Avalon () is an island featured in the Arthurian legend. It first appeared in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 1136 Historia Regum Britanniae as a place of magic where King Arthur's sword Excalibur was made and later where Arthur was taken to recover from being gravely wounded at the Battle of Camlann. Since then, the island has become a symbol of Arthurian mythology, similar to Arthur's castle, Camelot.
Avalon was associated from an early date with mystical practices and magical figures such as King Arthur's sorceress sister Morgan, cast as the island's ruler by Geoffrey and many later authors. Certain Cornish and Welsh traditions have maintained that Arthur is an eternal king who had never truly died but would return as the "once and future" king. The particular motif of his rest in Morgan's care in Avalon has become especially popular. It can be found in various versions in many French and other medieval Arthurian and other works written in the wake of Geoffrey, some of them also linking Avalon with the legend of the Holy Grail.
Avalon has often been identified as the former island of Glastonbury Tor. An early and long-standing belief involves the purported discovery of Arthur's remains and their later grand reburial, in accordance with the medieval English tradition in which Arthur did not survive the fatal injuries he suffered in his final battle. Besides Glastonbury, several other alternative locations of Avalon have also been claimed or proposed. Many medieval sources also localized the place in Sicily, and European folklore connected it with the phenomenon of Fata Morgana.
Etymology The meaning and origin of the name Avalon have been long debated by Arthurian scholars as well as Celtic and Romance philologists. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudo-chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae ("The History of the Kings of Britain", c. 1136) calls the place Insula Avallonis, meaning the "Isle of Avallon" in Latin. In his later Vita Merlini ("The Life of Merlin", c. 1150), he calls it Insula Pomorum, the "Isle of Fruit Trees" (from Latin pōmus "fruit tree"). Today, the name is generally considered to be from the Welsh afallen "apple tree, fruit tree" (from Proto-Celtic *abalnā, literally "fruit-bearing (thing)"). A Cornish or Breton origin is also possible, deriving from aball or avallen(n).Matasović, Ranko, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic, Brill, 2008, p. 23.Koch, John. Celtic Culture: A historical encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO 2006, p. 146.Savage, John J. H. "Insula Avallonia", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 73, (1942), pp. 405–415.Nitze, William Albert, Jenkins, Thomas Atkinson. Le Haut Livre du Graal, Phaeton Press, 1972, p. 55.Zimmer, Heinrich. "Bretonische Elemente in der Artursage des Gottfried von Monmouth", Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur, Volume 12, 1890, pp. 246–248.
The tradition of an "apple" island among the ancient Britons may also be related to Irish legends of the otherworld island home of Manannán mac Lir and Lugh, Emain Ablach (also the Old Irish poetic name for Isle of Man), where Ablach means "Having Apple Trees"Marstrander, Carl Johan Sverdrup (ed.), Dictionary of the Irish Language, Royal Irish Academy, 1976, letter A, column 11, line 026.— from Old Irish aball ("apple tree") — and is similar to the Middle Welsh name Afallach, which was used to replace the name Avalon in medieval Welsh translations of French and Latin Arthurian tales. All are related to the Gaulish root *aballo- "apple tree" (found in the place name Aballo/Aballone) and are derived from Proto-Celtic *abūl "apple", which is related at the Indo-European level to English apple, Russian яблоко (jabloko), Latvian ābele, etc.Hamp, Eric P. The north European word for 'apple', Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, 37, 1979, pp. 158–166.Adams, Douglas Q. The Indo-European Word for 'Apple'. Indogermanische Forschungen, 90, 1985, pp. 79–82.Stifter, David. An apple a day … Indogermanische Forschungen, vol. 124, no. 1, 2019, pp. 171-218.
In the early 12th century, William of Malmesbury claimed the name of Avalon came from a man called Avalloc, who once lived on this isle with his daughters. Gerald of Wales similarly derived the name of Avalon from its purported former ruler, Avallo. The name is also similar to "Avallus", described by Pliny the Elder in his 1st-century Naturalis Historia as a mysterious island where amber could be found.
Legend Geoffrey of Monmouth
According to Geoffrey in the Historia, and much subsequent literature which he inspired, King Arthur was taken to Avalon (Avallon) in hope that he could be saved and recover from his mortal wounds following the tragic Battle of Camlann. Geoffrey first mentions Avalon as the place where Arthur's sword Excalibur (Caliburn) was forged.
Geoffrey dealt with the subject in more detail in the Vita Merlini, in which he describes for the first time in Arthurian legend the fairy or fae-like enchantress Morgen (i.e. Morgan) as the chief of nine sisters (including Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe and Thiten) who together rule Avalon. Geoffrey's telling, in the in-story narration by the bard Taliesin to Merlin, indicates a sea voyage was needed to get there. The description of Avalon, which is heavily indebted to the early medieval Spanish scholar Isidore of Seville (having been mostly derived from the section on famous islands in Isidore's work Etymologiae, XIV.6.8 "Fortunatae Insulae"), shows the magical nature of the island:
In Layamon's Brut version of the Historia, Arthur is taken to Avalon to be healed there through means of magic water by a distinctively Anglo-Saxon version of Morgen: an elf queen of Avalon named Argante. In the Didot-Perceval, Perceval's Grail Quest adventures include him fighting a flock of ravens that turn out to be fairy maidens from Avalon, sisters of the wife of one Urbain of the Black Thorn, in a story likely representing Geoffrey's shapeshifting Morgen and her sisters as inspired by the Welsh Modron (Urbain thus being Modron's husband Urien) and possibly also influenced by the Irish Mórrigan.Roger Sherman Loomis, "More Celtic Elements in Gawain and the Green Knight." The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 42 (1943), pp. 173-174.Roger Sherman Loomis, "The Combat at the Ford in the Didot Perceval." Modern Philology 43 (1945), pp. 65-71. Geoffrey's Merlin not only never visits Avalon but is not even aware of its existence, until told about it after Arthur's delivery there by Taliesin. This would change to various degrees in the later Arthurian prose romance tradition that expanded on Merlin's association with Arthur, as well on the subject of Avalon itself.
