by David Keys
This last probable entry point is of particular importance because it is through the Porthmadog area that the great citadel of Dinas Emrys, ten miles farther north, would have been infected with plague. Dinas Emrys was abandoned in the mid–sixth century, like so many other British sites. The evidence for Mediterranean trade at Dinas Emrys is nowhere near as great as at the other sites, but excavations have yielded a fragment of west Turkish amphora and a shard of French-made plate (decorated with a Christian chi rho symbol).
After arriving in Britain through one or more of these entry points, the plague almost certainly proceeded to devastate vast areas of the southwest and Wales. Archaeology has revealed that at the very time the plague would have been raging, many settlements became totally depopulated, presumably as a direct result of the epidemic.
In Cornwall, a mile from the Atlantic coast, a settlement now known as Chun, with its twenty-foot-thick, twelve-foot-high stone defenses, became a ghost town in the mid–sixth century. It had likely been involved in the mining and export of tin and had therefore probably been in direct contact with overseas traders. A somewhat larger fortified Cornish settlement, Killibury, with a population of perhaps two hundred to three hundred, appears also to have become depopulated at the same time, as did a village at a site now called Grambla, near St. Ives.
In Devon, High Peak—a small fortified town, now a deserted series of earthworks on a windblown cliff top—ceased to exist after flourishing for more than seven hundred years. Another Devon coastal settlement, Mothecombe, also appears to have fallen into oblivion in the mid–sixth century. Dozens of other settlements almost certainly suffered the same fate but have not yet been detected archaeologically.
As well as those settlements that appear to have vanished into oblivion at the time of the plague, several other major archaeological sites have yielded fascinating evidence of rapid change or drastic population reduction at that time. The most important is the ancient Roman city of Viroconium (Wroxeter), which appears to have suffered a major drop in population followed by a complete reordering of the city’s property boundaries.6
The evidence from the site suggests that in the mid–sixth century the city’s major market fell into disuse, presumably because of a reduction in trade and number of customers.7 Within a few decades this was followed by a complete redesign of the city’s property boundaries within the much reduced urban area, and on the site of the marketplace a local magnate decided to build a large private house. This disrespect for previous property boundaries and former public property strongly indicates a substantial demographic discontinuity occurring at around the time of the plague.
On the eve of the plague, the city probably boasted several thousand inhabitants, spread over nearly two hundred acres and defended by almost two miles of timber palisade atop a substantial earthwork. It also likely had several churches, one of which has been recently discovered by archaeologists using ground-penetrating radar. But a few decades after the plague, the city was a very different place. It had shrunk to around twenty-five acres, its defenses were adjusted accordingly, and dozens of new houses were constructed on property plots that apparently did not respect their pre-plague predecessors. In part of the old Roman public baths (next to what had been the market) the inhabitants of a large new private house built a private chapel, the remains of which still survive today.8
It is likely that the plague recurred several times in the sixth century and that the cumulative result of the disease (together with the famine which preceded it) was a population reduction of up to 60 percent in southwest Britain (what is now southwest England, Wales, and the West Midlands).9 No figures survive (and probably none were ever gathered) for the number of people who died of plague during that time. The only clues to the likely mortality rate are the much-better-recorded experiences of the fourteenth-century visitation of the plague (the Black Death), indications of the sixth-century plague mortality rates in the eastern Mediterranean, and the evidence for settlement discontinuity in sixth-century southwest Britain. It is also quite possible that in northern Europe, including southwest Britain, the disease was transmitted even more easily and more rapidly than in the warmer, drier south of the Continent. Plague bacteria survived for many hours in damp climates, compared to just a few minutes in the drier Mediterranean region. Both dry and damp regions would have suffered from flea bite–disseminated infection, but Britain would have been more vulnerable to infection caused by air-carried bacteria, which could be directly inhaled without the need for flea-bite transmission.
With up to 60 percent of the population dead in southwest Britain (perhaps up to 90 percent in some areas if typical plague devastation patterns pertained), normal life virtually collapsed, much agricultural land went out of use, and—as the archaeological record testifies—many towns and villages became depopulated and deserted.
With such devastation, the question must be asked: Why does there seem to have been no folk memory of this catastrophe?
The answer is that there may well have been.
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T H E W A S T E L A N D
Contrary to received wisdom, the sixth-century plague catastrophe may indeed have been preserved in the oral tradition and in literature that, centuries later, acted as source material for particular aspects of the medieval Arthurian romances—especially those associated with the quest for the Holy Grail.
The concept of the “Waste Land” occurs in at least half a dozen Arthurian romances dating from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries.¹ It also occurs in a totally non-Arthurian, mid-eleventh-century Welsh epic called the Mabinogi and possibly in the twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth.² In several of the romances the phenomenon is specifically referred to as the “Waste Land,” while in several others—and in the Mabinogi—the concept is manifestly in evidence but is not given a formal name.
