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The tradition that the
Arthur of legend was buried at Glastonbury is a well-established
one. But certain problems regarding the account of the
exhumation of the great king's bones in 1190 A.D. have
called into question the veracity of the tradition. It
now seems unlikely that Glastonbury, while still an
ancient sacred site, is the real Isle of Avalon, and that
we had best look elsewhere in Britain for this Celtic
Otherworld localization. Some odd details
surround the "discovery" of King Arthur's grave
at Glastonbury. These details have been discussed at
length before by scholars, but the conclusions drawn from
them have varied. First, a 6th century Arthur (the usual
date ascribed to his floruit) would have had his grave
marked by a stone bearing Roman capitals. The formula of
the inscription (see Leslie Alcock's ARTHUR'S BRITAIN)
would have been something like HIC SEPVLTVS IACIT ARTVRIVS Instead, the monks at
Glastonbury claimed to have found a lead cross buried
beneath the coffin cover. Drawings of this cross reveal
the form and content of the inscription (HIC IACET
SEPVLTVS INCLITUS REX ARTVRIVS IN INSULA AVALONIA/"Here
lies buried the famous king Arthur in the isle of Avalon")
to be of the tenth century, not the sixth century. This
would seem puzzling, were it not for the fact that 12th
century monks could easily forge an inscription in such a
way as to make it seem to be from an earlier period. We
know that they did this with manuscripts. An alternate theory has
been proposed (again see Alcock): that the grave was
originally discovered in 945 A.D., when St. Dunstan, the
Abbot of Glastonbury, erected a masonry wall around the
cemetary and had the area raised. At this time the
original stone marker would have been removed, and the
lead cross fashioned and placed inside the coffin. The
whole was then covered over and forgotten, only to be
rediscovered in 1190. The objection to this
theory is that so remarkable a discovery in the 10th
century would certainly have been recorded. Furthermore,
the grave of a worthy such as Arthur would have been
marked in such a way as to be readily noticeable to
future generations, i.e. it would not have been left
unmarked with a mere lead cross placed within the coffin.
Furthermore, I been unable to find other recorded
instances in which such a cross or similar inscribed
memorial object has been found inside an ancient coffin. All in all, the theory
that Arthur was reburied, but his grave left unmarked, is
not acceptable. This being the case, we must reluctantly
admit that in all likelihood the Glastonbury burial of
King Arthur is a forgery. The possible financial and
political reasons for committing such a forgery have been
mentioned elsewhere. We should also make
mention of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Malvasius of Iceland.
This Malvasius is the Melwas placed at Glastonbury in
Caradoc of Llancarfan's LIFE OF GILDAS. It is strange
that no one has asked why Geoffrey would have put Melwas
in Iceland if he knew Glastonbury was Avalon. Morgan
herself could be thought of as one of the male Morgans
found in the pedigree of Glast, the eponymous founder of
Glastonbury. But, if so, why is she placed at Avalon,
while Melwas is placed in Iceland? Iceland is Geoffrey's
misreading of the Glas- of Glastonbury as being derived
from L. glacies, "ice". Had he known
Morgan was associated with Glastonbury, he would have put
her in Iceland as well. Thus, Geoffrey's Avalon is not
Glastonbury. It has been remarked before that Geoffrey
nowhere in his works identifies Avalon with Glastonbury. On Hadrian's Wall, which
forms the dividing line between England and Lowland
Scotland, there are two Roman forts of particular
interest to students of Arthurian legend. One, at
Castlesteads, was called Camboglanna. This Old
Celtic name lies at the root of the modern Welsh
placename Camlann, the site of Arthur's death in 537 A.D.
according to the Welsh Annals. If Camboglanna is where
Arthur died, then it is certainly not a coincidence that
the only place in Britain known anciently as Avalon is
located further west along the Wall at Burgh-by-Sands. The Aballava fort, now
on the edge of marshland near the Solway Firth, was
referred to in the early RAVENNA COSMOGRAPHY as Avalana.
This placename means, literally, the "place of
apples". Camboglanna is on the Irthing, a tributary
of the Eden River. The Eden empties into the Solway Firth
very near Aballava/Avalana. A dedication to the goddess
Latis was found at Aballava, offered by a certain Lucius
Ursius (Ursius is from L. ursus, "bear"; cf. W.
