CHRIST IN CORNWALL & GLASTONBURY, THE HOLY LAND OF BRITAIN – (1)

By Revd. H. A. Lewis

CHRIST IN CORNWALL? – PART ONE

I. LEGENDS AND HISTORY

A talented authoress has lately published a booklet, in which she sets out to disprove most of the holy legends of Glastonbury and Cornwall, and in particular that of the visit of Our Lord to this land. She has entitled it “Glastonbury,Truth and Fiction.” The title alone shows the prejudiced attitude of the writer and her fellow sceptics. Since when has legend or oral tradition become identified with fiction? Or truth confined to facts attested by documents of unimpeachable reliability? The utmost that the writer has proved is that many of these holy legends have not the documentary support which she and her kind require in order that they should be classified as “truth,” or at any rate be removed from the realm of “fiction.” I wonder in which category the writer would place the following, to mention only three generally accepted traditions:

The martyrdom of most of the Apostles, The episcopacy of St Peter at Rome, The residence of St John at Ephesus. If documentary proof is the only requisite of truth, and all legend is fiction, then surely these, too are fiction.

The view taken by the present writer has always been that legends often, perhaps generally, contain a germ of truth, and that the probable degree of truth can be fairly gauged by such considerations as the source of origin; the localities where the legends had vogue; the likelihood or otherwise of the influence of careless legend mongers; and finally the result of applying to the legends the acid test of history and archaeology.

I claim that the legendary visit of Our Lord to Britain, and to Cornwall in particular, comes through all these tests remarkably unscathed, leaving all reasonable people with the conviction that it may have been, and many of us who have given years of study to the subject, the growing faith that it is probably true.

I shall presently record the various versions of the legend, mostly in the very words in which they were given me by my informants, the majority of whom are simple folk with no pretension to much “book learning.” It will be seen at once that it is almost exclusively associated in Cornwall with the tin trade, in the mining districts and the adjacent ports from which British tin was exported before and during the first century A.D. It is not usually found in parts where monastic influence was most pronounced. Even at Glastonbury the legend perpetuated and embellished by the monks of the middle ages was about Joseph of Arimathea, rather than about Our Lord, as the holy visitor.

You have to go to Priddy by the old lead mines of the Mendips, or to Pilton, the reputed port from which much of the lead was shipped, to hear the local traditions of the visit of Christ or the Christ Child. In Cornwall it is found at such widely separated places as Marazion and Ding Dong in Penwith, St Day and Falmouth in Carnmarth, St Just in Roseland, and Lammana (Looe Island) in Wivelshire.These are all either tin districts or adjacent havens. Only Lammana can claim definite association with any of the big monastic houses:(1) and, what is to me most striking, St Michael’s Mount, while expressly mentioned in the tinners’ version of the legend, did not itself perpetuate it through the monastery, whose claim to pilgrimage was based on supposed apparitions of the Archangel.

It will be seen, too, that this holy legend is given in the simplest of language, without any of the “artistic detail” so dear to legend mongers, but so damaging to the value and credibility of many of their stories. The legend of the Holy Visit itself is not found in the elaborate romances of the Arthurian cycle, though there is indirect support for it in the claim of the greatest knights of the Round Table to descent from Joseph of Arimathea, who is, as we shall see, closely associated with the legend, and who provides an important clue to its credibility.

As regards the test of history and archaeology, I do not propose here to give more than passing reference to the early documents which tend to prove the existence of the legend at the time they were written;(2) but I claim with assurance that there is not one word in the Gospel narrative which in anyway disproves it.The argument from silence leaves me cold. The omission of direct or indirect reference is of little value, in view of the fact that there is, as I imagine, only one alternative legend with regard to the eighteen years of Our Lord’s boyhood and early manhood, viz., that he spent all his time at Nazareth as a carpenter, and there is certainly no more support for this belief in the story of the Evangelists.On the contrary, I consider that the account of his visit to Nazareth during the ministry fits in far better with the possibility of a prolonged absence, for he appears in the Synagogue as at least a comparative stranger. Even if he had made Nazareth his home for all those eighteen years, there would still have been plenty of time for a visit to Britain if the opportunity were there. We shall see that Joseph, the traditional tin merchant and supposed uncle, provides a simple and quite convincing “opportunity.”

