HOLY GLASTONBURY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19170, 9 November 1925, Page 13

HOLY GLASTONBURY.

FIRST CHURCH IN ENGLAND.

BURIAL PLACE OF KINGS,

CUP OF THE LAST SUPPER

Glastonbury, which has just- closed a most successful festival season, is surely, if tradition speaks truly, the spot most deserving of reverence in all England. Here, as nowhere else in Britain, Christianity has been continuously preached for nearly 1900 years. Here Joseph of Arimathea was buried, having first, it is said, buried with his own hand in the neighbouring Chalice Hill the Cup of the Last Supper itself. Hero St. Patrick was born, and hero ho died. Here King Arthur came to heal him of his grievous wound, but likewise died; and here was the burial place of many of the old kings. The spot in Glastonbury which most appeals to the imagination is not the ruins of the abbey nor their beauty and hints of former grandeur, nor is it the Tor, crowned with the ancient church and serving as a landmark for miles around; but it is a grey slab like a paving stone, cracked across, set in the grass —one may have to drive a cow away before he can see it—of Weary-all Hill. It is a pleasant green ridge, broken only near the summit by one little wood of oak and larch and Scots pine, and it is climbed by an easy footpath. To this hill it was 'that Joseph of Arimathea, with his 11 companions, came, having sailed in over what is now the low moor and heathland of the Bruce Valley and Bridgwater Bay. When, weary all, they had made two-thirds of the ascent, the saint, as token that their pilgrimage was over, thrust his staff in the ground, where it took root and became the famous Glastonbury Thorn. There are many descendants of the Thorn, from seeds or cuttings, in Glastonbury gardens; and they still blossom, as did the parent tree, at Christmas— hora ipsa qua Christus natus fuerat. ' The best-known of these descendants to-day stands just inside the entrance to the abboy ruins, itself an old tree now and decrepit, having to be propped up, and, as the thin foliage and scanty crop ot this year's haws upon it show, nearly past bearing flowers or fruit. With a leaf closely resembling that of the common English hawthorn and a flower like the white may of the hedgerows, the tree has fewer thorns and a slightly differen. habit of growth in its interlacing branches to show that it comes of exotic stock. It.Ms the site of the original tree that is marked by that cracked paving stone amid the grass. It is roughly ascribed with characters suggestive of the scratchings with which a tourist writes his —or her—name upon a rock, with the legend: " J.A." (presumably Joseph of Arimathea) Ann. D. XXXI. date would seem to be too early, > something less than 40 years, Jut, so much does it resemble some hnlld *>'" maker's scribbling, hundreds of vim to s must gaze uncomprehendmgly at. the 11 scription and wonder who and what ku of a woman "Ann D.'" may have been. From the hill top the visitor gets a lovely view of Glastonbury below the plan'of the abbey ruins plainly visible, the Tor rising boldly, topped with its old tower, and the wide, flat moorland, Meare Heath and Sedgemoor, once inlets of the sea. stretching westward, all crisscrossed with ditches, studded with willows, and cut across by the straight, silver cord of the canalised Brue. Of Glastonbury Abbey there 13 little need to speak. Fragments though the ruins are, they are singularly impressive. The size*of the plan of the main church and the glorious lift of the great arch between nave and choir give an idea of the matrnifWnce of the buildings m the days of the abbey's greatness. Almost unequalled, also, is the beauty of the Norman work on what remains of bt. Joseph's Chapel. And that is, perhaps, the holiest spot of all this sacred ground, for the chapel, we are told, was built "over and around" the original church of mud and wattles erected bv Joseph and his eleven companions, "which is truly to be reckoned"—so Henry n. declared in a charter of 1184—''the source and origin of all religion in England." Surely, then, as has been said, Glastonbury is deserving of reverence. Tourists and post cards and char-a-bancs cannot divest it of its odour of sanctity. Something of miraculous infl"ence appears to attach to it yet, for there seems no doubt that the Ground nlan and dimensions of the Edgar Chapel, which had so puzzled antiquaries, were, in 1908. re■vealed through the medium of automatic writing." With "The Pilgrim's Inn"—a charming building—"The Abbot's Cafe," "The Abbey Hotel," and so forth, even the commercial life of the place has its sacerdotal associations. And few tourists climb Weary-all Hill. The cows lie about the grey slab set in the rough crass undisturbed. At almost any hour of the day one may have the hill, with its spreading view and its memories, to himself.