The Stories Unfold

Okay, here's where we're at.

I've sent off my latest drafts of the two premises or pitches for TV Drama. One is kind of a local story - contrasting village life during war time with the same village today - and the other is a political thriller.

These are my third run-throughs of the ideas. To my great surprise (and delight), both ideas in their original forms (two sides of A-4, slightly double-spaced, each) appealed to my executive producer contact (ex-colleague), and at my meeting with her in London we were able to chat over these ideas.

Redrafted versions of the two story ideas were submitted just before I went away on holiday (about which, more anon). Rightly, my exec spotted a few weaknesses in both, and I've now expanded them. The first, about the local village (two dramatic periods in the lifetime of one ageing farmer), I would see ideally as a three-parter. The idea now runs to four pages on that one. The other - what happens when high-profile 'fat cats' start being murdered - I would love to tackle as a five-part serial.

My exec expects to get back to me within a week or so. If these ideas are strong enough, she'll take them to the next level. Basically, she'll be bidding on the basis of these for the go-ahead to commission treatments - detailed plans for each project giving character information, episode storylines and other supporting material. So, if one or both of these projects goes to treatment stage, I'll be a BBC employee again, for the first time in twelve years ...

It's been odd, trying to readjust after the holiday. What I've come to feel is that the research trip to Ulva was symbolically the end of the road for my Arthurian studies. It was on the nearby Isle of Iona, my spiritual home, that I resolved to write my Shakespeare and Arthur books, fully four years ago.

Since then I have researched both subjects at great length and in considerable depth. I have acquired a leading literary agent, lost him, and picked up another. I have tested the material out on 'Authonomy', and in both cases scored something of a hit with the international writing community. And, okay, so, we've hit an obstacle. Publishing is a rabbit frozen in the headlights of economic uncertainty, the advent of e-books, competition from other sources, etc., etc. Nothing seems to be happening.

But the Divine Kim (who's not all that well, just at the moment, sad to say) has given me permission to investigate self-publishing. So I can work on my Arthur book, having visited the spot where the story ends, writing it my way, in the knowledge that even if we don't get a publisher on board in the New Year, I can still go ahead with a publishing arrangement.

So it's all systems go ... sort of.

Exploring the Past

I don't know many writers who actually find writing fun. No, by and large we have to get our kicks in other ways. For me, research is definitely one of them.



This is a photo of Ormaig, once the principal settlement on the Hebridean island of Ulva. It was home to the Clan MacQuarrie, the "Sons of Guaire".



A little further along the coast, the map shows a Cille Mhic Eoghain or 'Cell of the Sons of Owain'. In this case, Owain and Guaire were probably the same person - Guaire appearing as Guaire son of Aedan in Adomnan of Iona's Life of St Columba and Owain in all likelihood being Owain of North Rheged, a British prince whose mother was Aedan's daughter. She was also Muirgein, born in Perthshire, the half-sister of Arthur.

Ulva is relevant, then, to the Arthur story (the story of the real King Arthur, that is), because "Guaire" was also the father of Gwalchmai, who later became known as Gawain. The Sir Gawain of the later romances was thus one of the Sons of Guaire, a founder of the Clan MacQuarrie of Ormaig and quite possibly one of the priests of the Cell of the Sons of Owain.

The word in Gaelic for a doctor, a wise or learned man and, by extension, a Druid is Ullamh (Irish - ollamh). Interestingly, although possible derivations of the island's name, Ulva, include the Scottish Gaelic ullamh dha - 'ready for it' (i.e. occupation) - no one seems to have suggested that Ulva could in fact be the Isle of the Wiseman. This wise man would have been Sir Ullamh O'Corn, as he is known in a Hebridean folktale - that is, Sir Wiseman son of Horn, the nephew of Arthur. Given the near God-like status of his father among the people of North Britain until his land was overrun by the Saxon foreigners in the year of Arthur's defeat, Gwalchmai (otherwise known as Ullamh or Gawain) would most likely have been a Druidic priest of sorts, and so the remains of his chapel or cell on the southern coast of Ulva represent the hermitage of a wise man who had been ejected from his proper place on the nearby Isle of Iona by the coming of St Columba and his intolerant monks.

