p.344. It is an almost unique instance, in the imaginative literature ofthat period, of a direct and avowed allegory. There is often allegory, butit is usually contributed by modern interpreters, and would sometimesgreatly astound the original fabulists.X. ARTHURThe earliest mention of the island of Avalon, or Avilion, in connectionwith the death of Arthur, is a slight one by the old English chronicler,Geoffrey of Monmouth (Book XI. c. 2), and the event is attributed by himto the year 542. Wace's French romance was an enlargement of Geoffrey; andthe narrative of Layamon (at the close of the twelfth century) anexplanation of that of Wace. Layamon's account of the actual death ofArthur, as quoted in the text, is to be found in the translation, a veryliteral one, by Madden (Madden's "Layamon's Brut," III. pp. 140-146).The earliest description of the island itself is by an anonymous authorknown as "Pseudo-Gildas," supposed to be a thirteenth-century Bretonwriter (Meyer's "Voyage of Bram," I. p. 237), and quoted by ArchbishopUsher in his "British Ecclesiastical Antiquities" (1637), p. 273, who thusdescribes it in Latin hexameters:-- "Cingitur oceano memorabilis insula nullis Desolata bonis: non fur, nec praedo, nec hostis Insidiatur ibi: nec vis, nec bruma nec aestas, Immoderata furit.
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