The Lost Land of King Arthur

Only by devious paths can Glastonbury, once the remote shrine for devout pilgrims from all parts of the land, be reached, for it is still somewhat out of the common track. But to wander awhile in the apple-country is delightful alike to the mind and the physical sense—to drink in its associations, to inhale its warm, sweet air, to see the gleam of white blossoms and the crimson softening upon the round ripened cheeks of the pendent fruit, these are the sources of enjoyment and the elements of the charm. Countless gardens send forth a rare perfume, and the quiet of the whole city in the midst of orchards and streams and showing the relics of by-gone splendour has a lulling effect upon the traveller who comes from the roaring town and the busy mart. When the twin dark towers of Wells Cathedral are fading shadow-like in the distance the new strange picture of the island-valley is revealed. There stretch the long level meadows of deep emerald, there glooms a forest of trees whose twisted branches are bright with apple-blossoms. The high Tor hill looks stern and bare, but cosy and inviting is the town below with its rows of irregular houses, many of which date back to long past days, while others, constituted of stone with which the architects of Dunstan’s and of Becket’s time wrought, seem to bear mute tribute to the famous era when the Abbey was in its glory and reverend pilgrims from afar came to bring oblations to that hallowed shrine. To-day the visitor finds a welcome at the “Inne” built in 1475 for the devout travellers whom the Abbot could not accommodate within the walls of the Abbey; and so few are the changes of time that the lofty façade, the parapet and turrets, the wide archway, the ecclesiastical windows, and the long corridors, remain almost as they were first designed and made. Side by side stand “Ye Olde Pilgrim’s Inne” and the Tribunal, or Court House, built by Abbot Beere, for the trial of petty offenders against the law. Unexplored dungeons are reported to exist underground, together with subterranean passages communicating with the Abbey from the “Inne” and the Tribunal. In the neighbourhood is a conspicuous building once used for collecting the tithes, called the Abbey Barn, dating from 1420, in some respects the best preserved of all the ancient memorials. But the pride and glory of Glastonbury centre in the wondrously beautiful remains of the oldest, richest, and stateliest of English Abbeys—an Abbey whose reputed founder was Joseph of Arimathæa, that Joseph who had seen the face and heard the voice of the Saviour of mankind. It was the only church of first rank in England standing as a monument of British days which escaped the scath and wreck which followed the storm of Norman conquest.

To what dim epoch the earliest history of Glastonbury belongs is more or less conjectural, though the discovery of some sixty low mounds by archæologists led to the discovery that a prehistoric lake-village in remote times occupied the site. Excavations revealed the remains of human habitations and of successive occupation by the same race—a race which hunted the boar, the roebuck, and the deer, and whose sole accomplishment was the making of coarse, rude pottery. But this people has passed away and not even a tradition of its existence is extant. It was at a much later period, though, looking backward, the time seems far distant, that the first legend of Glastonbury took root and flowered. So pure, fragrant, and beautiful is that treasured blossom that it would seem ruthless to attempt to pluck it by the roots from the ground, and to cast it aside as a worthless weed of ignorance and superstition. It brings to us the memory of that time when the Son of Man was on earth; it is a seed blown from that land which His presence sanctified. Nearly two thousand years ago the crucified Nazarene was watched by agonised crowds upon Calvary. Joseph of Arimathæa, “a good man and a just,” begged the dead body from Pilate and buried it in his own garden, thereby incurring the fierce resentment of the Jews. He fled from Palestine, fearing for his life, and so enraged were his enemies at his escape that they expelled his friends also—Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and Philip among others—putting them out to sea without oars or sail. “After tossing about many days,” says one writer, “they were driven in God’s providence to Marseilles, and from Marseilles St. Joseph came to Britain, where he died at a good old age, after having preached the Gospel of Christ with power and earnestness for many years.” This was about A.D. 63. “The happy news of the Saviour’s resurrection, and the offer of the only assured means of salvation to all who would embrace it” were welcomed by King Arviragus, who assigned to St. Joseph the Isle of Avalon as a retreat. When Joseph and his little Christian band, passing over Stone Down where stand the two notable Avalon Oaks, came to the place, weary with long travelling, they rested on the ridge of a hill, which in its name of Weary-all Hill (really Worall) is supposed to commemorate this incident; and where the saint’s staff touched the sod, a thorn tree miraculously sprang up, and every Christmas Day it buds and blossoms as a memorial of our Lord, and of the first Christian festival.31 Another story says that the saint was met by a boisterous mob of the heathen, and that, planting his pilgrim’s staff in the earth, he knelt down to pray; and as he prayed, the hard, dry staff began to bud and give forth fragrance, and became a living tree. Then said Joseph, “Our God is with us,” and the heathen, transfixed by the miracle, were convinced and pacified. So runs the earliest Christian legend in England, and as a fitting sequel we learn that not long after Joseph’s mission had begun the first Christian chapel was built, and occupied part of the site on which the most beautiful of holy houses was afterwards reared—Glastonbury Abbey. St. Joseph’s Chapel, magnificent in ruin, is one of those hallowed places in which one might spend hours in silent contemplation. Through many centuries the legend of the Holy Thorn has been preserved, and Glastonbury has remained distinguished by the fact that there the “winter thorn” has blossomed every Christmas “mindful of our Lord,” or, as a pupil of Caxton’s wrote in 1520—