All this is of great interest to me right now because in a few hours I shall be setting off for the Isle of Mull. By Sunday I expect to have set foot on the Isle of Ulva, the first of what might be several exploratory visits over the next week or so. I want to see Ormaig, where the descendants of Owain/Guaire (the princely son of Muirgein and Urien) lived. I want to find my way to what remains of the Cell of the Sons of Owain, to stand where the genuine Gawain once stood, to gaze out across the Hebridean sea, looking south towards Iona, which the Christians took from the Druids.

That's my kind of research, folks. Writing can never quite measure up to something like that!

Consensus Busting

Wasn't all that sleepy last night, so I watched a movie. I chose "All the President's Men". Partly because I could watch it for free, partly because it's a very good, intelligent film (great script, great cast, great director), partly because I wanted to see something about two guys beating the system.

It's not the complexity of the Woodward-and-Bernstein investigation into the Watergate scandal that sticks with me, having watched the film again. It's the sheer number of nay-sayers, gainsayers, cowards and downright liars who tried to stop the investigation in its tracks.

Amazingly, the Washington Post stood by its young reporters, when the entire Nixon administration was crying foul and denying, denying, denying everything that turned out to be true.

But as you watch the film you occasionally get the distinct impression that, had it not been for the sheer persistence of the journalists and a good old-fashioned sense of right and wrong at the Washington Post, the scandal might never have been exposed. There were so many moments when the whole thing could have been called off because only a handful of people doubted the official line.

The pressure to give up, to leave the story alone, and to let Nixon get on with his presidency unencumbered by investigations into his devious ways, must have been incredible.

Still, between them, after an immensity of hard work and many reversals, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein managed to bust through the consensus.

Now, history is basically consensus, and that consensus is always susceptible to change. For example, I discovered only two nights ago that some 300-400 black sailors fought for Britain under Nelson at Trafalgar in 1805. As did a number of Americans, Danes, Portugese, French ... It was kind of a multinational force. Britain won, famously, but many races helped.

To learn that sort of thing is to find that history is different - richer, deeper, more complex - than previously imagined.

But there is always resistance to that sort of thing. Those who create and enforce the consensus have a nasty habit of fighting tooth and nail to preserve it.

Like those White House officials who continually slammed the Washington Post (until some of those officials were found guilty on a number of counts), there are conservative egos out there who will stop at nothing to try to ensure that no view, no perspective, no reading of history - no consensus - ever changes.

I feel a bit like Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein. The evidence is definitely there. But there are powerful voices who won't allow their delicate little consensus to be busted. Even though it is vital, if we want to understand Shakespeare's works or recognise Arthur's key role in the history of Britain, to blow that consensus to smithereens.

It is the cosy consensus that stands in the way of such understanding. Why? Because it made up its mind long ago (according to the standards of the time) and has refused to alter it ever since. Which means that generations of students are being fed outdated nonsense in the name of "history". They are also being fed boring history - which is a crime against humanity. History is one of the most fascinating, engaging, intriguing subjects there is. To make it boring is to conspire against knowledge and the spirit of enquiry - it is to destroy when it should be creating, to depress when it ought to inspire.

Currently, the historical establishment is sitting on the facts, rather like those officials at the White House, and doing everything it can to silence or belittle anyone who offers a real insight into their subject.

The establishment relies on consensus - even when that consensus is outworn and no longer of any real value. In fact, it's an elitist affront to learning and understanding, to history itself and to those who lived it.

The historical consensus must be busted altogether. Woodward and Bernstein were right, and the Post was right to stand by them.

So where are our heroes of free speech today? And who is supporting and defending their efforts?

What is Britain for?

