AVALON Blog Post 7: GLASTONBURY TOR

Some places are holy places.

On Wednesday—it might have been Wednesday--we drove west from Stonehenge, following the sun. Mystics say there are ley lines--spiritual energetic paths marked by sacred sites—that run through Stonehenge and Glastonbury. One of these is called St. Michael’s Line, which runs through Skellig Michael in Ireland, Mont St-Michel in France, all the way to Mount Carmel in Israel. Glastonbury Tor is on this line, which follows the path of the sunrise on May 8^th—close to Beltane, the ancient festival day that many cultures still celebrate as May Day.

We arrived in Glastonbury and pulled into a car park on Silver Lane. The sun was on its way to setting as we walked towards the Tor. Past the Chalice Well, where they say Joseph of Arimathea dipped the Holy Grail into a stream, past the holy thorn, where they say Joseph of Arimathea struck his staff into the ground, and it grew into the Holy Thorn, a blessed bush that flowers twice a year, at Christmas and Easter. We went through an old wooden gate and stepped onto the Tor.

Some places are holy places.

Glastonbury Tor was once called Ynis Witryn, the Isle of Glass, in an older tongue. Today the tower of the ancient church of Saint Michael stands at the top of the Tor. That church was built in 1323, but was quarried for stone in the 1500s, leaving only the tower. Before that, another Christian church was built atop the Tor in the 10^th or 11^th century—but that one was destroyed in an earthquake in 1275. Excavations in the past suggest there was a Celtic monastery on the Tor sometime in the 600s or 700s.

And before that? Archaeological exploration in the 1960s found artifacts suggesting a pre-monastery Roman temple, and prehistoric flint artifacts from the Mesolithic era (9600-6000 BCE) suggesting something even earlier. The human-built earthwork terraces that shape the Tor date to the Neolithic, around 5000 BCE, the same time that Stonehenge was built.

What was here, before the Roman armies brought Christianity to Britain? What might it have been? Who first stood in that place and felt it to be sacred? 

Some places are holy places.

According to earth scientists, in the 500s the floodplain around the tor was a lake, and the tor at its center an island. It is certain that this place has been deemed holy for a millennium and more. Some speculate that when it was an island, it was the Isle of Avalon.

My Mom and I stepped onto Glastonbury Tor at twilight. Fairy time, the time that the Scots call the gloaming. In a world that often insists we see things as this or that, good or evil, black or white, friend or foe—it is good to be reminded that Nature plays by other rules. In the gloaming, light and dark mingle in the air--the mingling is its defining quality. At twilight everything has a quality of in-between-ness. We climbed the Tor at twilight.

It’s a climb! It is a steep, aerobic hike of 521 feet above the surrounding plain. My Mom stopped two thirds of the way up, to sit on an old stone bench and look out over the wee glittering town below. I kept going all the way to the top.

It is a very powerful place, is Glastonbury Tor. Is it Avalon? I don’t know. Maybe! Does it matter? Maybe! Is it holy? Yes.

Why would a new religion build its churches on top of someone else’s holy places? There are many reasons, but one is surely: it's effective. If you and everyone you know and all of their fathers and grandmothers and great great aunties as far back as anyone can remember have known a place to be holy…and now there’s a new building there, with new guardians, and they say, this was how it always was, you just misunderstood it before…well, if it is a holy place, and it is your holy place, chances are you’ll keep going there, even after the building changes. And if the new guardians make new rules, over time, you might just accept them. And you might even forget that there were ever other rules.

This is how it is:

And this:

There is a scene in my play AVALON that repeats three times, at beginning, middle, and end. It's the first thing I wrote, before I knew much about what the play would be, and it fell into my head almost fully formed. Because the scene is repeated, it becomes something more than just the words the characters are saying. It becomes something, maybe, like a prayer. Sitting at the top of Glastonbury Tor, that scene came into my mind.

[SCENE: A young woman with a bowl of peaches. Warm from the sun, she peels and slices them and puts the pieces in her mouth. The juice runs down her hands, arms, down her neck so she is sweet and sticky in the sun.  A man watches from the edge of the clearing, behind a giant tree, just so. He is strange and powerful, full of thoughts, comely and distant.

