The Lost Land of King Arthur

by John Cuming Walters

Only by devious paths can Glastonbury, once the remote shrine for devout pilgrims from all parts of the land, be reached, for it is still somewhat out of the common track. But to wander awhile in the apple-country is delightful alike to the mind and the physical sense—to drink in its associations, to inhale its warm, sweet air, to see the gleam of white blossoms and the crimson softening upon the round ripened cheeks of the pendent fruit, these are the sources of enjoyment and the elements of the charm. Countless gardens send forth a rare perfume, and the quiet of the whole city in the midst of orchards and streams and showing the relics of by-gone splendour has a lulling effect upon the traveller who comes from the roaring town and the busy mart. When the twin dark towers of Wells Cathedral are fading shadow-like in the distance the new strange picture of the island-valley is revealed. There stretch the long level meadows of deep emerald, there glooms a forest of trees whose twisted branches are bright with apple-blossoms. The high Tor hill looks stern and bare, but cosy and inviting is the town below with its rows of irregular houses, many of which date back to long past days, while others, constituted of stone with which the architects of Dunstan’s and of Becket’s time wrought, seem to bear mute tribute to the famous era when the Abbey was in its glory and reverend pilgrims from afar came to bring oblations to that hallowed shrine. To-day the visitor finds a welcome at the “Inne” built in 1475 for the devout travellers whom the Abbot could not accommodate within the walls of the Abbey; and so few are the changes of time that the lofty façade, the parapet and turrets, the wide archway, the ecclesiastical windows, and the long corridors, remain almost as they were first designed and made. Side by side stand “Ye Olde Pilgrim’s Inne” and the Tribunal, or Court House, built by Abbot Beere, for the trial of petty offenders against the law. Unexplored dungeons are reported to exist underground, together with subterranean passages communicating with the Abbey from the “Inne” and the Tribunal. In the neighbourhood is a conspicuous building once used for collecting the tithes, called the Abbey Barn, dating from 1420, in some respects the best preserved of all the ancient memorials. But the pride and glory of Glastonbury centre in the wondrously beautiful remains of the oldest, richest, and stateliest of English Abbeys—an Abbey whose reputed founder was Joseph of Arimathæa, that Joseph who had seen the face and heard the voice of the Saviour of mankind. It was the only church of first rank in England standing as a monument of British days which escaped the scath and wreck which followed the storm of Norman conquest.

THE OLDE PILGRIM’S INN, GLASTONBURY

[To face p. 222

To what dim epoch the earliest history of Glastonbury belongs is more or less conjectural, though the discovery of some sixty low mounds by archæologists led to the discovery that a prehistoric lake-village in remote times occupied the site. Excavations revealed the remains of human habitations and of successive occupation by the same race—a race which hunted the boar, the roebuck, and the deer, and whose sole accomplishment was the making of coarse, rude pottery. But this people has passed away and not even a tradition of its existence is extant. It was at a much later period, though, looking backward, the time seems far distant, that the first legend of Glastonbury took root and flowered. So pure, fragrant, and beautiful is that treasured blossom that it would seem ruthless to attempt to pluck it by the roots from the ground, and to cast it aside as a worthless weed of ignorance and superstition. It brings to us the memory of that time when the Son of Man was on earth; it is a seed blown from that land which His presence sanctified. Nearly two thousand years ago the crucified Nazarene was watched by agonised crowds upon Calvary. Joseph of Arimathæa, “a good man and a just,” begged the dead body from Pilate and buried it in his own garden, thereby incurring the fierce resentment of the Jews. He fled from Palestine, fearing for his life, and so enraged were his enemies at his escape that they expelled his friends also—Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and Philip among others—putting them out to sea without oars or sail. “After tossing about many days,” says one writer, “they were driven in God’s providence to Marseilles, and from Marseilles St. Joseph came to Britain, where he died at a good old age, after having preached the Gospel of Christ with power and earnestness for many years.” This was about A.D. 63. “The happy news of the Saviour’s resurrection, and the offer of the only assured means of salvation to all who would embrace it” were welcomed by King Arviragus, who assigned to St. Joseph the Isle of Avalon as a retreat. When Joseph and his little Christian band, passing over Stone Down where stand the two notable Avalon Oaks, came to the place, weary with long travelling, they rested on the ridge of a hill, which in its name of Weary-all Hill (really Worall) is supposed to commemorate this incident; and where the saint’s staff touched the sod, a thorn tree miraculously sprang up, and every Christmas Day it buds and blossoms as a memorial of our Lord, and of the first Christian festival.[31] Another story says that the saint was met by a boisterous mob of the heathen, and that, planting his pilgrim’s staff in the earth, he knelt down to pray; and as he prayed, the hard, dry staff began to bud and give forth fragrance, and became a living tree. Then said Joseph, “Our God is with us,” and the heathen, transfixed by the miracle, were convinced and pacified. So runs the earliest Christian legend in England, and as a fitting sequel we learn that not long after Joseph’s mission had begun the first Christian chapel was built, and occupied part of the site on which the most beautiful of holy houses was afterwards reared—Glastonbury Abbey. St. Joseph’s Chapel, magnificent in ruin, is one of those hallowed places in which one might spend hours in silent contemplation. Through many centuries the legend of the Holy Thorn has been preserved, and Glastonbury has remained distinguished by the fact that there the “winter thorn” has blossomed every Christmas “mindful of our Lord,” or, as a pupil of Caxton’s wrote in 1520—

“The hawthornes also that groweth in Werall

Do burge and bere green leaves at Christmas

As fresh as other in May.”

The tree was regarded with great awe and superstition by the inhabitants, and when the change in the calendar was made they looked to the “sacra spina” for confirmation of the righteousness of what had been done. Many people refused to celebrate the new-style Christmas Day because the Thorn showed no blossoms, and when the white flowers appeared on January 5th, the old-style Christmas was held to have been divinely sanctioned. A trunk of the tree was cut down by a Puritan soldier, though his sacrilege caused him to be severely wounded by a piece of the dismembered tree striking him; but when the Thorn was cast into the river as dead and worthless it miraculously took root again. The spot where it grew is marked by a monumental stone bearing the inscription:—I. A. A.D. XXXI.