Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings. For today’s Mermaid Monday blog post, I will be discussing Watery Otherworlds of the Fae and the Dead! I will be focusing on Welsh and Arthurian tales here. Think of this post as a meditation on just how entwined water, the Fae, and the dead are in Celtic Otherworlds.
Of course, Avalon is an Otherworldly Island, to which Arthur is taken as he lay dying after the Battle of Camlann. However, Otherworlds, in general, are associated with the dead, as the Celtic Otherworlds are not just lands of the Fae, but also lands of the dead! Beyond that, we know that the Otherworld is often accessed through the water, given that the element of water is a portal.
We see an example of the Otherworld being accessed beneath a lake in the tale of The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach in Wales. In that story, a man must venture beneath the lake to win the hand of the Faery Woman he has fallen in love with. Of course, in that story, the Otherworld is not shown as expressly a land of the dead, but given the misty liminality of the Celtic Otherworlds, we can presume it is also a land of the dead. Another example from Arthurian legend of reaching the Otherworld via water is in Preiddeu Annwn (or, in English, The Spoils of Annwn). In the poem, Arthur sails to the Otherworld of Annwn in search of a Cauldron. This is also where the Nine Maidens of Annwn are featured, as they guard the Cauldron and warm it with their breath! Once again, with The Spoils of Annwn, the text does not really outright state that this Otherworld is a land of the dead. However, as you read more folklore and mythology, you learn to read between the lines. This is especially important when looking at Celtic folklore and myth, as the Celts did not write down their stories, so what we have preserved was first written down by monks and Christian clerics. So, yes, we read between the lines.
You see, the reason that it was so easy to fall into the Otherworld, into Faerylands, was because the Otherworld exists alongside our world. At liminal places, portal places, it is easy to slip through! This is how Pwyll encountered Arawn in the First Branch of The Mabinogion. He was hunting and presumably slipped through the portal, or Arawn slipped through into the human world to make his request of Pwyll. It is more likely the latter, as Rhiannon also rides through the portal from the Otherworld to find Pwyll later in the First Branch! Of course, I will leave my examination of that tale there, as that story does not feature water.
Now, we have come full circle, as I want to look to Avalon once again. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, one of the best-known stories about Avalon is that Arthur was taken there when he lay dying after the Battle of Camlann. In most tellings of the legends, it is Morgan le Fay who ferried a dying Arthur to Avalon so that he may be healed. However, in the first literary reference to Avalon, in Vita Merlini, Arthur is brought to Morgen to be healed. Either way, Morgana is integrally important to the story of Arthur going to Avalon, for it is Morgana who is said to heal him. Yet, my interpretation of this ‘healing’ has always been that Arthur was being spiritually healed, not physically healed. He had died, but was healed of all of the trauma that he had endured. This makes Arthur’s being ferried to Avalon as he was dying possibly one of the best literary and folkloric examples we have of Avalon as an Isle of the Dead!
So, yes, Avalon, Annwn, and various other names for the Celtic Otherworlds are all places of the Fae and of the Dead. The living may have preternaturally long lives in the Otherworld too, for in Vita Merlini, Monmouth referenced men living to age 100 or more on Avalon. And, yes, we can access these lands at liminal places, and water as an element is liminal. Beyond all of this, when we look to the Three Worlds of Celtic Cosmology, the Land of Sea is associated with the Ancestors. That means that water, in general, has ties to the dead in Celtic thought.
I hope that you have enjoyed reading my slightly rambling and spiraling thoughts on Avalon, Annwn, and the Celtic Otherworlds, as watery lands of the Fae and the dead. What is your favorite example of a story that shows the Otherworld as a land of the dead? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is the painting The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon by Edward Burne-Jones. I found the art on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Sleep_of_Arthur_in_Avalon/
LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries
Further Reading
- The Mabinogion translated by Sioned Davies
- Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
- Avalon Within by Jhenah Telyndru
- The Avalonian Oracle by Jhenah Telyndru
- Welsh Fairies by Mhara Starling
- https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/preiddeu-annwn.html (Here you can read Preiddeu Annwn on the Camelot Project.)
- https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/geoffrey-of-monmouth-avalon-vita.html (Here you can read the Avalon passage from Vita Merlini on the Camelot Project.)