 He comes closer. He is a wizard.

She sees him.]

YOUNG WOMAN

Would you like a peach?

WIZARD

I know what it will cost me.

YOUNG WOMAN

Only the energy to take it from my hand and put it in your mouth

WIZARD

Only the energy to slip the moon from the night sky and put it in your pocket

YOUNG WOMAN

I don’t know what that means. This is only a peach.

WIZARD

Ah, no.

YOUNG WOMAN

It is.

WIZARD

Nothing is ever only a peach.

YOUNG WOMAN : [laughs. Eats a slice of peach.]

WIZARD:  [watches her do this]

YOUNG WOMAN

Well, if it seems to you too costly, I will do it for you.

[She stands, a slice of peach dripping in her delicate fingers. She crosses to him, extends the peach towards his lips. His lips part, so slightly. She pulls the peach back, struck by a new thought]

YOUNG WOMAN

What will it cost me, if I feed you?

The peaches are in the scene because of a typo. The day I started writing AVALON, I wrote myself a first-day poem, a kind of pep talk about what the play would be. As I was writing, I glanced back and saw that in a line where I meant to type “peace” I had typed “peach.” I changed it to peace, but kept going:

The Bard plucks music from the air

The lovers twine and seek and struggle, and find those fair rare moments—here, in, Ca-mel-lot—in which all the world is suspended in a summer dazzle of sunshine, peace, fairness, kindness, happiness

Peaches and apples,

The glamor of the moon

The dazzle of the sun

The moment I saw the word peach, I had a vision of the scene that starts the play. Avalon means Isle of Apples, but there can be peaches too.

[Images: Glastonbury Tor, sun side and night side]

In the Tower and on the Tor, I took photos. A young woman and her mother offered to take some for me. The few folks there shared an interior smile, a feeling of good will, of communion and solitude at once. It's a witchy place, in the best way. I sat in the tower, walked around it, stood in the wind. The horizon glowed in colors that would have seemed impossible, had I not been seeing them with my own eyes.

 [Witchy vibes inside the Tower, and Twilight through the doorway]

I stayed at the top of the Tor while the last stragglers and their dogs wandered gently down. It is a place of power, as my Dad would have called it. I sat in the doorway, quietly opening my own doors to the open doors of the place. The first stars diamonded into the deepening blue of the sky, stark and joyful. I was still sitting there when I saw a man come over the last rise of the hill below me. As I saw him I had an immediate sense that it was time to go. Mom was waiting down the hill and it was dark, almost.

I pulled on my coat and walked out of the tower, heading for the steps. As I started down them, the man I had seen was just getting to the top. With an Irish lilt he asked, “Are you from Portland?”

“I am!” I said, running through my head why a stranger at the top of Glastonbury Tor might guess such a thing…and coming up with an answer. “Did you see my Mom down the hill?”

“I did,” he said. “She’s a wonderful lady.”

“I know!” I said. He paused, debating something with himself, then said, “I like…your energy. I don’t, usually talk to folks like this.”

“I don't either," I said, then continued. "I’m Melody. It’s good to meet you.”

“I’m Ricochet” he said. “Ricochet?” I repeated, not sure I’d gotten it right, but also thinking, that’s quite a name! “Rick O’Shea,” he said again, and I heard it properly that time. Later, when my Mom and I compared notes, we realized we had both had the exact same train of thought about his name. She had talked to him for some time, and learned that he has traveled to sacred places across the globe—Mount Shasta, Taos, many more. A traveler, a pilgrim, a seer.

Back on the Tor, Rick O’Shea asked me, “So, what brings you here?”

I debated with myself—it’s a lot, the writing of this play, the quest of it, the pilgrimage of this trip, the holy sense of going into the roots of our human tree, in search of a true story there…what is the level of explanation this new friend will want to hear?

“I’m writing a play called Avalon,” I said. “It rises out of the stories of Arthur, Morgan LeFay, Merlin, and their companions...My Mom and I are making a sort of pilgrimage to places connected with the legends.”

