Avalon

Etymology

The meaning and origin of the name Avalon have been long debated by Arthurian scholars as well as Celtic and Romance philologists. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudo-chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae ("The History of the Kings of Britain", c. 1136) calls the place Insula Avallonis, meaning the "Isle of Avallon" in Latin. In his later Vita Merlini ("The Life of Merlin", c. 1150), he calls it Insula Pomorum, the "Isle of Fruit Trees" (from Latin pōmus "fruit tree"). Today, the name is generally considered to be from the Welsh afallen "apple tree, fruit tree" (from Proto-Celtic *abalnā, literally "fruit-bearing (thing)"). A Cornish or Breton origin is also possible, deriving from aball or avallen(n).

The tradition of an "apple" island among the ancient Britons may also be related to Irish legends of the otherworld island home of Manannán mac Lir and Lugh, Emain Ablach (also the Old Irish poetic name for Isle of Man), where Ablach means "Having Apple Trees"— from Old Irish aball ("apple tree") — and is similar to the Middle Welsh name Afallach, which was used to replace the name Avalon in medieval Welsh translations of French and Latin Arthurian tales. All are related to the Gaulish root *aballo- "apple tree" (found in the place name Aballo/Aballone) and are derived from Proto-Celtic *abūl "apple", which is related at the Indo-European level to English apple, Russian яблоко (jabloko), Latvian ābele, etc.

In the early 12th century, William of Malmesbury claimed the name of Avalon came from a man called Avalloc, who once lived on this isle with his daughters. Gerald of Wales similarly derived the name of Avalon from its purported former ruler, Avallo. The name is also similar to "Avallus", described by Pliny the Elder in his 1st-century Naturalis Historia as a mysterious island where amber could be found.

Legend

Geoffrey of Monmouth

According to Geoffrey in the Historia, and much subsequent literature which he inspired, King Arthur was taken to Avalon (Avallon) in hope that he could be saved and recover from his mortal wounds following the tragic Battle of Camlann. Geoffrey first mentions Avalon as the place where Arthur's sword Excalibur (Caliburn) was forged.

Geoffrey dealt with the subject in more detail in the Vita Merlini, in which he describes for the first time in Arthurian legend the fairy or fae-like enchantress Morgen (i.e. Morgan) as the chief of nine sisters (including Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe and Thiten) who together rule Avalon. Geoffrey's telling, in the in-story narration by the bard Taliesin to Merlin, indicates a sea voyage was needed to get there. The description of Avalon, which is heavily indebted to the early medieval Spanish scholar Isidore of Seville (having been mostly derived from the section on famous islands in Isidore's work Etymologiae, XIV.6.8 "Fortunatae Insulae"), shows the magical nature of the island:

The Isle of Fruit Trees which men call the Fortunate Isle (Insula Pomorum quae Fortunata uocatur) gets its name from the fact that it produces all things of itself; the fields there have no need of the ploughs of the farmers and all cultivation is lacking except what nature provides. Of its own accord it produces grain and grapes, and apple trees grow in its woods from the close-clipped grass. The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, and people live there a hundred years or more. There nine sisters rule by a pleasing set of laws those who come to them from our country.

In Layamon's Brut version of the Historia, Arthur is taken to Avalon to be healed there through means of magic water by a distinctively Anglo-Saxon version of Morgen: an elf queen of Avalon named Argante. In the Didot-Perceval, Perceval's Grail Quest adventures include him fighting a flock of ravens that turn out to be fairy maidens from Avalon, sisters of the wife of one Urbain of the Black Thorn, in a story likely representing Geoffrey's shapeshifting Morgen and her sisters as inspired by the Welsh Modron (Urbain thus being Modron's husband Urien) and possibly also influenced by the Irish Mórrigan. Geoffrey's Merlin not only never visits Avalon but is not even aware of its existence, until told about it after Arthur's delivery there by Taliesin. This would change to various degrees in the later Arthurian prose romance tradition that expanded on Merlin's association with Arthur, as well on the subject of Avalon itself.

Later medieval literature

In many versions of Arthurian legend, including Thomas Malory's compilation Le Morte d'Arthur, Morgan the Fairy and several other magical queens (numbering either three, four, or "many") arrive after the battle to take the mortally wounded Arthur from the battlefield of Camlann (Salisbury Plain in the romances) to Avalon in a black boat. Besides Morgan, who by this time had already become Arthur's supernatural sibling in the popular romance tradition, they sometimes come with the Lady of the Lake among them. The others may include the Queen of Northgales (North Wales) and the Queen of the Wasteland. In the Vulgate Queste, Morgan tells Arthur of her intention to relocate to Avalon, "where the ladies who know all the magic in the world are" (ou les dames sont qui seiuent tous les enchantemens del monde [sic]), not long before his final battle. Its Welsh version also claims, within its text, to be a translation of old Latin books from Avalon, as does the French Perlesvaus. In Lope Garcia de Salazar's Spanish summary of the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal, Avalon is conflated with (and explicitly named as) the mythological Island of Brasil, said to be located west of Ireland and afterwards forever hidden in mist by Morgan's enchantment.

