A Castle above the Sea(Origin Stories)
It is the day before the day
before three days before today, which is to say, five days ago, which is to
say, time is not real, I don’t think, at least not the way we pretend it is. We
are in Tintagel, and it is Magic.
There is a story about a man
and a woman and a wizard and a baby, and the baby’s sister, who was just old
enough to watch from doorways. It is King Arthur’s origin story, and it’s
complicated. Here on the far west coast of Cornwall is Tintagel, and Tintagel
is the castle where it happened, they say.
This is Tintagel today:
It's pronounced Tin-TAA-jell, like this. This has taken me some getting used to, as I have pronounced it TIN-ta-gell' in my head since I was about 8. But I've come to like it. Tin-TAA-jell.
Once it was a castle. 1600 years
ago or so. Then one day the middle part of it fell into the sea, the stones
fell down, where rooms were was changed to only air, the whole thing became a
dream of a building. A once and future castle. The English Heritage trust is building a
new foot bridge, a wonder of cantilevers, which will have a tiny gap between
the two sides, right in the middle. I think about stepping across that little
gap, and it gives me vertigo.
Which is the point.
The marriage of past and future
happens in midair, with nothing beneath our feet.
The day before all those other
days—it was the fourth morning of our trip--we woke up in Glastonbury and drove
to Tintagel. We hiked down the hill towards the beach, then up the cliffs to
where the bridge will eventually cross. There’s an old church there—Saint
Materiana’s. A mere 900 years old.
Inside is a Roman milestone
bearing the name of Emperor Licinius, who died in 324. And outside is a crocus,
just opening her petals in the early spring sun.
We followed the long winding shale path down towards Merlin’s cave, and the beach. We couldn’t go all the
way down—the construction has closed off the path. This is what it looked like:
This is what it sounded like:
My Mom sat on a bench and drew
a little bird who paid her a visit. She is such a wonderful artist. You should tell her so in the comments. I climbed the old stone steps to stand very
dramatically on the hill facing Merlin’s cave
Merlin was a middle aged
wizard, an old-young man when Arthur was born. A druid, a mystic, a bard, a
savant, a wild man of the woods. Magician, counselor, wise man: the first wizard
of them all, who gave us Prospero, Gandalf, Dumbledore, Schmendrick the
Magician, if you read Peter Beagle, which you should. At Tintagel in the dead
of night, Merlin gathered a baby boy in his arms, and carried him out through
the cave to the sea. Climbed into a little ship and sailed away. To keep the
boy safe, they say.
There won’t be access to the
beach and Merlin’s Cave until the Heritage Trust finishes building the new
bridge. Instead of walking into it myself, I must rely on Laura on TripAdvisor,
who states: “If this cave was Merlin’s he would have made it better.”
To me it felt like a place both
wild and good—which doesn’t equal safe.
Before we left the little town
of Tintagel I bought a wee Cornish piskie in a wee Cornish shop. “Put me in
your pocket or purse for good luck!” said the sign—and who am I to not spend £1.50
on good luck? Then we had Cornish pasties in The Cornish Bakery with Calum:
Calum made me an espresso shot for the road, and had the other half of it himself. I said to him, “You’re a bit of a Merlin, aren’t you? …I mean, you look like what I imagine Merlin might have looked like.”
He grinned. “I used to have a
beard,” he said. “Then I suppose I did.”
He’s a part of a group called
the Warriors of Tintagel,
dedicated to dark age reenactments. They have battles; it looks quite
excellent. When Calum heard why I was there, a wistful look came over him. “We
just had a show, last Monday…If I’d know you were coming we could have done something
today. I wish I’d known.”
Very gentle and earnest, for a
possible wizard.
We said thank you and got in
the car and drove. We were headed into Wales—and if you’ve read my second post,
you know what came of that! But while we were leaving Tintagel, and the sun was
hanging soft and gold in the Western sky, it was spirits we were thinking of,
not ghosts.
The spirit of a king, of a
wizard, of a small girl playing on a tiny beach, of a land, of a story, of a
time.
This is what it looks like, at
Tintagel, if you go:
Melody Bates
Tintagel, Now.
NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon: DISPATCH FROM NELLIEVILLE
AVALON will have its world premiere in August 2019, produced by Opera House Arts and staged in a site specific production at Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies on Deer Isle. All text, photos, and video ©2019 Melody Bates. Learn more and support her work here.
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