He nodded. We were silent for a moment, a couple of kindred spirits having a chance meeting at twilight in a holy place, if you believe in chance.

“Do you, do email?” he asked, and since I do we exchanged emails, there on the Tor—it’s the 21^st century, and the gods surely smile on the kind of tech that connects people who’d otherwise go their separate ways—I think the gods must like that.

I said I should be heading back down to my mother, adding, “I think you have the Tor to yourself.” Rick O’Shea smiled and said, “She’s a wonderful woman. She was sitting there on the stone and we had a good chat.” I laughed and said it had been such a treat to meet him, and that I’d write to him. “Come see the play!” I said.

“Maybe!” he said. Another pause.

“Well. Good night. Enjoy…this wonderful place,” I said.

“I will,” he said. After another pause, he added,
“Good luck with your…prayer.”

In the stillness, I thought, that’s what this play is. A prayer.

“Thank you,” I said, and went down the hill.

Some places are holy places.

[Images: There and back again]

NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon:  FOR OUR MOTHERS

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 and photos ©2019 Melody Bates. Learn more and support her work here.

AVALON Blog Post 6: Driving the Snakes out of Ireland

All the Snakes of Ireland

A Song for Saint Patrick’s Day

I always loved St. Patrick’s Day. Growing up, I felt a strong bond with the Irish part of my heritage. I loved the poetry, the music, the dancing, the fairy lore, the family stories, the bright life force that ran through my idea of what it was to be Irish. I wore green, ate soda bread, played jigs on my fiddle and danced a fair seven steps. Erin go bragh! It’s a bit funny though—it was St. Patrick’s day, but I didn't know much about him.

 

[Images: St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, The horned fertility god Cernunnos with snake on the Gundestrup Cauldron-1^st Century BCE, and Minoan Snake Goddess-1700-1450 c. BCE]

They tell a story about Saint Patrick: while fasting on a mountaintop in Ireland, he was attacked by snakes. He rang his bell, Finn Foya, whose name means “sweet voice,” and all the snakes in Ireland fled into the sea, leaving the island forever. Thus St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, and to this day, Ireland has no snakes.

Scientists tell another story, which is that Ireland never had snakes. Ice Age and surrounding seas kept them from reaching fair Erin. So whence the legend of Patrick and the snakes and the bell?

Cultural anthropologists suggest a third version of the story: that the “snakes” of Ireland could be a symbolic reference to pagan Druids, and the indigenous spiritual traditions that Christianity branded as heathen and idolatrous. That these were “driven out” as Patrick and other missionaries sounded the bell of Christianity, and the new religion took hold.

 

 

[Images: the Pictish Aberlemno Serpent Stone- 

c. 600 CE, and the modern flag of Wales]

So are the snakes in St. Patrick’s story a symbolic stand-in for Druids? Let’s consult some professional smart folk.

Historian Natalia Klemczak tells us that the Druids were the “ancient religious leaders, scientists and researchers of the Celtic society…poets, astronomers, magicians, and astrologers…They organized intellectual life, judicial processes, had skills to heal people, and were involved in developing strategies for war. They were an oasis of wisdom and highly respected in their society.” The snake was a Druid symbol, one they legendarily tattooed on their bodies.

Both snake and dragon are ancient symbols of the divine, particularly associated with fertility and mother goddesses, their shedding of skin connected to rebirth and the cycle of life. Cultural historian and systems scientist Riane Eisler writes: “In archaeological excavations all through the Neolithic, the serpent is one of the most frequent motifs. ‘The snake and its abstract derivative, the spiral, are the dominant motifs of the art of Old Europe,’ writes archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. She also points out that the association of the serpent with the Goddess survived well into historic times…Clearly the serpent was too important, too sacred, and too ubiquitous a symbol of the power of the Goddess to be ignored. If the old mind was to be refashioned to fit the new system’s requirements, the serpent would either have to be appropriated as one of the emblems of the new ruling classes or, alternately, defeated, distorted, and discredited.”

Or erased, yeah? That works too, I guess.