“The hawthornes also that groweth in WerallDo burge and bere green leaves at ChristmasAs fresh as other in May.”

The tree was regarded with great awe and superstition by the inhabitants, and when the change in the calendar was made they looked to the “sacra spina” for confirmation of the righteousness of what had been done. Many people refused to celebrate the new-style Christmas Day because the Thorn showed no blossoms, and when the white flowers appeared on January 5th, the old-style Christmas was held to have been divinely sanctioned. A trunk of the tree was cut down by a Puritan soldier, though his sacrilege caused him to be severely wounded by a piece of the dismembered tree striking him; but when the Thorn was cast into the river as dead and worthless it miraculously took root again. The spot where it grew is marked by a monumental stone bearing the inscription:—I. A. A.D. XXXI.

A Somerset historian likewise records that in addition to the Holy Thorn there grew in the Abbey churchyard a miraculous walnut tree, which never budded forth before the feast of St. Barnabas, namely, the 11th of June, and “on that day shot forth leaves and flourished like its usual species.” This tree is gone, but another “of the commonplace sort” stands in its place. “It is strange,” we read, “to say how much this tree was sought after by the credulous; and though not an uncommon walnut, Queen Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of the realm, even when the times of monkish superstition had ceased, gave large sums of money for small cuttings from the original.” The walnut tree, however, never vied with the Holy Thorn in popularity. The “Athenian Oracle” (1690) wriggled out of the difficulties attending a belief in the budding of the hawthorn tree with characteristic ingenuity, and supplied an example that most of us would gladly imitate. To an inquirer who asked for information and an opinion, the “Oracle” replied (none too grammatically), “All that Mr. Camden says of it is, that if any one may be believed in matters of this nature, this has been affirmed to him to be true by several credible persons; it was not in Glastonbury itself, but in Wirral Park, hard by it; however, this superstitious tree, true or false, was cut down in the last reforming age, though it seems they did not make such root and branch work with it but that some stumps remained, at least some branches or grafts out of it were saved, and still growing in the same country; though whether they have the same virtue with the former, or that had any more than any other hawthorn, we don’t pretend to determine any more than the forementioned historian.” The belief in the tree and the knowledge of its peculiar properties were so wide-spread that Sedley’s verse on Cornelia, who “bloomed in the winter of her days like Glastonbury Thorn” was easily understood. Bishop Goodman, writing to the Lord General Oliver Cromwell in 1652, said he could “find no naturall cause” either in the soil or other circumstances for the extraordinary character of the tree. “This I know,” said the prelate, “that God first appeared to Moses in a bramble bush; and that Aaron’s rod, being dried and withered, did budde; and these were God’s actions, and His first actions; and, truly, Glastonbury was a place noted for holiness, and the first religious foundation in England, and, in effect, was the first dissolved; and therein, was such a barbarous inhumanity as Egypt never heard the like. It may well be that this White Thorne did then spring up, and began to blossome on Christmas day, to give a testimony to religion, and that it doth flourish in persecution,” and so forth. Infinite meanings and significances could be extracted from the legend, that fantastic casket of man’s art and devising which is made to enshrine the small pure pearl of truth. If this were the place for sermons it might be pointed out that the vitality of the Thorn is an emblem of the vitality of the religion it commemorates; but our duty is to trace its connection with history. The legend has been somewhat altered in form in order to bring it into direct association with the building of the Abbey. This new version of the miracle is that Joseph of Arimathæa was commanded to build a church in honour of the Virgin Mary, but finding that the natives were distrustful of him and his mission he prayed, like Gideon, for a miracle. Forthwith his staff began to shoot forth leaves and blossoms, and the unwithered Thorn took root. Be that as it may, the first Christians built a chapel of twisted alder, in the form of a parallelogram, 60 feet long and 26 feet broad (to come to details), and having “a window at the west end and one at the east; on each side were three windows, and near the western angle was a door each side.” A representation of the first building for Christian worship erected in this country is found on an old document now in the British Museum, and it is said to have been copied from a plate of brass which had been affixed to an adjoining pillar. The chapel is variously referred to in ancient records as “Lignea Basilica,” “Vetusta Ecclesia,” and the “Ealdechirche,” and with its walls of wattles and its roof of rushes it must long have been an object of revered contemplation. Joseph built and preached in “the little lonely church,” “built with wattles from the marsh,” journeying from thence across the plain to the Mendips, where he found other half barbarous Britons to listen to the story of the Redemption. He laid the foundations of a bishopric at Wells, which was afterwards to be the rival of Glastonbury Abbey itself, and to the end of a long and fruitful life continued his ministry to the people.

