From sacrilege had power their sacred bones to save,
He, who that God in man to his sepulchre brought,
Or he, which for the faith twelve famous battles fought.”—Drayton.
A quaint old-world look is upon the face of the city of many legends, King Arthur’s “isle of rest.” It lies deep in a green well-watered valley, and its steep sudden hill, the Tor, rising abruptly to a height of over five hundred feet and crowned with a lonely square tower, seems to shelter and keep watch upon the traditional apple-island. The orchard lawns are seen everywhere with their deep-green carpet and the crooked branches of innumerable fruit-laden trees casting grotesque shadows upon it. The whole year round the western airs are balmy, though in spite of hoary legend and poetic eulogy Glastonbury has felt the effects of terrific storms, whirlwinds, and earthquakes. Its history—a history of marvel and wonder, inextricably mingled for many centuries with superstition—takes us far back into the misty past when the ancient Britons named the marshland, often flooded by the water of the Bristol Channel, Ynyswytryn, or Inis vitrea, the Glassy Island; either, it has been surmised, on account of the “glasten” or blue-green colour of its surface, or from the abundance of “glass” (or woad) to be found in the vicinity.[30] On the other hand Professor Freeman believed that Glastonbury was the abode and perhaps the possession of one Glæsting, who, on discovering that his cattle strayed to the rich pastures, settled in that part, which in the natural order of things became Glæstingaburgh. That it was veritably an island admits of no doubt; the circuit of the water can still be traced; and when the Romans in turn made discovery of the fruitfulness of the region enclosed by the waters of the western sea, they denominated it Insula Avalonia, or Isle of Apples. This was the “fortunate isle,” celebrated in the ancient ode of which Camden has given us a version, “where unforced fruits and willing comforts meet,” where the fields require “no rustic hand” but only Nature’s cultivation, where
“The fertile plains with corn and herds are proud,
And golden apples shine in every wood.”
ST. MICHAEL’S TOWER, GLASTONBURY
[To face p. 218
The inflowing of the sea made islands not only of Glastonbury, but of Athelney, Beckery, and Meare; and not many centuries ago, when a tempest raged, the sea-wall was broken down and the Channel waters swept up the low-lying land almost as far as Glastonbury Church. The simple record of this event reads: “The breach of the sea-flood was January 20th, 1606.” Again in 1703 was Glastonbury threatened with a deluge, and the water was five feet deep in its streets; but as geologists are able to affirm that the sea is receding from the western coast it is unlikely that such catastrophes will recur. A little lazy stream, the Brue, almost engirdles the city, and thus permits the inhabitants with seeming reasonableness to retain for Glastonbury the name loved best—the Isle of Avalon. That Roman name has been full of dreamy suggestiveness to the poet’s mind; and though the poet’s Avalon may often have been an enchanted city, the “baseless fabric of a vision,” the Avalon of Somerset, with its two streets forming a perfect cross, its Abbey ruins, its antiquities, and its slumbrous aspect, is assuredly not unworthy of the legends clustering about it.