AVALON

SCOTLAND?

One of the names of the Underworld; the Land of the Dead ruled by Arawn. It is the Celtic equivalent to the Norse Valhalla; the magical, Otherworldly island to which King Arthur was taken, either to die or to be healed, after his final battle. There are many theories about the location of Camlann, this last battle; it is likeliest to be on the Eden River just north of Dolgellau in North Wales, where Arthur was ambushed and betrayed by Maelgwn of Gwynedd. If he was rescued from the battlefield, the safest route out of enemy territory would be to the west, into the Irish Sea. Some have thought that Bardsey Island off the tip of the Lleyn Peninsula might be Arthur’s final resting-place.

There are several, perhaps separate, traditions of magical Otherworldly associations in and around the Irish Sea. The Isle of Man was the abode of the Irish sea god Manannan, but he was also associated with the supernatural island of Emhain Abhlach, “Emhain of the Apple Trees,” which the old Celtic literature identifies with the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde. The island name Abhlach is very close in form to Avallach, the name of the Lord of the Dead, and Avalon was the realm of Avallach.

There is also a lonely spot along the north coast of the Irish Sea, the Scottish shore, which has a strong claim to be Avalon. The Whithorn peninsula was in earlier times called Ynys Afallach, literally “The Island of the Lord of the Dead.” It was never literally an island, though it was fairly remote from the rest of Scotland. Whithorn itself (Ynys Wydryn) was a monastery that had the unique distinction of being regarded as the holiest place in Britain (or Ireland), “The Shining Place.”

In Christian Celtic Britain in the Dark Ages there were Three Perpetual Choirs: religious houses where services were chanted or sung continuously. One was Cor Emrys, which was at Mynydd-y-Gaer. The second was Llantwit Major. The third and holiest was the Cor of Bangor Wydryn at Ynys Afallach, and this was surely the fittest place to take the dying overking, the most successful British leader of battles.

One strange and Otherworldly aspect of Arthur’s rest in Avalon is the idea of his being in some sort of suspended animation there, somehow not quite dead but capable of being recalled to life. Even stranger is that this idea actually preceded Arthur’s lifetime. Stories of a sleeping Arthur entombed in a cave or on an island were shaped by pre-Arthurian Celtic beliefs. In the first century AD, a Roman official called Demetrius visited Britain and noted one of the few myths of the British ever to be recorded objectively in plain, straight terms. His report was transmitted by the writer Plutarch in his book On the Cessation of Oracles. It told of an exiled god, whom he called Saturn, lying asleep in a cave on an island—a warm place in the general direction of the sunset.

Probably both of the cave stories about Arthur’s end date back to pre-Arthurian beliefs, or those beliefs added a mythic resonance to the actual events of Arthur’s last months. Some of the story of Arthur is history, and some of it is myth (see Religion: Otherworld).