Any thoughts?

It's a question my agent posed me in connection with my book about Arthur ('King' Arthur, that is - the original, the historical, the one!) "What is Britain for?" What's the point of the book - current subtitle: "The True Story of Arthur and the Fall of Britain" - if we haven't decided what Britain is, and why we should give a damn?!

And at first I thought - "What is Britain for? Well, it's kind of for keeping the wind off Belgium. And for making sure Ireland doesn't get too close to the Continent."

But that was just me being facetious.

Anyway, I've spent about two months now on my rejigged opening chapters to Commanding Youth and I think I'm getting there. The question. What's it all for.

The Romans invaded, but they only took about a half to two-thirds of Britain - essentially, the same part as the invading Angles, Saxons and Jutes would later turn into a place called 'England'.

The rest of Britain got renamed. The tattooed people to the north got called 'Picts' (from pictii- 'painted'). Their Irish equivalent was the 'Cruithne' - effectively, the Picts in Ireland (or, as Diodorus Siculus called them, 'those of the Pritani who inhabit Iris'). The Britons, according to a description given by Claudian Claudianus just five years before the Romans left Britain for good, remained rather 'Pictish' themselves.

So - all of the British Isles, plus a substantial part of Ireland, were once 'British'. Then Rome came along and turned just a part of the territory into 'Britain', the rest becoming somehow alien. And the bit Rome called Britain then got taken over by Germanic immigrants (the English) who were anything but British.

And therein lies the problem of Britain.

Over the centuries, England has tried to govern every part of the British Isles (and Ireland) from London. But England is the odd-one-out, the non-British part of the whole. Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall ... these are aspects of the real Britain, and they have all been imposed upon, trampled, exploited and frequently despised by the controlling English in their southern capital.

So I'm beginning to formulate an answer to the question "What is Britain for?"

It's for uniting against the stranglehold of London and the southeast, and for remembering that Britain existed long before England was invented.

Now I've just got to get that idea past my agent, who's based in ... yes, you've guessed it.

London.

Whose History?

Well, if you want a good argument, history is the place to be.

Or do I mean 'historiography' - the writing of history?

See, history is a very political subject. I know that. But suddenly, it seems, it's got a lot more so, with our gloriously awful new coalition government in the UK. Michael Gove, a glove puppet posing as Education supremo, has approached a right-wing bigot and asked him to sort out the history part of the schools' national curriculum.

Terry Deary, the author of those Horrible History books (which, let's face it, are a fantastic introduction to history for kids), has already had a go, describing contemporary historians as 'nearly as seedy and devious as politicians.'

He branded Niall Ferguson, the apologist for the British Empire whose idea of history is so attractive to the Tories, 'a deeply offensive right-wing man who uses history to get across a political point.'

Good stuff, eh? But what's this - the rudest man in history (David Starkey) has had a little rant at female historians, saying that they write 'historical Mills and Boon.' (For those who don't know what Mills and Boon is/are, it's low-rent romantic melodrama written by the bucket-load and sold to subliterate women in hospitals.)

Now, I've got my own gripes with historians, thanks to the years I've spent working on Arthur and Shakespeare. Most of them, I've discovered, just repeat what somebody else previously said. Take the Shakespeare biography industry. Endless re-runs of the same stuff, slightly re-worded but nothing new. And what I've found is that, for those who are prepared to dig, there is a wealth of material about Will Shakespeare, mostly untapped, completely ignored by the "historians" who are so terrified of departing from the script that they'd rather publish gibberish than a book about who Shakespeare was.

Or Arthur. Historians insist - against all the evidence - of looking for Arthur in the wrong place and in the wrong century. And when they can't find him there, they throw their little arms up in the air and moan "Then he didn't exist!" When there's a bloody obvious Arthur, perfectly visible, the first on record with that name, surrounded by individuals whose names are uncannily similar to those of the Knights of the Round Table ... oh, but no, it can't have been him, say the "historians". Just sour grapes, really. They wanted to find him in England, failed, and now don't want anybody else to have him.

