CHAPTER 7
THE GRAVE OF ARTHUR
It
is not my purpose in this chapter to deal with what I consider to be the
misidentification of
Glastonbury
with Avalon. Others have presented a detailed case against the fraudulent claim
of
Glastonbury
as the final resting place of King Arthur, and I added some of my own arguments
in my previous book, The Mysteries of Avalon.
Here
I wish to restrict my attention to the only known place in Britain to actually
have born the name Avalon prior to the time of Arthur as well as to this place’s
proximity to both Arthur’s Camlann at Castlesteads and his possible ruling
center towards the west end of Hadrian’s Wall.
Obviously,
the possible location of his grave at
Avalon
is of great interest to anyone seeking to demonstrate the reality of a
historical Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Insula Avallonis’ or ‘Isle of Avalon’
is held by most Arthurian scholars to be a purely mythological designation - no
matter where one chooses to localize it.
From
a philological standpoint, the –on terminal of Avallon or Avalon demands an
original terminal fronted by a broad vowel. Thus there is a problem trying to equate
the word with Welsh afallen, ‘apple tree’, or Cornish avallen. This problem can
be overcome in two ways: 1) by evoking an attested Continental place-name, e.g.
Aballone, modern Avallon, in France or by 2) allowing for the possibility that
the plural form of Welsh afal, afalau, cf. Cornish avalow and Breton avalou, at
some point underwent a fairly common miscopying of u/w as n.
As
it happens, the only known site in all of Roman Britain to bear an ‘Avalon’
name is the Aballava fort at Burgh-By-Sands, 5. miles west of Stanwix on
Hadrian’s Wall. This fort is under
14
miles west of Castlesteads. The name Aballava is found listed in the various
early sources in the following forms:
Aballava
– Rudge Cup and Amiens patera
Aballavensium
– RIB inscription No. 883
Avalana,
Avalava – Ravenna Cosmography
Aballaba
– Notitia Dignitatum
It
is the one spelling in the Ravenna Cosmography that stands out here. The v of Aballava/Avalava
has been rendered as an n, yielding the spelling Avalana. This is exactly the type
of spelling we would need to end up with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latinized
Avallonis.
The
Celtic derivational suffix –ava of Aballava,
British
*-aua, is now found in the –au of Welsh, giving as a meaning for Insula
Avallonis ‘Island
of
the Apple-trees’.
An
Arthur who fell at Camlann/Camboglanna at
Castlesteads
could easily have been carted along the Roman road or brought down the river
system in this region to Burgh-By-Sands.
Camboglanna
is on the Irthing, a tributary of the
Eden
River. The Eden empties into the Solway
Firth
very near Aballava/Avalana.
Two
dedications to a goddess Latis were made at the Birdoswald Roman fort, 7 miles
east of Castlesteads, and at Aballava. The first (RIB 1897) is addressed to DIA
LATI and the second to DEAE
LATI.
Latis comes from a British root similar to Proto-Celtic *lati-, ‘liquid, fluid’,
and Proto-Indo- European *lat-, ‘wet’. Some authorities have seen in her a
goddess of beer (cf. Old Irish laith, ‘ale, liquor’), but here she is
manifestly a goddess of open bodies of fresh water, i.e. she is a literal ‘Lady
of the Lake’. Burgh-By-Sands was, in fact, surrounded by vast marshlands.
Although these lands have long since been drained, the area is still called ‘Burgh
Marsh’. We can be fairly certain, then, that the Avalon fort was on an island
of sorts, the true ‘Insula’ of Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s
apple-tree Otherworld.
Topography
dictated the position of the Aballava fort. There was an important crossing of
the Solway at Burgh and the existence of this crossing may have influenced the
siting of the Roman fort here. The fort sits atop a low hill on the highest
ground at the east end of the village. The church sits within the south-east
corner of the fort and is partly built of Roman stones. The modern road lies on
the line of the Wall. Burgh is one of the least explored and understood of all the
forts on the Wall. Although earlier visitors presumed a fort here, no remains
were visible.
Excavations
north of the church in 1922, when a new burial ground was formed, resulted in
the location of the east wall, 6-7 ft thick, with an earth backing, and the
east gate of the fort, with a road leading out. Within the fort, stone
buildings running north-south were interpreted as barracks-blocks. The Roman
levels and buildings were all badly preserved.
The
sketch plan of the site prepared on the basis of these discoveries suggests a
fort measuring 520 ft north-south by 410 ft east-west, giving an area of nearly
5 acres. Excavations on several occasions between 1978 and 2002 south and east
of the fort has led to the discovery of buildings, presumably of the civil
settlement. The bath-house, south of the fort, was destroyed in making the
canal, itself replaced by the railway line, now also abandoned. Further south,
the tombstone of a Dacian tribesman may indicate the location of the cemetery.
Recent excavations have failed to clarify the location, size and date of the
Wall fort at Burgh. We do know the stone fort lay astride the Wall, but the
Wall ditch was infilled and re-cut before it was constructed. It is possible
that the fort to the south of the Wall at
Moorhouse
was retained for some time before being succeeded by a replacement astride the Wall.
As
stated above, the actual Roman period cemetary at Burgh-By-Sands/Aballava is
said have been to the south of the fort. When I enquired about the tombstone of
the Dacian tribesman found in this cemetery, Tim Padley at the Tullie
House
Museum in Carlisle informed me of the discovery of two other fragments. All
three are listed in the Roman Inscriptions of Britain as follows:
2046
(tombstone)
...
IVL
PII... TINVS CIVES DACVS
2047
(tombstone) D M S
...
2048
(tombstone) VII
Alas,
according to Mr. Padley, the placement of the cemetary to the ‘south of the
fort’ puts it, in his words, ‘near the vallum, possibly destroyed by the canal
and railway.’
The
tombstone fragments were in the care of Tullie House when they disappeared.
While
it is impossible to know whether Arthur was buried in the Roman period cemetary
of the Aballava
fort, this cemetary must remain a primary candidate for the location of his
grave.
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