It has often been objected that such an adventure would have shown itself in his parables and discourses. If there is little or no reference to travel abroad, there is equally little to carpentry and Nazareth; and, as I pointed out in “The Child Christ at Lammana,” those of us who have lived abroad know that most people are not much interested in hearing about our lives there. Our Lord spoke about the things in which his hearers were interested and which he used to point the moral of his teaching.

It has again been objected that such a voyage as this legend suggests would be impossible for an ordinary Hebrew child or man. I do not know the real grounds of this objection, unless it means that it seems difficult to us. You have only to study the writings of Diodorus Siculus to see how accessible was Western Britain to the merchants, or the Acts and Pauline Epistles to see that travel by land or sea, presented no great difficulties to the Apostle and his friends.

Archaeology is showing us more and more the absurdity of the old idea that the Britons in the time of Christ were wild painted savages. The finds in the Lake villages of Meare and Glastonbury show a remarkable degree of culture and art, and so do the excavations now going on in the old “Castles” of Cornwall. It is more than possible that the Phoenician and Hebrew traders had many friends in these islands of a culture little (if any) inferior to their own(3).

II. THE LEGEND AS TRACED

Some sceptics are quite incorrigible. They would even deny the existence of the legend at all. While anyone who really seeks can find abundant evidence that it was a household tradition at Priddy in the last generation that Christ came there, and while it is certain that there is an age old proverb in parts of the Mendips ”As sure as Our Lord was at Priddy”; yet a dignitary of Wells lately suggested that the “legend of Priddy” was invented quite recently by a schoolmistress, to afford a plot for a children’s play! Miss Hamilton Thompson was bold enough to assert in the booklet already referred to that two references to ancient writings which she could not trace were, in her opinion, “deliberate fabrications.” You will find them traced, analysed, and (at least partially) verified in the Appendices. Truly “there are none so blind as those who won’t see.”

Before I proceed to show that the legend did actually exist in Cornwall, and still survives in parts, I throw out a word of warning to casual searchers. It is no use tackling all and sundry with a bald question “Did you ever hear…?” The probability is that you would get a negative answer in almost every case. The Cornish folk are not fond of talking about their old legends and traditions to us “foreigners.” They are very sensitive to ridicule, and riaicule has, alas, nearly killed the Holy Legend. Once suggest that a tradition is “rubbish,” and no oyster can ever be closer than the Cornish man or woman. For the same reason, the younger generation has not often heard of it, because the parents have feared that their sophisticated children would laugh at them.

In the course of some six years of rather intensive searching, I have gathered the following, which, in all cases of direct information, I give as nearly as I can in the actual words spoken. In no single case has the theme been enlarged on or “dressed up.”

1. St Just in Roseland. My original informant here is the late Rector, the Rev. J. V. Hammond, who has often told me that a number of the older people still say that “Christ came to St Just.” He quoted one man of middle age as saying, “Of course we know Christ came to St Just.” I proceeded to verify this for myself, and in this case found confirmation much easier to obtain than had been the case round Looe. I have had it confirmed by past inhabitants of St Just that it was a common tradition of their childhood that Christ came there. One variant version was that “Joseph of Arimathea and Our Lord came in a boat, and anchored in St Just Creek.” I know a man in Falmouth who, as a boy, used to go frequently to St Just, to visit the farmers in their homes, when acting as a local preacher. He tells me that the older folk often talked about it, and in particular records how as a boy he used to sit with the farmers on the beach below the Church, waiting for the tide to bring barges of manure. He tells how, “as often as not,” the conversation would come round to the Holy Legend, and he says that “it was as much as your life was worth” to express any doubt about Christ coming to St Just. The period of which he is speaking cannot be more than forty years ago. He tells me also of a certain flat stone, with curious but unintelligible markings on it, which they used to point out as “the stone on which Christ stepped” when he landed. I hold no brief at all for this part of the story, but I think I know which stone it is, and where it stands today.

2. Falmouth. This is, of course, a comparatively modern town, and I should not expect to find much material here, but I have procured the following, which I value as highly as any in my collection.

A man of about 75 who used to live near the Strand (the oldest part of Falmouth, by the old village of Smithick) said his father always used to say that “Joseph of Arimathea landed at the Strand, crossed the stream, and went up Smithick hill.” This could hardly have been invented by a modern schoolmistress, as there are few living who even know of the stream which used to flow over the site of the Moor to day.

A dear old lady, but very illiterate, who recently died at the age of over 80, came out with this, when I was talking about the song “Joseph, was a tin man”(4), “Of course, we know Our Saviour preached to the miners. He was very fond of the miners.”

