Glastonbury Folklore | LIVE @ 3 Wishes Fairy Festival

The Three Ravens Podcast

This live recording from the Three Wishes Fairy Festival explores the deep mythological and historical layers of Glastonbury and Somerset. The hosts

Key takeaways

• Glastonbury's name likely derives from 'glass town,' referring to its historic floodplain and reflective waters.
• The Mabinogi contains early Welsh texts, such as Culhwch and Olwen, detailing adventures involving King Arthur.

Main topics

• Glastonbury Mythology
• Celtic Legends

Notable quotes

To enter into the water and fall through the waterline was to ritually die a death.

Conclusion

A rich journey through the layered myths, seasonal cycles, and histori

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:05) The Speaker 2 (0:05) three ravens sat on a tree Down, a down, hey down, a down They were as black as they might be With a down One of them said to his mate Where shall we our breakfast take? With a down, derry, derry, derry down, down Speaker 2 (0:37) Down in yonder green field, Down, a-down, hey, down, a-down, There lies a knight slain under his shield, With a down, his hounds they lie down at his feet, So well do they their master keep, With a down, derry, derry, derry, down, down. Speaker 2 (1:10) They fly so eagerly Down, a-down, hey, down, a-down There is no fowl, dare him come nigh With a down Down there comes a fowl, oh, do As great with young as she might go With a down, darey, darey, darey, down, down Speaker 2 (1:42) He's buried him before the prime Down, a-down, hey, down, a-down She was dead herself every evening time With her darts and every gentleman Such hounds, such hawks, and such slain With her down, derry, derry, derry, down, down Speaker 2 (2:15) With a down, derry, derry, derry, down, down. Speaker 2 (2:27) Welcome to Speaker 3 (2:27) a very special mini pop-up live recording of the Three Ravens podcast here at Three Wishes Fairy Festival. My Speaker 1 (2:36) name's Martin. Speaker 3 (2:37) I'm Eleanor. And Speaker 1 (2:38) welcome to the Three Ravens podcast. If this is the first time that you've heard of us, then welcome especially, but also to all of our listeners around the world. We are speaking to you from a very lovely sunny day here in Somerset. And we're going to start this episode by talking about some of Glastonbury's... folk and fairy lore in particular. Speaker 3 (2:58) Now we are here surrounded by many fairies and fae beings and mythical creatures as far as the eye can see which is only appropriate as this is a very very magical part of the world. It Speaker 1 (3:12) certainly is and this is the 20th annual fairy festival that Karen Kay has organized in this place on this spot and if you haven't heard our interview with Karen then she came on to Local Legends to chat with us all about her career and her new oracle deck. We are here to talk about Glastonbury in particular, starting with the name Glastonbury and where that came from. Speaker 3 (3:34) Yes, so we think that Glastonbury actually came from glass. town Speaker 2 (3:40) and Speaker 3 (3:40) this is not because the town was once built completely of glass which Speaker 2 (3:44) would Speaker 3 (3:45) have been impractical and also pretty impossible and see-through and see-through but that's because the land that Glastonbury is now on was once a historic flood plain yeah Speaker 1 (3:55) so it's covered Speaker 3 (3:56) in water and they think that the reflective surface of the glass gave the name to this glass fortress that was built there. Speaker 1 (4:06) If we go back to the Bronze Age into Iron Age transition, then water lines were of extreme importance to people living in England and in Wales as well. Of course, down in this part of the world, in the southwest, in the West Country, like Wales, we would class this as Celtic Britain. So part of the Brittonic nations. There were six back in the day, as we would kind of classify them now. But when we think about Glastonbury in particular, it probably became most famous because it was one of the sites of the very first church we think it may have been the first church in all of england was founded up on the top of glastonbury tor which i can see just over there and there is only a single tower that remains and there is an interesting story about that tower that we're going to get to in a bit but the importance of the waterline was it was believed that beneath us At all times, well, that was the other world, the land of the fairies. When we think about the word fairy, well, that comes from an original word meaning fate. So it was the land of fate, also the land of death in essence. And the folklore of Glastonbury and its fairies is intrinsically linked to this idea of fate and death and the death of the year especially. And Speaker 3 (5:21) it's difficult for us to picture now, perhaps. but a long time ago and we're talking neolithic period glastonbury looked very different it was actually believed that people lived in houses on stilts to get themselves out of the swampy water and traveled about from place to place in canoes so Quite like a very boggy Venice. Yeah, that's right. Speaker 1 (5:43) But Speaker 3 (5:43) right here in Somerset. And Speaker 1 (5:45) all made out of wood. And so the original church that was built on top of the Torah up there was originally a wooden church. It was only replaced with a stone one during the medieval era. But if we think before Christianity came here, when this was a pagan landscape, this was an incredibly sacred place. And one of the ways that people tried to appeal to fate, appeal to death, and try and bend fate to their will was by offering sacrifices. through the waterline. So a lot of the Bronze Age artefacts that we have in this country, if you think about Anglesey up in Wales or even all along the Thames, then it was standard practice for people to, if not sacrifice whole bodies into water, then they would also bend and break things like swords and pins. So Speaker 3 (6:29) to enter into the water and fall through the waterline was to ritually die a death. And in order for something to