Pagan Portals - Guided Visualisations: Pathways into Wisdom and Witchcraft - Lucya Starza 2020

Gwyn and the glass castle

The legend of Gwyn ap Nudd and St Collen

A sixteenth-century Welsh ecclesiastical manuscript — Buchedd Collen, The life of St Collen (Pronounced Cothlenn) discussed the life and works of an early seventh-century Abbot based at the great Abbey at Glastonbury, Somerset. Collen was a Welshman, who after serving as a soldier dedicated himself to service in the abbey and swiftly rose to power. After a time, he decided to become a hermit and lived in a small cell on the side of Glastonbury Tor. It was during his time here that he became aware of Gwyn ap Nudd being worshipped, or at least honoured, by the local people, and eventually encountered Gwyn for himself.

Here is a translation of the text by Lady Charlotte Guest:⁷

And as he was one day in his cell, he heard two men conversing about Gwyn ab Nudd, and saying that he was king of Annwn and of the Fairies. And Collen put his head out of his cell, and said to them, ’Hold your tongues quickly, those are but Devils.’ — ’Hold thou thy tongue,’ said they, ’thou shalt receive a reproof from him.’ And Collen shut his cell as before.

And soon after, he heard a knocking at the door of his cell, and someone inquired if he were within. Then said Collen, ’I am; who is it that asks?’ ’It is I, a messenger from Gwyn ab Nudd, the king of Annwn, to command thee to come and speak with him on the top of the hill at noon.’

But Collen did not go. And the next day behold the same messenger came, ordering Collen to go and speak with the king on the top of the hill at noon.

But Collen did not go. And the third day behold the same messenger came, ordering Collen to go and speak with the king on the top of the hill at noon. ’And if thou dost not go, Collen, thou wilt be the worst for it.’

Then Collen, being afraid, arose, and prepared some holy water, and put it in a flask at his side, and went to the top of the hill. And when he came there, he saw the fairest castle he had ever beheld, and around it the best-appointed troops, and numbers of minstrels, and every kind of music of voice and string, and steeds with youths upon them the comeliest in the world, and maidens of elegant aspect, sprightly, light of foot, of graceful apparel, and in the bloom of youth and every magnificence becoming the court of a puissant sovereign. And he beheld a courteous man on the top of the castle, who bade him enter, saying that the king was waiting for him to come to meat. And Collen went into the castle, and when he came there, the king was sitting in a golden chair. And he welcomed Collen honourably and desired him to eat, assuring him that, besides what he saw, he should have the most luxurious of every dainty and delicacy that the mind could desire, and should be supplied with every drink and liquor that his heart could wish; and that there should be in readiness for him every luxury of courtesy and service, of banquet and of honourable entertainment, of rank and of presents: and every respect and welcome due to a man of his wisdom.

’I will not eat the leaves of the trees,’ said Collen.

’Didst thou ever see men of better equipment than those in red and blue?’ asked the king.

’Their equipment is good enough,’ said Collen, ’for such equipment as it is.’

’What kind of equipment is that?’ said the king.

Then said Collen, ’The red on the one part signifies burning, and the blue on the other signifies coldness.’ And with that Collen drew out his flask, and threw the holy water on their heads, whereupon they vanished from his sight, so that there was neither castle, nor troops, nor men, nor maidens, nor music, nor song, nor steeds, nor youths, nor banquet, nor the appearance of anything whatever, but the green hillocks.

The tale is usually told as if the Saint successfully banished the faeries from the Tor, but a steady study of the text reveals no such success — rather it could easily be seen that as Collen finds himself once more upon ’the green hillocks’ it is he who has been banished from the faery court. Perhaps his rudeness to the rather gracious King was duly noted. Of course, the offer of faery food is a notoriously perilous sign of hospitality and it may be that Gwyn and his retinue were inviting Collen into a greater connection with faery than he was bargaining for, their reputation for mischief being well known.