So it is true - historians are petty, intellectually lazy and committed to telling their version of events regardless of the evidence.

Or they're callow, conformist regurgitators of the accepted 'message' who'll go to extraordinary lengths to avoid touching on 'difficult' or 'dangerous' material.

Many of them are guilty of collaborating in a process of keeping history away from the common people or broadcasting a narrow-minded and orthodox view of what happened.

And then you get the Niall Fergusons and their right-wing followers, making up stupid lies about the BBC pursuing a left-wing agenda and trying to convince themselves and everybody else that the British Empire was the best thing ever.

We can really do without maniacs like that. History is a bitchy enough game as it is, without bringing in the madmen and the arch-propagandists to tell us all what to think.

Anyone Here From Porlock?

Famously, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge woke up from a laudanum-fuelled dream with a complete poem perfectly formed in his head. He rose and instantly began writing out the inspired verse, which became known as Kubla Khan.

Coleridge had only got a few lines in when there was a knock at the door. It was an unidentified man from Porlock, a nearby village. No one knows what the man from Porlock wanted, but he kept the poet occupied for upwards of an hour. When he finally left, Coleridge had forgotten the rest of the poem.

The world is full of people from Porlock. They are the writer's nemesis. There you are, struggling to make headway. Maybe you've just built up a head of steam, struck a rich vein, and you can start to feel like you're getting somewhere, and just then ...

Knock, knock.

Or the phone rings.

Now, I'm a Piscean. Which means I'm torn. When I'm on my own I get listless and crave company. And when I'm with other people I wish I was on my own.

But, being a writer, I know that the being-on-my-own time is vital. Without it, nothing gets written. But achieving being-on-my-own time, and keeping those Porlockian interrupters at arm's length, is getting harder and harder these days.

Bardic poets used to lie in the dark with a heavy stone on their stomachs overnight. In the morning, their latest poem had to be fully formed in their heads.

So I'm off to find myself a heavy stone. Those bards knew a thing or two. One of them being, never answer the door to a Porlock type when you're trying to get something creative done. The stone, I think, is there to remind you of that. And it gives you a very handy excuse: 'Sorry, can't come to the door just now, I've got a huge stone on top of me!'

BTW: progress on the Arthur book - I've introduced Camelot (yes, it existed) and started work on Arthur's ancestry. Woke up this morning reminding myself to mention that refugees to Armorica (Brittany, or the Lesser Britain) recalled their homeland as Leon or Leonais - the legendary Lyonesse. We know it today as Lothian.

Now, where's that stone (he says, just as the phone rings)?

And ... relax

Okay, the deed is done. Yesterday afternoon I had one of my moments and pressed 'Send'.

Actually, it wasn't quite as random as that. Two months it's taken me to revise three opening chapters to Will's Treason (subtitle: 'Shakespeare and the Gunpowder Plot'), although the last week or so of that was mostly devoted to the 'proposal'.

What's a 'proposal', apart from something you do on bended knee? Well, it's like a sales pitch, or a business plan, for a TV treatment, or any of those things which really aren't all that important but people like to pretend they are. The worst is probably TV treatments (although I'm sure a lot of business plans ultimately caused the recent recession), because nobody reads them, they're a waste of time, they're not what we're good at and they end up crippling the writer's freedom and imagination.

And ... relax.

Anyway, after many a long dark night of the soul the three chapters, plus pitch, info, chapter outlines, tra-la-la, were done. Finished. Revised. Pored over. Checked.

So I asked people on Facebook whether I should send the 103-page project straight off to my agent. Some replied along the lines of, 'NO! God, no! By no means! Keep checking it!' Others were more like, 'YES! Send the damned thing NOW!' A few bets were hedged, i.e., 'Check it. Then send it. Or send it. Then check it. I dunno.'

