The Legend of Glastonbury.—A. D. 62.
Down in the pleasant west of England a river—the copious Brue—follows its course to Bridgewater Bay, between the Sedgemoors and other rising grounds. Somersetshire farmers now drive their ploughs and graze their cattle where I am going to describe water: thanks to those Benedictine monks whom they have so clean forgotten. But at Christmas-tide, some sixty years after the first Christmas the world ever saw, there were no monks at Glastonbury; for the simple reason, there were no Christians there. No one had banked out the waters of the Bristol Channel, and converted a brackish and unwholesome swamp into fine arable or pasture land. The Brue had it all its own way, to make islands, pools, and treacherous bogs with its unrestrained waters; until it had got so far west as to struggle with the advancing tide of the bay.
Glastonbury has the holiest memories of any place in England; and they date from the first moment when the faith was planted there. The sacred name of our Lord was brought to this marshy district in a far-off heathen land by one of his own disciples, Saint Joseph of Arimathea.
Who has not heard of the Glastonbury thorn? A history of Somerset would be incomplete which did not mention its blossoming every Christmas that comes round. It was fair and fragrant for fifteen hundred winters, while all around was sapless and dead. People try to account for this standing miracle by something peculiar in the soil, as they would explain away the freedom of Ireland from snakes and toads, or the healing virtues of St. Winifred's Well. There were probably Sadducees in Jerusalem who thought the Pool of Bethesda was all nonsense, or a mere chalybeate. Anything you like about the powers of nature, but nothing of the marvels of grace. Chemistry to any extent, but of miracle not one jot. Thorns blooming at Christmas? It is all a question of earth, soil, stratum, and the lay of the ground, with those who are "of the earth, earthy."
But we are now on our way to Glastonbury as Christian pilgrims, staff in hand. And it is very fit that we should regard the old thorn (or such suckers and cuttings of it as may be found) with reverence. For that thorn is a Christian tree, planted by Christian hands. More than this: it was planted by the hands whose unutterable privilege it was to unfasten and take down from the cross, and bear with adoring reverence to the tomb, the body of God, separated from his soul, united ever with his divinity.
We are accustomed, in our meditations on the passion, to contemplate the emaciated, agonized form of our Lord stretched and racked upon the cross; or, after the Consummatum est, when eventide was come, laid stark and bloodless in the arms of the Queen of martyrs, his most desolate Mother. Naturally we lose out of sight, by comparison, other agents and events in what followed his expiring cry. Yet look again. In the growing dusk of that first Good Friday, at the foot of the cross, and in the group of five or six persons to whom the eternal Father seems to commit the lifeless body of his Son, there is the saint of Glastonbury. With the dolorous Mother, and the beloved disciple, and the saintly, penitent Magdalene, and the other holy women, and Nicodemus, St. Joseph of Arimathea also bears his part.
To come back to Glastonbury; we must pass over some thirty years from that sacred paschal eve. Pentecost soon followed it, with its fiery tongues on the apostles' brows. They were illuminated and strengthened to preach the faith over the earth lying in darkness. So they separated on this world-wide mission, each on the path whereon the guidance of God's Spirit led him. "Their sound went over all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the whole world." St. Philip went into Phrygia, and, by some accounts, was martyred there. Others make him to have preached the gospel in what is now France, and that St. Joseph was one of his companions. A better supported tradition has it that St. Joseph, with St. Lazarus and his two holy sisters, Martha and Mary, landed at Marseilles from Judea. Anyhow, here comes St. Joseph of Arimathea to Britain, with a faithful band of eleven disciples. He has reached the distant region of tin-mines which the old Phoenicians had discovered and worked in Cornwall, Scilly, and, perhaps, the Mendip Hills. He is come not for precious metals, but to bring the priceless word of life.
So, rather more than sixty years after the Incarnation, and while Saints Peter and Paul are still alive in Rome, though the day of their martyrdom draws near, we find ourselves on the brow of Weary-All Hill, a mile or so south-west of the spot where Glastonbury Abbey will be built.
