by Bob Curran
Just to confuse matters even further, however, there may also be a Breton connection with the concept of Lyonesse. Some scholars have argued that the name has been confused with Leonaisse—a region in Brittany—although others have argued that this was a French name for the Lothian area in Scotland. It has also been suggested that the 140 churches and abbeys that dotted the land paid their tithes to the great Abbey at Cluny in Brittany, although there appears to have been no evidence for this.
Lyonesse appears in both English and Breton folklore, although in slightly different versions and with slightly different details. For example, in English myth, the name of its capital is given as Carlyon, which is presumably taken to mean “City of the Lions” whereas in Breton fable it is given as Ker Ys—“the city of Ys.”
The marvelous and beautiful city of Ker Ys was said to lie submerged beneath the Seven Stones Reef off the English coast. In March 1967, the oil-tanker Torrey Canyon struck Pollard’s Rock, a large outcropping, and was badly holed, creating a biological hazard on the Cornish and French coasts as tons of oil spilled out from her hold. Although divers were sent down of the Reef to make her safe, no trace of any sunken buildings or ruins relating to Ker Ys were found anywhere in the vicinity. However, at Land’s End there may be some stronger evidence of an undersea landmass at Mount St. Michael. The old Cornish name for this island rising out of the sea is Carrack Looz en Cooz, literally “the grey rock in the wood.” The Mount was said to be the great hill where the last king of the Cornish giants, Cormoran, had his fortress, and where he was defeated by King Brute of Britain in prehistoric times. The hill was also supposed to have been surrounded by a mighty forest, which stretched all the way into Lyonesse and was, in later times, the hunting lands of the kings there. This forest was said to have been submerged when Lyonesse sank, and, at low tide, the stumps of a petrified woodland can still be seen, stretching out under the water, giving at least some credence to this assertion.
Both Cornish and Breton traditions contain a number of differences, and yet there is a third tradition that may have been invented as a “compromise” between these differing elements. It is said that following the disastrous Battle of Camlann against his illegitimate son Modred, reputed to have been in A.D. 537, a badly wounded Arthur and several of his knights fled to Lyonesse for safety. The country was low-lying and protected by dykes as in the Breton version. However, Arthur was pursued by Maelgwyn, Modred’s second-in-command (Modred himself being wounded and dying), who then occupied the country. For a number of months, Maelgwyn ruled as a tyrant in Lyonesse, punishing the population there for having supported Arthur. In A.D. 538 it was secretly agreed among the people that the dykes should be opened and the country flooded in order to drive the invaders out. This was done, but the disaster turned out to be worse than anticipated, and many were drowned. Lyonesse itself was lost forever beneath the waves.
The Fall of Lyonesse
How, then, was Lyonesse destroyed? Again, the answer is complex because there are two big explanations set several centuries apart. The first is undoubtedly a Christian one, and may have been based on the history of an actual event. The story runs that somewhere in the early medieval period (about the ninth or 10th century), the inhabitants of Lyonesse had become so debauched and depraved that God decided to destroy them. He created a great wave with which He overwhelmed the entire land, consigning it to the ocean deeps forever. Everyone was killed except one man who had remained pure and Godly throughout his days. Here we revisit the story of Trevellyn, mentioned earlier in this chapter. But in this legend, instead of riding a horse, he was permitted to escape the destruction to reach the shore of Cornwall carrying some of the wealth of Lyonesse with him.
This story was popular around the late 1400s and early 1500s, and is clearly a moral fable. Lyonesse perished because of the wickedness of its inhabitants, but one Godly man was spared (similar to Noah in the fable of the Deluge) to perpetuate the line of the drowned country and gain wealth for himself and his family. The tale may also be based on the destruction on the major seaport of Dunwich on the Suffolk coast. In early times, Dunwich was one of the major trading ports in England, boasting a population of more than 3,000 people (big for an early medieval town), eight churches, and five houses belonging to religious orders. It traded wool with the Netherlands and furs with the Baltic region, and boasted a port that could take boats from all over the world. It was mentioned as a major center by both St. Felix of Burgundy and by the Norman Doomsday Book in 1086, which mentions it as an extremely important center of trade.
