Gwyn Page 8

  After the three month long exorcism of Glastonbury Tor, Patrick is told in a dream to leave two of his brethren there ‘in perpetuity’ to look after the place, and he ‘do grant to all who shall fell with axe and hatchet in pious intention the wood in any part of the said mountain, in order that the approach may be easier for Christians . . . ‘

  William of Malmesbury says that Patrick was the first Abbot of Glastonbury. If it is true that he came to Glaston-bury and that there is an ounce of truth to the exorcism on the Tor (by one of either of the ‘Two Patricks’) we can hazard a guess and say that the Celtic Church attempted to claim Ynys Witrin some time during the middle of the 5th century. This ties in with the accepted date of the dawn of the Celtic Church, and with Christian evidence appearing in archaeological digs in the surrounding area. It also allows for an ‘old’ church to be on Ynys Witrin, when taken over by the Anglo-Saxons in the 7th/8th century.

  Saint Patrick’s attempt at banishing the ‘devils’ from the Tor is not the only attempt of an early Christian Saint to do this. According to a 16th century ‘Life of St. Collen’ , who was believed to have lived in the 6th century (that is after St. Patrick) Collen’s story tells how he single handily removed Gwyn ap Nudd from the Tor! This would imply that Patrick, and the two wardens left there ‘in perpetuity’ hadn’t succeeded in removing the old Hunter God at all!

  Critics say that this ‘Life of St. Collen’ is too recent a source to give any credence to, but local historian Geoffrey Ashe says:

  “. . . Among the relics of Welsh hagiography is a ‘Life of St. Collen . . . The ‘Life’ is -written down in a manuscript of the time of Henry VIII . . . When I first drew attention to it as a key document, I was reproved for citing such a late item. But manuscripts can be copied from very much older manuscripts, and I have since been gratified to see scholars pushing this ‘Life’ backwards through the centuries, and citing it as evidence. My point was, and is, that no matter what its date, its accounts of the saint’s adventure is a folklore item of immemorial age and owes nothing to medieval romance - or Abbey legends . . . what is certain is that this tale bypasses all the medieval Glastonbury literature, which gives no hint of it and could never have suggested it. What is virtually certain is that it supplies a glimpse of truly ancient beliefs about the Tor being a hollow hill, a point of contact with a pre-Christian Underworld.”

  (Geoffrey Ashe, ‘Avalonian Quest’.)

  Saint Collen had set up a hermitage on the lower slopes of Glastonbury Tor. One day he overheard two men outside his hermitage chatting about Gwyn ap Nudd. They were talking of him being the King of the Faeries and the Lord of the Otherworld. Saint Collen told the two men not to speak highly of the Faeries or the Otherworld as they were demonic and not Christian. The two men were not apologetic and in fact told Saint Collen that his words were an insult to Gwyn and that he should hold his tongue - or else upset Gwyn ap Nudd!

  Shortly after the two men had left, a fairy visitor arrived at Saint Collen’s hermitage with an invitation for him to come to the top of the Tor and meet with Gwyn ap Nudd. But Saint Collen rejected the fairy’s offer. The next day Gwyn sent another fairy messenger, who also met with scorn and unfriendliness from the grumpy saint; and the next day and the next day after that! Apparently, with the last invitation the fairy messenger threatened Saint Collen that he really should accept Gwyn’s invitation or suffer the consequences!

  So Saint Collen finally decided to go to the top of the Tor to visit Gwyn, and he took with him some holy water. As Saint Collen reached the summit of the Tor he found himself mysteriously within a beautiful castle. In the castle he met with Gwyn ap Nudd who sat upon a golden throne. Saint Collen looked around at the wondrous Fairy Castle. Finely dressed retainers and musicians were busy about their business, and beautiful damsels danced gracefully in the great hall; all were happy and having a great time!

