Kitabı oku: «The Lost Land of King Arthur», sayfa 9

 
“No other place on Britain’s spacious earth
Were worthy of his end but where he had his birth.”
 

Pilgrims find their way to that lonely spot, and resting near the huge stone, they may reflect at will upon the wondrous possibility of there being, after all, by the side of this stream, a tangible link with King Arthur. The stone lies in a nook between two rocks, and three graceful and luxurious trees watch over it as if they were the metamorphosed three Queens who received the wounded king in the magic boat which glided to Avalon. All around is a profound calm; not a sound but the occasional buzz of an insect comes from the long grasses of the meadows above, or from the ferns and ivy which spring from the shady channel below. At sunset the scene is delightful. The high meadows are kindled with brilliant light, but not a ray comes to that hollow where, it is said, Arthur was laid. His grave is in perpetual shadow, and when I last saw it a long, gaunt, withered branch stretched over it like a spectral arm. The edacious tooth of time has bitten away the letters, and moss has overgrown a portion of the stone, so that the inscription is barely decipherable, but the words are known to be—

 
“Cotin hic jacit filius Magari.”
 

The actual history is best given in the words of the local antiquary Borlase, who in his noted 1769 volume gave an illustration of the relics and said—

“This inscribed stone, nine feet nine inches long, and two feet three inches wide, was formerly a foot-bridge near the late Lord Falmouth’s seat of Worthyvale, about a mile and a half from Camelford. It was called Slaughter Bridge, and as Tradition says, from a bloody battle fought on this ground, fatal to the great King Arthur. A few years since, the late Lady Dowager Falmouth, shaping a rough kind of hill, about 100 yards off, into spiral walks, removed this stone from the place where it served as a bridge, and, building a low piece of masonry for its support, placed it at the foot of her improvements, where it still lies in one of the natural grots of the hill. This stone is taken notice of by Mr. Carew in the following words: ‘For testimony of the last battle in which Arthur was killed, the old folks thereabouts (viz., round Camelford) show you a stone bearing Arthur’s name, though now departed to “Atry.” This inscription has been lately published; but so incorrectly that it may still be reckoned among the nondescripts. It is said there, “that this stone lay at the very place where Arthur received his mortal wound.” All this about King Arthur takes its rise from the last five letters of this Inscription, which are by some thought to be Maguri (quasi magni Arthuri), and from thence others will have it, that a son of Arthur was buried here; but though history, as well as tradition, affirms that Arthur fought his last battle, in which he was mortally wounded, near this place, yet that this Inscription retains anything of his name is all a mistake. The letters are Roman, and as follow: Cotin hic jacit filius magari. By the i in hic being joined to the h, by the h wanting its cross link, the bad line of the writing, the distorted leaning of the letters, I conclude, that the monument cannot be so ancient as the time of Arthur.’” It seems quite clear that what is now called King Arthur’s tombstone was originally called, when in position, Slaughter Bridge, a name which has been transferred to the modern structure. That the stone once served actually as a funeral monument is also pretty obvious, but whom it commemorates is a mystery. The engraved letters belong to an era posterior to Arthur, and there are, as a fact, relics indubitably of an earlier date in the locality.

“Graves” of King Arthur are so numerous as to make all claims more or less ridiculous. Even Camelford, as if fearing that the evidence in one case may not be strong enough, provides an alternative, and points out that near at hand is Warbelow Barrow, an ancient fortification of considerable extent, in the centre of which is a large mound reputed also to be King Arthur’s burying-place. It would be easy to reduce the whole subject to absurdity by saying that if there were a doubt that King Arthur ever lived, his numerous “graves” conclusively prove that he died many times, despite the tradition, too, that he did not die at all. The jumble of foolishness and contradictions does not of course affect the real story; it is the resultant of popular superstitions and confusing traditions. Upon the smallest basis of ancient fact superstition rears a stupendous edifice, and these many claims to possess King Arthur’s “grave” arise from the eagerness of a people to support the idea of their direct connection with a lost hero, and from their readiness to attach his name to those places which naturally suggest a possible or a poetic connection. That a very strong and sincere belief exists that Arthur was buried near Camelford is, however, not to be questioned, and there is perhaps a better reason for conceding the point in this case than in all the others. All traditions agree that the last battle was fought in the vicinity and that it was fatal to Arthur, and his burial close at hand is the most natural of conclusions. Mr. King, an antiquary, declared that on the bank of the Camlan could be seen “a fallen maen of the later British era, having the name of Arthur inscribed on its lower side,” but this seems to have been conjecture rather than established proof. Yet it is flying in the face of the most cherished of beliefs to admit that any grave of Arthur exists—to say nothing of a multitude of them. If he passed into the land of Faerie, if he did not die but only awaits a call to “come again,” why do we expect to find the place of his sepulture?—why are tombs discovered?—why are lovely spots called King Arthur’s graves? What said the ancient triad?—

 
“The grave of March is this, and this is the grave of Gwyther,
Here is the grave of Gwgawn Gleddyfrudd,
But unknown is the grave of Arthur.”
 