In 1286, however, part of the town was swept away into the sea during a severe winter gale, and the mouth of the River Dunwich was silted up. Trade began to fall away and in 1347, another severe storm destroyed more than 400 of the town’s houses (most of which once more fell into the sea). The storms had further changed the nature of the coastline, and throughout the years, many of the houses that were left gradually slipped into the ocean by a process of long-shore drift. Today, Dunwich is little more than a tiny village, which is still being threatened by coastal erosion; and although it still formally has the status of a town, it is not even a shadow of its former importance in medieval times. Only the ruins of a large Franciscan abbey—Greyfriars—together with the remains of a leper hospice serve to give any memory of the town’s status in the 13th century. Perhaps some memory of those 13th and 14th century catastrophes (and even others similar to them) found their way into English folklore, and became somehow intertwined with the concept of sunken Lyonesse.
This tale comes from a relatively late period when Christianity was well established in England, and suggests that the sinking of Lyonesse may have occurred somewhere around the ninth or 10th century. Other accounts place the disaster approximately 500 years earlier, in the fifth century.
The List of Kings
The list of the kings of the country, largely taken from Arthurian literature, is suggestive of fifth century Welsh tradition. The list itself, comprising four “known” kings, derives from a number of medieval English texts centred around the legend of Tristan (Tristram), together with a number of what appear to be later Italian works (usually variants on the central theme of the legend), which have all contributed to the Prose Tristan. It has been argued that the basis of these texts are Welsh and owe more to Welsh heroic fable than to any kings of a forgotten land. The first of the four “known” kings was Felig (who supposedly took the throne circa A.D. 445). There is great confusion about this particular monarch because he appears in several other guises: Felic, Felec, and Felix. Indeed, he may have also been a saint, as there are references to a St. Felix who may in fact have come from Wales. Is it possible, then, that the saint was also a king of Lyonesse? If so, he also appears to have been married with children. Indeed, the list states that his son, Meliodas ap Felig took the throne of Lyonesse around A.D. 475. He was succeeded by his son Tristan (or Tristram) Fawr, Tristan the Elder, in A.D. 510. This is the famous Sir Tristan who appears in the Arthurian legend, and in the tragedy of Tristan and Iseult. He is described as a “warrior king” and a great hero. The last, and fourth, king mentioned is Tristan’s son, Tristan Fychem, Tristan the Younger, who became monarch in A.D. 537 and was apparently on the throne when Lyonesse was overwhelmed that year. There are also hints in English texts about earlier kings of the region, but if there were any, their names are lost both to history and mythology. Gradlon, however, who appears as the last king in the Breton tradition, is not mentioned, nor are any of his predecessors.
Gradlon
The Breton story, however, holds a number of interesting features. Gradlon had only one child, his daughter, Dahut, who was greatly indulged and spoiled. At the time of its destruction, Lyonesse, similar to Holland, was below sea level, but was protected by a series of dams and tidal barriers. Gradlon himself was the only person in the entire kingdom who had keys to the gates and could let the sea in. He was supposedly an extremely good and kind man, and had built the main city
of Lyonesse—Ker Ys—into a center of art and culture as well as a notable trading center. His weakness, however, was Dahut. The princess, it is said, was a wilful and spiteful girl. Her mother, according to the legend, had been Malgven, Queen of Hyperborea, who herself had been a wild and temperamental woman. She had died not long after Dahut’s birth and Gradlon (described as an old man) had lavished every available excess on his daughter. Moreover, he had turned a blind eye to her tantrums and spitefulness.