In some texts, Arthur's fate in Avalon is left untold or uncertain. In the Vera historia de morte Arthuri ("True story of the death of Arthur"), for instance, Arthur is taken by four of his men to Avalon in the land of Gwynedd (north-west Wales), where he is about to die but then mysteriously disappears in a mist amongst sudden great storm. Lanzelet tells of Arthur's son Loholt (Loüt) having left together with his father to Avalon "whence the Bretons still expect both of them evermore." Other times, Arthur's eventual death is explicitly confirmed, as it happens in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur, where the Archbishop of Canterbury later receives the dead king's body from Morgan and buries it at Glastonbury. In the telling from Alliterative Morte Arthure, relatively devoid of supernatural elements, it is not Morgan but the renowned physicians from Salerno who try, and fail, to save Arthur's life in Avalon. Conversely, the Gesta Regum Britanniae, an early rewrite of Geoffrey's Historia, states (in the present tense) that Morgan "keeps his healed body for her very own and they now live together." In a similar narrative, the chronicle Draco Normannicus contains a fictional letter from King Arthur to Henry II of England, claiming Arthur having been healed of his wounds and made immortal by his "deathless (eternal) nymph" sister Morgan in the holy island of Avalon (Avallonis eas insula sacra) through the island's miraculous herbs. This is reminiscent of the British tradition mentioned by Gervase of Tilbury as having Morgan still healing Arthur's wounds opening annually ever since on the Isle of Avalon (Davalim). In the Didot-Perceval, Arthur's sister Morgan is left to tends his mortal wounds in Avalon while the Britons wait for him (as told by him to do) for 40 years before electing another king. The author then adds that some people still hope that Arthur did not die and would return as he had promised, and tells of a legend according to which he has been seen since out hunting in the forests.

Connection to Glastonbury

Though no longer an island, in the 12th century the high conical rock outcrop bulk of Glastonbury Tor in today's South-West England in the town of Glastonbury (situated about 15 miles (25 kilometres) from the sea), had been surrounded by marsh before the draining of fenland in the Somerset Levels. Its earliest name in Welsh was the Isle of Glass, which suggests that the location was at one point seen as an island. At the end of the 12th century, Gerald of Wales wrote in De principis instructione:

What is now known as Glastonbury was, in ancient times, called the Isle of Avalon. It is virtually an island, for it is completely surrounded by marshlands. In Welsh it is called Ynys Afallach, which means the Island of Apples and this fruit once grew in great abundance. After the Battle of Camlann, a noblewoman called Morgan, later the ruler and patroness of these parts as well as being a close blood-relation of King Arthur, carried him off to the island, now known as Glastonbury, so that his wounds could be cared for. Years ago the district had also been called Ynys Gutrin in Welsh, that is the Island of Glass, and from these words the invading Saxons later coined the place-name Glastingebury.

Around 1190, monks at Glastonbury Abbey claimed to have discovered the bones of Arthur and his wife Guinevere. The discovery of the burial is described by chroniclers, notably Gerald, as being just after King Henry II's reign when the new abbot of Glastonbury, Henry de Sully, commissioned a search of the abbey grounds. At a depth of 5 m (16 feet), the monks were said to have discovered an unmarked tomb with a massive treetrunk coffin and, also buried, a lead cross bearing the inscription:

Accounts of the exact inscription vary, with five different versions existing. One popular today, made famous by Malory, claims "Here lies Arthur, the king that was and the king that shall be" (Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus), also known in the now-popular variant "the once and future king" (rex quondam et futurus). The earliest is by Gerald in Liber de Principis instructione c. 1193, who wrote that he viewed the cross in person and traced the lettering. His transcript reads: "Here lies buried the famous Arthurus with Wenneveria his second wife in the isle of Avalon" (Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus cum Wenneveria uxore sua secunda in insula Avallonia). He wrote that in the coffin were two bodies, whom Giraldus refers to as Arthur and "his queen"; the male body's bones were described as gigantic. The account of the burial by the chronicle of Margam Abbey says three bodies were found, the other being that of Mordred; Richard Barber argues that Mordred's name was airbrushed out of the story once his reputation as a traitor was appreciated.

Sicily and other locations

Medieval settings for the location of Avalon ranged far beyond Glastonbury. Besides the mentioned examples of Gwynedd and Brasil, they included paradisal underworld realms equated with the other side of the Earth at the antipodes. Italian romances and folklore explicitly link Morgan's and sometimes Arthur's eternal domain with Mount Etna (Mongibel) in Sicily, and the Strait of Messina, located to the north of Etna and associated with the optical mirage phenomenon of Fata Morgana ("Morgan the Fairy"). Pomponius Mela's ancient Roman description of the island of Île de Sein, off the coast of Brittany, was also notably one of Geoffrey of Monmouth's original inspirations for his Avalon.

In modern times, similar to the search for Arthur's mythical capital Camelot, a variety of sites across Britain, France and elsewhere have been put forward as being the "real Avalon". Such proposed locations include Greenland or other places in or across the Atlantic, the former Roman fort of Aballava (known as Avalana by the sixth century) in Cumbria, Bardsey Island off the coast of Gwynedd, the isle of Île Aval on the coast of Brittany, and Lady's Island in Ireland's Leinster. In the works of William F. Warren, Avalon was compared to Hyperborea along with the Garden of Eden and theorized to be located in the Arctic. Geoffrey Ashe championed an association of Avalon with the town of Avallon in Burgundy, as part of a theory connecting King Arthur to the Romano-British leader Riothamus who was last seen in that area. Robert Graves identified Avalon with the Spanish island of Majorca (Mallorca), while Laurence Gardner suggested the Isle of Arran off the coast of Scotland. Graham Phillips located the purported grave of his "historical Arthur" candidate Owain Ddantgwyn in the "true site of Avalon" on a former island at Baschurch in Shropshire.