A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
I looked at the boy in sorrow; and as I looked I saw the cloud of
a deep despondency settle upon his countenance. I followed the
direction of his eye, and saw that a very old and white-bearded
man, clothed in a flowing black gown, had risen and was standing
at the table upon unsteady legs, and feebly swaying his ancient
head and surveying the company with his watery and wandering eye.
The same suffering look that was in the page's face was observable
in all the faces around--the look of dumb creatures who know that
they must endure and make no moan.
“Marry, we shall have it again,” sighed the boy; “that same old
weary tale that he hath told a thousand times in the same words,
and that he _will_ tell till he dieth, every time he hath gotten his
barrel full and feeleth his exaggeration-mill a-working. Would
God I had died or I saw this day!”
“Who is it?”
“Merlin, the mighty liar and magician, perdition singe him for
the weariness he worketh with his one tale! But that men fear
him for that he hath the storms and the lightnings and all the
devils that be in hell at his beck and call, they would have dug
his entrails out these many years ago to get at that tale and
squelch it. He telleth it always in the third person, making
believe he is too modest to glorify himself--maledictions light
upon him, misfortune be his dole! Good friend, prithee call me
for evensong.”
The boy nestled himself upon my shoulder and pretended to go
to sleep. The old man began his tale; and presently the lad was
asleep in reality; so also were the dogs, and the court, the lackeys,
and the files of men-at-arms. The droning voice droned on; a soft
snoring arose on all sides and supported it like a deep and subdued
accompaniment of wind instruments. Some heads were bowed upon
folded arms, some lay back with open mouths that issued unconscious
music; the flies buzzed and bit, unmolested, the rats swarmed
softly out from a hundred holes, and pattered about, and made
themselves at home everywhere; and one of them sat up like a
squirrel on the king's head and held a bit of cheese in its hands
and nibbled it, and dribbled the crumbs in the king's face with
naive and impudent irreverence. It was a tranquil scene, and
restful to the weary eye and the jaded spirit.
This was the old man's tale. He said:
“Right so the king and Merlin departed, and went until an hermit
that was a good man and a great leech. So the hermit searched
all his wounds and gave him good salves; so the king was there
three days, and then were his wounds well amended that he might
ride and go, and so departed. And as they rode, Arthur said,
I have no sword. No force,* [*Footnote from M.T.: No matter.]
said Merlin, hereby is a sword that shall be yours and I may.
So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water
and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm
clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand.
Lo, said Merlin, yonder is that sword that I spake of. With that
they saw a damsel going upon the lake. What damsel is that?
said Arthur. That is the Lady of the lake, said Merlin; and within
that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth,
and richly beseen, and this damsel will come to you anon, and then
speak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword. Anon
withal came the damsel unto Arthur and saluted him, and he her
again. Damsel, said Arthur, what sword is that, that yonder
the arm holdeth above the water? I would it were mine, for I have
no sword. Sir Arthur King, said the damsel, that sword is mine,
and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it.
By my faith, said Arthur, I will give you what gift ye will ask.
Well, said the damsel, go ye into yonder barge and row yourself
to the sword, and take it and the scabbard with you, and I will ask
my gift when I see my time. So Sir Arthur and Merlin alight, and
tied their horses to two trees, and so they went into the ship,
and when they came to the sword that the hand held, Sir Arthur
took it up by the handles, and took it with him. And the arm
and the hand went under the water; and so they came unto the land
and rode forth. And then Sir Arthur saw a rich pavilion. What
signifieth yonder pavilion? It is the knight's pavilion, said
Merlin, that ye fought with last, Sir Pellinore, but he is out,
he is not there; he hath ado with a knight of yours, that hight
Egglame, and they have fought together, but at the last Egglame
fled, and else he had been dead, and he hath chased him even
to Carlion, and we shall meet with him anon in the highway. That
is well said, said Arthur, now have I a sword, now will I wage
battle with him, and be avenged on him. Sir, ye shall not so,
said Merlin, for the knight is weary of fighting and chasing, so
that ye shall have no worship to have ado with him; also, he will
not lightly be matched of one knight living; and therefore it is my
counsel, let him pass, for he shall do you good service in short
time, and his sons, after his days. Also ye shall see that day
in short space ye shall be right glad to give him your sister
to wed. When I see him, I will do as ye advise me, said Arthur.