arth, "bear", often cited as the first
component of Arthur's name). She is the goddess of open
bodies of fresh water, a literal "Lady of the Lake". An Arthur who fell at
Camboglanna could have been brought down the river system
in this region or carted along the Roman road to this
"Avalon". The Avalon of Geoffrey of
Monmouth (see below) is a relocation of the Aballava fort
near Camboglanna. The inscriptions found
at Avallana may be significant in this regard, as two,
perhaps three Urs- or "bear" names are present
(Urseius, Matusius, from Celtic *matu-, "bear",
and possibly Ursinianus). The Welsh associated
Arthur’s name with their own word arth,
"bear". In one remarkable inscription a man by
the name of Lucius Urseius or Lucius "the Bear"
makes a dedication to Dea Latis, the "Goddess of the
Lake". This sounds suspiciously like the Lady of the
Lake of Arthurian romance, who is in some versions of the
story a denizen of Avalon. King Arthur’s sword was
supposed to have been forged in Avalon and was returned
to the Lady of the Lake upon his death. I would add that it may
be possible to identify the Niviane/Viviane given as the
name of the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian romances.
In Welsh tradition,
Nyfain (variants Nyuein, Nyven, Nevyn) daughter of
Brychan is the name given to the mother of Urien.
As is well known, the Welsh kingdom of Brycheiniog was of
Irish foundation. Nyfain cannot, as some
might thing, be an eponym for the ancient Novantae
tribe, whose territory (roughly Dumfries and
Galloway) was ruled over by Urien. The
identification is etymologically impossible. But
the name could very early easily represent the Irish
goddess Nemhain. Nemhain was one of the premiere
battle-goddesses of Ireland, and was often paired with
Macha, Morrigan and Badb. According to a
tract called "Mothers of Irish Saints", Brychan
had a wife Dina. This wife's name adequetely
explains the intrusion of the goddess Diana and Dyonas
into the story of Niviane (see the Vulgate "Merlin"
28). Urien himself was
married to Modron, i.e. Matrona, the Mother Goddess,
daughter of Aballach, a personification of the Irish
Ablach, from Emhain Ablach, the apple tree otherworld.
In this case, Aballach is to be visualized as the king
of Avalon, i.e. of the Aballava fort at the
west end of Hadrian's Wall, just across the Solway from
the homeland of Urien. Emhain Ablach, chiefly
because it was associated in Irish tradition with the god
Mannanan mac Lir, was wrongly identified with the Isle of
Man. Another theory holds that this Otherworld is,
in reality, the island of Arran. However, the only
important “apple-place” which actually bears an
apple name is Aballava/Avallana, which is geographically
situated roughly between the Isle of Man and Arran.
Emhain means “twins” (from proto-Celtic *jemno-,
“twin”), as the folk etymology story attached
to the Irish royal site Emhain Macha makes clear. In
the case of Emhain Macha, the “twins” reference
is almost certainly to the two mounds atop the hill-fort,
designated by archaeologists as Sites A and B. Both
sites were once surmounted by large, timber-built
structures, constructed in several phases (see Barry
Raftery’s Pagan Celtic Ireland, pp. 74-79).
If I am right and these two mounds are the
“twins” of Macha, then it is probably not a
coincidence that there were two Roman forts at Aballava.
Burgh By Sand I was at Hill Farm, on the Roman road which
runs along a ridge to the Kirkbride fort. Burgh By
Sand II was on the hill to the south of Burgh village,
but was replaced by the later Wall fort. These two
forts at Aballava may well be the “twins” of
Emhain Ablach. I would mention the
Locus Maponi (which in Rivet and Smith's _The Place-Names
of Roman Britain_ is rendered the Loch or LAKE
of Mabon), identifiable with Lochmaben in Dumfries.
As is well known, Mabon was the son of Modron. This
is the same Modron who is presented as the wife of
Urien, son of Nyfain/Nemhain. While it is tempting to
give Modron the 'Divine Mother' the name Nemhain, we are
not justified in making this assumption. And,
indeed, given the proximity of Lochmaben to the Annan
River, and the presence of a St. Ann's on a tributary of
the Annan which has its confluence with the latter river
at Lochmaben, it makes more sense to associate Modron/Matrona
"the Divine Mother" with a British version of
the Irish goddess Anu. According to Rivet and Smith,
Annan is "the genitive of anau, cognate with Welsh
anaw 'riches' and Gaelic anu... Anu was an Irish
goddess of prosperity." It is interesting
that Anu's Christian counterpart, St. Ann, present near
the Annan and Lochmaben, also replaced the goddess
Arnemetia at Buxton, the site of Arthur's Mount Badon
battle. I would add that the only name we have for the
mother of Medrawt is "Anna", supposedly the
sister of Arthur. This Anna's
husband is said to be Llew (Geoffrey of Monmouth's Loth
of Lodonesia), i.e. the god Lleu. In Welsh
tradition, the youthful god Lleu and Mabon the divine son
were both placed in death at the same place (Nantle in
Gwynedd). Nikolai Tolstoy (in his _The Quest for
Merlin_) thought this implied an identification of the
two gods. Of course, we have the god Lleu's name at
Carlisle/Luguvalium, the fort and town of
someone called Luguvalos, "Lugus-strong".
