The Manawatu Daily Times Round Table's Influence Goes On

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7301, 31 October 1933, Page 6

The Manawatu Daily Times Round Table's Influence Goes On

Knightly legend again has been unhorsed by prosaic research. Excavations conducted by the British Office of Works have examined the foundations of ruined Tintagel Castle, -where tradition has long - held King Arthur and his Knights of the Hound Table were wont to gather in ancient Cornwall. Results go to show that the castle was erected in the twelfth century. “We can now state definitely,” says C. A. Raleigh .Radford, Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Wales, “that the legend that Arthur held court at Tintagel is untrue.”

Doubtless this discomfiting revelation will be speedily forgotten (if ever heard of) by the generality, and tradition wall climb back on,his horse. But the very small minority seriously interested in the authencity of Arthurian traditions will not be greatly astonished, for this news from Tintagel verifies conclusions already accepted. Three years ago a convention of Arthurian students at Truro, Cornwall, among other legendary matters, discussed Tintagel Castle and decided that it could not have been there in Arthur’s time. “The first recorded mention of Tintagel anywhere,” said the president of the convention, “was in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Regum Britannia,’ written in the twelfth century. There is no mention of any castle at Tintagel in the ‘Doomesday Book.’ ”

Whatever part of the Arthurian cycle relates to actual personages and events, Arthur and his Knights are still potent. At one period their adventures made the bulk of contemporary literature and contributed much to influence thought and behaviour as welL as provide entertainment. It would be hard to think of any other source of material that has been of such value to later authorship. So much, at least, a fact-finding ago cannot disprove with pick and shovel.

Art the Great Leveller

If it be true, as poets have sung, that “Art is long, and Time is fleeting,” it is happily also true that art is -wide in its embrace. It was so in the fifteenth century when honours were bestowed almost equally on those illustrious Florentine artists, Michelangelo, of noble birth, and Andrea del -Sarto, a tailor’s son.

To-day as then, “talents are distributed without regard to pedigrees,” as Frederick the Great, generous patron of the arts, intelligently observed. Out of New York comes the report that among the amateur artists to whom scholarships and merit awards have been given by the Art Students’ League of that city are listed an ironworker side by side with a singer; an attorney, a letter carrier and a hairdresser; a carpenter and a governess.

Before such a showing democracy need not bow its head. If in these less colourful days fewer princely connoisseurs exist who, like Lorenzo the Magnificent, take young artists into their palaces and even present them with “violent-coloured mantles,” there is compensating advantage in the opportunities afforded many a budding talent by organisations such as the league.

A fact worth noting is that 1115 contestants sent in works. The paintings came from all sorts and conditions of men and women in 35 of the American States, as well as from foreign countries, and the occupations of the amateur artists ranged literally from preachers to plumbers. It is not a. slight thing that at this.time, when much is written and discussed regarding the new-found leisure of many and its useful employment, that at least one cultural hobby is thus indicated and encouraged by such a contest.