We go into deep waters here, where it starts to feel personal. Modern-day Christianity comes into view when we consider religion from this long historical angle, which means that people’s personal relationship with their faith comes into view too. How do we have this conversation? I was raised Catholic, with devout lefty Catholic-worker style progressives on my Mom’s side, and Irish mystics on my Dad’s. I treasure the memory of my paternal Grandpa announcing on one full moon evening in August that it was “time for church,” and taking us out in the old tin boat to sit in the moonlit cove of Oregon's Odell Lake, while the last twilight faded and the bats thrummed softly through the luminous air. Also vivid, the debates I had with the young priests who taught my confirmation classes when I was 13, about why women can’t be priests. An intractable argument, in the end.

In writing AVALON, I am still wondering about both of those things: the luminous church of the lake and the moonlight, and whether we all have equal access to the divine. I am also writing about a historical moment in which one way of structuring the world was overtaken and replaced by another. Since we are, historically and figuratively, the heirs of that moment, and still living with its structures and consequences, I don’t think it’s possible for it not to feel personal. For good or ill—maybe for both at once. Let’s keep going.

[Image: statue of Saint and Dragon in the Orkadian Cathedral of Saint Magnus]

Midway through our Avalon pilgrimage, my Mom and I went far north to the Orkney Islands, an hour’s ferry ride from the northernmost tip of the Scottish mainland. In Kirkwall we visited the Cathedral of Saint Magnus, built out of local pink sandstone in the 1100's. Inside, I came across a statue of a man vanquishing a dragon with a human face.

At first I thought it was Saint George, the ne plus ultra of dragon-slaying saints. But he looked so spare and Nordic--perhaps it was St. Magnus himself. I googled St. Magnus + dragon, and sure enough, there are stories of St. Magnus vanquishing not only a dragon, but--on a different occasion--a large group of snakes. A prolific vanquisher of reptiles! But then I realized the statue wasn’t Magnus either. It was Saint Olaf. So I googled Olaf, and he too had gone toe-to-tail with a dragon—in his case a terrible sea serpent. I started to wonder just how many saint v. dragon (or snake) stories there are out there. It turns out, there are a lot. Theodore, Michael, Margaret, Philip, Keyne, Cado, Paul Aurelian, Romain, Florent, Clement, Martha, Maudet, to name a few…and of course, Patrick and his snakes.

I suppose it is possible that all of these saints came upon actual dragons and/ or hordes of snakes, and smote them, etc. But let me just take Occam’s razor out of its case…it seems rawther more likely to me, dear readers, that the Saint-vanquishes-dragon visual was a very apt metaphor for out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new. A potent reminder that snakes and dragons are the Devil, and so are your old gods, and we know what happens to devils and their worshippers.

Should we automatically side with the saints? Should we have any sympathy for the snakes? 

There were men and women who were Druids in the land of the Once and Future King. Even the Romans said so. They were mystics, healers, bards, knowledge-keepers, and leaders of their people. And then, some few centuries after Saint Patrick’s time, they were gone. The story of Saint Patrick and the snakes may be made up, but the story of the Druids who somehow ceased to be is a true one.

I think it’s the story of two different ways of structuring the world, and how one structure overcame the other. I think it is a story worth telling.

The Lorica of St. Patrick is an old prayer that may have arisen from a tradition more ancient than the man himself. I love this part of it:

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun
Brilliance of moon
Splendor of fire
Speed of lightning
Swiftness of wind
Depth of sea
Stability of earth
Firmness of rock.

It does sound rather pagan.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, and Happy Snakes’ Day too. May the road rise to meet us all.

Melody Bates

St. Patrick's Day

NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon: GLASTONBURY TOR

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 and photo of St. Olaf © 2019 Melody Bates. Learn more and support her work here.

AVALON Blog Post 5: Dispatch from Nellieville

A guest post from sculptor and AVALON co-creator Peter Beerits, whose Nellieville installation will be the stage for the August 2019 world premiere of the play.

Avalon Blog--Sunday, March 10

I am working to make Nellieville a fitting site for the OHA production of Avalon, which means sprucing up the woods around the Grail Castle and increasing the population of knights. In a recent reshuffle of sculptures, I came back from a client’s home with a truckload of tattered and worn-out sculptures of gardeners and landscapers. I’ve decided to rebuild them and repurpose them as knights.  I am ever a found object man, so why shouldn’t my old sculptures be found objects?

