Gwyn Read online

  There are plenty of stories of the accidental ‘meeting of worlds’. One of my favourite stories of these accidental encounters is that of the hill ‘Bryn yr Ellyllon’ (the ‘Hill of Fairies’) located in Clwyd, North Wales. For a long time the Hill was believed to be haunted and many had seen a ghostly figure in the vicinity. One evening at dusk an old woman was walking home and encountered a most unusual figure, ‘clothed in a coat of gold which shone like the sun’. The magical being crossed the road in front of her and disappeared into ‘Bryn yr Ellyllon’. The old lady was so shocked by the experience that she hurried to the home of the local vicar and told him what she had seen. In 1833 A. D. the hill (an ancient barrow) was cleared away by workmen, who found a skeleton of a very tall man laid out, wrapped in a cloak of embossed gold! The workmen broke up the golden cloak for themselves, fortunately some of the pieces were recovered and reconstructed by the British Museum, where they can still be seen today. The golden cape was dated to the early Bronze Age, about 1400 B.C.

  Another famous story is of the ‘Green Children of Woolpit’, a story recorded in the 12th century by Ralph of Coggeshall. A boy and girl with green skin appeared one day in the Suffolk village of Woolpit. Other than being green they looked like normal human children. Neither of them could speak any English. Initially they refused to eat anything but after a day or two they would eat, but then only beans. After many months they learnt to speak English, and were able to explain where they had come from. They said they had come from ‘St Martins Land’, a place where the sun never truly sets - possibly the realm of the Dusk. One day they had been tending their father’s herd, and had heard bells ringing in the distance. They set off in search of the bells and found themselves in Woolpit, unable to find their way home! As time passed, their skin became the colour of normal human beings but the boy, who had always appeared sickly, died. The girl grew up to become a woman and married a man of Kings Lynn. What kin became of this union is untold.

  That the children came from ‘St Martins Land’ is very curious. Martinmas is held on the 11th November, a date that is connected with the Samhain festivities of the Celtic New Year and with the ‘Cwm Annwn’ (the Hounds of the Otherworld and the Wild Hunt), which is considered below in chapter 5.

  There is an obscure Welsh poem ascribed to the 6th century bard Taliesin known as ‘The Spoiling of Annwn’. It describes a treasure hunting raid into the Otherworld by King Arthur and his men. They are seeking a magical cauldron of ‘Inspiration and Plenty’. (This is an obvious forerunner of the Holy Grail stories, which start some seven centuries later.) One of Arthur’s men is captured and held prisoner in the realm of Caer Sidi. Taliesin speaks of the faerie castle in another of his poems, where he tells of his ‘chair’ or ‘place’ in Caer Sidi, as being ‘perfected’. Taliesin’s poetry is always difficult to understand, but he tells us that in Caer Sidi, plague and age reach no one. That it is a place of great music and that there is a mystical well, which gives ‘drink sweeter than white wine’.

  In ‘The Spoiling of Annwn’ , Taliesin also speaks of Caer Wydyr, ‘the Glass Castle’ and this is thought to be a realm of the dead. Even so it is a place of happiness, whose inmates feast and enjoy themselves in musical entertainments. Of course, the similarity between ‘Caer Wydyr’ and ‘Ynys Witrin’ cannot be overlooked: that Glastonbury was originally the ‘Isle of Glass’ has to be connected with the ‘Glass Castle’. It is a happy realm of the dead where everything is circular and nothing perishes; the British Paradise. Is it any wonder that ‘Paradise Lane’ still runs around the back of Glastonbury Tor, and Gwyn’s name can be turned into ‘Gwynfa’ which is Welsh for Paradise.

  The ancient Britons always held islands to be sacred and holy. They were also seen as realms for the dead and sacred ground. This tradition was continued by the Druids and by the Celtic Church. There are many ‘Holy Islands’ including the Isle of Lundy in the Bristol Channel, Bardsey Isle to the extreme north west of Wales, Iona, the resting place of many Scottish Kings and most famously, Lindisfarne. Glastonbury too, is one of these Sacred Isles of the Dead.

