Slaughter Bridge

SLAUGHTER BRIDGE.

HISTORIANS and poets have made the world familiar with King Arthur. We know how Merlin deceived, by his magic, the beautiful Igerna, so that she received King Uter as her husband. We know also that Uter P.endragon died, and that his son, by Igerna, reigned King of Britain. How Arthur ruled, and how he slaughtered all the enemies of Britain, is told in the chronicles. But even at Tintagel [a] all is silent respecting the king or his celebrated Round Table.

"In the days of King Arthur the Mount of Cornwall was kept by a monstrous giant," is familiar to us all; and it is curious to find a tradition that the extirpation of these Titans was due to Arthur and Christianity, as already related. At Slaughter Bridge I heard the story, but it did not sound like a tradition; the true native character was not in the narrative,--That in 824 the Cornish and Saxons fought so bloody a battle that the river ran red with blood. On Slaughter Bridge Arthur is said to have killed his nephew, Modred, but that, previously to this last fight, Modred wounded his uncle with a poisoned sword, nearly in front of Worthyvale House. A single stone laid over a stream, having some letters cut on ifs lower surface, is believed to mark the exact spot where Arthur received his death-wound.

[a]  "I shall offer conjecture touching the name of this place, which I will not say is right, but only probable. Tin is the same as Din, Dines, and Diveth, deceit; so that Tindixel, turned, for easier pronunciation, to Tintagel, Dindagel, or Daundagel  signifies Castle of Deceit, which name might be aptly given to it from the famous deceit practised here by Uter Pendragon by the help of Merlin's enchantment."--Tonkin.