Last, but far from least, a marvellous old saint, who has just found rest from long and painful cancer, said once in the dreamy voice with which she brought out all her bright “gems”: “Folks say that Jesus passed by here, and blessed these parts.”

3. Mining District of St Day, Redruth, etc. A well known Falmothian, who was brought up near Chacewater, says he often heard the old people, when he was a boy, say that “Joseph of Arimathea and the Child Christ worked (sic) at Creeg Brawse.” This is a very ancient tin mine between Chacewater and St Day

Another exceptionally well informed person tells me that at St Day the miners always used to say that Christ came to the mines. I always suspect that this was also the original tradition about Gwennap Pit, but if so it has been obliterated by the recent connection with John Wesley. It may well have been one of the reasons why Wesley chose it as his open air chapel.

The son of a prominent business man in Penryn says that, as a boy, he was somewhere between Cowlands Creek and Come to Good, when a village woman, in the course of conversation, said something like this: “Some people say that Our Lord came to these parts, but I don’t know if it be true or not.” These places are between the ancient tin streaming district of Carnon Downs, and the creeks of the Fal river, from which the tin would be shipped.

Several informants from Redruth have said they had heard something about the legend, and one in particular knew the song “Joseph was a tin man” very well.

4. Marazion and Penwith District. Canon Jennings, in his “Madron, Morvah and Penzance,” refers with confidence to the existence, at any rate in the past, of the tradition that Christ came to Mount’s Bay, and suggests this legend as a possible basis for the name “Penzance” (Holy Headland).

A very prominent Falmouth lady, who lived in her childhood in Penwith, says she was always told that Christ visited Ding Dong mine, which is reputed to be one of the oldest in Cornwall.

5. Looe, Talland, and Polperro. Several informants had memories, albeit sometimes faint, of the Holy Legend. One in particular gave it as follows: “My grandmother often used to say that Joseph of Arimathea and Our Lord landed at Looe Island.”

Another told how her mother would say to her father “You must go and get your hair cut, Or folks will say it is Joseph of Arimathea come back!”

Others said that scoffers of Looe would point to the arms of East Looe, which show a boat, with two figures, and say “There is your Joseph of Arimathea.” While the remark seems to have been made in jest, yet it must have reflected a story actually told and believed by others. The arms in question have no connection at all with the Legend, but that does not affect the implication of the words. One illustration will show the difficulty of collecting material. An old man who had lived all his life at Port Looe (the old Lammana), used to deny stoutly that he had ever heard about the tradition. I persisted, because this was the very land mentioned as the scene of the landing. At last I was able to confront him with evidence that his late wife had often spoken of it. A final question elicited the following, “Oh yes, I’ve ‘eared ‘er talk of it.” Another old man who was born on Looe Island was as close as can be. He would say he never talked of anything he did not believe, or believe anything he did not see, etc., but he talked vaguely of “all kinds of stories.” He remembered an old inscription on stone, now alas, lost. His wife, now nearly a centenarian, who came from Porthallow, spoke mysteriously of a piece of cloth which, they said, “was part of the cloth in which Our Saviour’s body was buried,” and of other “relics” of the sepulchre. These might have been “relics” from the old Chapel of Lammana, and, whether genuine or not, would then reflect an old Arimathean tradition, in line with that of Glastonbury, the parent Community.(5)

At Talland, a late incumbent, according to his sister, often used to talk with conviction of Our Lord having come to Cornwall, and a family who later inhabited the Vicarage said that, in their childhood, they had often head the story.

Polperro seemed to contain few memories of the legend, but one woman said she had always heard that Our Lord came to Cornwall, “and why not?”

6. Elsewhere. In Somerset I have definitely traced the legend at Priddy, in other parts of the Mendips, and at Pilton, where Our Lord and Joseph, are said to have landed in the old harbour. At Glastonbury we saw that it was chiefly concerned with Joseph in popular memory, but the various Appendices show that the holier version undoubtedly existed once. In ancient Gaul, Dr Taylor in his “Coming of the Saints” tells how he has traced the stories of Joseph in Morlaix, Limoges, and the Rhone Valley. Anatole Ie Braz, in “Un Pays des Pardons” records the beautiful and traditional Breton legend, in equally beautiful language, that St Anne was a “duchesse” of “Cornuaille,” and was visited there by Our Lord before her death.(6) Whether the original legend referred to the present Cornuaille in Brittany, or to the old home of the Breton Colonists in our own Cornwall is really immaterial. If Christ could come as far as Brittany, he could quite well have come on here, and these legends of France, along the old tin trade route, form a definite connecting link in a story which is entirely woven round the tin trade.

