With gemmed and flashing hilt it will not sink.
There rises from below a hand that grasps it,
And waves it in the air: and wailing voices
Are heard along the shore.”
[30] Glastonbury occupies a former site of Druidical worship, and Professor Rhys believes the name to be a corruption of the British word glasten, an oak, the Druids cultivating both the oak and the apple as foster parents of their sacred mistletoe. Glestenaburh, says Canon Taylor, was assimilated by the Saxons to their gentile form Glestinga-burh or Glæsting-burh, which being supposed by a false etymology to mean the “shining” or “glassy” town was mistranslated by the Welsh as Ynys-Widrin, the Island of Glass.
[31] William Morris slightly varied the story in his King Arthur’s Tomb, when he represents Lancelot journeying to “where the Glastonbury glided towers shine” and relates that
“Presently
He rode on giddy still, until he reach’d
A place of apple-trees, by the Thorn-Tree
Wherefrom St. Joseph in the past days preach’d.”