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Lundy, Isle of Avalon
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Luned & Lundy names
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Luned / Lunette/ Lynettee
Loomis states that the wife of
Gawain, LUNED or LYNETTE = Moon
Goddess.
'lune' - 'moon'
Luned (-t) is the older form of the name. - (Bromwich)
'Lynete/Lyonors was the possessor of a precious cup and a
marvellous healing power'
'Malory ch14 (33,22,23,26) a cup of gold 'That is rich and
precious'
'In Wolfram's 'Parzival' one of the grail maidens is called 'Florie
von Lunel.'
'The beauty of Luned was much celebrated among the bards of the
middle ages.
'Called Lunette in the French romances
'Morte d'Arthur story of Gareth who undertook the adventure of
the Castle Perilous on her behalf.
'Gareth married her sister
Lyones of
Castle Perilous, Luned married his bro.Gaheris.
Luned and her sister
Lyones =
Lundy and
Lyonesse.
In " Jones' Welsh Bards" Luned is said to be the same
person as Elined one of the daughters of Brychain. The same Elined who is
thought, by some authorities to be St. Elen, the source of the three ancient
church dedications on Lundy, at
Abbotsham and at
Croyde.
( Luned = St. Elined = St. Elen ).
'The goddess of the moon has from earliest times also been
the
power that could blast or bring to luxuriant ripeness all green things....
Diana
of the Ephesians....the vegetation goddesses Hecate, Demeter, Persephone, had
also their lunar aspects. Plutarch for instance says: 'One Demeter is in the
earth, lady and mistress of that which is on the earth, and the other is in the
moon, and is called by those who live in the moon, Kore or Persephone." (De
Facie Lunae, LXX.) We have noted that original tradition made Gareth the lover
of Lynete, and
Chretien de Troyes
makes
Gawain, who is of course Gareth under
another name, lover of Lunete, and says expressly that she was the moon. (Ivain
l.2398.) Lunete like Lorie de la Roche
Florie, is called a fay, her name
assuming the corrupt form Felinet. Probably her Welsh progenitor is
Arianrhod,
'Silver ?" a name which suggests a lunar nature. Is it coincidence that
both in classical and Arthurian mythology the mistress of vegetation, heroine of
an abduction story and the object of a mystery cult, should be equated with the
goddess of the moon?
Though Strabo refers to the goddesses whose rites, celebrated in
an island near Britain, resembled those of Samothraceas Demeter and Kore, it is
more than possible that they were blended with the rites of another goddess,
sometimes equated with Persephone, also worshipped at Samothrace, Hecate. We
read in a classical source that 'In Samothrace there were mysteries of the
Korybantes and of Hecate.' In the Cave of Zerynfhos, 'It is said that they
worshipped Hecate with orgies and performed initiation rites to her and
sacrificed dogs.' Hecate and Demeter were both shape-changers. IN her ability to
take on both a hideous and a radiantly beautiful form, the Grail Messenger or
Grail Bearer corresponds closely to Hecate - Demeter, worshipped at Samothrace.
Another point on which the goddess of Samothrace and the goddess
who appears in the Grail romances agree, is that they both are messengers or
guides to the otherworld. Hecate is thought of as the guide of the spirits of
the dead to her under-world realm. The resemblance between the Greek and Celtic
conceptios of that Otherworld has been conclusively demonstrated in Nutt's
extended study. Loomis
'The report preserved by Strabo that in an
island near Britain sacrifices were offered to Demeter and Kore like those of
Samothrace finds an incredible amount of corroboration in Arthurian romance. For
the corresponding divinity, who must have sprung from ancient mythological roots
which ran deep in the soil of the British Ilses, and whom we can trace back to
Wales and Ireland, shares six characteristics with the Greek gdodesses. She is
the heroine of a seasonal abduction story. She is mistress both of moon and
vegetation. She transforms herself from the most hideous animal-like forms to
radiant beauty. She is a guide to the otherworld. She embraces a youthful god
with the knowledge of her husband, who interrupts them with his lightning
stroke. Finally she is associated with a cult in which a priestess bears a
vessel adorned with lights in an initiation ceremony, intimately connected with
the healing of a maimed god.
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the lady Alundyne
The tale of
'Owain and the Lady of the Fountain' appears in the
Mabinogion a collection of welsh prose tales put together between the latter
part of the 11th and the end of the 13th centuries.
Some versions of the
'Thirteen Treasures of the Island of
Britain' give the ring of Lunette as one of the treasures, showing that the
story of Owain and the Lady must have been widely known.