I sent it. And I feel about a hundred pounds lighter. The sun is shining. A fine weekend is promised.

Only I've now got to start on the opening chapters and proposal for Commanding Youth (subtitle - I'm not sure, yet; currently it's something like 'Arthur and the Fall of Britain'. Suggestions on a postcard, please, to: stirlingsa@hotmail.co.uk) So the whole process starts again. And instead of trying to live my life in 16th century England for two months, I'll be heading back to the Dark Ages.

Forgive me if I only blog occasionally, for a while, at least, or until there's some news. Only we didn't have blogs in Manau Gododdin.

(Curses - forgot to mention a fantastic meeting of the Screenwriters' Forum in Birmingham last week. Great to meet up again with Natasha, Dan, Catherine, Simon ...)

What I'm Looking Forward To

We've got our main holiday booked for this summer - a week at Calgary Bay on the Isle of Mull.

Usually, we'd head straight for the Isle of Iona, where Kim and I got married in 2002, but this year it'll be the neighbouring island we'll mostly be exploring - if, that is, we can tear ourselves away from Calgary beach.

But one place that's top of my agenda to visit is the island of Ulva, just off the coast of Mull. It was once the family territory of the Clan MacQuarrie or 'Sons of Guaire'.

Guaire (meaning 'hair') is a name to conjure with if, like me, you're fascinated by the historical Arthur and his brethren. Arthur's nephew Gawain (originally, Gwalchmai) was supposedly the son of 'Gwyar', a version of Guaire rendered phonetically into Welsh.

Guaire himself appears in the seventh-century 'Life of St Columba' as the 'strongest layman' in Argyll in his time and a man who died in a rather curious way, reminiscent of the Celtic triple-death sacrifice. In the 'Life of St Columba' he was referred to as 'Guaire son of Aedan', making him brother to Arthur (Artuir mac Aedain) and Muirgein.

Finally, in Taliesin's funerary poem for Arthur, Preiddeu Annwn ('The Treasures of the Cauldron'), Guaire is the only person to go into the grave before Arthur. Go back a few blogposts and you'll see this grave.

So, Guaire was fairly important, in the Arthurian scheme of things. I suspect that his real name, as it were, was Owain, and that he was the prince of North Rheged (Cumbria), as well as being Arthur's nephew (the son of his half-sister Muirgein) and an adoptive son of King Aedan. St Columba tried to convert him to Christianity, which may explain the need for his sacrifice after Arthur's last battle - because Owain had betrayed the faith and, directly or indirectly, caused the death of Arthur.

The island of Ulva was seemingly colonised by Owain/Guaire's descendants - Gwalchmai or Gawain included - after their true spiritual home was denied them by Columba's monks. They were the Sons of Guaire, forerunners of the Clan MacQuarrie.

I can't wait to set foot on the island of Gawain.

Authonomy

A year ago, my old computer got a Trojan or Spybot or whatever you call the things. The timing was a nightmare. My first book, Commanding Youth (the one about Arthur), was in the top ten on Authonomy. If I failed to get it into the top five for February, i.e. because my computer wasn't working, I'd have to spend another month reading, flirting, plugging, begging and going Authonomad.

But then, two publishers had already asked to see the proposal for Commanding Youth, so being in the Authonomy top five (which guarantees you an editor's critique from HarperCollins) seemed slightly irrelevant. I made it into the top five at the beginning of March ... and then took my book off Authonomy. The nice part of me said it was to give another writer a chance. The nasty part said, I can't bear to spend another minute on Authonomy.

So what's Authonomy? It's a website. HarperCollins publishers couldn't really be bothered to wade through their 'slush-pile' of unsolicited manuscripts so they created Authonomy. Writers upload some of their unpublished book(s) on Authonomy. Other writers read a bit, or a lot, and give them feedback. You can support a book by pretending to pop it up on your virtual bookshelf. Add some complicated algorithms, some rather large egos, plenty of gamesmanship and some 6,000 authors from all corners of the globe, and that's about it: Authonomy (www.authonomy.com)

Now, Authonomy was great for me. A lot of the feedback you get is neither here nor there (some people just want you to read and back theirs), but a great deal was extremely useful. Editors cost money, but on Authonomy you could rack up a couple of hundred comments, some of them detailed, and figure out what you needed to do with your manuscript next. There was help, advice and sympathy online at any time.