  Now Glastonbury Tor dominates the Somerset Levels. From the Mendips it looks like a huge pyramid of Egypt, often rising up out of the vapours of the surrounding marshes - the famous ‘Mists of Avalon’. From all around, it overlords the surrounding countryside. It is no longer an island as centuries of man-made irrigation have created the flat vibrant green Levels that are s called ‘Sea Moors’. In ancient times Glastonbury was a misty island, surrounded by marsh and the tidal estuary of the River Brue. Almost! It was joined to the mainland, by a small neck of land to the east where a great earthwork barrier now called ‘Ponters Ball’ was created, forming a wall or boundary, enclosing the Sacred Ground of Ynys Witrin. (Please see map of Ynys Witrin at the beginning of this book). The date of Ponters Ball is undecided, it could be Iron Age, but it could equally be Dark Age.

  So, Ynys Witrin was most probably an Isle of the Dead, the ‘Glass Isle’ (the see-through, and invisible realm) a most sacred enclosure that was crowned by the natural pyramid of Glastonbury Tor, the realm of Gwyn ap Nudd, Lord of Paradise.

  The Iron Age ‘Lake Villages’ of Glastonbury were places of industry, located off the island. It would have been much easier to work on the island than struggle against rising tide levels, but the natives chose not to. It was as if they did not wish to contaminate the sacred isle with their industry. Interestingly, there were no burials found in the ‘Lake Villages’ either . . .

  “No cemetery has been located for either Village. Home to many hundreds of people over time, a significant number must have died at Glastonbury and Meare. Either the cemeteries were sited on neighbouring dry land and have not as yet been traced or they practised methods of disposal of the dead which did not involve burial . . . “

  (‘The Lake Villages of Somerset’ by Stephen Minnitt and John Coles)

  So where did they put their dead? It takes but 20 minutes to walk from the location of the Lake Villages to the dry land enclosure of Ynys Witrin! How long would it take by log boat?

  With the exception of King Arthur’s grave, no ancient burials have been found on the Isle of Glastonbury. The lack of ancient burials at Glastonbury could be suggestive that the local natives practised excarnation. This is usually done by raising the dead bodies up upon high platforms and leaving them to nature, for carrion crows, ravens and other birds of prey, in a belief that birds take the spirit to the Otherworld. This method was used on Native American sacred grounds and other cultures throughout the world, as far back as 8000 B.C. and probably before.

  Two graves, which do exist locally, are worthy of note. King Arthur’s grave in Glastonbury has never been actually proven to be Arthur’s, but the find itself is fascinating. The ‘coffin’ was a hollowed out oak, buried a staggering 16 feet deep!

  A further significant curiosity is that of the grave found in the Iron Age hill fort of Cadbury Castle, about 11 miles south of the Tor. The body that was found there was laid out in such a way that it seemed deliberately aligned with Glastonbury Tor.

  It would be wrong to view Glastonbury as an Isle of the Dead in an ugly or morbid way. You would not lay the bodies of your loved ones in a bad place, you would put them into Holy ground, a venerated place, so that they could be close to the entrance of Paradise. This is how Ynys Witrin should be viewed, as the threshold or entrance, to the Otherworld. Excarnation too, may seem barbaric to modern western minds but in many ways it is actually preferable to burial. Rather than being covered in soil and put out of sight. Your loved one was put on a platform so that the sun, moon and stars continued to shine down upon them. The platforms were high enough so that the birds of prey could not be seen, in any unpleasant detail, consuming the dead.

  In his recent book, ‘The Cygnus Mystery’, the author Andrew Collins has shown how, throughout the world, most ancient cultures saw birds as psychopomps (soul carriers) connecting the spirits of humanity to the spirit world. This is why Angels in C
hristian iconography are depicted with wings. In many cultures the soul carrier was a swan or a goose, sometimes an eagle or vulture.