An interesting detail in the tale of Gwyn and Collen is the description of those within the mounds as wearing red and blue. If we dismiss Collen’s interpretation that they describe ’burning and coldness’ e.g., the fires of hell and the cold of death, or of being outside God’s kingdom, we may be reminded that faeries are often associated with the colour red, or seen wearing red, a colour always associated with magic and otherness. In addition to this though we hear within the glass castle they wear the colour blue and Glastonbury itself has close associations with the colour — ’glas’ in Welsh means blue/grey and there is evidence to suggest that the inhabitants of the local lake village in the Iron Age wove good quality blue coloured cloth. Some scholars also suggest the name Glastonbury comes from the name of Cyndrwyn Glas, Cyndrwyn the blue who was king of the area in the fifth Century, so it may be that those in red and blue are displaying their faery and ancestral connections respectively.

While we know that Collen was an Abbot of Glastonbury around the seventh century, whether his cell was upon the Tor or back in Wales (not far from Glastonbury just across the Severn estuary) is not stated explicitly in the text and still disputed. Several Welsh locations also claim this tale as their own, especially Llangollen which is named after him. However, the connections between Glastonbury Tor and Gwyn remain strong in its earliest name, Ynys Witrin, ’the Glass Fortress’, being another name for the legendary Caer Wydyr, the Glass Castle, otherwise known as Caer Sidi, the spiral or faery castle and entrance to the Otherworld, as seen in Taliesin’s poem Preiddeu Annwfn, ’The spoils of Annwn’.

Glastonbury and Caer Wydyr

Glastonbury, a small town in the Somerset marshes just a few miles away from Wales and the Severn estuary is an area rich in myth and magic more than any other in the British landscape, with legends and lore growing all around it like a thicket from the distant past up to the present day. The town stands at the foot of the beautiful Glastonbury Tor, a hill which rises out of the flat landscape around it to the height of 518 feet. Formed of blue lias stone and clay, the conical hill works as a natural aquifer supplying white calcite-rich water and red iron-rich water to the two sacred springs at its base.

Glastonbury has been associated with the otherworldly Isle of Avalon for centuries, surrounded as it is by mists and lakes — once before the land was drained the Tor would have been surrounded by water (a phenomenon still seen after winter rains) and evidence of an Iron Age lake village has provided details of a rich community who for whatever reason seldom set foot on the sacred hill which was known to them as ’Ynys Witrin’, ’the fortress or of Glass’ — synonymous with Caer Wydr, the mound or castle of glass, another name for the Otherworld in the Brythonic tradition, which like the Tor is always reached by crossing water or going through mist.

We first hear of Glastonbury as Ynis Witrin in William of Malmsbury’s ’Gesta Regum Anglorum’ (’Deeds of the English Kings’ c. 1125) and in The Life of St Gildas⁸ which was also written in the twelfth century based on an earlier ninth-century manuscript. In Gildas we hear of Ynys Witrin as a fortress surrounded by marshes and lakes and the home of a king Melwas who had abducted Queen Guinevere, Arthur’s wife who was besieging the castle seeking her return, in a tale obviously parallel to that of Gwyn, Creiddylad and Gwythyr. Interestingly, another thread of Glastonbury lore suggests that the name Ynys Witrin came from a St Gwytherin (victorious) who founded a community on the hill, and the name gradually changed from Ynys Gwytherin to Ynis Witrin. One can hardly mistake the connection there with Gwyn’s eternal rival, Gwythyr ap Greidawl.

In Brythonic myth, we hear of the glass castle as one of the many names of the Otherworld, each title conveying one of its properties or functions, and perhaps one of the methods we may use to access it realms. Equally its connection with Avalon is equally old — Avalon was said to be ruled by nine sisters or priestesses, just as the cauldron of Annwfn is ignited or kindled by the breath of nine maidens, showing them to be one and the same. In the heart of this sacred fortress lies the cauldron or sacred vessel of the goddess and it is this which Gwyn guards. While numerous places on the land may be or claim a connection to these Otherworldly destinations — Avalon, for example, is claimed by Glastonbury and the Isle of Lundy among others — it is better to think of these terrestrial locations as especially good places to access Annwfn, the otherworld, rather than expect them to be the destination in and of themselves.