The more popular and more befitting tradition deviates entirely from any commonplace termination of King Arthur’s career, and gives a magical end to his miraculous history. The king’s brand, Excalibur or Calibur, the emblem of his kingship and the symbol of his power, the sword which he alone could wield, and by winning which he had gained his crown, was given to Sir Bedivere by the dying chief to return unto the Lady of the Lake. “My time hieth fast,” said the king; “therefore take thou Excalibur, my good sword, and go with it unto yonder waterside, and when thou comest there I charge thee, throw my sword into that water, and come again and tell me what thou shalt see.” Twice did Sir Bedivere falteringly go to dark Dozmare Pool, a melancholy sheet of water overshadowed by high and dreary hills which seem to keep gloomy watch over Camelford. Twice did Sir Bedivere’s heart fail him, and instead of flinging the wondrous sword into the depths, supposed to be unfathomable, of the black lake, he hid it among the many-knotted waterflags that whistled stiff and dry about the marge. “Authority forgets a dying King,” said Arthur to the faithless knight; but for the last time asserting his power, he threateningly bade him to fulfil his task; and the knight ran, leapt down the ridges, and threw the splendid brand into mid-water.

 
“But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandish’d him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.”²⁹
 

Poets, in describing this scene, have found it scarcely possible to do other than follow closely the words of Malory, which relate the incident with directness and yet with a charm of picturesqueness scarcely to be surpassed except by much elaboration—and elaboration would be out of place in such a case, and would destroy the subtle effect of the narrative. After telling of the hiding of the sword by the reluctant knight, and of Arthur’s indignation at his evasive words and long tarrying, the chronicler says:—“Then Sir Bedivere departed, and went to the sword, and lightly took it up, and went to the water side, and there he bound the girdle about the hilts, and then he threw the sword as far into the water as he might, and there came an arm and a hand above the water, and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished it, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water.” “The hand that arose from the mere,” says Renan, “is the hope of the Celtic heroes. It is thus that weak people, dowered with imagination, revenge themselves on their conquerors. Feeling themselves to be strong inwardly and weak outwardly, they protest, they exult, and such a strife unloosing their might renders them capable of miracles.”

Four miles to the east of Camelford is Row Tor, 1,296 feet high, its sharp spine, broken and projecting in parts, no doubt suggesting the name it popularly bears of the Rough Mountain. On the left is Rame Head, another typical hill, bare and brown, and it is between these two that Dozmare Pool, the reputed scene of the incident with the sword and the magic hand, may be seen dimly glittering. It is a weird legend-haunted spot. The traveller finds himself shut in between the frowning hills and beside a dark tarn of most dismal aspect. It has been supposed that the waters of Dozmare Pool were once tidal, and from this supposition the name is derived, dos meaning a drop, and mari the sea. Instead of being unfathomable, however, the pool is now only a few feet deep, though its black appearance certainly suggests a great depth. This and all other superstitions have probably been suggested by its gloom and desolation, by its situation among the dreariest of hills, and by tragic events for which there is some historic foundation and which occurred in the vicinity. The wraith of the place is one Tregeagle, an unjust and tyrannical man of yore, who in expiation of his many sins is doomed to visit Dozmare Pool, where amid the terrific storms on the hills and moors during winter his piteous howling can be distinctly heard. His punishment is to empty the pool with a limpet shell, and it may be due to his labours that the waters have so considerably diminished in bulk since the time that they were “unfathomable.” But Tregeagle loudly mourns because he considers his task a hopeless one, and then the Evil Power comes in person and pursues him round and round the dismal tarn until at last Tregeagle flies shrieking to the sanctuary at Roche Rocks, fifteen miles distant. This is the tale told of the “middle meer” in which Excalibur was flung and lost to mortal sight for ever.