The question is, what do Avalon knights look like? The origin of the story lies in the Dark Ages when the people of ancient Britain struggled to deal with the power vacuum left by the slow collapse of the Roman Empire. The Saxons also had ideas about how to respond to this vacuum: they invaded the British coasts.

The original Arthur was a dux bellorum (duke of war) who gathered his followers in a wooden hillfort and won a series of strategically important battles, unifying Britain and driving out the Saxons. This story has evolved over the centuries, captivating listeners, and will again this August when Avalon is performed at Nervous Nellie’s.

Today, we visualize Arthur and his knights in the extravagant armor of the high Middle Ages but, really, they would have been lucky to have helmets. Many generations of story tellers have pictured these warriors in the gear they found plausible. I could dress my knights in camo and Kevlar, but I settled on aluminum, which I can find as scrap (I always want found objects) and which evokes the knights who fought in Saturday matinee movies. That’s my version of the myth.

But what about the women?  My found object gardeners are all men. In traditional Camelot tales, the women mostly need to be rescued or cause trouble—really big trouble. Melody has found a different way to tell it in her play.  The vitality of myth arises from its ability to evolve, to give each generation the clues they need to make sense of life. So, I think I’ll make some lady knights!

(Images: Stained glass, including the Grail Window, both in the Wizard's Tower, and new knight sculptures. Photos by Peter Beerits)

NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon:  DRIVING THE SNAKES OUT OF IRELAND

AVALON, by Melody Bates, 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 and photos ©2019 Peter Beerits. More about Melody's work here. More about Peter's work here.

AVALON Blog Post 4: Tintagel

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.

Avalon Blog Post 3: AVALON (disambiguated)

AVALON (disambiguated)

A guest post from Judith Jerome, Production Dramaturg for AVALON

Avalon. Frankie Avalon. The Avalon Ballroom. Mists of Avalon. I’m just starting to let my brain storm. But wait, the computer is in front of me: 110 businesses, songs, bands, places, films, games, novels, boats, etc. are listed in Wikipedia as containing the name Avalon.  The Wiki heading is: “Avalon (disambiguation).”

 Yes. The disambiguation revealed is the power of the name, and behind it some felt sense, some memory shrouded in mists, a dream, lingering cultural resonance, centuries old. That place. Whatever it was.

I used to teach a class I called “Red Circle Stories.” It was about identifying and performing the personal stories we tell again and again, or even if we hold them secretly, tell them only to ourselves, we have circled them in red in our own minds. Stories of mystery. Stories we know as well as we know the backs of our own hands, and yet don’t know at all. Stories that reassure us that I am I, but also that are always on the verge of disarming us/I. Stories we tell in the hope that this time we will learn something new.  

Shakespeare’s stories are like that. They are our western European cultural dreams; that’s why they have lasted for almost 500 years. None of the history plays started whole cloth with William himself. He told stories already circling in the cultural imagination. Every telling is a new telling. What will we learn about ourselves this time?

The stories of King Arthur and Camelot are the same and, crucially, Avalon is their backdrop. The stories came out of Avalon; the world once was Avalon. Maybe.

One text behind Melody’s seeking Avalon is Rianna Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade, which opens out an archaeological pre-history that tells the loss of a partnership social order, its defeat by a dominator model. Similar in some ways to the mists Marion Zimmer Bradley sought to lift in her 1983 novel. Psychoanalysis teaches us that the dissolutions/psychoses we fear are ones we have already been through; I think it must be the same with our Avalons, our Shangri Las, our Xanadus. Pre-historical truth or no, somewhere we know something about Avalon and long for it again.

Right now Melody is seeking Avalon in places. Geography, buildings, rocks, dirt, mosses, and trees. So much is held there, so much to learn, and some of us are just beginning to understand this different kind of learning . We write emails to trees and grant personhood to Lake Erie.