Caer Wydyr and the Brythonic star lore

The Welsh triads tell us that Gwyn ap Nudd was one of the three great astronomers of Britain, the others being Gwydion and Idris — Gwydion the famous magician of Welsh myth and Idris Gawr, Idris the giant son of Gwyddno Garanhir whose seat is the mountain Cader Idris in Snowdonia, the summit of which Idris used for his study of the stars and which is also said to host Gwyn and his wild hunt. Similarly, Gwyn’s seat at Glastonbury Tor, and other related areas in the Welsh Black Mountains function well as vantage points for the heavens as well as the land around. Glastonbury Tor’s ancient name, Ynys Witrin, connects it closely to Caer Wydr as mentioned in ’the spoils of Annwn’ and similarly alludes the study of the heavens, as like those other glass towers of Brythonic myth, Caer Arianrhrod, and Merlin/Myrddin’s glass tower. These high places function as a still point, the axis mundi from which the ever-turning vastness of space may be considered, as well as the turn of the seasons and relating it also to one of its other names in Annwfn — Caer Sidi, meaning the faery, or spiral castle. Another possibly later myth related to Glastonbury also relates it to star lore, situating the Tor as the sign of Aquarius in a vast star temple, mapping out the zodiac on the earth itself in a mixture of ancient field boundaries and natural features.

Our Welsh and Brythonic stellar lore is now largely lost but there is no doubt that once this was an area of great significance to the druids and their earlier counterparts. This small selection of stars by their Welsh names demonstrates how important the Brythonic myths were to their star lore and can be used as a basis for further exploration.

Caer Gwydion — the Milky Way

Caer Arianrhod — Corona Borealis

Telyn Arthur — Lyra

Llys Dôn — Cassiopeia

We can see by this list that numerous stellar features were attributed to the gods, and it is likely that at least one or more were once the province of Gwyn a Nudd. The most likely is the constellation of Orion the hunter, arising as he does at Nos Calan Gaeaf/Samhain, to ride high over the skies over the winter months, accompanied by his faithful hound, Dormach/Sirius, the dog star. At Glastonbury in the winter he can be seen striding over the Tor from early evening until the early hours only to recede beneath the horizon as dawn draws near.

Practice: Studying the stars and the solar wheel

There is no doubt that astronomy was of great importance to our ancient ancestors across the British Isles and the whole of Celtic Northern Europe. Many Neolithic structures, barrow mounds and stone circles have alignments to numerous stellar features or mark the solstices and equinoxes, the four cardinal points of the seasonal solar year. Becoming aware of the sun, moon and stars and their great cycles leads us into ever greater awareness of the vast rhythms of life on the land and our place within it, and in turn the universe itself. There are many books that can guide you with this lore, and now there are hundreds of computer programmes and apps that can help you locate and identify the stars above you, and what stellar features would have or still do align with any position on earth at any time in the future or distant past — useful if you wish to explore archaeoastronomy or visit sacred sites and see what stellar alignments they may have had at the time of their construction.

In Celtic faery lore, there are many tales of people seeing stars within the earth itself, and in an example of the old adage ’as above so below’ careful exploration of Annwfn and the inner realms of the land via seership and inner vision do have the potential to allow the seeker to encounter ever greater beings and an increasing sense of vast space — as if the whole universe may be accessed by going ’within’ — indeed modern faery encounters can even have a great deal in common with alien and UFO sightings.

Let the presence of the stars and their slow reel across the heavens fill your consciousness. On a calm clear night, climb to a high place, and lie back upon the earth, letting your body sink into the soil as your spirit soars to the greatest heights. Let your mind and eyes wander, counting the stars and letting your senses expand into the great endless expanse before you. Allow yourself to drift on their silver currents, letting the hours pass without care or conscious study. See if you can feel their great presences and in contrast the blue-green gem upon which you dwell. Allow their poetry, their endless song, to tangle in your hair and permeate your whole being for a while, and ignite the Awen, the inspirational and oracular fires within you.

In the winter months seek out, especially, Orion the hunter, and greet this giant each night as he strides across the sky. Allow his presence to be a part of your awareness, and mark his passing through the night as a prayer to guide your way through the winter, whether the cold season be within the land or within your own soul. Know his great strength as he walks through the darkness, and know him as your ally and guide, not in the mind, but in the heart, where your courage may be found.