Finding Arthur (40 page)

It is far more likely, because it is far more commercial, that Malory
would have preferred to have his Arthur sail off to Avalon to be cured, but he had no choice—he had to introduce the Archbishop and interment in a Christian Chapel, because he had to ensure Christianity was in on the act. Malory’s Bedevere and the Archbishop fasted and prayed, that is, they acted contrary to nature; they denied themselves food when they were hungry and spoke to a supernatural entity, when they could have thought things through and talked things over and decided for themselves what to do. If this had been a real event and if it had involved people of the Old Way, they would probably have arranged a feast and listened to a druid-bard give them something to think about as he sang the praises of the dead Arthur.

The Old Way version of Malory’s fiction, the one that left Arthur wounded but not dead, also had the advantage of a cliffhanger ending, with Arthur being taken away to be healed: would he die, would he survive? The dead Arthur of the Christian version puts the brakes on what until then had been a good-going adventure.

Malory may have had to write what suited the authorities lest they kill him, but he still knew what made a good story and commercial sense, and so, having left Arthur with the women in the barge in
chapter five
and then dead in a Christian crypt in
chapter six
, Malory began
chapter seven
with, “Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead … and men say he will come again. I will not say that it shall be so.”
¹⁰

Malory’s return to the Old Way version is liberally larded with Christian references and disclaimers. I love the extra-cautious words, “Yet some men say.” It is easy to picture Malory saying—
but not me
,
don’t blame me
.

Malory was treading on dangerous ground, indeed; he had put Arthur in the same position as Jesus of Nazareth (and others)—killed but not quite dead and gone, and with the prospect of a return. Just in case someone should doubt that he is on the side of the Christians, Malory concludes, “I will not say that it shall be so.”

It is clear from such passages that Malory was torn between his source material and the stuff he was bound to write because of fear of punishment by the Church. His story becomes a bit of a mess:

Thus of Arthur I find never more written in books that be authorised … nor more of the very certainty of his death heard [sic] I never read, but thus he was led away in a ship … More of the death of … Arthur could I never find, but that ladies brought him to his burials.
¹¹

Malory’s specific reference to “books that be authorised” suggests the possibility that there was more about Arthur and Avalon written in books that were
not
authorized. Some translations change this passage to “books of authority” and so cleverly suggest authoritative books while avoiding any connotation of unauthorized books (heaven forbid).

The awkward “of his death heard I never read” suggests something has gone awry here. The word
heard
hints at the oral tradition. It may be that something relevant to the oral tradition has been deleted. Certainly something fishy has gone on here. It seems clear that Malory was using sources that were not authorized by the Church—it can only have been the Church because no other body had sufficient interest and authority to so frighten him.

That part of Malory that was a commercial writer caused him to favor the most potentially popular version, that is, the version that contained the most Old-Way-of-the-druids material, but human weakness caused him to write only what was authorized, for fear of punishment. Malory ended up writing a cobbled-together mixture of both versions: one that had Arthur taken away by women in a barge and another that had Arthur buried in a Christian chapel.

Circumstances in Arthur Mac Aedan’s Scotland in the sixth century provide a possible historical foundation for both versions. The problem is how to work out which parts in Malory were based on history and which parts were inspired by commercial considerations or required for religious and political reasons. I was fortunate in that, like almost everyone in the twenty-first century, I was well prepared to undertake this exercise because, like almost everyone in the twenty-first century, I have seen an enormous number of films created by cynical audience-pleasers according to the dictates of “the front office,” and so could readily recognize many of the telltale signs that shout out—
pure fiction
!

I decided it was unlikely that Arthur had asked Bedevere to throw his sword away into a lake three times in reality. I knew, however, that water deposition was a common cult-act among the Celts, and so I knew it was possible that someone threw Arthur’s sword into a lake (or, more accurately, given that it turned out all this was happening in Scotland, into a loch).