  Gwyn offered Saint Collen some food but the saint did not trust the fairy food and so declined. Then Gwyn said, “Have you ever seen men better dressed than these, in their red and blue liveries?’ Collen replied, “Their dress is good of its kind, but the red is the red of fire and the blue is the blue of cold.’ After passing his judgement upon Gwyn’s kingdom being an infernal hell in the disguise of paradise, Collen scattered holy water all around him! Gwyn and his beautiful castle and all its inhabitants then disappeared and Saint Collen found himself alone on top of the windy Tor. (Saint Collen was the grandson of Coleddog, a man described in the Welsh Triads as one of three most ineloquent men of the court of Arthur.)

  With both the ‘history’ of Saint Patrick and the ‘legend’ of Saint Collen it would appear that the Celtic Church actively attempted to banish paganism from the Tor during the 6th century, lending weight to the argument that the Tor (if not the whole island of Ynys Witrin) was pagan ‘sacred ground’ for the best part of five hundred years after Rome invaded.

  The legend that an Arthur (Leader of Battles) was brought here after his final battle, during the mid 6th century, suggests a ‘transition period’ of the Glass Isle being both sacred British burial ground and an early centre of Celtic Christianity. Frustratingly for the Celtic Church this would be a short-lived glory, as the locals were beginning to leave the area, heading for safer lands far away from the encroaching Saxons. When Ynys Witrin was taken and renamed ‘Glastonbury’ by the Saxons, their king, Ina of Wessex, built the first stone church here, next to the ‘old’ church - around which grew the wide expansion of Glastonbury Abbey.

  It has been suggested that the location of the Abbey (and thus the first stone church of King Ina, and the ‘old church’) was deliberately sited behind Chalice Hill, out of sight of Glastonbury Tor. So, it is thought, that the pagan hill could not be seen by the early monks and by the same token, the people using the Tor, would not have to see the first monks and their activities! As Geoffrey Ashe writes in his ‘Avalonian Quest’:

  “The site of the Old Church and its adjacent cells is one of the few places where the Tor would have been completely invisible, because Chalice Hill is in the way. Was that one reason for the choice - that a barrier stood between the hermits and the eerie abode of Gwyn? Today, from the same spot, you can look towards the Tor’s summit and see the tower of St. Michael’s Church just sticking up. But that too could be significant. Michael, the Archangel, was the conqueror of the infernal powers and therefore a proper person to hold them down.”

  The gateway to Annwn/Avalon, the Celtic Other-world was shut! The Lord of Paradise, his beautiful castle and all its fairy inhabitants, were banished - disappeared -gone. The Tor, just a windy summit overlooking a troubled landscape, where the descendants of the ancient Britons were leaving their homeland, heading for Cornwall, Brittany, or crossing the Sabrina Sea to the Vale of Neath and beyond, into the mountains. New people were settling and claiming the land. With the new people, their ‘non-Celtic’ faith flourished. Eventually, upon the summit of the Tor a Saxon religious settlement was planted, which in time was replaced by the medieval church of St. Michael. Gwyn became just a ghost of the past.

  The old Celtic gods and goddesses were diminished, literally shrunken into little fairy folk. Some held onto their glory a little. The great goddess of Ireland, the Morrighan, survived in the Arthurian romances as Arthur’s half sister Morgan le Fay (which means, ‘Morgan the Fairy’). So too, Gwyn was diminished into being the ‘King of the Tylwyth Teg’ (the Welsh Fairies). It is in this guise that he is remembered by the Welsh, at Craig Y Ddinas, in the Vale of Neath - before the Methodists banished him and his kin forever!

  “Gwynn . . . in post mythical times, was regarded as monarch of the Welsh fairies or Tylwyth Teg, and chief of the Ellyllon, a band of puckish elves, not unlike brownies or goblins. He was usually described as being accompanied by an owl, probably to indicate the nocturnal character of his revels and adventures.”

  (‘A dictionary of non-classical mythology’.)

