast from the dragon ship, the ocean washed him before the feet of Merlin, to tho sunset when the black barge bore him, dying, to Avillion, tended by the wailing queens. King Alfred lived, it is true, but he never vexed the goatherd's wife by letting cakes burn to embers. Tyrrel did not kill King Rufus with an arrow glancing from a tree. Clarence — " false, fleeting, perjured Clarence " —was never cast into a butt of malmsey. Queen Eleanor never sucked the venom from her husband's wound, despite the lovely lines of Tennyson:— She knew that love can conquer dentil, Who, kneeling with an arm about her king, Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath. Tradition pictures " Bonnie" Prince Charlie as a handsome and gallant soldier, fighting against cruel fate for a kingdom. He was neither handsome nor dashing. A contemporary describes him as having a long face, a pale complexion, a large mouth, and a broad forehead.