MIGHT ARTHUR REALLY HAVE BEEN BURIED AT BURGH BY SANDS/'AVALON'?

St. Michael's Church, Burgh By Sands

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ABALLAVA (entry from THE PLACE-NAMES OF ROMAN BRITAIN by Rivet and Smith):

Rudge Cup and Amiens patera: ABALLAVA

Inscription, RIB 883, IN C(U)NEUM FRISIONUM ABALLAVENSIUM

Ravenna, 10729 : AVALANA; variant AVALAVA.

Notitia Dignitatum, XL47 :  Prafectus numeri Maurorum Aurelianorum, ABALLABA. 

DERIVATION. The name is from Celtic *aballa-; there is Gaulish avallo = 'poma' in the Vienna Glossary. The modem languages show Welsh afall 'apple-tree', Welsh afal 'apple' and Breton aval, Irish ubhall, abhall. Cognate Germanic words include English apple and others which go back to a common North European base *abl-. Latin nux avellana 'hazel-nut' may involve a borrowing from Celtic, though there was possibly a native Italic representative of the group (see below). Romano-British Aballava can hardly refer to a fruit or to a single distinguished tree, although it might (as with other tree-references in place-names) allude to a sacred tree. A more mundane explanation is that the name is a collective 'orchard ' ; Irish abhall is used in this sense in some parts. The name is paralleled in Gaul : Aballo TP = Aballone AI  l604 > Avallon (Yonne, France), and there are other places called Avalon in France. In Italic lands there was Abella  (Campania), described as malifera 'rich in apples' in the Aeneid VII.740.

The name has the derivational suffix -ava (British *-auà), as in Galava, Manavia, and abroad Genava, etc. ; see Holder I.305. It is now represented by Welsh -au, Breton -aou -ou.

IDENTIFICATION.  The Roman fort at Burgh-by-Sands, Cumberland (NY 3259).

Note. Presumably the Avalon of Arthurian legend has a like origin. The name appears first in Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the equation with Glastonbury was made with the discovery of the pretended tomb of Arthur at the abbey in 1191 : 

Hic iacet sepultus inditus rex Arturius in insula Avalonia. 

This was adopted in Welsh as Ynys Afallon 'Isle of Apples', perhaps a Celtic version of the Greek Hesperides".

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CAMBOGLANNA (entry from THE PLACE-NAMES OF ROMAN BRITAIN by Rivet and Smith)

Rudge Cup : CAMBOGLANS

Amiens patera : CAMBOG[LANI]S

Ravenna 10711 (= R&C 131) : GABAGLANDA 

Ravenna 10736 (=R&C 167)  CAMBROIANNA

ND : In Seeck's edition the entry at XI,44 reads : Tribunus cohortis primae Aeliae Dacorum, AMBOGLANNA

M. W. C. Hassall in Aspects of the ND (Oxford, 1976), 113, supposes a lacuna in an early MS of ND, and restores it as follows : 

XL43a : Tribunus cohortis primae Aeliae Dacorum, [BANNA

XL44 : Tribunus cohortis secundae Tungrorum], CAMBOGLANNA

See further BANNA. The presence of cohors II Tungrorum at Castlesteads is attested on RIB 1981-83 and 1999.

The sources need some elucidation. On the restored form of the Amiens patera, see p. 230. The Rudge Cup and the patera tell us that a locative plural in -is- is being recorded (compare Mais, locative plural of Maia, on the same vessels); in the other texts Camboglanna is therefore a nominative or accusative neuter plural, not a feminine singular. Ravenna's first form has initial G for C, a common scribal error, and has at some stage lost -m-, which was often abbreviated, like -n-, in medieval MSS. Ravenna's second form has not previously been equated with Camboglanna. R&C indeed specifically deny the possibility; they emend the Cambroianna of the text to *Cambolanna, by no means unreasonably, and fmd an etymology for its second element in British *landa, *lanna (see VINDOLANDA), placing this *Cambolanna in S.W. Scotland. However, it should be noted that R&C's emendation leaves the original one letter short, whereas equation with Camboglanna does not; also, duplications in Ravenna are much more common than R&C allowed (see Chapter V). The wide separation of the two names in Ravenna's list is no bar to uniting them; compare the duplication of the name of another Wall-fort, Maio-Maia, again widely separated in the text. The Cosmographer was working here from two maps, whose differing scripts led him to duplicate in differing ways. See also Crawford's earlier study in Antiquity, IX (!935) > where he had other arguments for maintaining the separateness of the two places and for locating *Cambolanna well to the north of the Wall. Finally, ND's omission of the initial C- may be merely a scribal accident or an assimilation to Latin ambo- 'both'.

DERIVATION. For *cambo-, see the previous entry. British *glanno- is now Welsh glann 'bank, shore', found also in British Glanum (if for *Glannum) and Glannoventa. The preésent name is thus 'curved bank' or 'bank at the bend'.