Later medieval literature
In many versions of Arthurian legend, including Thomas Malory's compilation Le Morte d'Arthur, Morgan the Fairy and several other magical queens (numbering either three, four, or "many") arrive after the battle to take the mortally wounded Arthur from the battlefield of Camlann (Salisbury Plain in the romances) to Avalon in a black boat. Besides Morgan, who by this time had already become Arthur's supernatural sibling in the popular romance tradition, they sometimes come with the Lady of the Lake among them. The others may include the Queen of Northgales (North Wales) and the Queen of the Wasteland. In the Vulgate Queste, Morgan tells Arthur of her intention to relocate to Avalon, "where the ladies who know all the magic in the world are" (ou les dames sont qui seiuent tous les enchantemens del monde ), not long before his final battle. Its Welsh version also claims, within its text, to be a translation of old Latin books from Avalon, as does the French Perlesvaus. In Lope Garcia de Salazar's Spanish summary of the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal, Avalon is conflated with (and explicitly named as) the mythological Island of Brasil, said to be located west of Ireland and afterwards forever hidden in mist by Morgan's enchantment.
In some texts, Arthur's fate in Avalon is left untold or uncertain. In the Vera historia de morte Arthuri ("True story of the death of Arthur"), for instance, Arthur is taken by four of his men to Avalon in the land of Gwynedd (north-west Wales), where he is about to die but then mysteriously disappears in a mist amongst sudden great storm. Lanzelet tells of Arthur's son Loholt (Loüt) having left together with his father to Avalon "whence the Bretons still expect both of them evermore." Other times, Arthur's eventual death is explicitly confirmed, as it happens in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur, where the Archbishop of Canterbury later receives the dead king's body from Morgan and buries it at Glastonbury. In the telling from Alliterative Morte Arthure, relatively devoid of supernatural elements, it is not Morgan but the renowned physicians from Salerno who try, and fail, to save Arthur's life in Avalon. Conversely, the Gesta Regum Britanniae, an early rewrite of Geoffrey's Historia, states (in the present tense) that Morgan "keeps his healed body for her very own and they now live together." In a similar narrative, the chronicle Draco Normannicus contains a fictional letter from King Arthur to Henry II of England, claiming Arthur having been healed of his wounds and made immortal by his "deathless (eternal) nymph" sister Morgan in the holy island of Avalon (Avallonis eas insula sacra) through the island's miraculous herbs. This is reminiscent of the British tradition mentioned by Gervase of Tilbury as having Morgan still healing Arthur's wounds opening annually ever since on the Isle of Avalon (Davalim). In the Didot-Perceval, Arthur's sister Morgan is left to tends his mortal wounds in Avalon while the Britons wait for him (as told by him to do) for 40 years before electing another king. The author then adds that some people still hope that Arthur did not die and would return as he had promised, and tells of a legend according to which he has been seen since out hunting in the forests.
In Perlesvaus, the bodies of Guinevere and her young son Loholt have been already buried in Avalon by Arthur himself during his reign. Erec and Enide, an early Arthurian romance by Chrétien de Troyes, mentions at the wedding of Arthur and Guinevere a "friend" (i.e. lover) of Morgan as the Lord of the Isle of Avalon, Guingomar (manuscript variants Guinguemar, Guingamar, Guigomar, Guilemer, Gimoers). In this appearance, he might have been derived from the fairy king Gwyn ap Nudd, who in the Welsh Arthurian tradition figures as the ruler of Avalon-like Celtic Otherworld, Annwn. In Lanval by Marie de France, the protagonist's fairy lover comes from Avalon and in the end takes him there. The German Diu Crône says the Queen of Avalon is the goddess (göttin) Enfeidas, Arthur's aunt (sister of Uther Pendragon) and one of the guardians of the Grail. In Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, Petitcrieu is a magical dog created by a goddess in Avalon. The Venician Les Prophéties de Merlin features the character of an enchantress known only as the Lady of Avalon (Dame d'Avalon), a Merlin's apprentice who is a fierce rival of Morgan as well as of Sebile, another of Merlin's female students. In the late Italian Tavola Ritonda, the lady of the island of Avalon (dama dell'isola di Vallone, likely the same as the Lady of Avalon from the Propheties) is a fairy mother of the evil sorceress Elergia. An unnamed Lady of the Isle of Avalon (named as Lady Lyle of Avalon by Malory) appears indirectly in the Post-Vulgate Cycle story of Sir Balin in which her damsel brings a cursed magic sword to Camelot.