I came to see that if I stripped away from the story the propaganda, the commercial material, and the magic (the medieval equivalent of special effects) and looked at what was left with reference to history, there was evidence that pointed toward the historical Arthur.

The legendary Arthur was taken to Avalon to be buried, or to wait there until his return when his country needed him again (the legends vary). Avalon is usually thought of as an island, especially as an island in the western sea. According to Malory there was a church there, or was there? Malory’s version is not clear. I was suspicious that his reference to a church was a later accretion, because Christians often added Christian glosses to traditional stories. However, it was possible there was a church on Avalon, even if Avalon was a place of the people of the Old Way at the time of Arthur’s, Arthur Mac Aedan’s, death. In the early 590s Pope Gregory the Great ordered that churches be built on land that was special to people of the Old Way.

Given that Arthur Mac Aedan died around 596, there would have been little time for anyone to obey Gregory’s orders, but, of course, it is quite possible that local churchmen had already acted on their own initiatives. Be that as it may, it is also possible that, even if he was a man of the Old Way, Arthur, Arthur Mac Aedan, ended up under what was then or what later became Christian ground. It is even possible that his burial place was partially of the Old Way and partially Christian: things did not always change overnight.

There had to be a reason, though, why the location of Avalon was so mysterious, why it had to be kept secret. Ideally, Avalon would be a burial place with some especial female tie-in (to explain Malory’s women) and would come with an explanation for the name Avalon, preferably an explanation that had something to do with apples.

All these items of evidence and many more stood to be considered with reference to the islands off the west coast of Britain and Ireland,
but I did not have time to consider any of them, because Iona pushed to the front of the queue and stayed there.

Iona is an island set in the sea off the coast of western Scotland (part of Argyll, Arthur Mac Aedan country). Iona had had a Christian church on it since at least the late 560s, some thirty years before the death of Arthur Mac Aedan. It was a famous burial place of kings and other notables of Argyll. I did not know of any particular female connection, not to begin with.

This evidence did not mean that Iona was necessarily Avalon but it did mean Iona was the first island I looked at when I started to look for Avalon. If Iona was Avalon it would have been impossible for Geoffrey or Malory to have said so without undermining their preferred southern Arthur; Iona is, after all, in the far northwest of Britain. Malory clearly knew more than he said about Avalon, because after writing about it, he went on to say, “Thus of Arthur I find never more written in books that be authorised.”
¹²
The clear implication of this is that there was more written about Arthur’s burial place in books that were not authorized. If this were not so, all Malory need have said was, “Thus of Arthur I find never more written in books”—full stop.

Things are usually unauthorized because they contradict something preferred by the authorities. If Malory had identified Iona as Avalon he would have undermined the authorized books that said Avalon was Glastonbury, this being the party line in Malory’s day. Even if Malory’s sources had read “Avalon is Iona!” in bold ink, there was no way Malory would have said so: there were too many commercial interests at stake.

If Avalon was in the north and not the south of Britain, that fact alone would have explained why the location of Avalon had been brushed out of history. As for the female tie-in, Malory said, “And when [Arthur and Bedevere] were at the water side, even fast by the bank hived a little barge with many fair ladies in it, and among them all was a queen, and all they had black hoods.”
¹³
These women with black hoods take the wounded Arthur away. On the same page Malory upped the ante and made it
three
queens and some other ladies. How many women were there exactly? Malory does not say but Geoffrey does.

Geoffrey says there were nine women in total; he even names
them. Malory fudged the issue because maiden connections, especially nine maiden connections, signified the Old Way of the druids, and Malory didn’t want to get into trouble. These nine-maiden associations have been almost entirely scoured from both history and geography. Relatively few are left, but they include Maiden Island near Oban, forty miles from Iona. If Malory had put nine women in his barge he would have highlighted a dangerously clear link to the Old Way of the druids and this he dared not do.
¹⁴
Geoffrey dared but Malory didn’t. Things had clearly tightened up since Geoffrey’s day.