do that, if you wanted to sacrifice a bronze pin, you might bend it before you threw it in, thus killing the pin and allowing it to pass into the other world as an offering. Speaker 1 (6:46) And so when we think about the gods of the other world and the pagan superstructure of gods, then we had a god of chaos or a god of the ocean. And the two things were kind of considered to be the same thing. He goes by various names. He was called... Nodens was one of his most famous names as chronicled by the Romans because of course we're talking about a pre-literate culture here. In Wales he was known as Nudd and then he also became known as Ludd and Ludd is if you ask Geoffrey of Monmouth the mythical founder of London. That's one story from Geoffrey of Monmouth anyway. Speaker 3 (7:26) And we know that that gods were appealed to and worshipped on this very special site for a very long time. Even before the first church was built up on the Tor, there is evidence that there was a very important site there, perhaps a chieftain's hall. That's right. Where artefacts have been discovered, which suggests someone important was living and working and trading there. Yes, including... Speaker 1 (7:53) artifacts that came from the Byzantine Empire. So people trading right through into the Russian steppe for amber, but we've got pottery fragments, we've got old currency. And when we think about the legends of King Arthur, well, Arthur is intrinsically associated with Glastonbury and people who went to visit the old abbey there, the ruins thereof, they will find two grave sites, one for King Arthur and one for Guinevere. And that's also some interesting folklore that we'll get to in a minute. But when we think about this being a wealthy place, we know that people were coming here to religiously worship for hundreds and hundreds of years before writing came, before the Romans came. And belief about that particular hill over there is that it was an entryway into the other world. And I was talking about Nodon's Nod earlier. Well, his son is called Gwyn Ap. and we first learn about legends to do with Gwyn Ap Nudd through the Mabinogi which is the earliest collection of British stories that have ever been discovered. Speaker 3 (8:59) Yes, so the four branches of the Mabinogi are texts in middle Welsh so very very early Welsh surviving texts that we have they're of slightly different ages but the earliest one has been dated to somewhere in the middle of the 11th century so it's a super old piece of writing that one's called Cilwch and Olwen that's Speaker 2 (9:22) the Speaker 3 (9:23) first of the texts that they've discovered and in Cilwch and Olwen it's a great adventure story about King Arthur and his merry friends going on a wild goose chase to find... Well, a boar chase to be specific. Well, a wild boar chase to find a magical boar so they can get a comb to cut a giant's hair so he can go to his daughter's wedding looking lovely. It's a whole saga. But in that text, there is a reference to Gwynapneth, this son of Nodend or Neth, engaging in a battle with Gwydir, who is his opposite. And we see examples of the Gwyn versus Gwydir battle across all sorts of stories. People have referred to them as being parallel to Jesus and John the Baptist. Yes. Or Gawain and the Green Knight. It's essentially these two opposing solar forces, one representing summer, one representing winter, who battle it out for the year. and one of them is always going to lose. Speaker 1 (10:26) And so if you ask Robert Graves, then they represent the Oak King and the Holly King, which are very popular pagan idea that have taken a deep route across the 20th century into the 21st century. But nonetheless, the idea is that King Arthur was fed up with the chaos of these two forces fighting one another, one representing the sun and spring and one representing wintertime. And so Gwyn Apnuth was the winter king. And it said that if he ever won these battles, then we would have very cold years. Unlike this year. I Speaker 3 (10:59) don't think he won this year. No, absolutely not. Speaker 1 (11:02) But King Arthur, to stop this chaotic fighting happening year on year, he said, no, you're going to fight one day every single year, and that will be May Day. So on May Day, they have this big old scrap and whoever wins rules the rest of the year. And normally it's the solar deity who is also remembered as Bedivere in lot of later medieval chronicles he of the silver hand and the idea is that in fighting he lost his arm and it was replaced with moonlight so we have this idea of this kind of sky god or a son of a sky god but Speaker 3 (11:36) it's not just a battle over personal differences is it it's a kind of love triangle as well Speaker 1 (11:41) absolutely so if we go back to records of the earliest kings and we follow them through and follow them through from the same starting place from Nodens from Nuth from Lod well one of his descendants was a very very beautiful woman who is basically our version of Persephone or proserpine he might be familiar with from Greek and Roman mythology she was seduced or kidnapped sometimes called a rape but basically a harvesting of proserpine by hades or pluto who took her down into the underworld and so in the greco-roman model of mythology every spring when she returns to the surface of the world well her return inspires her mother who is a fertility goddess to bring plants and flowers and crops into our world well kerry ladd who is this English or British and Welsh equivalent, she also a child of this same god this god of oceans god of chaos she's said to be one of the if not the greatest beauty that these islands have ever seen and these two deities one who's her relation potentially even her brother in Speaker 3 (12:56) some tellings yeah slightly suspect that's Speaker 1 (12:58) right but he is trying to claim her for himself as is this solar deity and so they fight over her year on year and so how the seasons then behave in this country is similarly dictated by what's happened in this duel that happens on may day every single year. And Speaker 2 (13:14) she