A change had come to Lyonesse during Gradlon’s reign. Christianity had arrived in the country under the auspices of St. Guenole, who had come from Brittany. Dahut tolerated the saint, but became incensed by the growing influence of another Christian—Corentin, Bishop of Quimper in Brittany—over her father. She accused the Bishop of turning Ker Ys into a dull and boring place. She, herself, favored the old Celtic Pagan ways, and was reputed to take a lover each night from among the male population of Lyonesse in a sort of ritualistic frenzy. During their love-making, she made them wear a silken mask, which, as soon as the rays of the rising sun touched it, turned into iron claws and tore the face from the unfortunate victim before killing him. Angered by the spread of the Christian faith and her father’s growing reliance on Coretin, Dahut resolved to destroy the realm and escape to Cornwall. While Gradlon was asleep, she took the keys from him and opened several of the locks on the gates. Water started to seep through. Realizing what she was doing, St. Guenole tried to stop her, but the old man was not strong enough. As the water began to rise, the saint ran to save the old monarch. Taking a swift steed, he pulled Gradlon into the saddle, but the king would not leave without his daughter, even though he knew that she had brought about the disaster. The three of them began to gallop toward distant Cornwall, but their progress was too slow, and the encroaching water was rapidly overtaking them. Suddenly, Dahout either fell or was pushed by St. Guenole from the galloping horse. Unable to turn and save her, they galloped on, outdistancing the water, until they reach Cornwall. There, Gradlon was granted refuge with his kinsman, King Mark of Cornwall, but his kingdom was lost forever beneath the ocean and most of its inhabitants drowned. It is said that St. Guenole was revered in the region of Landevennec in Finestaire in Brittany, but he may also be known as St. Winwallow, who was worshipped in the area around Landewednag at the Lizard in Cornwall. There is a great religious affinity toward these saints from the fishermen of both locations; they often share worship, sometimes remembering Lyonesse in the course of their prayers. Dahout, however, continued to live—at least in both the mythologies of Cornwall and Brittany—but as a spectre or monster of the sea. She is said to dwell among the rocks and reefs of the English Channel, singing songs that will lure unwary sailors to their doom.
The concept of Lyonesse, the vanished kingdom, had tantalized the imaginations of both writers and poets through the ages and even into modern times. Fantasy writers in particular have sometimes developed the theme of a sunken land lying somewhere off the coast of Britain. The most celebrated of the works incorporating this idea is probably Jack Vance’s The Lyonesse Trilogy in which he depicts the lost kingdom as part of the Elder Isles. The sunken country also appears in Stephen Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle, written between 1987 and 1999, and it may well have served as a model for J.R.R. Tolkein’s land of Numenor, a place that coexists with Middle Earth. In the 1995 film First Knight, Leonesse is the land from which the central heroine Guinevere comes—she is described in the film as “The Lady of Leonesse,” although this is not a sunken land. Rather, it is a buffer zone ruled by her father that lies between the kingdom of Arthur and that of his implacable enemy Maleagant. But the name of the kingdom has obviously been borrowed from the Lyonesse mythology to give it some sort of authentic chivalric and medieval feel.
So does the lost land lie below the ocean somewhere off the coasts of Cornwall and Brittany? It is said that at some future date, one of the signs heralding the return of King Arthur will be when this sunken land rises from the depths of the sea in all its former glory. However, with the threat of global warming and the rise in sea levels along the French and English coasts, it might be more likely that already existing land locations along the shores will one day be joining it beneath the mysterious waters of the English Channel.
9
Davy Jones’s Locker
Almost everybody, whether seafarer or landlubber, has heard of Davy Jones’s Locker. Recently, the name has become even more relevant with the release of the extremely popular film The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest starring Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. Bill Nighy appears as the eponymous Davy Jones. In the films, he appears as a sort of evil, Cthulhu-like figure. He is a commander of the doomed, ghostly ship The Flying Dutchman, which is intent on dragging both pirates and sea-travelers to some unknown lair. But just how accurate is the movie representation, and who exactly was Davy Jones?
The Birth of Davy Jones
The name “Davy Jones’s Locker” has been used since the 1700s (and perhaps even earlier) to denote the deepest point of the ocean. It was also used as a euphemism for death by drowning at sea (that is, “being taken to Davy Jones’s Locker”). The notion of such a place has a strong ideological connection with the concept of the Otherworld because it is supposed to be a region where the spirits of drowned sailors gathered. No real or coherent description of it exists, although some legends have tried to paint a picture of what it might be like. It has been described, for instance, as a great hall in which the spirits of the dead sailors are held in great water-filled glass jars for eternity. In other descriptions, it is said to be a narrow chamber, filled with clutter and ships’ tackle in which the sailors’ spirits are held in small bottles, thrown among the litter. In other accounts, it is described as a place of eternal torment in which the dead are forced to work ceaselessly, watched over by the terrible Davy Jones—a synonym for the Devil.