  Local author Kathy Jones has written about the island of Glastonbury forming the shape of a giant Swan, and in the Glastonbury Zodiac this island is seen to represent the mythical Fire Phoenix.

  Although the tribal territories of the native Britons shifted and changed shape with each era, Ynys Witrin appears to be situated upon the western extremity of the tribe known as the ‘Durotriges’, whose land was loosely speaking, Dorset, Somerset and western Wiltshire. They shared the northern Somerset Sea Moors with the ‘Dobunni’ tribe of Gloucestershire and Avon. Possibly the Lake Villages were areas of commerce and trade between these two tribes, beside the sacred island. The extent that these tribal people kept their identity and traditions throughout Roman rule, can only be guessed. By the 5th century, the Dark Ages, they had become ‘Romano Britons’ and may have lost their tribal identities to some extent.

  It would seem most likely that Ynys Witrin during the late Dark Ages was still seen as a sacred enclosure. Possibly, a small Celtic Christian settlement was sited where the Abbey now stands (especially, if there is any truth in the Joseph of Arimathea legend) or it may have still been viewed as the realm of Gwyn ap Nudd. As the early Christian settlement which later became the Abbey was deliberately situated out of sight of the Tor, it is possible that Ynis Witrin had both a Celtic Christian area and an older, pagan area, co-existing side by side; for a while at least.

  Chapter Four

  Gwyn ap Nudd

  “We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore. The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew, Being weary of the world’s empires, bow down to you, Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.”

  (W.B. Yeats)

  As we have seen, ‘Gwyn ap Nudd’ means ‘Gwyn the son of Nudd’. Nudd was the great Milky Way, sky and river god of the Britons.

  The ‘Light deities’ of the Children of Don were represented in the night sky. The goddess Arianrhod whose name means ‘silver wheel’ was represented by the constellation of Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. Nudd, her brother, was the Milky Way itself, ‘the great river’, and Gwyn appears to be the constellation of Orion, the great hunter.

  We also saw that Nudd was known as ‘Lludd Llaw Eraint’, which means ‘Lludd of the Silver Hand’. The name Nudd seems to mean both ‘nourishment’ and ‘moisture’ and he is believed to be a god of healing. But as the main personification of the night sky, his name survives in the term ‘nether-world’, and the ‘land of nod’ - the fairyland realm of sleep and dreams.

  His connection with great rivers is shown by the Romano British temple dedicated to him, besides the River Severn, at Lydney (under his Roman name of ‘Nodens’) and also his position alongside the Thames, at Ludgate. He is also present in the naming of the Vale of Neath, in Wales (‘the last abode of the Faerie’) and of Saint Nectan’s Glen, near Tintagel in Cornwall, where Nectan is the Cornish translation of ‘Nathanus’, which is itself, the Latin rendering of ‘Neath’.

  The earliest written information we have about Gwyn is found in the Black Book of Carmarthen. In it, there is a poem, in which Gwyn is celebrated as a great warrior and as an escort to the grave (a psychopomp). He witnesses the deaths of great heroes and takes them to his realm.

  The poem is in the form of a conversation between a mythical Welsh prince, Gwyddneu Garanhir and Gwyn ap Nudd. They meet in battle and Gwyn assists Gwyddneu, then the Welsh prince asks Gwyn his identity;

  Gwyddneu speak

  ‘A bull of conflict was he, active in dispersing an arrayed army,

  The ruler of hosts, indisposed to anger,

  Blameless and pure his conduct in protecting life’.

  Gwyn speaks

  ‘Against a hero stout was his advance,

  The ruler of hosts, disposer of wrath,

  There will be protection for thee since thou askest it’.

  Gwyddneu speaks

  ‘For thou hast given me protection

  How warmly wert thou welcomed!

  The hero of hosts, from what region thou comest’?

  Gwyn speaks

  ‘I come from battle and conflict

  With a shield in my hand;

  Broken is the helmet by the pushing of spears’.

  Gwyddneu speaks

  ‘I will address thee, exalted man,

  With his shield in distress.

  Brave man, what is thy descent’?