Since issuing the second edition, I have now traced the story at the following additional places. A Welsh woman told me she had been told by her school teacher that Christ came to Caerleon. The vicar of Glastonbury tells me that Our Lord is said to have walked along the Pilgrims’ Way to Winchester, which was very likely the old tin trade route. A lady has recorded the existence of the tradition of Our Lord landing at Hordle, near Bournemouth. I have myself traced a tradition, albeit faint, that Christ came with Joseph on one of his trading voyages to Merchants’ Point on Tresco in Scilly,which is said to have been so named from the Phoenician traders. Perhaps the most interesting is a statement by Mr.E.V. Duff, Count of the Holy Roman Empire (per the vicar of Glastonbury) that among the Maronite Christians of the Lebanon district of Northern Galilee “there lingers a tradition that Our Lord as a youth came to Britain as a shipwright aboard a trading ship of Tyre, and that he wintered on the shores of the West of England, owing to bad weather.” We note the close proximity of these tribesmen to Tyre, and their probable racial connection with the Phoenicians.

In view of the above, it is not at all surprising to find strong trace of the legend among the traditions of the miners and tin workers. The late Mr. H. Jenner, F.S.A., Chief Bard of Cornwall, and a great authority on all things Cornish, was much impressed by this. He wrote twice at least to the “Western Morning News” about it, and contributed a masterly article about St Joseph of Arimathea to “Pax,” the organ of the Benedictines, in 1916, in which he points out the difficulty of finding an “adequate reason” why Joseph should be singled out in tradition as the Apostle of Britain, “unless it happened to be the literal and actual truth”.(7) He then goes on to tell how a certain “invocation” among tin workers, who say quietly to themselves Joseph was in the “tin trade,” may afford some ground for the legend. He quotes Mr. Bailie Hamilton, through Mr. Hallam (a master at Harrow), as having heard from the foreman of these workers the following explanation of the invocation.

“One of these (traditions of metal workers) is that St Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man of the Gospels, made his money in the tin trade between Phoenicia and Cornwall. We have also a story that he made several voyages to Britain in his own ships, and that on one occasion he brought with him the Child Christ and his Mother as passengers, and landed them; at St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall”

While many have told me that they have heard of this “invocation,” and I have been positively assured by one informant that it is still used by some workers in tin, I should rather doubt whether the modern tinners who use it are aware of all its original import, as given above.

I have already referred to the old song beginning “Joseph was a tin man.” It is known to many, but, unfortunately, I have so far failed to find anyone who can remember the rest. One informant said it went on “and the miners loved him well.” Beyond that it still remains a blank, apart from one woman who was sure it was about “his coming in a ship.”

It will be noted that the tinners’ tradition, as given through Mr.Jenner, includes the Blessed Virgin Mary. Even this is not so impossible as appears at first sight, at least if we feel that there is any basis at all for the Breton tradition given above.(8)

III. THE TIN TRADE WITH BRITAIN

We have abundant evidence that the tin trade with Britain was flourishing long before the Christian era. Posidonius(9) quoted by Diodorus Siculus (v.21, 22, 31), comments on the friendliness and good manners of the people of Daninonia (Devon and Cornwall), because of their intercourse with the traders. Britain was the principal, and, at times, almost the only place where tin was obtainable for the. ancients. The Phoenicians came here for it, and it is practically certain that among the traders would be found Hebrews as well, for this race has always known where and how to find profitable trade. There are names in Cornwall suggestive of Hebrew origin, or at least of a Hebrew tradition, notably Marazion and its counterpart Market Jew street, in Penzance. A considerable part of Cornish folk lore deals with “Jews’ Houses” and the “Knockers,” who were said to be the spirits of Jewish miners. If, as we are told in the Gospels, Joseph of Arimathea was an exceptionally wealthy man, he might well have made his fortune in tin. The fact that the Evangelists, who all mention him, have so little to say about him, surely suggests that he may have been a trader whose visits to his “homeland” were intermittent and short.

