There was no time to try to see anything of Glastonbury that night after dinner, and we were too tired. But that big hill looked so inviting that we decided that we would see it the next day and climb up to the top of it, before we did anything else. I was a little disappointed with Glastonbury, as we walked through the streets on our way to the Tor. The place looked much too prosperous to please me, and not at all too neat.
I cheered up a little when we came to the Abbot's Kitchen. It stands in the middle of a big field, with a fence around it, and we had to borrow a key from a woman who kept it to lend so that we could go in and see it. We even spared a little time from the Tor to see it in. The Abbot's Kitchen belonged to the old abbey of Glastonbury. It is a small, square building, with a fireplace in each corner. It is still in such good repair that it is hardly fair to call it a ruin, but it is a part of old Glastonbury, and we carried back the key feeling glad that we had borrowed it.
It was a good, stiff climb up the side of the Tor, and we stopped more than once to look back at the town behind us and below us. It looked prettier from here. Down there in the streets there was the noise of a busy modern town. The ways were muddy and there were rather frowsy women and children about some of the doors. But up here we were out of sight and hearing of all that. From here the town looked quiet and peaceful and beautiful—just its roofs and chimneys and towers showing through the wide, green masses of the trees, and the sound of a church chime, that rang every quarter of an hour, came to us softened and mellow.
"Down there," I said, "we saw nothing but Glastonbury—to-day's Glastonbury—but here we can see Avalon. That is Avalon down there below us, the Island of Apples, the happy country, the place where there was no sorrow, the place where fairies lived, the place where Joseph brought the Holy Grail and where he built his church. A wonderful old place it was, and it was a wonderful abbey that grew up where Joseph first made his little chapel. Our old friend St. Dunstan, who pinched the devil's nose, was the abbot there once. So was St. Patrick. When he came to Glastonbury he climbed up to the top of this hill where we are now and found, where this old tower is, the ruins of a church of St. Michael. They used to have a way of building churches to St. Michael on the tops of high hills. St. Patrick rebuilt this one and afterwards it was thrown down by an earthquake. I don't know whether St. Patrick built this tower that is here now or not.
"Did I say that fairies used to live here? Another abbot of Glastonbury found that out. He was St. Collen, and he must have lived when there was no church of St. Michael here on the top of the Tor. St. Collen was one of those men who think that they cannot serve God and live in comfort at the same time. When he had been abbot of Glastonbury for a time he thought that he was leading too easy a life, so he gave up his post and went about preaching. But even that did not please him, so he came back here and made a cell in the rock on the side of Glastonbury Tor, and lived in it as a hermit.
"One day he heard two men outside his cell talking about Gwyn, the son of Nudd. And one of them said: 'Gwyn, the son of Nudd, is the King of the Fairies.'
"Then Collen put his head out of the door of his cell and said to the two men: 'Do not talk of such wicked things. There are no fairies, or if there are they are devils. And there is no Gwyn, the son of Nudd. Hold your tongues about him.'
"'Hold your own tongue about him,' one of the men answered, 'or you will hear from him in some unpleasant way.'
"The men went away, and by and by Collen heard a knock at his door, and a voice asked if he were in his cell. 'I am here,' he answered; 'who is it that asks?'
"'I am a messenger from Gwyn, the son of Nudd, the King of the Fairies,' the voice said, 'and he has sent me to command you to come and speak with him on the top of the hill at noon.'