The Hollow Hills

by Mary Stewart

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  LIKE ITS PREDECESSOR, The Crystal Cave, this novel is a work of the imagination, though firmly based in both history and legend. Not perhaps equally in both: so little is known about Britain in the fifth century A.D. (the beginning of the "Dark Ages") that one is almost as dependent on tradition and conjecture as on fact. I for one like to think that where tradition is so persistent — and as immortal and self-perpetuating as the stories of the Arthurian Legend — there must be a grain of fact behind even the strangest of the tales which have gathered round the meager central facts of Arthur's existence. It is exciting to interpret these sometimes weird and often nonsensical legends into a story which has some sort of coherence as human experience and imaginative truth. I have tried with The Hollow Hills to write a story which stands on its own, without reference to its forerunner, The Crystal Cave, or even to whatever explanatory notes follow here. Indeed, I only add these notes for the benefit of those readers whose interest may go beyond the novel itself, but who are not familiar enough with the ramifications of the Arthurian Legend to follow the thinking behind some parts of my story. It may give them pleasure to trace for themselves the seeds of certain ideas and the origins of certain references.

  In The Crystal Cave I based my story mainly on the "history" related by Geoffrey of Monmouth, [1] which is the basis of the later and mainly mediaeval tales of "Arthur and his Court," but I set the action against the fifth-century Romano-British background, which is the real setting for all that we know of the Arthurian Fact. [2] We have no fixed dates, but I have followed some authorities who postulate 470 A.D. or thereabouts as the date of Arthur's birth. The story of The Hollow Hills covers the hidden years between that date and the raising of the young Arthur to be war-leader (dux bellorum) or, as legend has had it for more than a thousand years, King of Britain. What I would like to trace here are the threads I have woven to make this story of a period of Arthur's life which tradition barely touches, and history touches not at all.

  That Arthur existed seems certain. We cannot say even that much for certain about Merlin. "Merlin the magician," as we know him, is a composite figure built almost entirely out of song and legend; but here again one feels that for such a legend to persist through the centuries, some man of power must have existed, with gifts that seemed miraculous to his own times. He first appears in legend as a youth, even then possessed of strange powers. On this story as related by Geoffrey of Monmouth I have built an imaginary character who seemed to me to grow out of and epitomize the time of confusion and seeking that we call the Dark Ages. Geoffrey Ashe, in his brilliant book From Caesar to Arthur [3], describes this "multiplicity of vision":

  When Christianity prevailed and Celtic paganism crumbled into mythology, a great deal of this sort of thing was carried over. Water and islands retained their magic. Lake-sprites flitted to and fro, heroes travelled in strange boats. The haunted hills became fairy-hills, belonging to vivid fairy folk hardly to be paralleled among other nations. Where barrows existed they often fitted this role. Unseen realms intersected the visible, and there were secret means of communication and access. The fairies and the heroes, the ex-gods and the demigods, jostled the spirits of the dead in kaleidoscopic confusion... Everything grew ambiguous. Thus, long after the triumph of Christianity, there continued to be fairy-hills; but even those which were not barrows might be regarded as havens for disembodied souls... There were saints of whom miracles were reported; but similar miracles, not long since, might have been the business of fully identifiable gods. There were glass castles where a hero might lie an age entranced; there were blissful fairylands to be reached by water or by cave-passageways... Journeys and enchantments, combats and imprisonments — theme by theme — the Celtic imagination articulated itself in story. Yet any given episode might be taken as fact or imagination or religious allegory or all three at once.

  Merlin, the narrator of The Hollow Hills, the "enchanter" and healer gifted with the Sight, is able to move in and out of the different worlds at will. And as Merlin's legend is linked with the caves of glass, the invisible towers, the hollow hills where he now sleeps for all time, so I have seen him as the link between the worlds; the instrument by which, as he says, "all the kings become one King, and all the gods one God." For this he abnegates his own will and his desire for normal manhood. The hollow hills are the physical point of entry between this world and the Otherworld, and Merlin is their human counterpart, the meeting point for the interlocking worlds of men, gods, beasts and twilight spirits.

