. St. Paul's
Cathedral stands just to the east of it, on Ludgate Hill.

These stories were first written down by a Welsh priest called Geoffrey
of Monmouth, who lived in the days of King Stephen; and long ago
everyone believed they were true. Then came a time when people said
what, perhaps, you are thinking, "These stories are only fairy-tales.
Who made them up?" Well, Geoffrey of Monmouth said, in his book
written nearly 800 years ago, that he had read them in a still older
book which came out of Brittany. Who else had read this old book? No
one, so Geoffrey said; so people left off believing them; they were put
aside and forgotten. Now wise men think that they are really the old
stories of our nation which have been passed down from father to son,
and that perhaps the heroes of which they tell are the gods the people
once worshipped, that Lud was a God of the Waters. If so, was it not
very natural that he was worshipped in Old London on the shores of the
Thames and the Fleet Rivers?

There is another hero, Bran the Blessed, of whom I must tell you. He
too was King of the Isle of the Mighty, as Britain was called. He was
so big no ship could contain him for he was like a mountain, and his
eyes were like two lakes. In the end of his days he fought with the
Irish in their own land until only he and seven of his followers were
left alive, and he was wounded unto death. And he said to his
followers, "Very soon I shall die; then cut off my head, and {16} take
it with you to London, and there bury it in the White Mountain looking
towards France, and no foreigners shall invade the land while it is
there." Much more he told them of the manner of their coming to
London, and all that he said came true, so that many years passed away
before in the White Mount, where the Tower now stands, they buried the
head. There it lay until Arthur dug it up, for he said, "The strong
arm should defend the land." He meant that the men of a nation should
be its defence.

Arthur himself was proclaimed King in London. Perhaps you remember the
old story of the child who was brought up so secretly that, when the
King, his father, died, no one knew who was now the rightful King or,
indeed, if there was one. Then, as Merlin the Magician had advised,
the Archbishop of Canterbury called on all the great lords of the
kingdom to come together in London; and there, one day, outside the
greatest church in the City (was it St. Paul's, I wo