Among other things which we learn from Posidonius are details about some of the trading posts round the coast, the way in which the tin was brought there by the natives in ingots, and the route taken by the traders to the Mediterranean. This was over the Channel to Morlaix, or some adjacent port in Brittany, and thence across Gaul to the Rhone estuary at Marseilles and Narbonne. In Britain, he speaks of a certain “Ictis,” a sort of high water island, as a great trading post. He speaks as though this sort of place (an island at high water) was a common feature in the trade, and anyone, or all, of the following suit his description quite well: Looe Island, St Michael’sMount, or the one time “islands” round Glastonbury. Ptolemy and others speak of Voliba as a chief port of Britain, and this has been identified by many with the Fal estuary, which is the chief natural harbour of Britain. It is directly opposite Morlaix, and a rock off the adjacent coast is pointed out as the nearest land to Brittany. The inference that the present Falmouth was the port from which the tin was shipped across the channel is too obvious to need elaboration. It was in Falmouth harbour that the only identifiable ingot of tin of the period was dredged up, and Falmouth and St Just in Roseland are, as we have seen, two of the places where the name of Joseph is mentioned in legend. On the other side of the channel, the tin trade route is traced across Gaul by Limoges and the Rhone Valley. It is at least suggestive that the name of Joseph is found in local tradition at all these places I have mentioned, and, as far as I am aware, nowhere else except in the mining districts of North West Spain. The Rhone Valley legends, while dealing principally with the reputed settlement there of Martha, Mary and Lazarus, mention Joseph as their “companion” in emigration, but distinctly suggest that he moves on elsewhere. Where should that be, except to his eventual legendary home at Glastonbury?

The lead mines near Priddy in the Mendips were certainly in existence before the Romans began to exploit them about 50 A.D., and the need for this metal would account for Joseph’s connection with Glastonbury and the district. If I were to venture to reconstruct a trading voyage of the tin merchants from materials available, I should say that it probably began at Tyre or Joppa, that the merchants disembarked at Narbonne, that they travelled overland from thence to Morlaix, re-embarked for the crossing of the Channel to the Fal, and, after calling at various trading places along the Cornish coast, proceeded to their terminus in the Severn estuary.

In connection with Joseph, we must remember that he was almost certainly a decurion in the Roman Empire. “Nobilis decurio” is St Jerome’s translation in the Vulgate of St Mark’s “honourable counsellor” (A.V.), and I believe he meant what the Latin words mean, not a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, but a member of a provincial Roman Senate. We hear of decurions in charge of mining districts,(10) which is very striking. It is interesting to see how this title has been misunderstood, not only by most modern Biblical commentators, but also by the Arthurian romancers, who, thinking it was a purely military term, call Joseph “that noble soldier of Pilate.” Hence King Arthur and his nearest of kin boast of their reputed ancestor, not as the wealthy trader that he was, but as the founder and paragon of chivalry, and, according to John Hardyng (c. 1450), the original bearer of the “arms of St George”.(11)

IV. THE HOLY VISIT WHEN AND WHY?

When I wrote “The Child Christ at Lammana,” I was going on one aspect of the legend only, that which I traced at Looe, and that which is enshrined in the tinners’ tradition, viz., that our Lord came as a Child with Joseph of Arimathea. It will be noticed, however, that in other versions, notably those at Priddy and St Just, I find no suggestion at all that they are about a child. I am indebted to the Rev. C. C. Dobson (” Did our Lord Visit Britain?”) for the suggestion which I now accept, that Christ first visited our shores as a Child, and that he later sojourned here for a longer or shorter time as a Man.(12) If this sounds too bold and fantastic an idea, I ask you to bear in mind the following points:

A. If, as legend suggests, and as the story of the Entombment surely confirms, Joseph was an uncle or some older relative of the Blessed Virgin, he might well have brought the Holy Child to Britain, and given him his first introduction to Glastonbury and the Lake villages then existing near there. Archaeology, as I have said, pictures the villagers as possessing a high degree of culture, and living a simple, quiet life of fishing and husbandry. The growing Child would naturally fall in with any chance of seeing the greater world all the more if he realised it then as the world he came to save. Later, when he was grown up, he would surely look for a peaceful retreat in which to prepare for his life’s work. Is it so remarkable that he would remember the Vale of Avalon, and find it there? The most cursory study of Josephus and contemporary writers must convince us that, whatever we may think of the suitability or otherwise of Avalon, it could not have been more unsuitable for quiet preparation than Galilee, whose claim to notoriety at that time appears to have been that it was the breeding ground of sedition and lawlessness. With his “uncle’s” frequent trading voyages, there would be no difficulty whatever about transport there and back.