Chalice Hill revives by its name and associations another reminiscence of our Lord even more amazing. St. Joseph was the bringer to this country of two precious relics—one—

“The Cup itself from which our LordDrank at the last sad supper with His own,”

the other, some of the blood which oozed from the crucified Saviour’s body. The chalice, or sacred cup, was buried by Joseph at the spot where a perpetual spring of water bubbles—the “Blood Spring,” which supplies the Holy Well, scene of many miraculous cures in times past. That the waters are medicinal admits of no doubt; that it issues from the Cup is a matter of faith, especially as the Holy Grail is claimed to be now in safe keeping by more than one far-distant Abbey.32 As for the second relic, it is said that St. Joseph confided the memorial to his nephew Isaac, who sealed up the blood in two vials and secreted them from the invading Roman pagans. When danger menaced him, he hid the phials in an ancient fig-tree, which he then cast into the sea. Carried by the waves to Gaul, the fig-tree was cast up at the spot which now forms Fécamp harbour; and there a few centuries later it was found with the two phials secure. Fearless Duke Richard of Normandy was so impressed by the discovery that he built an Abbey in which fitly to enshrine the Precious Blood, and Fécamp Abbey bears witness alike to his faith and his devotion. It was upon the story of the Grail that chroniclers seized with avidity after Borron had once shown its capabilities—a story now believed by many to be almost wholly of Celtic origin, the Sancgreal being none other than Fionn’s healing cup. Mr. Nutt, to whose exhaustive work on the subject reference has previously been made, has told us of every form, rudimentary and developed, in which the Grail legend has appeared, and of every explanation advanced as to its meaning. Whether the legend is based upon Christian canonical or uncanonical writings, or whether it is an ancient saga into which a Christian element was imported, whether it was extant in any definite form before the time of Robert de Borron, or whether it was a fabrication of the era to which many monkish fables have been traced, are points which to discuss in detail would require, and have had, volumes devoted to them. Within fifty years (1180-1225) there were eight versions of the story in which the idea of the Grail was elaborated, and we know how the idea has been developed and enriched and idealised until our own time. “The vanished Vase of Heaven that held like Christ’s own Heart an Hin of Blood,” has been a marvellously fecund seed of inspiration to romancist and poet. Percival and Galahad are the highest human conceptions of purity, and their quest is the most exalting and ennobling upon which heroes can set forth. Yet, as we have already seen, the conclusion cannot be resisted that the story had its root in paganism, and that the history of the Grail is nothing but the history of the gradual transformation of old Celtic folk-tales into a poem charged with Christian symbolism and mysticism. “This transformation, at first the inevitable outcome of its pre-Christian development, was hastened later by the perception that it was a fitting vehicle for certain moral and spiritual ideas.” Avalon, lying not far from the western sea beyond which tradition said were the happy isles of the blessed dead, was the Cymric equivalent for the Celtic paradise, and thus did Glastonbury become associated with the glorious legends which have made it in the eyes of the romancists the most sacred and wondrous city of earth. So may Glastonbury truly be said to gather round it “all the noblest memories alike of the older and the newer dwellers in the land.” Nor is it surprising that in a place of so much reputation modern marvels should be reported to occur or wonderful discoveries be made. An elixir was found in the ruins of the Abbey in 1586, one grain of which, being dropped upon an ounce and a quarter of mercury, was found to transmute the mercury into an ounce of pure gold. Another grain of it, dropped upon a piece of metal cut out of a warming-pan, turned the metal into silver, and this with the warming-pan was sent to Queen Elizabeth that she might “fit the piece with the place where it was cut out.”