I completely rewrote my opening chapters for Commanding Youth while I was on there, and put the first three chapters of Will's Treason (my Shakespeare project) up there last summer - the latter to find out if what I'd written was working. It was, and that gave me the confidence to go back to publishers and to get a new agent.

But that's the thing - I think I've outgrown Authonomy, now. I'm still doing rewrites, but I can't see myself uploading those onto the site because of the sheer amount of time, energy and commitment required to make sure that enough people read it so that I'll know what its strengths and weaknesses are.

And there are just far, far too many books on Authonomy. Too many people scrabbling to reach that coveted Ed's Desk (the monthly top five). Authonomy's been going for a year and a half now, or thereabouts. HarperCollins have just announced the publication of the fourth book to be picked up from Authonomy.

There are some FABULOUS writers on Authonomy, and some EXCELLENT books. I seldom read fiction because I tend to hate it. 99.99% of Authonomy is fiction, much of it YA ('Young Adult') sci-fi/fantasy and chick-lit, none of which I would usually go anywhere near. But I read loads and loads of great stuff on the site.

None of the four books acquired by HC publishers (so far) made it into the site's top five, which suggests that, unless a so-so critique from a HarperCollins editor is your main goal in life, you should forget trying to get to the top of the rankings. I saw too many weirdos preening themselves on Authonomy, and the risk with a popularity contest is that the best books will not make the Ed's Desk (almost inevitable, considering that getting into the top five is a full-time job in its own right).

Authonomy gives a writer something to do with his or her manuscript. The feedback will have much to tell the writer about their title, pitch and chapters. If the writer is prepared to listen, do some revision, listen again, edit, try again, and so on, and so on, their manuscript is likely to get better. If they're not prepared to listen, then they're not a real writer.

Thanks to Authonomy, I got my two projects up to a reasonably good standard. The problem I now have is that I have to go beyond that. And I'm not sure that Authonomy will be much help any more.

Basically, you can write, or you can be on Authonomy. It's a rare bird that can do both.

Caer Sidi - Arthur's Grave

This mound lies on the west side of an island off the coast of Britain. Somewhat disregarded now, it was at once one of the most sacred sites in Europe - perhaps even the world.

It shows up on the map as Sithean Mor - the Great Spirit-Mound - or Cnoc nam Aingeal, the 'Hill of the Angels'. The latter is a Christian designation and is slightly inaccurate. Properly, Cnoc nam Aingeal would translate as Hill of the Angel (singular) or Hill of the Light or Fire.

The historian E. Mairi MacArthur noted of the mound that, 'on the great quarterly festival of May Day, Latha Bealltuinn, fires were said to be kindled on its summit and the cattle driven through in an act of purification.' This was typical Beltane behaviour, and would suggest that long before the mound acquired a Christianised designation it was the scene of pagan rituals. On the eve of St Michael's feast day, the islanders ran their horses thrice round the mound in a sunwise direction.

In the 1770s, an Irish bishop informed a Welsh traveller that a cairn surmounted the grassy knoll, surrounded by a circle of stones. Local tradition also recorded that there were twelve of these stones, forming a Druidic temple, and that a human body was buried beneath each of the stones. The stones, however, have long since vanished.

The island on which the mound stands was long ago associated with the yew - a tree held sacred because of its great longevity (even today, most churchyards in Britain feature a yew or two). An early name for the Great Spirit-Mound would seem to have been the Cairn of Yews (Carnyw) or possibly the Corner or Retreat of Yews (Cernyw). And herein lies the solution to one of the mysteries surrounding the most famous inhabitant of the Great Spirit-Mound - Arthur.