There is no reason, therefore, to look for Llew in
Lothian, nor at Loudoun in Strathclyde (which
according to Watson is from a Lugudunum, "Lugus's
fort"), nor at Dinlleu ("Fort of Lleu") in
Gwynedd. Probably it is not necessary to search
for the unlocated Lugudunum somewhere near Wearmouth and
Chester-le-Street (see Rivet and Smith's _The Place-Names
of Roman Britain_). Medrawt may have
originated from the Annandale of Anu/Anna and
Lleu in the person of Mabon. Nyfain would then be
Niviane, Lady of the Lake, i.e. she of the Lake of Mabon,
the youthful Sun God. However, clearly the marshes
around Aballava were also sacred to Nyfain and it is
to this lake goddess that the dedication was made at the
Burgh-By-Sands fort. One further piece of evidence
should be presented in support of the notion that Nyfain
is the Arthurian Niviane. In the
Vulgate _Merlin_, the forest name of the Lady of the Lake
is first given as the Forest of Briosque and only later
as Broceliande, the name used by Chretien de Troyes.
While Broceliande has been sought in various places (including
Brittany), I would derive the Old French 'Briosque' from
the -fries component of Dumfries, the town situated just
WSW of Lochmaben in Dumfriesshire. While once
thought to be the "Fort of the Frisians",
authorities beginning with Chalmers (see Watson)
correctly identified -fries with Gaelic preas, Angl. pres(s),
gen. phris, Angl. -fries, gen. pl. preas, (b)p(h)reasach,
"bush, copse, thicket". To quote from _History
of the Burgh of Dumfries_, Chapter 1: "In
the earliest charter to the town, still extant –
that of Robert III., dated 28th
April, 1395 – the appellation given is “Burgi
de Dumfreiss,” a form of spelling which, with one
“s” omitted, continued in vogue till about 1780.
During the reign of Alexander III. and the long
interregnum which followed, the form nearly resembled
that of the present day – the prefix being generally
Dun or Dum, rather than Drum: thus, in a contemporary
representation made to the English Government respecting
the slaughter of John Comyn in 1305, the locality is
described as “en l’eglise de Freres meneours de
la ville de Dunfres;” [Sir Francis Palgrave’s
Documents and Records Illustrative of the History of
Scotland, p. 335.] and, thirty years afterwards, we read
of the appointment of an official as “Vice Comitatus
de Dumfres.” [Rotuli Scotić, vol. i., p.
271.] Such uncouth spellings
of the name of Dunfreisch, Droonfreisch, and
Drumfriesche, occasionally occur in old
documents; but the variations are never so great as to
leave any doubt as to the town that is meant; and nearly
all more or less embody the idea of a “castle in the
shrubbery,” [The only exception we have net with
occurs in a Papal Bull issued against Bruce in 1320 for
the homicide of Comyn, which is stated to have been
perpetrated in the Minorite Church of “Dynifes.”]
according to the etymology of Chalmers, which we accept
as preferable to any other that has been suggested. [Chalmers’s
words are: “This celebrated prefix Dunmust
necessarily have been appropriated to some fortlet, or
strength, according to the secondary signification of
that ancient work. The phrysof the British
speech, and the kindred phreas of the Scoto,
signify shrubs: and the Dun-fres must consequently
mean the castle among the shrubberies, or copsewood.”
– Caledonia, vol. iii., p. 45."
It makes a
great deal of sense to envisage Merlin and Viviane in the
Dumfries region, as this was the home stomping grounds of
Myrddin, the prototype for Geoffrey of Monmouth's Merlin.
In all likelihood, Broceliande is simply Briosque + land.
On cannot help wonder if we should associate the
Lochmaben Stone of Nyfain's lake with the Arthurian
sword-in-the-stone motif. The following is the
CANMORE report on the Lochmabenstane from the Royal
Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of
Scotland: Lochmaben
or Clochmaben Stone is an erratic, 7' high and 18' in
girth, which Feachem says may have been incorporated into
a megalithic monument, though there is no clear evidence
of this. It was published on the OS 1st edition 6"
as Druidical Circle (Remains of), which the Ordnance Name
Book [ONB] states formerly consisted of nine upright
stones placed in an oval, two of which remain, one being
locally called Lochmaben Stone. The actual Roman period
cemetary at Burgh-By-Sands/Aballava is said by Theo
Bergstrom in Hadrian’s Wall: Handbook to the
Roman Wall with the Cumbrian Coast and Outpost Forts
(New York, 1984) to have been to the south of the fort.