Such is Camelford; such are some of the traditions which make it alluring to the pilgrim. Leland was convinced that here the “British Hector” was slain, and Stow in his Chronicle affirmed that “after many encounters in which Arthur had always the advantage, the two parties came to a decisive action at Camblan, on the River Camalan, in Cornwall, near the place of Arthur’s birth.” These specific details leave no doubt as to the place meant. But Stow did not believe the last battle occurred in the winter season. He declares that Arthur survived his wounds “a few days,” and died on May 25th, in the year 542, at Glastonbury, to which shrine the pilgrims should last repair. From Camelford in Cornwall, therefore, we pass to the most mysterious region of all, the legendary and haunted Vale of Avalon.

CHAPTER X
OF GLASTONBURY AND THE PASSING OF ARTHUR

“And so they rowed from the land; and Sir Bedivere beheld all the ladies go with him. Then Sir Bedivere cried, Ah my Lord Arthur, what shall become of me now ye go from me, and leave me here alone among mine enemies? Comfort thyself, said the King. For I will go into the vale of Avilon, to heal me of my grievous wound. And if thou never more hear of me, pray for my soul.”—Malory.

 
“Whether the Kinge were there or not,
Hee never knewe, nor ever colde,
For from that sad and direful daye
Hee never more was seene on molde.”
 

Percy Reliques.

 
“O, three times favoured isle, where’s the place that might
Be with thyself compared for glory or delight
Whilst Glastonbury stood?…
Not great Arthur’s tomb, nor holy Joseph’s grave,
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.”
 

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.

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.

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.

A Somerset historian likewise records that in addition to the Holy Thorn there grew in the Abbey churchyard a miraculous walnut tree, which never budded forth before the feast of St. Barnabas, namely, the 11th of June, and “on that day shot forth leaves and flourished like its usual species.” This tree is gone, but another “of the commonplace sort” stands in its place. “It is strange,” we read, “to say how much this tree was sought after by the credulous; and though not an uncommon walnut, Queen Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of the realm, even when the times of monkish superstition had ceased, gave large sums of money for small cuttings from the original.” The walnut tree, however, never vied with the Holy Thorn in popularity. The “Athenian Oracle” (1690) wriggled out of the difficulties attending a belief in the budding of the hawthorn tree with characteristic ingenuity, and supplied an example that most of us would gladly imitate. To an inquirer who asked for information and an opinion, the “Oracle” replied (none too grammatically), “All that Mr. Camden says of it is, that if any one may be believed in matters of this nature, this has been affirmed to him to be true by several credible persons; it was not in Glastonbury itself, but in Wirral Park, hard by it; however, this superstitious tree, true or false, was cut down in the last reforming age, though it seems they did not make such root and branch work with it but that some stumps remained, at least some branches or grafts out of it were saved, and still growing in the same country; though whether they have the same virtue with the former, or that had any more than any other hawthorn, we don’t pretend to determine any more than the forementioned historian.” The belief in the tree and the knowledge of its peculiar properties were so wide-spread that Sedley’s verse on Cornelia, who “bloomed in the winter of her days like Glastonbury Thorn” was easily understood. Bishop Goodman, writing to the Lord General Oliver Cromwell in 1652, said he could “find no naturall cause” either in the soil or other circumstances for the extraordinary character of the tree. “This I know,” said the prelate, “that God first appeared to Moses in a bramble bush; and that Aaron’s rod, being dried and withered, did budde; and these were God’s actions, and His first actions; and, truly, Glastonbury was a place noted for holiness, and the first religious foundation in England, and, in effect, was the first dissolved; and therein, was such a barbarous inhumanity as Egypt never heard the like. It may well be that this White Thorne did then spring up, and began to blossome on Christmas day, to give a testimony to religion, and that it doth flourish in persecution,” and so forth. Infinite meanings and significances could be extracted from the legend, that fantastic casket of man’s art and devising which is made to enshrine the small pure pearl of truth. If this were the place for sermons it might be pointed out that the vitality of the Thorn is an emblem of the vitality of the religion it commemorates; but our duty is to trace its connection with history. The legend has been somewhat altered in form in order to bring it into direct association with the building of the Abbey. This new version of the miracle is that Joseph of Arimathæa was commanded to build a church in honour of the Virgin Mary, but finding that the natives were distrustful of him and his mission he prayed, like Gideon, for a miracle. Forthwith his staff began to shoot forth leaves and blossoms, and the unwithered Thorn took root. Be that as it may, the first Christians built a chapel of twisted alder, in the form of a parallelogram, 60 feet long and 26 feet broad (to come to details), and having “a window at the west end and one at the east; on each side were three windows, and near the western angle was a door each side.” A representation of the first building for Christian worship erected in this country is found on an old document now in the British Museum, and it is said to have been copied from a plate of brass which had been affixed to an adjoining pillar. The chapel is variously referred to in ancient records as “Lignea Basilica,” “Vetusta Ecclesia,” and the “Ealdechirche,” and with its walls of wattles and its roof of rushes it must long have been an object of revered contemplation. Joseph built and preached in “the little lonely church,” “built with wattles from the marsh,” journeying from thence across the plain to the Mendips, where he found other half barbarous Britons to listen to the story of the Redemption. He laid the foundations of a bishopric at Wells, which was afterwards to be the rival of Glastonbury Abbey itself, and to the end of a long and fruitful life continued his ministry to the people.