  Gwyn speaks

  ‘Round-hoofed is my horse, from the torment of battle,

  Fairy am I called, Gwyn the son of Nudd,

  The lover of Creurdilad, the daughter of Lludd’.

  Gwyddneu speaks

  ‘Since it is thou, Gwyn, an upright man,

  From thee there is no concealing:

  I am Gwyddneu Garanhir’.

  Gwyn speaks

  ‘Hasten to my ridge, the Tawe abode;

  Not the nearest Tawe name I to thee,

  But the Tawe which is the farthest.

  Polished is my ring, golden my saddle and bright:

  To my sadness

  I saw a conflict before Caer Vandwy.

  Before Caer Vandwy a host I saw,

  Shields were shattered and ribs broken;

  Renowned and splendid was he who made the assault’.

  Gwyddneu speaks

  ‘Gwyn, son of Nudd, the hope of armies,

  Quicker would legions fall before the hoofs

  Of thy horse than broken rushes to the ground’.

  Gwyn speaks

  ‘Handsome my dog, and round-bodied,

  And truly the best of dogs;

  Dormarth was he, which belonged to Maelgwyn’.

  Gwyddneu speaks

  ‘Dormarth, red-nosed, ground-grazing

  On him we percieved the speed

  Of thy wanderings on Gwibir Vynyd’(Cloud Mount).

  Gwyn speaks

  ‘I have been in the place where was killed Gwendoleu,

  The son of Ciedaw, the pillar of songs,

  When the ravens screamed over blood.

  I have been in the place where Bran was killed,

  The son of Iweridd, of far extending fame,

  When the ravens of the battle-field screamed.

  I have been where Llacheu was slain,

  The son of Arthur, extolled in songs,

  When the ravens screamed over blood.

  I have been where Meurig was killed

  The son of Goholeth, the accomplished,

  The resister of Lloegyr, the son of Lleynawg.

  I have been where the warriors of Britain were slain,

  From the east to the north:

  I am the escort of the grave.

  I have been where the warriors of Britain were slain,

  From the east to the south:

  I am the escort of the dead’!

  (from poem ‘XXXIII’ of the Black Book of Caermarten, written around 1250 A.D.)

  So, this is Gwyn’s entrance into our studies. If there were older writings about him then they have been lost, burnt or destroyed.

  This god of warriors is almost unrecognisable when compared to the ‘King of Fairies’ that he became diminished to in Glastonbury’s folklore. Gwyddneu describes Gwyn as;

  “. . . From thee there is no concealing. . .

  . . . Gwyn, son of Nudd, the hope of armies . . .”

  In the poem above, Gwyn describes being at the places where great heroes (and gods) had fallen in battle, and in the last two haunting verses he specifically describes his role as the ‘Escort to the grave’. As seen in chapter 2, he is one of the Light gods, and as such is a champion against darkness and confusion. In a pre-Christian Britain his role is akin to the ‘protective warrior’ characteristics of the archangel Michael. No surprise then, that the church upon Glastonbury Tor was dedicated to St Michael, and that so many Michael churches are placed on top of prominent hills all alo
ng the Michael/ Beltaine Line, from St Michael’s Mount to Glaston-bury Tor.

  “. . . Gwyn was said to specially frequent the summit of hills.”

  (page 255, ‘CelticMyth & Legend’, by Charles Squire.)

  The name Gwyn means ‘white, fair, and blessed’. And as mentioned in the previous chapter, his name can be extended to ‘Gwynfa’, the Welsh word for Paradise. In the poem Gwyn declares that he is;

  ‘The lover of Creurdilad, the daughter of Lludd’.

  Creurdilad the daughter of Lludd is the object of his desire and his sister! (As the example of Isis and Osiris shows this was often the way of love in the ancient pantheons of deities, being both lovers and siblings.) In the story of ‘Kulhwich and Olwen’ in the Mabinogion she is described as ‘The most splendid maiden in the Three Islands of the Mighty.’ and her name means ‘Heart’s Desire’.