University of Virginia Library

King Henry the Second, having undertaken an expedition into Ireland, to suppress a rebellion raised by Roderick King of Connaught, commonly called O'Connor Dun, or the brown monarch of Ireland, was entertained, in his passage through Wales, with the songs of the Welsh Bards. The subject of their poetry was King Arthur, whose history had been so disguised by fabulous inventions, that the place of his burial was in general scarcely known or remembered. But in one of these Welsh poems sung before Henry, it was recited, that King Arthur, after the battle of Camlan in Cornwall, was interred at Glastonbury Abbey, before the high altar, yet without any external mark or memorial. Afterwards Henry visited the abbey, and commanded the spot, described by the Bard, to be opened: when digging near twenty feet deep, they found the body, deposited under a large stone, inscribed with Arthur's name. This is the ground-work of the following Ode: but, for the better accommodation of the story to our present purpose, it is told with some slight variations from the Chronicle of Glastonbury. The castle of Cilgarran, where this discovery is supposed to have been made, now a romantic ruin, stands on a rock descending to the river Teivi in Pembrokeshire; and was built by Roger Montgomery, who led the van of the Normans at Hastings. W.