“… fragments of a tombstone of one Julius Pi[ ]linus…
a Dacian tribesman…” was found there. When I enquired about
this tombstone of Tim Padley at the Tullie House Museum
in Carlisle, he mentioned two other fragments. All
three are listed in the Roman Inscriptions of Britain
as follows: 2046 (tombstone) ... IVL PII... TINVS CIVES
DACVS 2047 (tombstone) D M S ... 2048 (tombstone) VII Alas,
according to Mr. Padley, a location of the cemetary to
the “south of the fort”, puts it, in his words,
“near the vallum, possibly destroyed by the canal
and railway.” The tombstone fragments
were in the care of Tullie House when they disappeared.
While it is impossible
to know whether Arthur was buried in the Roman period
cemetary of the Aballava fort, this cemetary must remain
a primary candidate for the location of his grave. In the ancient Irish
story of Art son of Conn, King Conn and then his son Art
voyage to an island called variously the Land of Promise
(Tir Tairngiri) and the Land of Wonders (Tir
na nIngnad). This island is distinguished by its
"fair fragrant apple-trees", its "wild
apples". The king of the Land of Wonders, who Art
slays, is named Morgan. The Land of Promise name,
in the story of Eithne daughter of Curcog, is given as a
synonym for Emhain or Emne Ablach, Ablach being the Old
Irish word for apple trees. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in
calling Insula Pomorum/Insula Avallonis/Isle of Avalon
the "Fortunate" Isle, would seem to have been
evoking an Otherworld identical to that which King Morgan
ruled. Might not the name Art have been
associated with Arthur's name? The only problem with
this theory is that we have to account for Geoffrey
naming Morgan's kingdom Avallonis, when in the story it
is called Tir na nIngnad, the "Land of
Wonders". To find Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s Avalon, a relocation of the Aballava fort
in Cumbria, it is necessary first to realize that this
placename is Cornish and means, simply, "Apple-tree".
The Old Cornish form of the word is auallen. Old
Welsh is aballen and Breton aualen. The
forms auallen and aballenn are recorded
from the 12th century (information courtesy Andrew Hawke,
Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru). If we
follow the Cornish coast north from the Camel where
Arthur supposedly was mortally wounded, we arrive at
Appledore, situated on a neck of land or headland jutting
out into the confluence of the Taw and Torridge Rivers.
According to Eilart Ekwall, this town was le Apildore
in 1335 AD. The name is Old English and means... "Apple-tree".
The Appledore in Kent has an identical origin,
but much earlier recorded forms: Apuldre 893 (Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle), Apeldres (Domesday Book). Obviously, the Cornish
name "Avalon" (Geoffrey’s Avallonis almost
certainly derives from Cornish auallen, “apple-tree”;
cf. Breton avallen, Welsh afallen, Celtic *aballon-/apple-orchard)
was a suitable substitution for the English name
Appledore. The "Insula" or island of Avalon/Appledore
is being used in the same sense as isle is used in Isle
of Purbeck, Isle of Portland, or Isle of Thanet. In other
words, Geoffrey’s Isle of Avalon is the neck of land
or headland of Appledore. It was to Appledore that
Geoffrey has the wounded King Arthur brought. The nine
sisters placed on Avalon by Geoffrey of Monmouth would
appear to be Irish goddesses. I have identified these
"sisters" as follows:
One wonders whether Morgan, whose name means "Sea-born", was initially placed at Appledore because of the presence of St. Margaret at the early parish church at Bideford. Margaret is the Latin Marina, Greek Pelagia, "of the sea". While this medieval saint's dedication cannot be traced back as far as Geoffrey's time in our extant records, were she present during this period, Morgan/Morrigan may well have replaced her. In closing, I would mention the Gallicenae of the island of Sena, mentioned thusly by Pomponius Mela: "Sena in the British sea, opposite the Osismician coast, is remarkable for an oracle of the Gallic God. Its priestesses, holy in perpetual virginity, are said to be nine in number. They are called Gallicenae, and are thought to be endowed with singular powers, so as to raise by their charms the winds and seas, to turn themselves into what animals they will, to cure wounds and diseases incurable by others, to know and predict the future; but this they do only to navigators who go thither purposely to consult them." Various origins for the term Gallicenae have been sought, but I think none of them very satisfactory. This is, rather transparently, a form of the Gaelic cailleachan, who were hags or witches possessing the power to conjure up storms, etc. If I am right with this interpretation, then the name for the priestesses of Sena or the Ill de Sein at the western extremity of Brittany must have come from an Irish source. Avalon is Copyright © 2005, August Hunt. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Comments to: August Hunt |
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