Page:Folklore1919.djvu/675

Rh has completely ousted the apples of Avallach excepting in a very vague and general way. We know the Thorn as the symbol of Urien, and it is significant that the old English poem of Ywain and Gawain should mention the magic tree of Ywain's fountain-challenge as a thorn-tree! Is there not here some close link between Glastonbury Thorn, the Apple of Avallach, and those other trees in the same category cited by Mr. Cook?

Sir John Rhys identified Urien, Brân, and Uther Pendragon as different aspects of the beheaded god, "the half-dead king." Mr. Nutt has shown how the story of the Voyage of Bran became the story of the Voyage of St. Joseph. It is needless to retrace this ground; but some curious local ghost stories found at Glastonbury are worth quoting in this connection. Before doing so, however, it may be well to describe the geographical aspect of the place very briefly. Glastonbury, roughly speaking, consists of a valley surrounded by three hills, rising from a perfectly fiat plain, which is land reclaimed from the sea and from marsh saltings. The chief hill, Glastonbury Tor, is the dominant feature of the landscape in this part of Somerset, and rises some seven hundred feet above sea-level. It is conical in shape, but so strangely formed that it looks quite different from every direction, so that it would be a worthy home for a deity of such shape-shifting powers as either Avallach, Urien-Brân, or the Grail King of the Romances. Its northern spur is called Chalice Hill, and is the traditional hiding-place of the Grail. A long spur to the South West is Weary All Hill, where St. Joseph is said to have planted the Thorn. The ruins of the great Abbey are deep in the hollow of the valley.

At the dissolution of the Abbey, Richard Whiting or Whytyng, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, was hanged, drawn, quartered and beheaded on Tor Hill, in the company of two of his monks, one of them being his Prior, John Thorne. One would naturally suppose that any ghost story connected with these unfortunate people would be localized on the Tor; but no. Vox populi has assigned a definite place of unrest for Abbot Whiting, and it is not here. Up the side of Chalice Hill runs a little lane known as "Dod Lane," which ends abruptly at a five-barred