Weary-All Hill! the name it has been known by for generations back. But not a likely name to be given it by St. Joseph and his eleven companions, as they stood on it for the first time, eighteen centuries ago; as they looked on the marshy plain, dotted with islands, in and out of which the glassy stream is winding. Weariness, at least lassitude of spirit, was unknown to those apostolic men. Had they not come all this way to bring the everlasting gospel? Had not their feet been "beautiful upon the mountains" as they crossed them, bearing this message of heavenly love?—mountains deep in snow, yawning with frightful clefts and precipices, gloomy with impenetrable forests, to which this Weary-All is scarcely a mole-hill?
"At length, then," said St. Joseph, when the twelve had paused on the brow of it to recover breath; for few of them were young, and it was rather a pull for a Somersetshire hill—"at length we have reached the end of our pilgrimage."
As he spoke, he pointed with his long staff to the little group of islands already noticed. A cheery December sun lingered on the scene, and, though it was evening, still cast a gleam upon the wide-spread water. The Brue was winding along, noiseless and limpid, sprinkled with its dark islets, as the shining coils of a snake are variegated with the spots upon its skin. There was no ice yet, though it was already the Christmas season. Perhaps the sea-water that mingled with the marsh from the Bristol Channel prevented its formation. The leafless thickets that fringed the slopes of West Sedgemoor, and clothed both islands and marshland in irregular clumps, allowed a more distinct view of the mirror of waters than when shaded with summer foliage. There was a kind of grave and sober animation over the whole scene.
A short distance further off, to the east, rose a solitary peaked hill, perhaps even then called the Tor. It has several scarped lines, or passes, drawn around it, denoting that the Romans had fortified it as a stronghold, which they occupied from time to time. Years after, a little chapel in honor of St. Michael the archangel will be built on its summit. Years later, again, that little chapel will be enlarged into a stately church, the tower of which still remains. And nearly fifteen centuries after St. Joseph first stood on Weary-All, the last abbot of the stately Benedictine monastery, as Glastonbury had become, was martyred there with two of his monks. His crime was, that he rendered to Caesar only those things that were Caesar's, and refused to acknowledge the tyrant Henry VIII. as head of God's church in England.
Northward of where we stand, at the distance of five miles and more, the abrupt range of the Mendip Hills caught at that moment almost the last beams of the declining sun, as it sank, fiery red, toward the western ocean.
"The end of our pilgrimage," said St. Joseph again, slowly, and gazed down on the peaceful spot. "These are the islands of which the heathen king spoke:—how are we to name him?"
"Arviragus," answered one of his companions, nay, it was the saint's own nephew, called Helaius.
"Permitting us to set up there a Christian altar, and to proclaim the names and the praises of Jesus and Mary." "May the kindness be returned a hundred-fold into his own bosom," ejaculated Theotimus.
"Amen," answered St. Joseph fervently. And Joseph his son, and Simeon and Avitus, and the rest, responded.
Then all knelt there on the brow of the hill; all but Hoel, their poor pagan guide to the spot. And with Christian psalms, and the Gloria Patri, and invocations to the court of heaven to assist them in their praises, they poured out thanksgivings to him who had permitted their long wanderings to cease, and their missionary life in this heathen land to begin.
Hoel stood near, leaning on his shepherd's crook. He guessed in general what it was about; but he understood neither Hebrew nor Greek.
He is a true Briton of that date, is Hoel; and he might literally be called "true blue," for he is painted all over in blue patterns with the juice of the woad, like his northern cousins, the Picts. His scanty garments are dyed the same hue with the same plant, which yields its juice plentifully in this part of Britain.
He looks at the saint, and thinks he is inquiring the name of that principal island in the group to which his staff points.
"Iniswytryn," cries Hoel, in explanation. "You're Latin scholars, gentlemen; so I suppose you know what that means—Glassy Island." [Footnote 150]
[Footnote 150: Insula Vitrea, the Roman and therefore the British name (by a slight corruption) of what was afterward called Glastonbury. Glas is the Celtic word for grayish blue, [Greek text] and enters into numerous local names in Ireland, Wales, and the Highlands. Its affinity with our word glass is probably more than a coincidence of sound, the ancient glass being mostly of the same neutral tint. Others derive the name of the place from the woad-plant, glaisn, which grows abundantly in this watered district.]
Glass, in those days, imported by the Romans into Britain, sorry stuff as the best of it would now be reckoned in the Birmingham or St. Helen's foundries, was thought a wonder of rarity and beauty. So Glassy Island was a name equivalent to our calling another island that we love very dearly the
"First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea."