B. His chief friends and acquaintances there would be in the Lake villages, and archaeology distinctly concludes that the one at Glastonbury did not survive till the Roman occupation, and that the one at Meare did not outlive that occupation for long. Small wonder then that such a faint memory should survive of that holy visit. But it did survive more by the mines of Priddy, which continued to be worked without a break for long after the Romans came to Bath. It probably survived also in the deep veneration felt for that building which men may have believed to have been constructed by the very hands of the Carpenter of Nazareth.(13)

C. Some friendly critics have raised the question of language, if Christ were living in a foreign land, but I cannot really see that difficulty. He came from Galilee, where the population was very mixed, and where probably most people had some knowledge of Greek and other languages. And I cannot imagine that he would have found greater difficulty in making friends with folk of another tongue than many people find today, who go and settle in foreign parts, with no preliminary knowledge at all of the language.

V. INDIRECT SUPPORT FOR THE LEGEND

Some indirect support for the legend, which will weigh heavier or lighter, according to the prejudices of the reader, is afforded by the following:

1 Place Names. In Cornwall we have Penzance (“Holy Headland”), Marazion (suggesting Hebrew connection), Jesus Well, opposite Padstow (an unique well dedication, I believe), St Saviour’s Chapel, Polruan (a dedication dating from the 13th century), Essa, at Saltash and Polruan (which might suggest the Holy, Name in Hebrew) and the so called “Aesop’s Bed,” a rock near Talland, which certainly has nothing to do with the fabler, and might, with some probability, be also a corruption of the Hebrew “Yesu.”.(14)

In Somerset, there is Christon, near Cheddar, on the old route from the lead mines of Priddy to Uphill, another reputed port of the old merchants.

2 The Wattle Church, called in Saxon time “the Ealde Chirche.” I have mentioned the reverence in which it was held from the earliest times of which we have any record. William of Malmesbury, by no means a credulous writer(15) speaks of it with reverential awe, and, in describing some curious stones on the floor, says, “If I were to suppose that they concealed a holy secret, I should do no harm to religion”. And he is our only historian of repute who saw the Ealde Chirche before the fire in 1184. He also quotes, with no apparent misgivings, the story of St David’s vision, with its supposed message from our Lord about the old church, “I have dedicated it long ago to my mother.” It is, indeed, hard to find any justification for such language and such reverence, unless we seek for a supposed origin far holier than its building by an early disciple. The dedication to the Blessed Virgin certainly dates back before the Conquest, when, as the present vicar of Glastonbury points out in his “St Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury,” such dedications were probably unknown (6th edition P.43).

3 The Holy Cemetery. This was held in a reverence as great as, if not greater than that accorded to the Wattle Church. I have shown in the Glastonbury Supplement that this may be due to the belief that the Blessed Virgin had been laid to rest here. It is interesting also to note that in the “Nova Legenda” and other medieval stories events are frequently dated from the Assumption, even when the Year of Our Lord is given as well. At the same time, if this supposition be rejected, the reverence in which it was held suggests some holier connection than the burial place of Joseph of Arimathea and subsequent saints. It was, apart from the old Church, the holiest part of the Holy Land of Britain.

4 Folk Lore and Folk Songs. I can see the smile of sceptics, when I include these. But they often contain a germ of truth, and more often reflect old legends and traditions. At Looe I traced a pretty bit of folk lore in connection with the Giant’s Hedge. According to this version, from a centenarian of Looe, “The piskies of Cornwall heard that a little boy and his uncle had landed at Looe Island, and they were so anxious to protect them, that they went to the giants, and got them to build a hedge.” Note the entire absence of names, and yet the obvious reference to our holy legend.

Of songs and so called carols, popular now or once in Cornwall, I mention:

Joseph was a Tinman.

I saw Three Ships.

Jerusalem

The second of these is most obscure, and has been sadly corrupted in later nursery versions. In the oldest form I can trace, the three ships bring, among others, “Joseph and his fair ladye.” Of course, this might mean Joseph of Nazareth, but in view of the fact that the rhyme is about ships, I think it is quite probable that it first referred to the holy legend, and that “his fair ladye” was originally “our fair Ladye”.