  Saints Collen and Patrick are not at all unique in their rol
es of being exorcists of older faiths and the deities thereof. Many early saints are the slayers of dragons, giants or demons, entities that probably, represent some older belief system. There is another saint that touches upon Gwyn’s story slightly, or at least upon the ‘Cwm Annwn’, the hunting ‘Hounds of Annwn’; and that is Saint Martin.

  St. Martin of Tours was of the 4th century. He was a pioneer in converting the urban areas of the ‘pagani’ (people of the countryside). He is attributed with the destruction of heathen temples and sacred trees (Druidic groves) with the same righteous passion as Saint Patrick. Because he was buried on the 11th November he is often depicted with a goose because the migration of geese coincide with his feast day. As we have seen, the noises of migrating geese may have been the source of the night noises associated with the nocturnal hunting hounds of Annwn. Their ‘Wild Hunt’ is said to take place on the night of St Martins.

  It would appear that, along with Gwyn’s arrival (i.e. the return of Orion) and the Celtic New Year festival of Samhain - the feast of Saint Martin’s became symbolic of otherworldliness too. A dry irony then, that the ‘Green Children of Woolpit’ (see Chapter 3) should say that they came from ‘St Martins Land’.

  Conclusion

  “In the center of this, ‘the holiest erthe in Englande’, rises the most pagan of hills. For the Tor keeps its spiritual freedom. It has never cried. ‘Thou hast conquered, O Galilean’.”

  (Dion Fortune, ‘Avalon of the Heart’)

  The first medieval church of Saint Michael that was built upon the Tor was destroyed by an earthquake (strange but true) on September 11th, 1275.

  It was rebuilt in the 14th century and survived until the Abbey itself was dissolved, in 1539 A.D. during the turbulent reign of Henry VIII. Where Saint Collen had cast his holy water and Saint Patrick and his brethren had exorcised the ancient spirits of the land, the last Abbot of Glastonbury and two of his monks were gruesomely hung on gallows until they were dead. No grim revenge from an ancient god, just a woeful crime caused by the politics of the time. For what small consolation it may be to the sorrowful minded, these last holy men of the Abbey died upon the ancient British threshold to paradise.

  Since then, the Tor has remained a windy summit, topped by a ruined church tower whose archways both observe the rising sun upon the eastern horizon and gaze westerly towards the sun setting over the Sabrina Sea. The place is vibrant with the ghosts of the past and pregnant with the unknown future; the Tor, magnificent, still dominates the Somerset landscape.

  The Dark Age Britons have gone. The Saxon kingdom of Wessex has been and gone. The once great Abbey is now just a well kept and beautiful ruin where tourists visit by the coach load. Modern pilgrims of many different beliefs climb up to the top of the Tor and evaluate its mystery from myriad different personal perspectives. Some with bibles and arms outstretched, others with pendulums and didgeridoos; Christians, Pagans and locals just walking their dogs.

  The Tor remains its wondrous self - and still, throughout the winter months, the constellation of Gwyn (Orion) rises into the night sky and goes ‘a-hunting!’ and he always will, just as long as the planet keeps spinning and the stars stay in the sky.

  When I first set out to write about Gwyn ap Nudd, I had absolutely no intention of deliberately undermining the Holy Grail legend of Joseph of Arimathea. Far from it, I have in the past been found to be both a passionate and argumentative supporter of Joseph of Arimathea coming to 1st century Glastonbury, as many of my friends would testify. I have a great fondness for the Grail legends, not for any religious reasons because I’m not a Christian, but a pagan who is at home with many gods and goddesses. In the acknowledgement that all deities are an aspect of the ‘one’ source, I wish to enjoy the taste of many and varied beverages, not to just drink water and nothing but water. I loved the Grail legends because ever since being a child, I have loved all stories that were Arthurian.

  In preparing to write about the first few centuries of Roman Britain, in trying to understand the sacred isle of Ynys Witrin, the broader context of what was happening in the surrounding landscape at the time became increasingly important. I had to learn about pre-Christian, Roman Somerset. As I did so, the Arimathean legend came falling down like the proverbial ‘house of cards’.