Since the twelfth century it has been commonplace for writers to place Arthur, the fabled Once and Future King, in Cornwall, in the extreme south west of Britain. The identification of Cornwall as Arthur's legendary stamping-ground rests entirely on a mistranslation of the word Cernyw.

In Welsh, Cornwall is Cernow, so writers from Geoffrey of Monmouth happily translated 'Corner of Yews' as Cornwall. As a result, for hundreds of years scholars have been looking for Arthur at the wrong end of Britain.

A medieval list of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain (almost certainly grave goods) includes Llen Arthyr yng Nghernyw, to which the note was added:

'The mantle of Arthur in Cornwall; whoever wore it was invisible, though he could see everybody.'

Again, though, Cernyw did not mean Cornwall. This particular 'invisibility cloak' was worn by Arthur at the Cairn of Yews.

The sixth-century bard Taliesin would appear to have been present when Arthur was buried in the Great Spirit-Mound. He referred to it by a series of names, but most prominent of these was Caer Sidi or 'Fortress of the Sidhe'. The Sidhe were those ancestral spirits who eventually evolved into the fairies of Irish and Scottish lore. Hence, the name of the mound: Sithean Mor (pronounced: shee-un more), the Big Mound of the Sidhe.

Certain people claim to have heard 'sweet music' emanating from the mound - and no wonder, for, as Lady Gregory observed in Gods and Fighting Men, 'a house of peace is the hill of the Sidhe of Emhain'. There were two Emhains - one, Emhain Macha, was the seat of the kings of Ulster; the other, Emhain Abhlach, was the 'Yew-Plain of Apples', later to be known as Avalon.

The Christian story of the mound concerns that Irish saint, Columcille or Columba. Towards the end of his long life - i.e., at about the same time as the historical Arthur fell in battle in Perthshire - Columba told his monks one morning that he was crossing to the far side of the island and none of them was to follow him.

One monk disobeyed and spied on Columba from a nearby hill. As described by Columba's hagiographer, Adomnan, a hundred or so years later, the rogue monk witnessed a 'marvellous apparition':

For holy angels, the citizens of the heavenly kingdom, were flying down with amazing speed, dressed in white robes, and began to gather around the holy man as he prayed. After they had conversed a little with St Columba, the heavenly crowd - as though they could feel that they were being spied on - quickly returned to the heights of heaven.

This was not the saint's only encounter with angels who behaved in a rather unangelic way, but the legend sufficed to account for the mound's change of name, from Great Spirit-Mound or Hill of the [Beltane] Fires to the Angels' Knoll.

An entirely separate account has the monks present when Columba held a 'colloquy' with a 'youth at Carn Eolairg', at the end of which the gnomic youth mysteriously vanished (rather as if he was wearing Arthur's cloak of invisibility). Carn Eolairg woud signify a cairn on a plain of yews - much the same as Carnyw or Cernyw.

St Columba died in 597, so the date of his strange meeting with angels 'dressed in white robes' on the Great Spirit-Mound can be pinpointed with some confidence to around 595, the year in which Arthur died. Mortally wounded, Arthur was carried from the far-off battlefield and transported to the Yewy Isle for treatment at the hands of his half-sister, Muirgein, who led a sisterhood of priestesses. In all likelihood, Arthur died en route, and his body was buried in the hills of Brolass in the Isle of Mull, beside Sidhean Allt Mhic-Artair - the Spirit Stream of the Sons of Arthur. It was his head, the Celtic seat of the soul, which was carried on for burial on the sacred isle.

And so, to visit the grave of Arthur, one has only to go to the very end of the road, on the western side of the Isle of Apples, and stand by the Great Spirit-Mound, where for centuries the Beltane fires were lit and a Druidic temple was formed by a circle of stones.

Why this place was named after Afallach, the apple-god, will be explained in another post.