Tarn Wadling and the supernatural landscape of Arthurian Cumberland
- Michael Smith
- Jan 9
- 10 min read
Updated: Jan 26
In the early fifteenth century, a mysterious lake near High Hesket in Cumberland provided the setting for a series of Arthurian romances now largely lost to time. Today, with the lake long since drained and the stories the domain of academics, only the name of Tarn Wadling wood survives to remind us of a place with such a rich and hauntingly supernatural literary past.
Tarn Wadling - a lake of ghosts and mysterious happenings
Tarn Wadling, as the romances remind us, was set in Inglewood Forest, a famous hunting location in the England/Scotland border regions. The Tarn itself had an established reputation both in terms of its fishing and also its supernatural connotations.
Gervase of Tilbury, in the thirteenth-century Otia Imperialia, writes of a lake in this area which he describes as 'Laikibrait'. R. R. Cox (1974) has shown convincingly that this is an anglicisation of the Old French Lai ki brait (the lake which cries), citing in particular a legal case during the reign of Edward I. Here, the text refers to 'in lacu de Terwathelan qui dicitur Laykebrayt' (the lake of Tarn Wathelan which called/is known as Laikibrait).
The 'crying' nature of the lake may relate to the release of methane from its murky bed, a possible explanation for will-o-the-wisps also observed emerging from its surface. These features may have been the inspiration of the ghost of Guinevere's mother in the Awntyrs off Arthure (see below). Certainly, the lake's reputation in folklore survived at least until the nineteenth century.
Tarn Wadling - poetic inspiration for Arthurian romance
The focus of this article is the relationship between the Tarn and a series of complex Arthurian romances written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Two stanzaic romances from this period mention Tarn Wadling in their narrative: The Avowing of Arthur (ca. 1375-1425); The Awntyrs off Arthure (ca. 1400-1425).
While a third romance, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle (ca. 1450), does not mention the tarn by name, a later ballad which is clearly derived from it (or has the same lost source) – The Marriage of Sir Gawain (ca. 1500) – is explicit in doing so.
None of these romances represents the autograph form of their sources; in other words, all are copied from texts which themselves were likely to have been copies (or copies of copies) of lost originals. It is difficult to state for certain the distance in time between when the lost source texts and their later extant copies were written.
While the later Marriage follows a typical balladic four-line stanzaic structure, the three earlier poems utilise a multi-line structure, again in stanzas, accompanied by complex rhyme schemes and rhythmical forms. This indicates either a single poet for all three texts or a set of poems written by a group of writers whose work was known to each other.
What is clear from all these romances is that the lake is a setting for mysterious activities and that the poet/s were either creating a literary reputation for the Tarn or building upon an existing one.
The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyn
Perhaps the most startling of these romances is the Awntyrs off Arthure, of which four examples survive, each subtly different to the other.
Only the version copied by Robert Thornton around 1440 gives the romance the name by which it is known today, The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne (Tarn) Wathelyn. Thornton’s dialectical spelling of the tarn is Wathelyn or Wathelayne, a word seemingly drawn from the Old Norse wath, meaning a ford or an area of shallow water.
In the first half of the story, Arthur and his court are hunting while Gawain, alone with Guinevere (referred to as Gaynor), encounter the ghost of Guinevere’s mother which has emerged from the tarn to warn them about promiscuity and wrongful wars.
The ghost emerges initially as a flame upon the waters; the sky goes dark and all the creatures of the forest run to their hiding places. Eventually, with ghoulish groans and wailing, the ghost simply goes on its way and Guinevere promises to pray for her soul.
The tarn and ghost only appear in the first half of the romance; in the second half, the narrative shifts to a land dispute and a brutal jousting scene before a final stanza knits both parts of the narrative together.
Of the four extant versions of the romance, only the Thornton redaction mentions the tarn again. This is at the the very end when he draws us back to the opening stanza in reminding us where the awntyr (adventure) occurred.
The Avowing of Arthur
The Avowing of Arthur (or, more fully, the Avowing of King Arthur, Sir Gawain, Sir Kay and Baldwin of Britain) is a more conventional Arthurian romance which builds on the established character tropes of the main participants.
The appearance of the tarn in this poem is relatively minor, playing no part in the narrative except as being part of Gawain’s vow to remain by it overnight. This suggests the tarn already held a reputation for danger which contemporary audiences, if not ourselves, would have understood.
This reputation may also suggest that The Awowing was written after both The Awntyrs off Arthure and the poem which formed the source for both The Wedding and The Marriage of Sir Gawain.
The notion of Gawain especially watching the tarn is tantalising in that it offers a direct intertextual relationship with the Awntyrs, hinting at a common authorship - or at least a common initial audience, wanting to hear more stories about the tarn and its reputation.
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle
If the evidence of the (later) Marriage of Sir Gawain suggests a the lost, common autograph to both it and to The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, we can see that the tarn – or Inglewood Forest which surrounds it – had a reputation for mystery throughout the 1400s and beyond.
It is in The Wedding that King Arthur, out hunting, meets the mysterious Sir Gromer Somer-Joure who, like the wronged Sir Galeron in The Awntyrs, seeks revenge on the King for taking his lands wrongfully. In The Marriage, the strange knight is not named, but still plays a major part in the action.
The menace and violence of the character of Sir Gromer reminds us of the Green Knight (from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) in that he is a man of the wilds with no known residence. He seems, as a woodland dweller, a man beyond the reach of the law – both that of the king and also of nature. He seems supernatural.
It is here also that Arthur, needing to find the answer to the question of what it is that women desire most, meets the equally mysterious ‘loathly lady’ Dame Ragnelle.