Hoel now spoke again in the same strange jargon as before, composed of British, or what we should call Welsh, and a little Latin. It was the dialect of those parts of Britain where the Romans had established their colonies and introduced their tongue. Be it noted, we are at this moment near the Roman colonies of Uxella, or Bridgewater, Ad Aquas, or Wells, and Ischalis, or Ilchester.
"So you are going to settle down there," remarked Hoel. "Won't you offer some sacrifice on first sighting the place?"
"We have no means of sacrificing this evening, friend," answered St. Joseph calmly, "nor to-morrow morning, I fear, unless we obtain materials, which at present we lack."
"Means!—materials!" said Hoel, musing with himself. "Well, every nation, I take it, has its own customs. But I know those who would not be long without providing the materials."
St. Joseph wished to ascertain what was passing in the man's mind. The zeal which urged St. Paul to become all things to all men, that he might save all, burned in the holy missionary's bosom. It made him seek out all that might serve the purpose of his coming. He had everything to learn: language, habits of thought, customs of social life, and the very observances of British heathenism.
"And how," he asked, "would you offer a sacrifice, good friend, when you had nothing to offer it with?"
"I? Nay, I could not. What good would a sacrifice be from a peasant like me?"
"To pray is to make an offering, is it not?"
"Yes; but I don't mean that. You know I mean something more; why, something really sacrificed—consumed, to make the gods favorable. Have you no such sacrifice in your religion? Then it can't be the true one, I'm sure!"
"Certainly," said St. Joseph, "we have the one true and adorable Sacrifice, of which all others are mere shadows, and some of them very dark, distorted shadows. Every morning we offer to the true and living God that spotless Lamb who alone can take away sin, or be a worthy thank-offering to his majesty and his mercy."
"A lamb?" said Hoel, still musing; "why, that's not to be had at this season. But would nothing else do instead? For example, now, I've a nice—"
"Do not concern yourself," answered St. Joseph, and smiled again, kindly. "We shall be able to provide ourselves in a few days, when we have made acquaintance with the neighborhood. I suppose they grow wine in these parts?"
"Wine?" repeated the peasant, opening his eyes. "Oh! yes, to be sure." Then, after a pause: "You're fond of wine, then, after all, like our own Druids? Well, I should hardly have thought—"
Helaius could hardly repress a smile at his mistake.
Hoel looked at him; then, as if he had hit on the cause of his amusement, laughed his loud clownish laugh, too.
"Wine? Ah! the very best, if you can buy it of those gray-bearded gentlemen; and old mead, and metheglin; or cider from our apples hereabout. We grew a mortal sight of 'em." [Footnote 151]
[Footnote 151: Glastonbury was afterward called by the Saxons Avalon, or the Island of Apples.]
Then he broke out into singing, and a kind of war-dance, to please his companions, as he deemed:
"All under yon oaks, and the mistletoe sprouting.
When victims have bled in the circle of stones.
We drink down the sunset with sword-play and shouting,
And he that refuses, we'll raddle his bones:
His bones!
And he that refuses, we'll raddle his bones!"
It was difficult not to smile at his extravagant tones and gestures.
"Gently, gently," said St. Joseph to his companions, "or we shall be misleading him, and doing harm."
"Oh! never mind, ancient sir," remarked Hoel encouragingly, though he had not understood what was said. "All quite right—why shouldn't one? Only, it strikes me, you've no place to lay in a stock of it at present. Now, our Druids burrow out caves, 'tis thought, somewhere under their cromlechs—"
"Listen!" interrupted St. Joseph, laying his hand on the other's arm. He looked into Hoel's face, and gained his attention in a moment. "Listen, while I say a thing to you. Bread and wine, the ordinary food of man in our native land, have been appointed by him whom we serve, as the materials of that true sacrifice which he will accept. He requires, and will admit, no other. Animals were sacrificed to him of old, before he appointed this new and better way; but now—"
"You spoke of a lamb," interrupted the peasant, growing rather sulky, "so I just took the liberty of informing you as we'd none at your service."
It was not the moment to pursue such high and mysterious truths with him any further. But Hoel himself would not be let off, nor would he let off St. Joseph. Something seemed to be working in his mind.
