Prophecy of Melkin

What it is

The Prophecy of Melkin is a short Latin text carried inside a chronicle from Glastonbury, in England. It announces a hidden burial: the grave of Joseph of Arimathea, said to lie at Glastonbury and to hold the Holy Grail. The chronicle presents the words as the work of Melkin, a Celtic bard placed in time before Merlin. It is a foretelling rather than a rite, with no ceremony attached, and it belongs with the Grail and Arthurian legends that gathered around Glastonbury in the Middle Ages.

Where it comes from

The text survives in the Cronica sive antiquitates Glastoniensis ecclesiae, a local chronicle by John of Glastonbury from the mid-14th century, who names Melkin as the author. Its making is thought to belong with legends current in England from the mid-13th century, which joined Joseph of Arimathea to the mythical Avalon, to Glastonbury and to King Arthur's court. An older story may lie behind it: the discovery of Arthur's supposed grave at Glastonbury around 1191, which Gerald of Wales, writing about 1193, said an ancient Welsh bard had foretold.

What it is for

The prophecy exists to point to a grave: Joseph of Arimathea's, hidden at Glastonbury and holding the Grail. It is framed as an old foretelling rather than a record, so the burial it names lies ahead of the speaker in time. Nothing in it is a rite or an instruction, and its claim is about place and burial. It is thought to have grown out of the same legends that tied Joseph, Avalon and Glastonbury together.

Who does it

Melkin, the supposed author, is described as a Celtic bard, said to have lived before Merlin. John of Glastonbury is the compiler who set the prophecy in his chronicle. The 16th-century antiquary John Leland called Melkin a famous and learned ancient British writer of Welsh origin, and claimed to have seen old fragments of a History of Britain by him at Glastonbury. John Bale and John Pitts, in the 16th and 17th centuries, placed him in the mid-6th century, the period linked with Arthur.

Peoples and places

The prophecy belongs to Glastonbury, in England, and to the monastic chronicle written there. Its attributed author is Celtic and, in Leland's account, Welsh. Its later readers were English chroniclers and antiquaries: John Hardyng in the mid-15th century, Leland in the 16th, then Bale and Pitts. The kindred story of a Welsh bard foretelling Arthur's grave is also set in Britain, and both tales place hidden burials in the same ground.

What people believe

Behind the text sit several linked claims: that Joseph of Arimathea came to Glastonbury, that his grave lies hidden there, and that the Holy Grail rests with him. Avalon, the island of Arthurian story, is drawn into the same picture alongside Glastonbury and Arthur's court. The weight of the prophecy rests on its speaker, a bard set before Merlin, whose words are presented as coming from a distant past.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Writers have tried to trace the name. It has been conjectured that Melkin comes from Maelgwn of Gwynedd, a 6th-century Welsh king also remembered as a bard and a prophet. The prophecy itself is read as a product of the mid-13th-century legends about Joseph, Avalon and Arthur, and as related to the earlier account of Arthur's grave at Glastonbury, said to have been foretold by a Welsh bard and reported by Gerald of Wales around 1193.

Compare and confuse

The Prophecy of Melkin is related to an earlier Glastonbury foretelling: the prediction, recorded by Gerald of Wales around 1193, that King Arthur's grave would be found, said to have been fulfilled around 1191. Both stories credit an old Welsh bard with knowledge of a hidden burial. The name Melkin is conjectured to come from Maelgwn of Gwynedd, a 6th-century Welsh king remembered as a bard and prophet.

Questions people ask about Prophecy of Melkin

Good reading and sources

• Prophecy of Melkin on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data