Maybe we will collect all the different tellings, with their many layers of cultural agenda, as Melody says it, as we go toward August’s performances. I have not looked these up on Wikipedia but I’ll bet there are way more than 110, and way more fun to come up with them ourselves.

Melody standing in ancient Cumbria's Pine Lake, wearing an 

"AVALON Volunteer Fire Co." shirt she found at a thrift store in Brooklyn.

NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon:  TINTAGEL

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 and photos ©2019 Melody Bates. Learn more and support her work here.

AVALON Blog Post 2: A Ghost Story for Saint Davy's Day

It’s 7:30pm and it’s midnight in Wales.

It’s midnight and dark forest and perhaps witches? Or ghosts? Or strange troll-type creatures with a malevolent glint in their eye? Anyway it’s very dark and we should have stopped sooner to book our lodging for the night…but we didn’t.

The dark is different in a land without big cities throwing light pollution into the sky. The night is different. What’s that they say on Game of Thrones? The night is dark and full of terrors. I mean, at least in Wales it might be. We left Tintagel around 4pm, and drove north. Thinking we’d stop around 6pm to get our bearings and look along our route to book a place to stay for the night. But then there wasn’t a good place to stop, and we just kept driving. And it just got darker. And there were no cities, or towns, or streetlamps…just a road, and the dark. And what you imagine to be in the dark. I suppose this is why medieval cities had walls.

A sign ahead has a bed symbol with an arrow pointing right. This means lodging, we think? We turn off the "A" road we’ve been on, onto the deeper dark of the exit road. Into the woods. Deeper. We were probably in the woods before we turned…but now we’re really in them. We drive a mile. Another mile. Nothing but the night around us. Then, at last, a building, some lights ahead.

We drive so slowly up to it, getting a look. No one stirring. A few lights on. I turn into the empty parking lot. There’s an odd greenish-blueish light set up on the side of the lot, casting a sickly glow on the looming trees. I do not have a good feeling about this place. Nor does my Mom—but neither of us says anything. This place may be the only place, and the only place would be better than none. Even if it’s run by trolls and highwaymen.

“I’m going to get on my phone and see if there’s anyplace else near,” I say. I have just enough slow internet service to get online and search. One pops up. 12.5 miles away. 24-hour front desk. Free wifi. Perfect. I book a room. It takes forever, but finally goes through. We pull out of the creepy lot, by its creepy lodge, and drive towards our new stop for the night.

“I didn’t like the look of that place,” says my Mom.

“Me neither,” say I.

It’s a hairy drive on dark lanes and then through a quaint little town before we get to our spot, but we get there. The Cwrt Bleddyn Hotel and Spa, which is apparently also a Ramada, which seems strange but we’re not asking questions at this point. They don’t have a room with two beds, the lovely concierge Charlotte says “but I can upgrade you, no charge, to our largest heritage room.” We’re grateful. There’s a beautiful willow tree out front and a fountain, and lots of cars which means lots of folks, and hopefully not trolls. Charlotte says, “Breakfast is in the restaurant from half six to 10. The spa and pool are just outside and you can use them all day tomorrow if you like.” She gives us the keys. “Room 35. Past the bar, down the steps, through the door, up to the top.”

We get lost. I go back to the desk. Charlotte walks us through to the correct staircase. It’s spiral. We go up.  

Three flights up with our bags. Two doors. I open the one on the left with our key card.

It’s big, but…eh, I don’t know. Odd. A small-ish bed. Strange yellow lighting. A bathroom with slanted roof and no windows. It smells a bit damp. We’re on the third floor and there are exposed rafter beams. This is an old, old building.

We are both making the best of this. Then my Mom says, is this room 34?

No it’s 35, I say, holding up the key envelope, on which Charlotte wrote “35.”

“I think it’s 34,” says my Mom. I’m so tired. How could we be in 34 if the keys to 35 opened the door? I open the door to look at how it’s numbered on the outside…and it IS 34.

“I guess…I’ll try the keycard on the other door.”

The other door doesn’t have a number. On it is written “The Catherine Parr Room.” It opens with our key card. 'I guess our keys open all the doors?" I say. "Maybe we should try all the rooms."