There is a tradition in the Western Isles of burying people on islands. People who lived in the fortress town of Beregonium and in the surrounding areas of Appin and Lorne were buried on Lismore. There are several small island graveyards in Loch Awe. Over the centuries, however, Iona has become by far the most famous island graveyard of them all.

An inventory dated 1549 lists forty-eight Scottish, eight Norwegian, and four Irish kings said to have been buried there, including Kenneth Mac Alpine around the year 860, Macbeth in 1057, and Malcolm Canmore in 1093. John Smith, the Labour Party leader and a son of Argyll, was buried there in 1994.

There are churches and burial places everywhere though, and so, although Iona met the church and burial place criteria for Avalon, these two facts alone were not weighty enough items of evidence. But these facts did not stand alone.

Arthur Mac Aedan’s great-great grandfather Fergus, his grandfather Gabhran, his great-great grand uncles Lorne and Angus, and other members of his family were buried on Iona, in Oran’s graveyard,
Relig Oran
.

The oldest traditions regarding [Oran’s graveyard] seem to view it as existing in the island before the establishment of this monastery by St. Columba. Thus, our old chronicles, in stating that Kenneth M’Alpin, who died in 860, was buried in Iona, add, “where the three sons of Erc, Fergus, Loarn, and Angus, were buried.” These were the founders of the Dalriadic Colony upwards of sixty years before the arrival of St Columba, and the annals of Ulster add confirmation to it when they tell us that in 784 the relics of the sons of Erc were removed to the royal cemetery of Tailten in Ireland. Fordun also tells us that Gabhran, King of Dalriada, who died in 560, was buried in
Eelic Grain
[
sic
] [Oran’s graveyard], which shows the belief in his day.
¹⁵

Aedan, Arthur’s father, is not included among those buried on Iona. This lends weight to the evidence that says that others members of Arthur’s family
were
buried on Iona, because Aedan and Columba-Crimthann were enemies. Aedan would not have wanted to be buried on Iona. (Aedan was buried in Kilkerran on the southeast tip of Kintyre.)

If Fergus and Gabhran, men of the Old Way both, and other members of Arthur’s family were buried on Iona, then it is possible, if not probable, that Arthur was buried there too, even after the arrival of Columba-Crimthann and despite the fact that Arthur was a man of the Old Way.

In the late sixth century Iona was not as Christian as churchmen like Columba-Crimthann’s hagiographer Adamnan would have us believe. There was a thriving community there before Columba-Crimthann arrived (a little over a generation before the death of Arthur Mac Aedan), and so, unless the druids and all the other people of the Old Way had been killed, expelled, or converted to Christianity, it would be reasonable to expect that some of them would still be on Iona in 596 when Arthur’s body was brought there to be buried.

Druids like Oran
were
killed and women
were
expelled, but that was in the first fanatical flush of Columba-Crimthann’s occupation. When Aedan came to power in 574 he protected the people of the Old Way on Iona (even if only because this diluted the power of Columba-Crimthann).

Even if there were no people of the Old Way on Iona in 596, the Columba-Crimthann Christians would still have been happy to have a man of Arthur’s status buried on their island with his ancestors, because this made political sense.

Malory says that Arthur was taken to Avalon to be healed of his
“grievous wound” and in the next chapter, somewhat confusingly, that Arthur was buried in a chapel “where lay a hermit grovelling on all four [
sic
], there fast by a tomb was new graven.”
¹⁶
If Arthur was taken to Iona-Avalon to be buried, then the two strands of Malory’s story come together neatly, because Iona is an island and there was a church on Iona in Arthur Mac Aedan’s day: Columba-Crimthann’s church. The
Relig Oran
where Gabhran, Arthur’s grandfather, and other members of his family were buried is only a few yards from the Abbey Church of Iona. It is impossible to be “faster by” a church than the
Relig Oran
, the place where Arthur, that is Arthur Mac Aedan, is buried.