Such facts are worthy of being related at some length not only on account of any curious interest they possess in themselves, but because they enable us to understand a number of allusions in the Arthurian story, and help to account for the selection of Glastonbury as the scene of the most solemn episodes in the career of the British king and his knights. The poet Spenser, in recording that Sir Lucius was the first to receive “the sacred pledge of Christ’s evangely,” hastens to recall the Glastonbury legend, and to explain that—

“Long before that dayHither came Joseph of Arithmathy,Who brought with him the Holy Grayle, they say,And preacht the truth.”

All the chief points in the old beliefs and the myths and traditions are caught up in Malory’s history. The account of Joseph and his coming to England may be read in the Book of Sir Galahad, for the story was told by the stainless knight who bore the marvellous shield—

“Sir,” said Sir Galahad, “by this shield beene full many mervailes.” “Sir,” said the knight, “it befell after the passion of our Lord Jesu Christ thirtie yeare, that Joseph of Aramathy, the gentle knight, that tooke downe our Lord from the crosse, and at that time hee departed from Jerusalem with a great part of the kindred with him, and so they laboured till they came to a citie that hight Sarras. And at that same houre that Joseph came unto Sarras there was a king that hight Evelake, that had great warre against the Sarasins, and in especial against one Sarasin, the which was King Evelake’s cosin, a rich king and a mighty, the which marched nigh this land, and his name was called Tollome le Feintes. So, upon a day these two met to doe battaile. Then Joseph, the son of Joseph of Aramathy, went unto King Evelake, and told him that he would be discomfited and slaine but if he left his beleeve of the ould law and beleeve upon the new law. And then he shewed him the right beleeve of the Holy Trinity, the which he agreed with al his hart, and ther this shield was made for King Evelake, in the name of him that died upon the crosse; and then through his good beleeve hee had the better of King Tollome. For when King Evelake was in the battaile, there was a cloath set afore the shield, and when hee was in the greatest perill hee let put away the cloath, and then anon his enemies saw a figure of a man upon the crosse, where through they were discomforted. And so it befell that a man of King Evelake’s had his hand smitten off, and beare his hand in his other hand, and Joseph called that man unto him, and bad him goe with good devotion and touch the crosse; and as soon as that man had touched the crosse with his hand, it was as whole as ever it was before. Then soone after there fell a great mervaile, that the crosse of the shield at one time vanished away that no man wist where it became. And there was King Evelake baptised, and for the most part all the people of that cittie. So soone after Joseph would depart, and King Evelake would go with him whether he would go or not; and so by fortune they came into this land, which at that time was called Great Brittaine, and there they found a great felon panim that put Joseph in prison. And so by fortune tidings came unto a worthy man that hight Mondrames, and hee assembled all his people, for the great renown that he had hard of Joseph; and so he came into the land of Great Brittaine, and disherited the felon panim and consumed him, and therewith delivered Joseph out of prison. And after that, all the people were turned to the Christian faith.”

