Tor Be, or Not Tor Be

tor |tôr|

noun
a hill or rocky peak

ORIGIN Old English torr, perhaps of Celtic origin and related to Welsh tor ‘belly’ and Scottish Gaelic tòrr ‘bulging hill.’

Welcome to Glastonbury Tor, place of mystery, enchantment, and legend.  The tower on the hill, solemnly watching over centuries of destruction and turmoil.  The sarcophagus of epic folklore. The treasury of ancient secrets.

Intrigued yet?

It all started, oh, we’ll say 1500 years ago, give or take a century or two. A child with golden locks was born to the ruler of the area.  This child, our lady Guinevere, grew in strength of will and poignancy of beauty to become the beloved of the great King Arthur himself.  Story has it that in his fervent dedication to discovering the Lord’s Cup, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, returned again and again to this gleaming hillside.

Why this hill?, you may ask.  The King was led by a legend of his people: the legend of Joseph of Arimathea. As I’ve explained earlier, Joseph settled in this area after the death and resurrection of his great nephew, Jesus.  Two miracles happened here in this fertile land that surrounded the tin trader.

The first was the planting of his staff which soon grew and blossomed into a thorn tree native to the Middle East, in honor of Jesus’s mocking crown of thorns. We’ll return to this a bit later.  But the second miracle was the burial of the Holy Grail.  Joseph of Arimathea brought the cup used at the Last Supper with him, holding two drops of the blood of Jesus.  He buried it in the belly of the Tor where, for centuries, it lay either undiscovered or forgotten.

Generations later, a well was dug at the base of this hill.  The story sprung back to life as the townspeople saw that the water of Glastonbury Tor ran red, tinged with the blood of Jesus.

King Arthur and his Knights, legend holds, based themselves from this very spot.  So dedicated was he, that the mortality of King Arthur and Lady Guinevere eventually buried them, too, near the source of his lifelong search.

Remember those Benedictine monks I mentioned yesterday? Hundreds of years after the death of King Arthur, the impoverished monks of Glastonbury Abbey dug near the chapel, removing old graves which they could replace (for a price) with the bodies of the newly deceased.  When suddenly…. CLANG. The shovel head hit against something sturdy and metallic.  The skinny monks struggled from the earth a tin casket.  As he opened the lid, one monk later told, he saw a skeleton with flowing blonde hair.  The moment the air kissed the human frame, all within the tin box disintegrated to dust.  The last of Lady Guinevere was gone.

Below this grave was yet another, more heavily embellished casket.  Carved into the outside was the inscription: “Here lies Arthur, King.”  Well, from this moment on, Glastonbury was back on the map.  Pilgrims the world over made their way into the tiny town, all paying their dues to the once great protector of their country.

Many believe these truly were the bones of Arthur.  By all accounts, he was buried at the Isle of Avalon.  And though today Glastonbury sits comfortably amongst the land, geology proves that the water levels around this area before modern day drainage was utilized had Glastonbury Tor cut off from solid ground. Glastonbury. Avalon. Could it be?…

As for the other miracle of Joseph of Arimathea, that of the thorn tree, well, as I wrote you all earlier, the tree still (barely) lives. And a tenacious little guy it is at that! Over the heads of the township, this hilltop thorn tree struggles for life.  Hooligans, ruffians, whatever you’d like to call them, have recently taken a chainsaw to this miraculous tree.  And yet somehow it still carries on.

When we walked up on the deposed stump, all fell eerily silent.  I looked at what remained of this ancient plant, girded by the faithful’s offerings of bright ribbons, and it seemed to be looking off into the distance toward the Tor as if to say, “Ah yes, now I understand.” As if some ancient truth finally settled between the two hilltop vigils.

“Yes, but it’s just a tree after all,” the skeptics say.  Just a tree it may be, but even the skeptics cannot deny the beautiful symbolism of a misplaced tree’s bloom at Christmas and Easter.  The sister tree, housed inside the walls of the Abbey, remains a yearly offerer to the Queen of England.  Every year on Christmas morning, the Queen has a cutting of the Holy Tree in full bloom placed on her breakfast table, a reminder that this land is still steeped in legend.

So there you have it. The two bulging hills of Glastonbury.  One, a striking fortress of obvious strength, the other a displaced and dethroned holy tree.  The watchmen of history stand vigilantly over the scuttle of humanness down below, and therein lies the mystery.

SO GOOD–