The literary history of the term, however, stretches back to the early 18th century. Perhaps the first mention of it is found in a work by the writer Daniel Defoe (more famous for his work Robinson Crusoe) entitled The Four Years Voyages of Captain George Roberts, which contains the phrase “heaving the rest into David Jones’s Locker.” This is suggestive of some sort of doom or death, and is probably used to evoke the idea of a mass drowning at sea. A slightly more detailed description of it is to be found in Tobias Smollet’s Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751). Here Smollet notes:
This same David Jones according to sailors is the fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep and is often seen in various shapes, perching amongst the rigging on the eve of hurricanes, ship-wrecks and other disasters to which the sea-faring life is exposed, warning the devoted wretch of death and woe.
In this case, David (Davy) Jones appears as a harbinger of disaster and death, a figure who, like the Irish banshee, appears to those who are likely to die in order to warn them of their approaching fate. A further reference is made by the American writer Washington Irving, in 1824, in an obscure work titled The Adventures of the Black Fisherman. However, here, there is only a passing reference to the Locker:
He came, said he, in a storm and he went in a storm; he came in the night and he went in the night; he came, nobody knows whence and he has gone nobody knows where. For aught I know, he has gone to the sea once more on his chest and may land to bother some people on the other side of the world, though it is a thousand pities, he added, if he had gone to Davy Jones’ Locker.
In the extract, it would appear that the Locker is the eventual destiny of dark and evil seamen who trouble folk both on the sea and land. It therefore becomes a euphemism for Hell or for some region that receives the black souls of the evil drowned.
But exactly who was Davy Jones, and why is his name linked with a dark and destructive Otherworld? And why has he become something of a demon of the sea? Many sailors decline to talk about him, even today, for fear of some supernatural retribution, but there have been a number of theories.
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bsp; Naming Davy
The first is that the name is a combination of two names: the Devil and Jonah. The latter, of course, was a biblical prophet from the Galilean village of Gath-hepher, near Nazareth, who was instructed by God to preach destruction to the wicked city of Nineveh. However, Jonah disobeyed the instructions and, refusing to go to Nineveh, took passage on a ship bound for the coastal city of Tarshish, in an attempt to escape God’s anger. It was a fruitless flight, for God created a storm that threatened to destroy the vessel. Fearing a shipwreck, the terrified sailors identified Jonah, who was asleep in the forward part of the ship, as the source of their danger. In order to save themselves from God’s wrath, they threw the prophet overboard whereupon he was swallowed by a great whale. In the belly of the creature, Jonah repented and was spat out on the shoreline. However, among sailors his name became synonymous with bad luck, or with a person who brings bad luck onto a ship. It was therefore believed that if there was a “Jonah” on board, whether a passenger or member of the crew, the ship would ultimately perish on its voyage, or some terrible disaster would befall it and everyone on it. Therefore, the name “Jonah” became associated with doom and death among seafaring folk; even mentioning it invited some form of misfortune. It is therefore thought that combining the name Jonah with that of the Devil, (whose name could also not be mentioned on board) formed a kind of “code” in a proper name—David or Davy Jones. This allowed, according to the theory, the possibility of both Jonah and the Devil to be discussed onboard the ship. The idea that the Devil could claim the souls of mariners who died at sea was also prevalent, and the concept of a chamber or “locker” (as used by a ship’s crew to store their valuables) came into play. This was where the Devil stored the souls he had claimed until the great Judgement Day. Thus, Jones became an amalgam of both Jonah, who destroyed boats by visiting God’s wrath upon them, and the Devil, who claimed the souls of the drowned unfortunates; his “locker” was an extension of Purgatory or the Otherworld.