According to Malory it was “Not long after that,” that Joseph was “laid in his death bed,” his last act being to make “a crosse of his owne blood” upon the shield before giving it to King Evelake. “Now may yee see a remembrance that I love you,” he said, “for yee shall never see this shield but that yee shall thinke on mee, and it shall be alwayes as fresh as it is now. And never shall no man beare this shielde about his necke but hee shall repent it, unto the time that Sir Galahad the good knight beare it.” It is the general opinion that Joseph of Arimathæa was buried in the ground surrounding the church of his foundation, for a burial ground to contain a thousand graves had been prepared in his time. William of Malmesbury wrote that there were preserved in that consecrated place “the remains of many saints, nor is there any space in the building that is free of their ashes. So much so that the stone pavement, and indeed the sides of the altar itself, above and below, is crammed with the multitude of the relics. Rightly, therefore, it is called the heavenly sanctuary on earth, of so large a number of saints it is the repository.” There is no clear record of who immediately succeeded Joseph, but his ministry was carried on by St. Patrick, who was a native of Glastonbury,33 by St. David, by Gildas, and by Dunstan. It was St. Patrick who, returning from his labours in Ireland in 461, found that the church built with wattles from the marsh was in a state of decay, and erected a substantial edifice on Tor Hill, dedicated to St. Mary and St. Michael. He was Glastonbury’s first abbot, though this fact is traditionary rather than historical, and his grave was near the altar of the original church. An oratory had previously existed on the site, having been founded a century after Joseph’s arrival by two saints, Phaganus and Duruvianus. The Abbey itself now began to take definite shape, the eyes of all Christians being drawn to Glastonbury by reason of its sacred record. In the sixth century, in King Arthur’s time, it was approaching its fulness of power and nearing that zenith of fame and splendour which did not decline for nearly a thousand years.

According to Professor Freeman, Glastonbury became, in the year 601, the great sanctuary of the British in the place of Ambresbury, which had but lately fallen. How it grew, how it was ruled by great leaders in the church, how it became the largest, the most beautiful, the most wealthy of all abbeys, how its fall was compassed, and how the last of its abbots, an aged man, was dragged to the hill-top and hanged, are historic facts which belong to a date far later than that with which we are concerned. We cannot even dwell upon St. Patrick’s sojourn at Glastonbury, or upon Dunstan’s retirement to its cloisters in order to devote himself to study and music. Here it was that he wrestled with the Evil One in person while labouring at his forge; here it was that heavenly visions were vouchsafed to him; here it was that he began his work of reformation in the Church and made the Abbey the centre of religious influence in the kingdom. After the lapse of centuries we gaze only upon the ruins of the fabric, and from them learn how majestic the temple in its prime must have been, comprehending a little of the truth half revealed and half concealed in the silent storied places with their shattered walls, their crumbling archways, their unroofed chambers, their windows darkened with trailing weeds, and their floors overgrown with lank grasses and moss.

King Arthur’s connection with Glastonbury cannot be deemed wholly mythical, though the mysteriously beautiful narrative which tells of his last days in Avalon seems too poetical for reality. There are, however, other links, not so generally recognised, connecting him with this consecrated place. Glastonbury was not only his “isle of rest;” nor was the Abbey known only to him as a shrine. He claimed, or it was claimed for him, that he was descended on his mother’s side from Joseph of Arimathæa, the genealogy being thus given:—“Helianis, the nephew of Joseph, begat Joshua; Joshua begat Aminadab; Aminadab begat Castellos; Castellos begat Mavael; Mavael begat Lambord, who begat Igerna of whom Uther Pendragon begat the famous and noble Arthur.” Glastonbury, in addition to its celebrity as a Christian sanctuary, would therefore have a claim upon King Arthur’s attention for the sake of his venerated ancestor, though there seems little reason to doubt that in his day it was the cynosure of the eyes of all who claimed to be within the religious fold. Lady Charlotte Guest, in one of the valuable notes to her translation of the Mabinogion, calls attention to a record of William of Malmesbury, which proves how much Glastonbury was in King Arthur’s mind on all occasions. “It is written in the Acts of the illustrious King Arthur,” we read, “that at a certain festival of the Nativity, at Caerleon, that monarch having conferred military distinction upon a valiant youth of the name of Ider, the son of King Nuth, in order to prove him, conducted him to the hill of Brentenol, for the purpose of fighting three most atrocious giants. And Ider, going before the rest of the company, attacked the giants valorously, and slew them. And when Arthur came up he found him apparently dead, having fainted with the immense toil he had undergone, whereupon he reproached himself with having been the cause of his death, through his tardiness in coming to his aid; and arriving at Glastonbury, he appointed there four-and-twenty monks to say mass for his soul, and endowed them most amply with lands, and with gold and silver, chalices, and other ecclesiastical ornaments.” From this we might well infer that King Arthur was in the habit of paying periodical visits to the island-valley. “The great Lady Lyle of Avelyon,” girt with a sword which only Balin could draw from its scabbard, with results afterwards disastrous to himself, is a link in the associations of Arthur and his court with the island-valley.