The resemblance of the name of the countess, Alundyne, to the
word Lundy is striking but just to emphasise the connection an early English
version of this story reads;-
" The riche lady Alundyne,
The dukes daughter of Landuit."
Both names differ far less
from 'Lundy' than do many of the names in the Arthurian myths which have become
changed over the years.
( see elsewhere for scribal confusion etc.)
The name of
the countess appears as Laudine in 'Yvain.'
The name of the maidservant, Luned becomes, in the French
Romances, Lunette.
In the variant versions of the tale of
'Owain and Luned and the
lady of the fountain' the castle is either on an island or a tower in a woodland
glade.
In the 'Livre d'Artus' the story of Merlin and Nimue is
interwoven with the story of the fountain and Lunette is more openly depicted as
an enchantress. In this version it was she who made the fountain and the
associated chapel.
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Lear
King Lear, is by the Welsh authorities called
indiscriminately Llyr or Llydd.
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Lindos
A sacred site on
the Island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean. It is on the
Trans
Europe St. Michael Line
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Lydda
St.
George was originally an eastern saint and his cult spread westward from its
source in LYDDA.
In his book
'Avalonian Quest,' Geoffrey Ashe tells of a Georgian
legend contained in an 8th cent. manuscript. The legend says that Joseph of
Arimathea and St. Philip, the Apostle, travelled to Lydda and there consecrated
a church to St. Mary. This church was put in Joseph's care. ( According to the
1254 Patent Rolls the church on Lundy was dedicated to St. Mary).
*** The King who received them would not become a Christian but
gave them the island of 'Ynys Witrin',
(later called Glastonbury)? where they
built a wattle church, in honour of St.Mary, which it was claimed had been
dedicated by the lord himself.
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Lydney
'In other cases the hillfort may have been built & used
solely as a sanctuary in which the priests and their assistants lived &
worked,receiving & perhaps accomodating worshippers, as at
Lydney.'Trav.Guide to Celtic Brit.'-
(lydney) - the cult objects.....suggest that the deity was
concerned with healing... the sun .. and water.
'Temple of Nodens -built after 366/7-Nuada of the
silv.hand-Nudd-Llud Llaw Ereint-llud of the silv.hand also -- LUGH.
'remarkable number of rep.of dogs
'a great hall surr.by alcoves or bays.
sacred sleep---land of nod
'Lord of Hounds' = Pwyll,Lord of Annwn.
***** 'The siting of the Lydney temple makes it clear that the
wide estuary of the Severn (Sabrina) was of first importance. ross
p228 'The temple at Bath was one of what would seem to have been
a series of shrines associated with healing springs and their presiding deities,
stretching right round the Severn estuary to include the impressive temple at
Lydney, and one at Caerwent.
**** 'Shrines assoc. with aquatic cults occur in the region of
the Severn estuary and adjacent areas.
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Llydaw
The first stanza of
triad 70 names the mother of Urien as
Nefyn,
daughter of Brychan Brycheiniog; the second stanza says
'The second,
Owain and Morfudd daughter of Urien and Anarun
archbishop of Llydaw, by Modron daughter of
Afallach their mother.'
'A'r
eil, Owein mab Vryen a Moruud uerch Vryen ac Anarun
Archesgob Llydaw, o Vodron merch Auallach eu
mam;
Owain
is descended on his father, Urien's side from Brychan
Brycheiniog and on his mother, Modron's side from
Afallach. His brother is
Anarun the Archbishop of Llydaw.
The
Breuddyd Rhonabwy
contains a reference to 'Howel fab Emyr Llydaw' - 'Hoel, son of the prince ( of
) Llydaw' . Other early welsh texts including 'Geraint' mention Hoel but do not
identify Llydaw.
Professor
John Rhys in Celtic Folklore says that 'Llydaw' signified 'land which one had to reach by boat'
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Ladon
Ladon - the sleepless
dragon
who
guards the tree of the
golden apples
in the garden of the Hesperides
( the
Twelve Labours of Hercules).
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London
Prior to its sacking in
the Boudiccan
revolt, Colchester was
the capital of Roman Britain and London, in the words of Tacitus was, '....an
important settlement for businessmen and merchandise.' By about 70 AD, in
the aftermath of the revolt, London
became the centre not only of administration but also of the transport system.
Archeological and other evidence seem to indicate that London, the largest
city in middle Roman Britain, was an insignificant settlement during the later Roman
years. The city was abandoned quite soon
after 410 and didn't become a significant burgh again until quite late in the Anglo
Saxon period.
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