  One meeting of the real and the fantasy worlds can be seen in the figure of Maximus. Magnus Maximus, the soldier with the dream of empire, was a fact; he commanded at Segontium until the time when he crossed to Gaul in his vain bid for power. "Macsen Wledig" is a legend, one of the Celtic "seeking" stories later to flower into the Quest of the Holy Grail. In this novel I have linked the facts of Arthur's great precursor and his imperial dream to the sword episodes of the Arthurian Legend, and lent them the shape of a Quest story.

  The tale of the "Sword of Maximus" is my invention. It follows the archetypal "seeking and finding" pattern of which the Quest of the Grail, which later attached itself to the Arthurian Legend, is only one example. The stories of the Holy Grail, identifying it with the Cup from the Last Supper, are twelfth-century tales modelled in their main elements on some early Celtic "quest" stories; in fact they have elements even older. These Grail stories show certain points in common, changing in detail, but fairly constant in form and idea. There is usually an unknown youth, the bel inconnu, who is brought up in the wilds, ignorant of his name or parentage. He leaves his home and rides out in search of his identity. He comes across a Waste Land, ruled by a maimed (impotent) king; there is a castle, usually on an island, on which the youth comes by chance. He reaches it in a boat belonging to a royal fisherman, the Fisher King of the Grail Legends. The Fisher King is sometimes identified with the impotent king of the Waste Land. The castle on the island is owned by a king of the Otherworld, and there the youth finds the object of his quest, sometimes a cup or a lance, sometimes a sword, broken or whole. At the quest's end he wakes by the side of the water with his horse tethered near him, and the island once again invisible. On his return from the Other-world, fertility and peace are restored to the Waste Land. Some tales figure a white stag collared with gold, who leads the youth to his destination.

  [1] History of the Kings of Britain, translated by Sebastian Evans and revised by Charles W. Dunn (Everyman's Library, 1912)

  [2] See Roman Britain and the English Settlements, R. G. Collingwood and J. N. L. Myres (Oxford, 1937); Celtic Britain, Nora K. Chadwick Vol. 34 in the series Ancient Peoples and Places, ed. Glyn Daniel (Thames and Hudson, 1963).

  [3] Published by Collins, 1960. See also The Quest for Arthur's Britain, ed. Geoffrey Ashe (Pall Mall Press, 1968)

  For further reference see Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages; A Collaborative History edited by R. S. Loomis (Oxford University Press, 1959); and The Evolution of the Grail Legend by D. D. R. Owen (University of St. Andrews Publications, 1968).

  SOME OTHER BRIEF NOTES

  SEGONTIUM, GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH in the Vita Merlini tells us of cups made by Weland the Smith in Caer Seint (Segontium), which were given to Merlin. There is also another story of a sword made by Weland which was given to Merlin by a Welsh king. There is a brief reference in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 418 A.D. "In this year the Romans collected all the treasures which were in Britain and hid some in the earth so that no one afterwards could find them, and some they took with them into Gaul."

  Galava. The main body of legend places King Arthur in the Celtic countries of the west, Cornwall, Wales, Brittany. In this I have followed the legends. But there is evidence which supports another strong tradition of Arthur in the north of England and in Scotland. So this story moves north. I have placed the traditional "Sir Ector of the Forest Sauvage" (who reared the young Arthur) at Galava, the modern Ambleside in th
e Lake District. I have often wondered if "the fountain of Galabes [Fontes galabes] where he (Merlin) wont to haunt" could be identified with the Roman Galava or Galaba. (In The Crystal Cave I gave it a different interpretation. The mediaeval romancers make "Galapas" a gaint — a version of the old guardian of the spring or waterway.) The fostering of Arthur on Ector, and the lodging at Galava of Bedwyr, are feasible; we find in Procopius that, as in later times, boys of good family were sent away to be educated. As for the "chapel in the green," once I had invented a shrine in the Wild Forest I could not resist calling it the Green Chapel, after the mediaeval Arthurian poem of Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, which has its setting somewhere in the Lake District.