Room 35 is giant. The whole rest of the top floor. Beautiful old wood and leather furnishings, not damp at all. Giant bed that we’ll be quite comfortable sharing. Fabulous. I took a picture:

Giant bathroom too. Bathtub seven feet long, I make a note to avail myself of it later. The john is actually a John. As in, made by Edward Johns. I look it up later—it’s a vintage blue dolphin loo with cistern and pull chain. People lose their minds over them in the antique markets. This one is there just for…using. Perhaps by Queens? Anyway here’s a blurry picture I took of it. It’s blurry because it feels funny to take a photo of a toilet, and I was laughing at myself:   

  

The toilet’s an antique and the tile is a bit Alice in Wonderland via Tom Petty, but it’s all good. Except…Well, the only thing that’s not quite right about the bathroom, I guess I would say,

Is the gaping hole in the wall leading to the totally creepy dark crawlspace.

I suppose a gaping hole in the wall leading to a totally creepy dark and dusty crawlspace that maybe has paint cans or construction equipment or maybe something more exotic, who knows because I’m not going in there…anyway I guess you could call that, a bit unusual. I didn’t take a picture.

There’s a plywood board and a large standing mirror to one side. “Let’s just, cover it up,” suggests my Mom. She is very wise. We do this. No problem. Head downstairs for a drink at the bar to soothe our jangled nerves.

Mom has a stout that’s brewed 10 miles away. It’s fruity and delicious. I order a Jamesons. Neat? Ice? Water? Asks the bartender. “Uhh..ice?” I say. I am not an accomplished drinker. But my Grandpa John drank Jamesons. An Irish chap across the bar pipes up. “One cube!” he says. “What’s that?” I say. “One cube! One cube of ice—Jamesons is a sipper” he says. “One cube,” I say to the bartender. “Jamesons is a sipper.”

We’re sipping our beverages and the stress of the night and the troll hotel and the dark wilderness roads is beginning to melt away. Charlotte finds us at the bar. “I’ve printed out a bit of history of the hotel for you,” she says, handing us a few pages of lore. Henry VIII used to come to this place when it was a hunting lodge, they say. That’s why our room is named for Catherine Parr—the wife who survived, more luck to her. They say Captain Morgan—of the rum, and the piracy—did too, and the Oak Room on the first floor is paneled with wood carving from one of his pirate ships. And most likely it is—I took a picture of it: 

 

A debate about whiskey breaks out. The Irishman opines further about Jamesons. A woman’s voice cuts in from a table opposite the bar. “Scotch is bettar,” she says, drily. “What’s that?” says the Irishman, jovially. “Scotch is Bettar,” she says in a fine loud brogue. “Why would ya drink anythin else?”

I try to perform diplomacy. “I’m both, I’m both: I’m Irish and Scottish, it’s fine!—Jamesons tonight, I’ll have a scotch next time.”

It’s no peace accord, but the jokes are good-natured and the ancestral rivalry quiets down as we finish our drinks and head back upstairs. Up three flights of the spiral staircase, back to the Catherine Parr room at the top.

I take a bubble bath. It’s quite nice. My Mom is already asleep when I get into bed. Want to get a good night’s sleep. Long day of driving tomorrow, if I'm up early enough I might take a dip in the pool the next morning before we head out. Sleep mask on. Turn out the light. Settle into the big comfy pillows.

But I don’t fall asleep.

Something…feels odd.

I would like to take a moment for a brief aside here. I think it is pertinent to say that ghosts leave me alone. I have never seen a ghost. A few times, maybe, I’ve had a sense of presence, once or twice definitely beneficent, once maybe a bit unsettling—never malevolent or downright scary. I don’t have ghost stories. My husband has seen ghosts. His mother Carolyn, who has lived on Vinal Haven and North Haven, has some blood curdling tales of her experiences in houses there. But so far, ghosts leave me alone.

So for me to feel something…well, that might mean something, no?

I’m lying there in the dark with my sleep mask on and something feels not quite good. I shift in the bed. My Mom, who does not talk in her sleep, shifts on her side of the bed and mumbles something, an unintelligible phrase. A moment passes and she says something else, indecipherable. A third time, a soft ripple of phrases that mean nothing I can understand. I take my sleep mask off.