She, we learn later, is related to Sir Gromer. As in other medieval 'loathly lady' stories (including that related by Chaucer's Wife of Bath) a monstrous woman transforms to a beautiful lady at the end of the narrative in return for her husband granting marital sovereignty to her.
In The Marriage, we also learn that the lady was initially made monstrous by the deeds of a wicked stepmother. The wicked stepmother is a feature of Middle English poetry in particular; we see such a character again, for example, in The Romance of William and the Werewolf. when prince Alphonse’s stepmother turns him into a werewolf so her own son can inherit the throne.
In both the outlaw Sir Gromer and the shape-shifting Dame Ragnelle, we associate their magic and menace with the strange other world of woodland and water. The poetic landscape of Inglewood Forest and Tarn Wadling is rich with mystery and ever-present danger.
Tarn Wadling in medieval times
Given its diminutive size (perhaps 5-600 yards across), the poetic reputation of Tarn Wadling seems disproportionate to its place in the landscape. The reason for this seems to lie somewhere in a mixture of folkloric renown, local aristocratic pursuits and the Tarn's location beside the old Roman road to the North.
There is little doubt that the Laikibrait described by Gervase of Tilbury was a place with an existing local reputation. Furthermore, the position of Inglewood forest as a celebrated hunting ground and the Tarn's reputation for carp were important factors of interest to local aristocracy.
Poets, as Richard Firth Green (Poets and Princepleasers, 1980) has shown, were fundamentally reliant on their patrons for their board, lodging and income. As Sir Gawain and the Green Knight reveals, how lords spent their leisure time was clearly seen as important in the narrative of the poets.
Patronal enjoyment was critical to these northern poets. Hence, we might imagine them writing exclusively for individuals such as the hugely powerful and influential Neville family, whose job it was to hold the north for the crown and whose lands covered vast areas.
Given the intricate poetic structure of many of these northern poems, it also seems possible to imagine them being written for the enjoyment of a court which took pleasure in well-crafted writing.
A further dimension, if less emphatic, is one of nationhood and politics. In creating a literary landscape particular to the area, the poetry may also have served to create an emotional bond between the northern lords and those whose power (in the south) they propped up.
In imagining a magical lake with Arthurian connections, southern lords were given a reason to imagine the north. The position of the Tarn by the old Roman road meant visitors travelling north could also see it for themselves.
This may account for the Tarn's appearance on the fourteenth century Gough map (ca. 1360). Despite the nearby Lake District with its many great and impressive lakes, the only other expanse of water shown by the map in the area is Windemere - a vast lake which dwarfs the size of Wadling's shallow pool.
Of course, we cannot be clear about the real motivations behind the poems without any primary evidence, of which there is little. Nonetheless, these poems had significant reach both locally and nationally.
It is possible that the Tarn, Inglewood forest and the Arthurian narrative combined to serve as some form of Cumbrian cultural focus to draw people together in an area of England remote from the crown and under threat from Scottish raids. Certainly, both The Awntyrs and The Wedding allude to the instability of land ownership in this area.
And what is abundantly clear is that these poems attracted readers far beyond a purely aristocratic network. Whether for reasons of Arthurian romance, local folklore or national politics, they were widely copied, often by people much less wealthy than the patrons who originally commissioned them.
It is a matter of record that the four surviving texts of The Awntyrs are not all from the north and one was even written in a London hand. The Avowing appears only in one manuscript (from Lancashire) while the only extant copy of The Wedding is thought also to have been copied in London.
From the Mersey valley to the vale of Pickering, from London to Derbyshire, the reputation of Tarn Wadling and Inglewood forest was hardly a local affair. Here, then, was a lake of truly national renown.
Tarn Wadling today
Despite the poetry, it seems that the reputation of the tarn was not sufficient to guarantee its physical survival – even in a landscape which today is dotted with place names suggestive of King Arthur.
In the nineteenth century, as befits those times of arrogant scientific certainty and landholder greed, the tarn was drained for farming, and drained once again in the 1940s. Who knows if its waters will rise again as climate changes?
Despite Tarn Wadling wood – a small patch of ancient woodland managed today by the Woodland Trust – little now remains to tell of a lake whose mysterious qualities and Arthurian reputation stretched across England in poetic recitation.
But etymology tells a different story, an evolution of former fact into modern fantasy. From modern Wadling to Old Norse Wathelyne, our minds wander back in time to watery places long since left to run dry.
Here, though the cavalcading lords and ladies, their courts and poets, have long since ceased to parade across the land, it is still possible in this lonely spot to conjure up their presence.
If you listen hard enough amid the northern winds, you might still hear the ghost of Guinevere’s mother crying out in purgatorial distress as she pleads for the intervention of her earthbound daughter in the saving of her soul.
The past holds secrets often more mysterious than we in modern complacency might conceive. Here, long ago, was a world of liminality, where the living on Middle Earth met with the souls of the dead in their limbo land of Purgatory.
Here was where the certainty of life came face to face with the terror of the spiritual unknown. And today, despite our rational assertions to the contrary, such days will still come to haunt us all.
Michael Smith, author, translator, printmaker
The Gough Map
The Gough Map is named after Richard Gough who acquired it for half-a-crown (12 1/2 pence) in 1774. The map was drawn on two large sheets of parchment, one the skin of a lamb, which were then stitched together. It is described as the earliest surviving map (ca. 1360) showing routes across Britain.
Such maps may have been used to inform the author of the Alliterative Morte Arthure, who exhibits a remarkable geographical knowledge of Britain and travel travel across England during this period.
See the UNESCO page on the Gough Map here.
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About the author, Michael Smith
I am a British author, translator and illustrator. I am currently studying for my PhD at the University of York, where I am researching the effective representation of Middle English romance.
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