Chalice Hill revives by its name and associations another reminiscence of our Lord even more amazing. St. Joseph was the bringer to this country of two precious relics—one—

 
“The Cup itself from which our Lord
Drank at the last sad supper with His own,”
 

the other, some of the blood which oozed from the crucified Saviour’s body. The chalice, or sacred cup, was buried by Joseph at the spot where a perpetual spring of water bubbles—the “Blood Spring,” which supplies the Holy Well, scene of many miraculous cures in times past. That the waters are medicinal admits of no doubt; that it issues from the Cup is a matter of faith, especially as the Holy Grail is claimed to be now in safe keeping by more than one far-distant Abbey.³² As for the second relic, it is said that St. Joseph confided the memorial to his nephew Isaac, who sealed up the blood in two vials and secreted them from the invading Roman pagans. When danger menaced him, he hid the phials in an ancient fig-tree, which he then cast into the sea. Carried by the waves to Gaul, the fig-tree was cast up at the spot which now forms Fécamp harbour; and there a few centuries later it was found with the two phials secure. Fearless Duke Richard of Normandy was so impressed by the discovery that he built an Abbey in which fitly to enshrine the Precious Blood, and Fécamp Abbey bears witness alike to his faith and his devotion. It was upon the story of the Grail that chroniclers seized with avidity after Borron had once shown its capabilities—a story now believed by many to be almost wholly of Celtic origin, the Sancgreal being none other than Fionn’s healing cup. Mr. Nutt, to whose exhaustive work on the subject reference has previously been made, has told us of every form, rudimentary and developed, in which the Grail legend has appeared, and of every explanation advanced as to its meaning. Whether the legend is based upon Christian canonical or uncanonical writings, or whether it is an ancient saga into which a Christian element was imported, whether it was extant in any definite form before the time of Robert de Borron, or whether it was a fabrication of the era to which many monkish fables have been traced, are points which to discuss in detail would require, and have had, volumes devoted to them. Within fifty years (1180-1225) there were eight versions of the story in which the idea of the Grail was elaborated, and we know how the idea has been developed and enriched and idealised until our own time. “The vanished Vase of Heaven that held like Christ’s own Heart an Hin of Blood,” has been a marvellously fecund seed of inspiration to romancist and poet. Percival and Galahad are the highest human conceptions of purity, and their quest is the most exalting and ennobling upon which heroes can set forth. Yet, as we have already seen, the conclusion cannot be resisted that the story had its root in paganism, and that the history of the Grail is nothing but the history of the gradual transformation of old Celtic folk-tales into a poem charged with Christian symbolism and mysticism. “This transformation, at first the inevitable outcome of its pre-Christian development, was hastened later by the perception that it was a fitting vehicle for certain moral and spiritual ideas.” Avalon, lying not far from the western sea beyond which tradition said were the happy isles of the blessed dead, was the Cymric equivalent for the Celtic paradise, and thus did Glastonbury become associated with the glorious legends which have made it in the eyes of the romancists the most sacred and wondrous city of earth. So may Glastonbury truly be said to gather round it “all the noblest memories alike of the older and the newer dwellers in the land.” Nor is it surprising that in a place of so much reputation modern marvels should be reported to occur or wonderful discoveries be made. An elixir was found in the ruins of the Abbey in 1586, one grain of which, being dropped upon an ounce and a quarter of mercury, was found to transmute the mercury into an ounce of pure gold. Another grain of it, dropped upon a piece of metal cut out of a warming-pan, turned the metal into silver, and this with the warming-pan was sent to Queen Elizabeth that she might “fit the piece with the place where it was cut out.”