Three key pieces of circumstantial evidence suggest that the Waste Land concept may derive in part from the real sixth-century catastrophe. For one thing, there is the similarity of date. All but two of the stories involving the concept of the Waste Land are in works associated with the semilegendary Dark Age dux bellorum (warlord) Arthur, who is said to have died in either 537 or 542; the mid-tenth-century Annales Cambriae (The Welsh Annals) gives the former date, the twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain the latter. Certainly the History of the Kings of Britain (and quite possibly other now long-lost texts) would have been known to the writers of the Arthurian romances, who would therefore have been well acquainted with Arthur’s sixth-century vintage.
Additionally, there are similarities in the nature of the literary and real “Waste Land” catastrophes. The Welsh Annals actually refer to the 530s famine in the very same sentence in which the death of Arthur is recorded; the entry for 537 calls it a “mortalitas” (mass death) that took place in Britain and Ireland. This mortalitas is almost certainly the same event as the “failure of bread” (the famine) referred to in the Annals of Ulster for the years 536 and/or 538.³
The History of the Kings of Britain, on the other hand, refers to devastation due to a war taking place sometime after the death of Arthur. Perhaps significantly, the date given for Arthur’s demise is the very date Continental historians have given here for the beginning of the plague catastrophe in Constantinople and Europe. It is interesting that the dates “selected” for Arthur’s death are those in which key recorded natural disasters occurred.
The medieval Arthurian romances are seen as being associated with famine and/or disease and/or war—a potentially significant reflection of the real circumstances of the mid– to late sixth century, in which famine was followed by plague, which in turn was followed by invasion and war. The relative chronology is, not surprisingly, somewhat confused in the Arthurian romances, but all the elements are there.
Even the type of disease—namely plague—may be hinted at in the nature of the mysterious wound that the king of the soon-to-be-wasted land suffer
s from. This royal wound—which magically causes the land to be wasted and is therefore symbolic of the Waste Land as a whole—was a bleeding injury to the thigh region in general and the groin/genital area in particular. In the real events of the sixth century, it was the plague that was the main cause of the Waste Land, and the key physical manifestation of plague were the buboes (great boils), which erupted bloodily into open sores, specifically in the groin and armpits.
The Arthurian romance The Quest for the Holy Grail (early thirteenth century) actually refers to “a great pestilence” in its description of the Waste Land phenomenon.4 And The Post-Vulgate (also of the thirteenth century) talks of half the people in the villages lying dead and “labourers dead in the fields”—exactly the sort of situation one would expect to see from plague. Indeed, there are strikingly similar historical accounts from Constantinople and Anatolia for the 540s.
The first brief mention of anything approximating a “wasting” of the land in Britain is in the Welsh Annals entry for 537, as previously noted. It states: “The battle of Camlann in which Arthur and Medraut fell and there was ‘mortalitas’ [mass deaths] in Britain and Ireland.”
But, as I touched on earlier in this chapter, the earliest proper description of the Waste Land phenomenon (though without any Arthurian connection) is in the Mabinogi, an epic Welsh folktale, eventually written down in the eleventh century. The story relates how a magical mist descended and that when it eventually lifted, everything had gone—“no animal, no smoke, no fire, no man, no dwelling.” The houses of the princely court were “empty, deserted, uninhabited without man or beast in them.”5 Later, there is a symbolic threat of famine when all the ears of wheat are magically stolen (by an army of mice) from the stalks on which they had been growing: “In the grey dawn only the naked stalks” remained. In the end, it transpires that this proto–Waste Land was caused by an evil wizard, possibly symbolizing death, called “The Grey One.”
There are geographical similarities between the literary Waste Lands and the real ones of the sixth century. Indeed, most of the Waste Lands in the Arthurian romances and other medieval literary sources were said to be located in Wales6 or, more specifically, south Wales7 or Logres/Loegria.8
More generally, Britain or Listenois (probably another name for Britain or a part of Britain) is cited as the location of the Waste Land. The Arthurian romances in general—the literary backdrop for the Waste Land—tend to be associated with the Somerset/south Wales region. Thus, the southwest quadrant of Britain is often seen as the area that was wasted—and this corresponds with what was probably the case (due mainly to the plague) in the real world of the sixth century.
The next description of the Waste Land phenomenon was written down by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain in the mid–twelfth century and describes how some years after Arthur’s death—conceivably in the 560s or 570s—the city of Cirencester was captured and burned by advancing barbarians. The British were chased over the river Severn into Wales. Then the leader of the barbarians “ravaged the fields, set fire to all the neighbouring cities and gave free vent to his fury until he had burnt almost all the land in the island, from one sea to another.