I look around me in the dark. There is some bleed from the skylights—oh, right, our room has skylights. It’s very posh, if it weren’t for the giant exposed rafters that you have to watch you don’t bonk your head on…and of course, the feeling that something else is in the room.

Or in the crawlspace?

I think of the open hole in the bathroom wall, improvisationally covered with board and mirror. The bathroom door is open. I think, I’m going to close that door.

I get up. I close the bathroom door.

I mean almost. The whole place is carpeted, bathroom too, and the carpet won’t let the door close all the way. Almost, though. Maybe that’s good enough?

I get back in bed. Something is still….around.

Lying on my back in bed, I feel stronger measures are needed. I am making it up as I go, here in Wales where there are perhaps unfriendly spirits in the Catherine Parr room, and truly should we be surprised if a hunting lodge of the British aristocracy including a dude who had several wives killed and a notoriously blood-thirsty pirate—would it be a shocker if it turned out they did some bad deeds here, too?

I invoke our ancestors. I raise both hands, palms out, to summon. I invoke my family spirits gone on before. In my head—or was I speaking? I was speaking somehow. This is heightened stuff, in the dark in Wales. It would be silly if there weren't SOMETHING IN THE ROOM.

I say their names. My father’s name, my grandparents on both sides. My great grandparents that I knew. All my people. I call them in. Watch over us tonight, I think-say. Protect us as we sleep.

I am not making this up when I say I could hear something else listening. Not my ancestors, I mean. Something else.

But I also felt a bit safer. The grandmothers were there. The grandfathers. The way-back kinfolk. Spirits of good will and protection. There was a tent of energy around us. My Mom was still asleep.

I pulled my sleep mask on and hoped for the best.

*****

8am the next morning: pouring rain making a tattoo on the skylights, grey light waking us up. Safe in our bed. “How did you sleep?” I asked my Mom. “Pretty well,” she said. “I mean, okay.”

“Do you ever talk in your sleep?” I asked her. I didn’t think she did, but what do I know. “Talk in my sleep?” she replied. “No.” “You did last night,” I said. “Really?” she said. “What did I say?” “I couldn’t understand it,” I said. “Weird!” she said. “Are you going to try the spa?”

I did. I grabbed my suit and went down to check it out. It was cool. Like, a little Roman bath in the middle of the Welsh countryside. I took a picture of it:

I swam a lap, dipped into the hot tub, tried the steam room, sat in the sauna for a minute. Lovely. Nipped back upstairs to get our bags, we had a bit of breakfast (included in our booking price, how nice), and headed to the front desk to check out.

There are two women there, neither of them Charlotte. “And how was your stay?” asks one “Oh, lovely,” we reply, basically at the same time. “Oh good,” say the women behind the desk.

There’s a pause. They’re printing our receipt. I ask,

“Do you…have ghosts here?”

The women look up sharply. “No.” says the older of the two, decisively.

Another pause. The younger asks, “Why? …Did you see something?”

I am immediately certain that they have ghosts. More certain than I was last night, when it could have been my imagination. Immediately, 100%, unequivocally, quite, certain.

“Didn’t see anything,” I say. “I felt, a presence. Presences.”

“What room?”

“35.”

“Ah.”

We wait.

“Well, there’s only been a few times, when someone said they saw something. But it’s always in Room 35.”

“Ohhhhh,” we say.

“Yeah, there was one time someone saw a woman in the window, walking…And another time, there was a man in the window below…”

“Uh-huh,” we say.

“But you didn’t see anything?”

“Nope.”

“Well, hope you enjoyed your stay!”

We leave. I snap a last photo as we walk to our car:

When we stop for lunch, I google the hotel. I type “Cwrt Bleddyn ha…” and my phone auto-finishes. Haunted. The place is haunted as all get out. Glasses rising from the bar, staff touched by unseen hands, someone playing a piano that doesn’t exist, ghosts all over the joint. We drive towards Glasgow, and speak no more of it.

Happy Saint Davy’s Day. Wales has ghosts.

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 and photos ©2019 Melody Bates

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