Avalon Fading

One of the greatest struggles in this project so far has been trying to separate European fairy belief into its composite parts. In theory, I am discussing Early Modern British lore, but most legends overlap between countries, and most were becoming outdated by the Early Modern period. So far I have been struggling to pin down a strictly British theme, ignoring the obvious just in front of me: the Arthurian legend. I had forgotten, caught up in the complicated metaphor, that The Faerie Queene was structured around tales of King Arthur.

Although I spent a full semester last year studying Arthurian legends, the fairy connection did not come to me quickly for, I think, the same reasons I mentioned in my first frustrating attempts to find pre-Victorian pictures of fairies. Compared to our modern ideas, the fairies of Arthurian legend do not seem much like fairies at all. In Ashliman's Fairy Lore, however, the author lists Avalon as among the most popular depictions of fairyland, or faerie. While Arthurian fairies (i.e. Morgan le Fay) are vaguely sinister in their most favorable portrayals, the fairyland itself is more reminiscent of Eden than anything else. It is the Paradise in which Arthur will linger as he waits to rise again.

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote The Life of Merlin in the late middle ages, Avalon, or the Island of Apples, produces all things of its own accord. None there labor for their livelihood, and those dwelling there live one hundred years or more (Ashliman 15-16). The location of Avalon changes from one source to the next. In the modern novel The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Avalon is akin to a parallel universe juxtaposed with our own and fading gradually into complete separation. I like this idea, as it captures the discomfort in and desperation for a closeness with supernatural realms. Since 1191, the physical site of Glastonbury Tor in Somerset, England, has also been associated with Avalon. In that year, Benedictine Monks from the nearby Abbey of St. Mary discovered what was said to be the grave of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. Many believed that the Tor, once almost entirely surrounded by water, could have been the enchanted island. It continues to be popularly linked with paranormal phenomena.


In fact, many traditional accounts place fairyland beneath the ground, including in grave mounds and natural hills (17). This emphasizes yet again the closeness of these particular supernatural creatures to common humanity. Some lore even plays upon the idea that we are competing with the fairies for space, a perhaps influential concept in the consensus that there are less fairies now than there once were. Fairies cannot coexist indefinitely with the Church, with reason, with the modern world. And so Avalon fades.

(Picture courtesy of http://photos.igougo.com/images/p361833-Glastonbury-Glastonbury_Tor.jpg.)