  When the Emperor Nero blamed the Christians for the ‘Great Fire of Rome’ in 64 A.D. it was the equivalent of any other historical political manipulation - sleight of hand benefiting the rulers, usually at the expense of a minority and usually for personal gains. From that time onwards, Christians were viewed all over the Roman Empire as fanatical terrorists and enemies of Rome. When Tacitus wrote, “a class hated for their abominations . . .” it is very clear that a Christian community would not knowingly be allowed to settle upon such a prominent sacred site as Ynys Witrin, in sight of other Roman temples and villas. The popular visionary idea (first suggested by Frederick Bligh Bond) that Joseph of Arimathea and his companions built a small church and surrounded it with twelve monk’s cells, is quite ridiculous - unless they pretended to be pagan ‘Sun worshippers’; maybe followers of Mithras? (This would account for ‘Christianity’ being here in the first century, as many Christian festivals like Christmas (25th Dec) are Mithraic in origin.)

  The impact of the ‘Great Fire of Rome’ cannot be understated. The fire burnt for six entire days, completely destroying four of Rome’s fourteen districts and seriously damaging seven others, even Nero’s own palace was destroyed. It’s the equivalent of totally destroying a third of London, seriously damaging another third, and demolishing 10 Downing Street, in six days of fire and mayhem!

  “Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.”

  (Tacitus)

  It really doesn’t matter that the Christians were most probably innocent, as is now suspected. For the decades that followed, they were blamed for the deed. Britain was the frontline of the Empire, a war zone that had only just had a violent couple of years with Boudica’s revolt and the massacre of the Druids on Anglesey. The Roman soldiers working on the Fosse Way, five miles from Ynys Witrin would rather shoot first and ask questions later. I am sure that any hint of terrorists or terrorist sympathisers in the area, would have been dealt with - severely.

  When also made aware of the complete lack of any archaeological remains, on or anywhere near Ynys Witrin, until the late 5th century, the Joseph of Arimathea devotee is left with limited evidence. Just a 12th century book, financed by the Abbey, written over eleven hundred years after it claims that Joseph of Arimathea came to Glaston-bury. The body of “knowledge” is weakened even more, when one knows that the said book, ‘The Antiquities of Glastonbury’ has many errors and interpolations within it.

  There is only one awkward snag that stops me from dismissing the Arimathean legend entirely, and that is the one passing statement that Gildas wrote in the 6th century;

  “Christ, the True Sun, afforded His light, the knowledge of His precepts, to our island in the last year, as we know, of Tiberius Caesar”

  (De excidio Britanniae)

  It is a fascinating declaration that Christianity came to Britain in 37 A.D. But it is as vague as it is interesting. Gildas was writing in the 6th century (five hundred years after the declared event) and he makes no reference to Ynys Witrin or Joseph of Arimathea. His quote does not tally with the ‘Antiquities of Glastonbury’ because that text gives 63 A.D. as the arrival of Joseph of Arimathea. All that can be properly said is that it was believed by some monks of the 6th century that Christianity came to Britain before the Roman Empire did! But still, there is no archaeological evidence to support this.

  I
must also remind the reader that the ‘Antiquities of Glastonbury’ makes no reference to a Holy Grail in any way, shape or form; it only tells of Joseph of Arimathea coming to the island with twelve companions and being given ‘12 Hides’ of land.

  Grail legends came much later and ironically can be shown to be adaptations of earlier Welsh Arthurian traditions, of Arthur questing into the mysterious realm of Annwn with his knights in search of the Magical Cauldron of Annwn. If Glastonbury has any real ‘Grail’ connections, then it is probably because Ynys Witrin was the entrance to Annwn, not because Joseph of Arimathea came here.

  “The first word from the cauldron, when was it spoken? By the breath of nine maidens it was gently warmed. Is it not the cauldron of the chief of Annwn?”