Avalon

The apples come up out of short grass, in woods nobody planted, on ground no plough has broken. Grain rises the same way, and grapes with it, the whole harvest arriving without a farmer’s hand anywhere in it. That is the first thing Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us about the island, before he says who lives there or why a dying king had to be carried across water to reach it.

He gave it two names. In the *Historia Regum Britanniae*, finished around 1136, it is *insula Avallonis*, the Isle of Avallon, and Arthur is borne there after Camlann so that his wounds might be attended to, the crown passing to Constantine son of Cador. Fourteen years later, in the *Vita Merlini*, Geoffrey slowed down and looked at the place properly: *Insula pomorum quae Fortunata vocatur*, the island of apples which is called the Fortunate Isle, so named because it produces everything for itself. The name sits very close to the Welsh *afal*, apple, and *afallen*, apple tree, which is the reading most people have taken. Sir John Rhys, writing in 1891, preferred to hear in it the name Aballach, a Celtic figure he had to reconstruct rather than find. Both readings run into the same wall. Avalon does not appear anywhere in the surviving record before Geoffrey wrote it down.

Nine women rule the island by a pleasant set of laws, and they rule it as physicians. The first among them is Morgen, who has learned what use every herb in the world can be put to and can therefore cure a sick body when nobody else can. She also knows how to change her shape, and how to cut the air on new wings in the manner of Daedalus, so that when she wants to be in Brest or Chartres or Pavia she simply is. Her sisters are Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe and Thiten, and Thiten is the one famous on the cithara. Geoffrey says Morgen taught them their learning herself.

Picture the ordinary business of the place. Nothing is being harvested, because nothing was sown; the fruit softens where it drops and the smell of it hangs low over the grass. Somewhere under the trees Thiten is working at her strings, and the sound carries because there is no other work being done, no ox, no blade, no voice raised across a field. A visitor arriving from anywhere in Britain in the twelfth century would have found the silence stranger than the magic.

The arrival is told by Taliesin, who narrates it to Merlin. After the battle of Camlann they brought Arthur across, hurt by his wounds, with Barinthus at the helm because Barinthus knew the waters and the stars of the sky. Morgen received them with the honour that was due and had the king laid in her own chamber on a golden couch. Then she uncovered the wound with her own hand and looked at it for a long time. At last she said that health could come back to him, if he stayed with her a long while and was willing to submit to her treatment. So they gave him over, glad of it, and put their sails up, and the wind took them home.

The island had already armed him once. In the *Historia*, Arthur’s sword Caliburn, the Excalibur of every later telling, was forged in Avalon. The place supplies the blade at the start of the reign and the bed at the end of it.

Then, in 1191, the monks of Glastonbury announced that they had found him. Their abbey had burned in 1184 and was being rebuilt at enormous cost, and during the works a grave came to light between two stone pyramids, deep in the earth, the body coffined in a hollow oak. Gerald of Wales wrote the earliest surviving account two years later and a fuller one around 1216. Two thirds of the tomb held a man’s bones, the last third a woman’s. There was a tress of yellow hair still holding its colour and its freshness until a monk grabbed at it, and then it went to dust in his fingers. The man’s shin-bone, set against the tallest person present, reached a good three inches above his knee. One eye-socket measured a palm across. There were ten wounds on the skull or more, every one healed over except a single larger one that had made a great hole. With the bones lay a lead cross, and the cross said that here lay buried the renowned King Arthur, with Guinevere his second wife, in the Isle of Avalon.

The timing is not subtle. A ruined abbey acquired a pilgrimage overnight, and the Welsh, who had been promised that Arthur would come back and lead them, were handed a set of bones instead. It was also not a wild place to put him. Glastonbury then stood in the middle of the Somerset Levels, a hill among reed and standing water and paths that drowned, about as close to an island as dry land gets. The name has been read as the Isle of Glass, which chimes agreeably with older stories of a glass island where dead heroes go, though the word itself has never been pinned down.

What the island offers is plain enough: food without labour, a century of life and more, and a cure for injuries that are otherwise fatal. What it costs is less often noticed. You cannot walk there. You have to be carried, by sea, by someone who can read stars, and Barinthus is the only person in the story who could do it. The healing is not instant either; Morgen’s terms are explicit, and they are long. Whatever Avalon gives, it gives on its own clock, and the clock does not run at the same speed as the one in Britain.

Malory, three centuries later, would rename it Avilion and send Arthur off in a barge with three queens weeping over him, the nine having quietly dwindled. The older version is colder and better. There is a wounded man on a golden couch, a woman studying the wound and telling him it will take time, and a crew rowing out on a fair wind, leaving him to it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Avalon?

Avalon is a legendary island in Arthurian tradition, first named in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s *Historia Regum Britanniae* around 1136 and described at length in his *Vita Merlini* around 1150. Geoffrey calls it the island of apples, the Fortunate Isle, because it grows grain, grapes and fruit with no ploughing and no farmers. Nine sisters skilled in healing rule it, and a person who lives there is said to reach a hundred years or more.

Who rules Avalon?

Nine sisters rule Avalon under what Geoffrey of Monmouth calls a pleasant set of laws. The chief of them is Morgen, the most skilled healer of the nine, who knows the medicinal use of every herb, can change her shape, and can travel through the air. The other eight are Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe and Thiten, the last of them celebrated as a musician on the cithara.

Why was King Arthur taken to Avalon?

Arthur was carried to Avalon after the battle of Camlann so that his mortal wounds could be treated. In the *Vita Merlini*, Taliesin describes the crossing: Barinthus, who knew the sea and the stars, piloted the boat, and Morgen laid Arthur on a golden couch, examined the wound, and said he could recover if he stayed with her a long time and accepted her treatment. The story ends with Arthur left in her care and the crew sailing home.

Is Avalon the same place as Glastonbury?

The identification was made in 1191, when the monks of Glastonbury Abbey announced they had found the grave of Arthur and Guinevere, along with a lead cross naming the Isle of Avalon. Gerald of Wales recorded the discovery within two years. The abbey had burned in 1184 and was being rebuilt, and the find brought both pilgrims and a useful political result, since a buried Arthur could not return to lead the Welsh.

What does the name Avalon mean?

Avalon is usually understood as the Isle of Apples, from the Welsh *afal*, apple, and *afallen*, apple tree, which matches Geoffrey of Monmouth’s own gloss of it as the island of apples. Sir John Rhys argued in 1891 for a different root, connecting it instead to a Celtic figure named Aballach. No source earlier than Geoffrey uses the name at all.

Related Entries

Arthur, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, Taliesin, Fisher King, Green Knight, Branwen, Rhiannon, Gwyn ap Nudd, Arawn, Cŵn Annwn, Manannán mac Lir, Sídhe, Hesperides