"A lamb is a lamb," persisted he doggedly, though he seemed to mean no disrespect; "and a sacrifice is a sacrifice; and bread is bread, I hope; and wine, I'm sure, is wine."
"All things are what they have been created by God," answered St. Joseph very gently, "until it is his holy will and pleasure to change them in any way, or even to change them into other things."
Hoel looked at him, but said nothing. His look, though, meant inquiry, and this St. Joseph perceived.
"Is not a tree changed into something very different from what it was before," he went on, "when the warm air of spring breathes upon it, and the sap rises into it, and it puts forth green buds, and they swell, and burst, and afterward come leaves and fruit?"
"True," answered he; and then was silent, thinking.
"Did you ever see one of the trees down yonder blossom at this season?"
For all answer, Hoel laughed, and pointed to the leafless boughs on the island, and the shores around them.
"Could the gods whom you worship cause them to do so?"
"Not one of 'em all," answered he, with a somewhat scornful gesture.
"Then, who makes winter pass and spring return; the bud burst forth, and the fruit ripen?"
A pause. The poor pagan was not prepared to answer.
"Now," continued St. Joseph, "my God, the one living and true, not only has appointed the laws by which seasons come round with their produce, and the sun rises and sets. He sometimes, moreover, changes these things, according to his own all-perfect will, so that the sun stays motionless in the heavens above, and the tree blooms in mid-winter on the earth below."
Hoel mused, and mused again, while his eyes wandered from the speaker to the rest, in whose looks he read confirmation of the words. Then he turned to take a sweep over the wintry scene that lay beneath and around. Woods and thickets skirting the slopes of Sedgemoor, the osiers lining the banks of the Brue, the few apple-trees that were even then on Iniswytryn—all without sign of a leaf.
He bent his eyes to the ground, knit his brows, seemed determined to hear no more, and to believe nothing of what he had heard.
Still the gentle, persuasive voice of the saint sounded in his ears:
"What is that, friend, you have in your hand?"
"My shepherd's crook," was the brief and surly answer.
"And see, my pilgrim-staff, that has aided my steps so far. Yours was cut from a British sapling, out of your moist soil, I dare say, no longer ago than last autumn. Mine, under a burning sky, long years since, in Judea, a land you never heard of. It came from a thorn-brake that had furnished thorns for a crown of which you know nothing. Which of these two staves would bud the quickest, if they were planted side by side?"
Hoel looked up, pleased to find something he understood. "Mine would, of course," he grinned out. "'Tis a right slip of mountain-ash, and would have leaves next spring, if I struck it into the ground."
"And what if mine now budded before you could count ten?"
"You jest with me where I see no jest," exclaimed the countryman, disposed now to be angry, "or you speak as one of the unwise."
"There is no jest here," answered St. Joseph with unruffled look. You say truly. By no power of mine could the seasons alter, or the effects of them. My Master has said: 'All the days of the earth, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, night and day, shall not cease!' But what if his power and his will unite to make some wonderful change in all this?"
"His power is great in the summer," answered Hoel, casting a look at the declining sun; "but in the winter time he seems further off, or feebler. He cannot melt the ice, nor draw up the dew, nor warm my fingers while I stand watching my sheep."
It was plain he was speaking of his deity, then sinking in the west, lower every moment.
"Ah!" said Avitus, "is it even such darkness as this into which the land is plunged? Would we had pushed on sooner from Gaul!"
"Courage, brother," whispered Simeon in answer. "There has been no time lost, Man can do but little, except pray and obey. If he does these well, he does good all around him. What says the holy text? 'Well done, good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful in a little.'"
Meanwhile St. Joseph had been in silent prayer. By some inspiration he felt moved to ask for power to work the first miracle ever wrought in Britain. Our Lord had promised: "These signs shall follow them that believe. In my name they shall cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." "Amen, amen, I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works that I do, he shall do also; and greater than these shall he do, because I go to the Father. And whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name, that will I do; that the Father may be glorified in the Son."