Then Sir Arthur looked on the sword, and liked it passing well.
Whether liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or the scabbard?
Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur. Ye are more unwise,
said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while
ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye
never so sore wounded; therefore, keep well the scabbard always
with you. So they rode into Carlion, and by the way they met with
Sir Pellinore; but Merlin had done such a craft that Pellinore saw
not Arthur, and he passed by without any words. I marvel, said
Arthur, that the knight would not speak. Sir, said Merlin, he saw
you not; for and he had seen you ye had not lightly departed. So
they came unto Carlion, whereof his knights were passing glad.
And when they heard of his adventures they marveled that he would
jeopard his person so alone. But all men of worship said it was
merry to be under such a chieftain that would put his person in
adventure as other poor knights did.”
CHAPTER IV
SIR DINADAN THE HUMORIST
It seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifully
told; but then I had heard it only once, and that makes a difference;
it was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt.
Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and he soon roused
the rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently poor quality.
He tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose,
and he tore around and around the place in a frenzy of fright,
with all the other dogs bellowing after him and battering and
crashing against everything that came in their way and making
altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening din and
turmoil; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughed
till the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs and
wallowed on the floor in ecstasy. It was just like so many children.
Sir Dinadan was so proud of his exploit that he could not keep
from telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal
idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humorists
of his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else had
got through. He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech
--of course a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old
played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse than
the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemed
peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I was
born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had
given me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years
afterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thing
as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities
--but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later.
However, of course the scoffer didn't laugh--I mean the boy. No,
he scoffed; there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He said
the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest were
petrified. I said “petrified” was good; as I believed, myself,
that the only right way to classify the majestic ages of some of
those jokes was by geologic periods. But that neat idea hit
the boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't been invented yet.
However, I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate
the commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is no use
to throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet.
Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his history-mill with me
for fuel. It was time for me to feel serious, and I did. Sir Kay
told how he had encountered me in a far land of barbarians, who
all wore the same ridiculous garb that I did--a garb that was a work
of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt
by human hands. However he had nullified the force of the
enchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights in
a three hours' battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my life
in order that so strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibited
to the wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He spoke
of me all the time, in the blandest way, as “this prodigious giant,”
and “this horrible sky-towering monster,” and “this tusked and
taloned man-devouring ogre”, and everybody took in all this bosh
in the naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that
there was any discrepancy between these watered statistics and me.
He said that in trying to escape from him I sprang into the top of
a tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodged
me with a stone the size of a cow, which “all-to brast” the most
of my bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court for
sentence. He ended by condemning me to die at noon on the 21st;
and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn before
he named the date.
I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was hardly enough
in my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up as
to how I had better be killed, the possibility of the killing being
doubted by some, because of the enchantment in my clothes. And yet
it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-shops.
Still, I was sane enough to notice this detail, to wit: many of
the terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this great
assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land would
have made a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey
the idea. However, I had read “Tom Jones,” and “Roderick Random,”
and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and first
ladies and gentlemen in England had remained little or no cleaner
in their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talk
implies, clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our
own nineteenth century--in which century, broadly speaking,
the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverable
in English history--or in European history, for that matter--may be
said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, instead
of putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters,
had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We should
have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena
which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the
unconsciously indelicate all things are delicate. King Arthur's
people were not aware that they were indecent and I had presence
of mind enough not to mention it.
They were so troubled about my enchanted clothes that they were
mightily relieved, at last, when old Merlin swept the difficulty