A closer look at one Glastonbury legend. No spoilers for The King Beneath the Hill.
In my earlier note about the king under the hill, I told you the broad story: Gwyn ap Nudd, the Tor, and the door into the Otherworld. I want to go back to the moment when Saint Collen reaches the top.
In the Welsh Life of Collen, the saint is living as a hermit on Glastonbury Tor. He hears of Gwyn, refuses two summonses, then goes to meet him with holy water. There is a court on the summit: a castle, riders, a company splendid enough to make the bare hill disappear. Collen throws the water. Court and company vanish. The Cambridge study of the Life is a good place to read about the episode and the different traditions folded into it.
That is Collen's account, and the Life is on his side. Elsewhere in Welsh tradition, Gwyn is a ruler of Annwn, the Otherworld. Here he is the dangerous king of a court the saint must refuse. Collen leaves the hill with his victory. The Life never returns to Gwyn.
One surviving manuscript of the Life was copied in 1536, only three years before the dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey. That does not date the beginning of the legend; stories travel for a long time before someone writes them down. But the closeness of those two dates stopped me. While I was setting a novel in 1539, there was this version of Collen's encounter on a page from almost the same moment. The Welsh Classical Dictionary at the National Library of Wales identifies the manuscript.
My Gwyn is a Warden, not a retelling of Gwyn ap Nudd. He has no shining court. He has a door beneath the Tor and two thousand years of duty. Collen's story ends on the hill. In my book, I wanted to stay with the man still standing there.
Sources and further reading
University of Cambridge — Study of the Life of Collen; Welsh Classical Dictionary at the National Library of Wales; National Trust — History and legends of Glastonbury Tor.