Speaker 3 (13:14) is remembered in the figure of the May Queen who you can still see at some rural May Day celebrations or Beltane celebrations today. You'll often see someone being crowned each year as the May Queen and that's after this figure. Yeah Speaker 1 (13:32) that's right and so the association between this story and Glastonbury is slightly earlier. It comes from the 7th century life of St. some colons, another one of those kind of British obscure saints that very few people have heard of. We don't really bother with saints days and old British saints anymore. He did Speaker 3 (13:50) have a day though and we could celebrate him. Speaker 1 (13:52) But they were all kind of superhero type characters and we just get this connection between King Arthur and his court and Avalon and Glastonbury here. And you can imagine this holy landscape from before a time when Christianity came. We know there was this significant and powerful ruler trading through into all different parts of Europe right into the Ural mountains in Rome. Russia, so a really powerful individual. Whether he was actually called Arthur or Arturius or any of these kinds of names we have for him now, they were all kind of applied to this figure during the medieval era. But nonetheless, it was really, really early evidence of some kind of powerful ruler and potentially king of all Britons living on that hill over there, which made it an incredibly powerful place. for the church to come and co-opt when Christianity arrived here. And Speaker 3 (14:42) it links into the wider idea of this being a place to come and trade. We know that Stonehenge, not too far away, was also a big centre for trade, particularly the tin trade, which was mined in Cornwall and came up to be traded, with people coming from all over the place to swap and barter for good tin. And Speaker 1 (15:01) the reason that people wanted tin so much is, firstly, it's super rare to find in the ground tin and corn. was abundant and rich with tin and copper but if you blend copper with tin you get bronze which is a much more sustainable and hard wearing metal that can be used to make shields and swords and all kinds of tools including the very sharp little points that people in this country used to use to tattoo themselves with all kinds of fantastic and intricate designs we have a concept that tattooing is somehow a modern tradition but actually it's truly ancient it's been happening in this country for as long as we really have records of people living here in terms of tin traders one other very famous one associated with glastonbury is joseph of arimathea yes Speaker 3 (15:48) you might not necessarily think tin trader joseph of arimathea yeah wait isn't he jesus's uncle in the stories He is! Yes, Speaker 1 (15:57) so it's said that after the crucifixion of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea came here as a tin trader, bringing with him this staff, this kind of holy staff, because he himself was like a super-powered saint, and that when he reached the bottom of Glastonbury Tor, he then struck the ground there and opened up a holy spring. Now, his staff transformed into a tree as well. The holy thorn. That is the holy thorn, which famously throughout history has bloomed in winter. So on midwinter day, the Glastonbury thorn is supposed to bloom. And that's obviously a really unnatural thing for trees to do. We expect them to bloom in the summertime, going back to those myths about, you know, solar deities and winter kings and all that kind of jazz. Speaker 3 (16:42) There's something in the water. Yeah. Speaker 1 (16:44) Which would make sense Speaker 3 (16:45) as he's just planted his tree. right on top of Fairyland. And Speaker 1 (16:49) this was believed to be a mythical set of wellsprings for a very, very, very long time. Only in the 20th century, they were uncovered by a revival mystery cult run by an absolutely incredible woman. We've done a whole episode about her life and the things that she did, but her name was Dionne Fortune. And Dionne Fortune and her mystery cult, who are based here at Glastonbury, they uncovered... two wells one symbolically male one symbolically female associated Speaker 3 (17:20) with the colors red and white that's Speaker 1 (17:23) right and so if you go to visit the chalice well today well that is that well allegedly rediscovered by dion fortune in her mystery cult and they were active really in the 1930s so that is you know quite late on when we're talking about folklore and folk history but Speaker 3 (17:38) glastonbury also has a slightly dark and traumatic past because it was a victim of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII which was an absolutely awful act of iconoclasm which destroyed loads of books and art and music because they were all contained in libraries within monasteries and abbeys but the abbot of Glastonbury was not having it was he? No Speaker 1 (18:05) he refused to surrender to the king's men when they came to dissolve Glastonbury Abbey as a response they broke in dragged him outside and hanged drew and courted him which is an incredibly violent death and Speaker 3 (18:19) a very extreme response absolutely Speaker 1 (18:20) and then on top of the tour there used to be St Michael's Church which was a very large complex of stone and people used to live up there as well as down in the abbey and so around the tower that's still there there used to be a much much larger building but the king Henry VIII decided that should be entirely dismantled leaving only the solitary Tor standing there as a reminder of the power of the crown to the people who live around here. And by that time the monks had drained the Somerset levels because for a very long time it was a flood plain. And if you're looking for a place to farm in Great Britain there are few better places than the Somerset levels. My family are Somerset based. We've been farming on this land for over 600 years and... by virtue of us surviving, that would suggest that, yeah, it's pretty good going farming around here. Speaker 3 (19:14) Yeah, Speaker 1 (19:14) it's