“All the settlements were smashed to the ground with a great force of battering rams. All the inhabitants were destroyed by flashing swords and crackling flames. Those left alive fled, shattered by these dreadful disasters,” wrote Geoffrey in a work that, while inaccurate in terms of names and dates, may be illuminating in terms of more general themes.9
Next, in the late twelfth century, the French writer Chrétien de Troyes in his Story of the Grail (sometimes also just called Perceval) describes the first truly Arthurian Waste Land associated with the castle/town the hero, Perceval, visits just before discovering the home of the Holy Grail—the so-called Grail Castle.
As a result of war and lack of food, the men-at-arms of the castle were “so weakened by famine and long vigils that they were wonderously changed.” And just as Perceval “found the land wasted and impoverished outside the walls [of the town], he found things no better within, for everywhere he went he saw the streets laid waste and the houses in ruins, for there was no man or woman to be seen. Thus he found the town desolate, without bread or pastry, without wine, cider or beer.”10
A further account written in the thirteenth century, The Perlesvaus (sometimes called The High History of the Grail), describes “a waste land, a land stretching far and wide where there dwelt neither beasts nor birds, for the earth was so dry and so poor that there was no pasture to be found.” The walls of the huge city were “crumbling round about and the gates leaning with age.” It was “quite empty of inhabitants, its great palaces derelict and waste, its markets and exchanges empty, its vast graveyards full of tombs, its churches ruined.”11
Then, in a thirteenth-century addition to one of the manuscripts of The Story of the Grail (an addition known as The Elucidation), there is a further Waste Land story with a spectacularly Celtic flavor to it. Unlike the Geoffrey of Monmouth story or Chrétien de Troyes’ version, the advent of this particular Waste Land is set years before the time of Arthur—and it is Arthur’s Round Table knights who are said to have vowed to bring it back to health by rediscovering the Grail Castle.
The story starts with a wicked king and his men, who rape the mysterious, otherworldly maidens who guard a sacred well and who serve water in golden cups, virtual proto-Grails, to all travelers. The rape and the theft of the golden cups drive the maidens away and disrupt the flow of goodness from the wells. The wells dry up and the land becomes waste: “The kingdom [of Logres] turned to loss, the land was dead and desert in such wise as that it was scarce worth a couple of hazel-nuts. For they lost the voices of the wells and the damsels that were therein.”12
Another thirteenth-century Arthurian romantic description appears in The Quest for the Holy Grail in which, for the first time, the Waste Land is regarded as a term of geographical nomenclature—a proper noun—and is seen as the direct result of the maiming of a king (ostensibly by a sword), though on this occasion it is set in a time before Arthur. It is also the occasion in which a great epidemic is seen to flow from the maiming: “This was the first blow struck by that sword in the Kingdom of Logres. And there resulted from it such a great pestilence and such a great persecution in both kingdoms that the earth no longer produced, when cultivated. From that time on, no wheat or other grain grew there, no tree gave fruit and very few fish were found in the sea. For this reason, the two kingdoms were called the Waste Land [for] they had been laid waste by this unfortunate blow.”13
Another blow (ostensibly by a lance), the so-called dolorous stroke, features in the thirteenth-century Merlin Continuation. This assault, seen in the narrative as having occurred at the time of Arthur, was regarded as the cause of the Waste Land. Balaain (Balain), the knight with the two swords, is described as having seized the sacred lance (the weapon used to wound Christ on the Cross) in both hands. He “struck King Pellehan who was behind him so hard that he pierced both his thighs.” The king fell to the ground, severely wounded. Then the palace trembled and shook, a great voice was heard throughout the castle, and people fainted everywhere. “The true history says that they lay unconscious two nights and two days and of this great fear more than one hundred died in the palace.”
Balaain then left the castle. “As he rode thus through the land, he found trees down and grain destroyed and all things laid waste, as if lightning had struck in each place, and unquestionably it had struck in many places, though not everywhere.
“He found half the people in the villages dead, both bourgeois and knights, and he found labourers dead in the fields. He found the Kingdom of Listenois [Britain] so totally destroyed that it was later called by everyone the Kingdom of the Waste Land and the Kingdom of the Strange Land, because everywhere the land had become so strange and wasted.”14
The Arthurian romances and other medieval Waste Land texts are all, of course, essentia
lly nonhistorical.15 Nonetheless, in terms of the period in which the action is set, in terms of the locations where the action takes place, and in terms of the mixture of famine, groin-area injury, pestilence, depopulation, and war, the idea of the Waste Land may have been partially derived, through oral and lost written accounts, from the real famine-hit, plague-ridden, war-torn, depopulated Waste Land of mid- to late-sixth-century southwest Britain.
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T H E B I R T H O F
E N G L A N D
Cynddylan’s hall is dark tonight,
There burns no fire, no bed is made.
I weep awhile, and then am quiet.
Cynddylan’s hall is dark tonight,
No fire is lit, no candle burns,
God will keep me sane.
Cynddylan’s hall. It pierces me
To see it roofless, fireless.
Dead is my lord, and I am yet alive.