IDENTIFICATION. The Roman fort at Castlesteads, Cumberland (NY 5163), beside the Cam Beck.

Note. Survival of the name for a time may be indicated if the Camelon of Harleian MS 3859, where Arthur fought two of his battles (one placed at A.D. 537), is really for Camlann or Cambglan. See discussion in Antiquity, IX (1935), 289-90, and Modern Philology, XLIII (1945), 56; also LHEB 437. Hassall notes, in support of thé identification with Castlesteads, that the Cambeck, the river at the site, may preserve the first element of the old name.

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Proximity of Camlan and Avalon on Hadrian's Wall

Over the years I written a great deal on Arthur's Avalon.  Is it a pleasant fiction, a nebulous Otherworld paradise?  Or might it have been a real place?

Well, there definitely was an Avalon, and it lies not too many miles to the west of the Camlan where Arthur died.  We are talking, of course, about the Roman fort of Aballava (or Avalana) at Burgh By Sands.  There was a great marsh here (Burgh Marsh), and a Roman period goddess Dea Latis (almost certainly 'Goddess of the Lake').  

Apples in Celtic tradition are emblems of the Otherworld, and a place named Aballava or "Apple Orchard' may have designated an ancient British sacred center.  We need not posit that Arthur was conveyed to an island of goddesses, for it was customary to build early Christian centers atop pagan shrines.  In my mind, therefore, it is not at all difficult to imagine Arthur being conveyed from Camboglanna/Castlesteads to Burgh By Sands.

The only problem for me in this scenario is what his burial at Aballava would mean for the geopolitical state of affairs then prevailing. I've only recently written this piece on what Badon and Camlan might mean for an Arthur who had been born at Ribchester:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/01/a-ribchester-arthur-and-battles-of.html

In my book THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY, I vacillated between the Irthing Valley or Stanwix (the Roman period Uxellodunum, which housed the largest cavalry unit in all of Britain) as Arthur's power center.  If he had ruled from Banna/Birdoswald or Camboglanna/Castlesteads, it would be hard to explain an interment at Burgh By Sands.  In addition, if Moderatus/Modred/Medraut belonged to an emerging Rheged centered in Annandale, accepting Aballava as the final resting place of Arthur becomes increasingly difficult. 

However, regardless of where Arthur's chief court lay, we must remember that although he perished in the conflict at Camlan, so, too, did his opponent.  There may have been a sort of pyrrhic victory. And that may mean that Arthur's territory remained intact and relatively safe from any immediate renewed attack.  If Aballava were within the region his successor controlled, he might still have been buried there.

A NOTE ON ABALLAC SON OF BELI AND ANNA

At the head of some of the Welsh genealogies we find Aballac (or Afallach) son of Beli and Anna.  It is well known that Aballac represents a Welsh attempt at Irish Ablach, a word meaning "abounding in apples" or "having apple trees", and found in the Irish Otherworld island place-name Emhain Ablach.

Given that this is so, I have no problem subscribing to the view that Beli here is a substitute for Irish bile, 'a sacred tree.'

But if this is so, who is Anna?  And why are these three personages set at the head of genealogies for the ancestry of Coel Hen of the North and of Cunedda, who was wrongly said to come from Manau Gododdin at the head of the Firth of Forth?  Manannan mac Lir was associated with Emhain Ablach,  sometimes misidentified with the Isle of Man, and the Welsh Manawydan is placed at North Queensferry/Tribruit in the PA GUR poem.  Queensferry was either in or on the eastern border of Manau Gododdin, where the two extant place-names Slamannan and Clackmannan delineate part of that region's extent.  

Well, I believe the clue to Anna's identity lies in the Welsh tradition which makes Afallach the father of Modron, wife of Urien of Rheged.  As I've demonstrated before, the nucleus of Rheged was Annandale, and it was in Annadale that we find Lochmaben.  Not far to the southeast is the Clochmaben Stone.  Both are named for the god Maponus/Mabon, son of Modron.  

As I read it, Anna is merely a Christian substitute for a goddess akin to the Irish Anu.  As Rivet and Smith make clear in their THE PLACE-NAMES OF ROMAN BRITAIN, the River Annan, found in Classical period sources as Anava, has as its root the same word we find in Anu.  There is a St. Ann's hamlet on the Kinnel Water tributary of the Annan, and a St. Ann's Well at Beaumont in the parish of Burgh By Sands ( = Aballava/Avalana/'Avalon').  The River Annan is across the Solway from the Bowness-on-Solway Roman fort, which is just two forts to the west of Burgh By Sands along Hadrian's Wall.

One of the 'waths' or fords over the Solway led from Burgh By Sands to the Clochmaben Stone:

Courtesy https://solwayshorewalker.wordpress.com/2015/08/22/waths-ford-and-border/

Could it be, therefore, that Aballac/Afallach was actually localized at Burgh By Sands?  Was this the earlier Welsh tradition, before it was supplanted by the false identification of Glastonbury with Avalon?