Blake’s “Jerusalem” is still a prime favourite, with its haunting and challenging question, never yet answered in the affirmative or negative:

“Did the countenance divine,

Shine forth upon these clouded hills?”(16)

VI. LIGHT FROM ANCIENT DOCUMENTS

Critics of all times have harped on the everlasting theme that the legends “have no documentary support,” at any rate before the 13th century. If by this they mean cast-iron proof, of course they have not – I never expect to find such.

We are dealing with a time which falls within the darkest period of the “dark ages” of history. Take the years A.D.8 to 25. Search the writings of the Evangelists, Josephus, the Roman historians, and Gibbon, and, apart from the defeat of Varus and his legions in Germany in A.D.9, you find next to nothing recorded. Josephus is never so short and uninformative as during this period, when, apparently, he was short of any reliable source of information. Of our old “historians” in Britain, Gildas and Nennius are fragmentary to a degree, and never attempt to show how and when Christianity was first introduced into Britain.The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as its name suggests, deals principally with the Anglo-Saxons, and the compilers were probably woefully ignorant (as St Augustine was) of the early history of Celtic Christianity. Our own Celtic saints are little more than names, around which, as the late Canon Doble showed, reverence has woven beautiful and totally incredible legends. But, as Canon Doble again insisted, they were real men and women, who lived saintly lives in the districts where their names are commemorated. The reason we know so little about them is the same reason why we know so little of Glastonbury and Cornwall in the first centuries of the Christian era. They lie in almost impenetrable darkness.

I have collected and transcribed in the various Appendices all the pertinent ancient documents which, in my opinion, tend to confirm the truth of the Holy Legend. Meanwhile I append the Supplement dealing with the holiest traditions of Glastonbury itself. After that I leave the documents to face the scrutiny of experts and await the final verdict of History on the possibility, likelihood, or truth of the wonderful story I believe in and tell.

TO BE CONTINUED

(1) Lammana was a tiny priory of Glastonbury before the Conquest. For its history see my “Ab Antique.”

(2) See Appendices

(3) On St. Martin’s Scilly, I have recently found much pottery of the Bronze age (c. 1000 B.C), which has decoration of high artistic merit together with an exceptionally beautiful blue bead, which must have been made in Egypt or Phoenicia, and been imported to Scilly by traders from the Mediterranean.

(4) An old song, once wellnown among mining people in Comwall.

(5) In reply to Mr. Painter of Glastonbury and Miss Twycross of Menheniot both of whom would discount the existence of the tradition at Looe, Mrs.A. Jeffrey of the latter place, in a letter wntten to “The Cornish Times” (May 21st, 1948) says “An aged Looe couple kept alive for 70 years the lovely Island story, but were reluctant to speak of it for fear of ridicule.” Mrs.Jeffrey, whom I quoted in my “The Child Christ at Lammana,” told me her grandmother spoke of “The Child Jesus and his uncle landing on Looe Island”. She was undoubtedly one of the aged couple to whom she now refers. I wish sceptics would realise that they are the last people to whom the old folks of Comwall would disclose their treasured memories.

(6) See Appendix 1.

(7) “Pax,” Summer 1916, p.135.

(8) This subject is dealt with fully in the Glastonbury Supplement, Part 2.

(9) Circa 80, B.C. There seems to be divided opinion among experts as to whether Diodorus was quoting from Posidonius in this passage, or whether it was from his own experience. Diodorus wrote shortly before the Christian era.

(10) Dr Davey Biggs’ “Ictus and Avalon” pp. 32 & 41.

(11) “And thus this armes, by Josephes’ creation, Full long afore Sainct George was generate, Were worshipt heir, of mykell elder date.” (Ed’n H Ellis,1812 Cap. 48).

(12) For Our Lord’s supposed residence here. See Glastonbury Supplement Part 1.

(13) The Wattle Church at Glastonbury.

(14) Pronounced locally “Essa’s Bed,” or by obvious corruption, “Ace o’spades.”

(15) At the end of “The Child Christ at Lammana” I expressed the opinion that William of Malmesbury rejected the story of the coming of Joseph to Glastonbury. I now think that the word “rejected” was much too forcible, but he was certainly inclined to be suspicious of legends as a whole. He undoubtedly knew of the tradition and referred to it.

(16) It has been suggested that Blake was simply drawing on his fancy when he wrote these words. How are we then going to explain that in 1773, when he was 16, he did a drawing entitled “Joseph of Arimathea among the rocks of Albion”? I am told that one branch of Blake’s family lived in or near Glastonbury.