Bronze Age Megaliths in Cornwall
Stone Circles
Second millennium BC, Cornwall, England.
Like the ring upon which oaths were sworn in pagan Iceland, the circle in late-Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain seems to have had a religious significance.
'Trengwainton Garden is probably best seen in May, when all the Azaleas are out,' said Miranda, 'but I thought it was really lovely all the same.' She and Quintin had driven down to Cornwall chased by an early-rising mid-June sun to see four Bronze Age stone circles, but it was only a short drive from Trengwainton National Trust Garden to the stone circle called Boscawen Un, so they had stopped off on the way.
'I asked the lady in the gift shop how the name was pronounced and it sounded like Tren-Gowan-Ton, not Treng-Wain-Ton,' said Miranda, as they waded into the tall grass inside the circle. 'I'm sure Sir Gawain's name was pronounced in the same way. Gowan, not gaWain. Sir Gowan. Gwain in Cornish means Spring, as in the season, according to this guide to Trengwainton Garden. So Sir Spring! Like Gawain's name in Welsh—Gwalchmai, hawk of May. The Knight of the Spring Goddess! These Arthurian myths are Cornish! Sir Gawain's strength increased until noon, remember, then diminished again as the afternoon wore on! And look at these lovely Bronze Age stone circles that the Cornish people have preserved.'
King Arthur was born in Cornwall,' replied Quintin. 'His mother was Ygraine, the wife of the Duke of Cornwall whom King Arthur's father Uther Pendragon impersonated on the night that King Arthur was conceived. Sir Gawain is also half-Cornish, the son of King Arthur's older half-sister Morgause. But his father was King Lot of Orkney, and there are some clues that place Sir Gawain's origin in Galloway, or Lothian in Scotland. Sir Tristram was a Cornish knight and the Cornish might have taken their old stories over to Brittany during the wars that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, then they reappeared in the Medieval Breton lais. But there are other influences as well. Thomas Green has written: Arthur's fame was not limited to one particular area of Britain. He is a figure of pan-Brittonic reputation according to even the earliest sources...
And he's certainly a mythological figure. The Roman occupation of Britain affected Cornwall much less than other parts of the country, of course, and the old traditional way of life might have persisted here for much longer. Many old mythical stories might have been common to all of Britain. And they did look after their stone circles here.
One of the Celtic saints, Saint Samson of Dol, complained of the persistence of pagan rites on a Cornish hilltop,' replied Miranda. 'They were celebrating a day that was sacred to the god Lugh in the old Celtic faith. That was in the days when Cornwall was supposed to be Christian, like in the five-hundreds AD. I wonder whether it was here?'
'Sir Lancelot had no connection with Cornwall, though,' replied Quintin. 'He was the son of King Ban of Benwick, which the thirteenth century pre-Cyclic Lancelot places in central France. But then, how would Lancelot be pronounced in Old French? Something like Lance Ullr? Ullr was an Old Norse god with a lot of the traits often ascribed to Odin. A master of the runes and a guide to the dead. The Medieval Arthurian stories might have drawn upon many different sources, from Wales, Cornwall via Brittany, and elsewhere, and perhaps the Norman French, descended as they were from Norse invaders, brought Ullr into England as well, along with their Scandinavian roots. Then the Anglo-French nobility in the twelfth century courts of England, Champagne and Brittany wove a mythical epic involving France, Cornwall, Britain and Nordic Orkney, in defiance of Christianity.'
'And the circles in Cornwall are beautiful.'
