Pennant's Tour 1773 |
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Page 132:- |
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| [ac]complished by art-magic, assisted by his friend the sage Merlin. By his aid, he assumed the form of King Gorlois, deceived all his guards, and, during his Majesty's absence on an important seige, got access to the fair Queen Igerna, and passed a rapturous night with the unwitting charmer in the castle of Tintagel*. Notwithstanding this, the river Eden baffled all his attempts to make it surround his new fortress - a Queen was an easier conquest. |
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| "Let Uther Pendragon do what he can, |
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| "Eden will run where Eden ran." |
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| It still preserves its old course, and a deep foss on the more defenceless side supplies the place of the obstinate stream. A well near it commemorates another piece of history relative to our Prince: in this it is said the treacherous Saxons, who did not dare to face him in the field, flung poison; he drank of this his favourite spring, and, with a hundred of his courtiers, fell victims to their villainy†. I will not insist on this great antiquity of the castle; it possibly may have been British: it is of a square form, of vast thickness, and with rudeness enough for an early period. It certainly is of very long standing, having been, as Anne Clifford informs us in her Diary, the beloved |
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| * Jeffrey of Monmouth, lib.viii. c.19. |
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| † Same, c.24. |
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