  Ambrosius' Wall. This is the Wansdyke, or Woden's Dyke, so called by the Saxons, who saw it as the work of the gods. It ran from Newbury to the Severn, and parts of it are still traceable. It was probably built some time between 450 and 475 A.D., so I have ascribed it to Ambrosius.

  Caer Bannog. This name, old Celtic for "the castle of the peaks," is my own interpretation of the various names — Carbonek, Corbenic, Caer Benoic, etc. — given to the castle where the youth finds the Grail.

  There is a Celtic legend in which Arthur carries off a cauldron (magic vessel or grail) and a wonderful sword from Nuadda or Llyd, King of the Otherworld.

  Cei and Bedwyr. They are Arthur's companions in legend. Cei was Ector's son and became Arthur's seneschal. Bedwyr's name was later mediaevalized to Bedivere, but in his relationship with Arthur he seems to be the original of Lancelot. Hence the reference to the guenfawyvar (white shadow: Guinevere) which falls between the boys on page 342.

  Cador of Cornwall. When Arthur died without issue, we are told that he left his kingdom to Cador's son.

  Morgause. On the subject of Arthur's unwitting incest with his sister, there is a rich confusion of legend. The most usual story is that he lay with his half-sister Morgause, wife (or mistress) of Lot, and begot Mordred, who was eventually his downfall. His own sister Morgan, or Morgian, became "Morgan le Fay," the enchantress. Morgause is said to have borne four sons to Lot, who later were to become Arthur's devoted followers. This seemed unlikely if Arthur had lain with her when she was Lot's wife, so I have taken my own way through the confusion of the stories, with the suggestion that after leaving the court Morgause will lose no time in taking her sister's place as Lot's queen. I believe there was in the fifth century a nunnery near Caer Eidyn (Edinburgh) in Lothian to which Morgian could have retired. This could be the "house of witches" or "wise women" of legend, and it is tempting to suppose that Morgian and her nuns came from there to take Arthur away and nurse him after his last battle against Mordred at Camlann.

  Coel, King of Rheged, is the original of the Old King Cole of the nursery rhymes. We are told that Hueil, one of the nineteen sons of Caw of Strathclyde, was much disliked by Arthur. Another of the sons, Gildas the monk, seems to have returned this dislike. It is he who, in 540 A.D., wrote The Loss and Conquest of Britain, without once mentioning Arthur by name, though he refers to the Battle of Badon Hill, the last of Arthur's twelve great battles, in which he broke the Saxon power. From the tone of Gildas' book it is to be inferred that, if Arthur was a Christian at all, his Christianity went no further than lip-service. At any rate he was no friend to the monks.

  Caliburn is the most pronounceable of the names for Arthur's sword, which was later romanticized as Excalibur. White was Arthur's colour; his white hound, Cabal, has a place in legend. Canrith means "white phantom."

  It will be seen from these necessarily sketchy notes that any given episode of my story may — to quote Geoffrey Ashe again — "be taken as fact or imagination or religious allegory or all three at once." In this, if in nothing else, it is wholly true to its time.

  — M.S.

  November 1970 — November 1972

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MARY STEWART, ONE OF THE MOST popular novelists writing today, was born in Sunderland, County Durham, England. Her father was a clergyman of the Church of England, her mother a descendant of the first New Zealand pioneers.

  After boarding-school, she received a B.A. with first class honours in English Language and Literature from Durham University and went on for her M.A. Later she returned to her own University as a Lecturer in English. She married a geologist, F. H. Stewart, who is now Regius Professor of Geology at Edinburgh University and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is Chairman of the Natural Environment Research Council and a member of the Advisory Board of the Research Councils.

  Mrs. Stewart's career as a novelist began in 1954 with the publication of Madam, Will You Talk? Since then she has published thirteen successful novels, including The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills, her two magical books about the legendary enchanter Merlin and the young Arthur. Her first book for young readers, The Little Broomstick, was published in 1971 and quickly met with the same success as her other novels. In 1968, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1971, the Scottish Chapter of the International PEN Association awarded her the Frederick Niven prize for The Crystal Cave.