And even while St. Joseph prayed, it seemed as if witnesses of the miracle, and disciples of the truth, were being given him; for, stealing up the ascent from various directions, knots of the wild Britons, in threes and fours, converged on the summit of Weary-All Hill. I do not suspect Hoel of treachery, or that he had meant to lead the foreigners into a snare. It is likely the rude inhabitants had perceived them from afar as they stood there, their forms traced on the hill-top against the red sunset sky. But these new-comers seemed to have no friendly intention. Most of them held in their hands the rude weapons of ancient British warfare. The bare arms of some were stained blue with the juice of the woad; others were tattooed; they had the wild and savage look we have seen in prints of the Sandwich Islanders. So, with threatening aspect and gestures, on they came, brandishing their lances and celts, or bronze hatchets, and beginning a sort of war-cry.
Yes; the moment was come, and the sovereignty of the true Lord both over nature and grace was to be manifested in one and the same moment.
St. Joseph told his companions how strongly the thought had come into his mind. It had, indeed, guided much that he had already said to Hoel. As by one impulse, they all knelt again, and besought our Lord to remember now his promise; so that the soul that had remained impervious to his word might see his work.
St. Joseph then approached the peasant, who by this time was surrounded by his countrymen. In a mild voice, yet with an authority not to be resisted, he said:
"Plant your staff here, upright in the ground."
Hoel was startled, looked at him, then slowly obeyed.
The multitude still gathered, their gestures more threatening every moment.
"Call now, if you will, on your gods, that the staff may bud and blossom."
The peasant turned by a kind of instinct to the setting sun; clouds were mantling round it; its form was veiled; nothing seen but a dull and rusty stain of sunset fast paling into twilight. Hoel shook his head.
"You will not call on it to hear, to help you?"
He was answered by a gesture which implied that the power of Hoel's god was set for that night.
Then St. Joseph, with another ejaculation of prayer, struck his thorny staff into the ground beside the other. He made over it the sign of the cross, saying:
"By the grace of him who for us men hung on the tree on Calvary, wearing the thorny crown, I bid thee be as thou wert wont to be in the bloom of spring!"
There was still light enough to see how, here and there on the length of the staff, the shrivelled rind began to swell and to break, how the green buds shot forth and lengthened into twigs; how these ramified out again, branch from branch, sucker after sucker; how the old staff expanded into a shapely trunk of thorn-tree, crowned with a pollard head of rustling leaves.
And then through the keen wintry air was wafted such a fragrance as had never saluted the senses of shepherd, or of dreaming bard, wandering through the brakes and thickets of leafy May. The seasons had been reversed at the strong prayer of the just. He who enabled Josue to command the greater and lesser light in the firmament, "Move not, O sun, toward Gabaon, nor thou, O moon, toward the valley of Ajalon," now honored the name of the true Josue, the Captain of salvation, by the "things that spring up in the earth," [Footnote 152] which obey their Lord as perfectly as sun, and moon, and stars.
[Footnote 152: Benedicite omnia germinantia in terrâ Domino.—Dan. iii. 76.]
What cries of astonishment broke from the rude men who crowded round! How they came trembling to the feet of St. Joseph; how they kissed the hem of his robe, and adored him as a god! They thought he was Baal himself; they shrieked out that the sun had set in clouds because Baal had come in person to take the place of his representative. And though St. Joseph and his companions testified by signs of abhorrence and earnest words how much the rude impiety disturbed them, yet, "Speaking these things, they scarce restrained the people from sacrificing to them." [Footnote 153]
[Footnote 153: Acts xiv. 17.]
But this reverence, misguided and idolatrous at first, soon found its true channel, and was directed to the Giver of every best gift. And so the gospel was preached in Glastonbury, and grew, and flourished, and breathed out its fragrance like the thorn itself.
Then, after nearly fifteen hundred years, came a winter more killing than any Christmas during which the thorn had bloomed; and "a famine, not of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord." The decree of spoliation went forth; the royal commissioners, with a warrant from Henry VIII., thundered at the gates. The choir of Glastonbury, as of numerous other shrines in England, was desecrated; treasures of literature in the library and scriptorium were torn in shreds and scattered to the winds, with the relics of innumerable saints. The abbot, and two of his brethren, were drawn on a hurdle to the Tor, and martyred on its summit; the community dispersed, and the ruins, covering many acres, were given over to strangers, as a stable for their cattle.
But this was long after St. Joseph and his companions had been gathered to the saints.