King Arthur and the Table Round
by William Wells Newell
1897

Arthurian story English readers are disposed to entertain that affection which is engendered by a sense of proprietorship. The names of Camelot and Caerleon, Carlisle and Cardigan, Lothian and Galloway, appear to set on the narrative the stamp of the soil. In Cornwall, Wales, andS cotland, traditions of Arthur and his Round Table are so closely associated with the landscape that visitors receive the impression of ancient memory, and cease to question the foundation of the legend; amid appropriate scenery, fiction assumes the air of history. To local interest is added a racial significance. Arthur and Guinevere, Gawain and Kay, seem to represent that earliest component of the population whose language survives in Wales, but whose characteristics have been submerged beneath the successive waves of later immigration. Of the original Briton we know little, and would gladly learn more; it has been considered that Arthurian tales, rightly interpreted, may serve for illumination.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)