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Way Out West (Pre-History)
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In this thread we'll be dealing with everything concerned with strange lands in the Atlantic. Some of the posts will be taken from sites other than our own archives (though mostly still written by the usual suspects). We have not always been able to track down some of the other contributors (apologies to them but since everything pinched is in the public domain we figure it's on the right side of sharp practice...pursuit of truth...blah blah...)..
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Jaq White



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LYONESSE: THE VANISHED DOMAIN

Medieval tradition describes a former land beyond southwest England. Is there any factual truth in this? What connection does Lyonesse have with King Arthur or the Celts? Tales of lands lost off the coasts of Britain and France abound in local tradition. The most famous, Lyonesse, was said to link Land's End and St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall with the Scilly Isles. In the Bay of Douarnenez off Brittany, there is reputed to lie the sunken city of Ker-Is which may once have had links with Mont-St-Michel.

Legends also tell of a district called the Bottom Cantred off the west coast of Wales. A land of 16 great cities between Bardsey Island and the mouth of the River Teifi, the Bottom Cantred was defended from the sea by dykes which, it is said, can be plainly seen under the waters of Cardigan Bay.

The earliest written report of a lost land off the coast of Cornwall is to be found in the 15th-century Itinerary of William of Worcester. He refers to 'woods and fields and 140 parochial churches, all now submerged, between the Mount and the Isles of Scilly'. But he does not give the drowned land a name.

Moreover, midway between Land's End and the Scilly Isles lay a group of rocks called the Seven Stones, bounding an area known in Cornish as Tregva, 'a dwelling'. Here fisherman reported drawing up pieces of doors and windows.

In Arthurian romance, Lyonesse is the name of the homeland of the hero Tristan, nephew of King Mark and lover of Mark's wife, Iseult. Because Mark was King of Cornwall, Carew or another author assumed that the Cornish 'lost land' and Lyonesse were one and the same. But medievalists believe this is an error and that 'Lyonesse' is a corrupt form of an earlier name given to Tristan's country. This was Loenois, actually Lothian, in Scotland. Such a location agrees with the fact that Tristan's own name belonged to a Pictish prince of the 8th century.

Once Cornwall's lost land had been identified with Lyonesse, it became bathed in the glow of Arthurian legend. New connections were made. Alfred Lord Tennyson placed Arthur's court of Camelot there, and mystics expected to see Lyonesse rise again from the waves or to behold it off Land's End in vision.

Oceanographers today, however, say that to submerge what were once tilled fields, a rise in sea level of more than 12 feet would be needed over the past 3,000 years. This does not agree with what is known of recent sea-level changes in the Bronze Age. The theory that the 'walls' were fish traps, and always covered at high tide, is more plausible. If so, they are not alone in suggesting that the Scilly Isles have lost ground to the sea. Submergence must have been gradual and intermittent, not a single traumatic event such as one man might witness, remember and hand down as tradition.

It is also possible that when the monks from the abbey of Mont-St-Michel in Brittany founded the Cornish daughter-house of St Michael's Mount in Cornwall, they brought the flood story with them. Wherever the tale started, it is not hard to believe there was once a flood which, like all disasters, was improved in the telling: a little village became a town and the town eventually became a whole kingdom.
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DPCrisp


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"Atalanta and Hippomenes were turned into lions by Zeus or Cybele after having sex in one of his/her temples."

Why lions? Any connection with Leon/Lyonnesse...?
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Mick Harper
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According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle -- which let's face it, is pretty good history -- Lyonnesse disappeared under the sea on the 11th November 1099.
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Melusine



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In Brittany in the Finistere department the upper part between Brest and Roscoff is called "the Leon". Near Roscoff on the Channel coast is the little town of St Pol de Leon.So Insula Tristanni could be in this area. The submerged city of Ys is said to be not far from the Island of Sein facing Douarnenez in the South part of Finistere (both the north and south part are separated by a mountain range called the Monts d'Arree).

So you see the ancient Kingdom of Leon is not completely under water.
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Mick Harper
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So, Melusine, when you say
In Brittany in the Finistere department the upper part between Brest and Roscoff is called "the Leon

you are actually saying that the Celtic tip of France consists of a word meaning End of Land with Leon right next door.

Now as it happens the Celtic tip of Spain is also called Cape Finistere and Leon is right next door to that too.

Now as it happens the Celtic tip of England is also called Lands End and right next door is...allegedly....Lyonesse.
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Seaking



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Caer-leon (castle of Leon?) in southern Wales is situated on the site of an old Roman fortress and arena . Its round amphitheatre was later associated with King Arthur's round table.
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Mick Harper
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And in the other bit of Celtic England, Cumbria, there's...wait for it....Carlisle. Also an Arthurian seat.
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DPCrisp


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I noticed the other day that the bight in the south of France is the Gulf of Lion. S'funny. Lyon is about 200 miles away up the Rhone.

It caught my eye because the bed of the gulf is fairly shallow and flat, unlike the Côte d'Azur immediately to the east. So the Gulf of Lion will have been one of the places flooded by rising sea levels within human memory.
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Melusine



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Lyon is the French word for the ancient name of Lugdunum. The city of Lugdunum (ancient name of Lyon) was founded in 43 BC, at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saone, by the Roman emperor Claudius, who was born in this place. The trade and traffic grew up intensively between the south and the north of the ancient Europe, and Lugdunum was one major transfer place for goods and travellers.

And Lyonesse is the French name for Lugdunensis
From Wikipedia.
Gallia Lugdunensis was a province of the Roman Empire roughly encompassing the regions of Brittany, Normandy and the area around Lutetia Parisiorum (Paris) in what is now the modern country of France
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Hatty
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Lyons was also where the Waldensian movement originated, The Poor Men of Lyons, followers of Peter Waldo (or Vaudes), who got lumped together with other 'heresies' such as the Cathari/Albigensians but, despite being wiped out in France in 1545 by Francis I, managed to survive, mainly by seeking protection from the Count of Savoy in Piedmont, and were eventually part of the Protestant movement although never quite mainstream.

The canton of Vaud was ruled by the House of Savoy from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and seems to have maintained its tradition of political and religious independence (when I lived in Neuchatel c. 30 years ago they were still campaigning to form an independent canton of Jura). The dukes of Savoy also ruled over Sardinia, the title originally bestowed by Frederick Barbarossa in 1164 then became part of the Crown of Aragon which incorporated Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia (there's a Catalan folk dance called the 'sardana'), which takes us back full circle to the Cathars and south of France.
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Mick Harper
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Of course the House of Savoy eventually created modern Italy, land of a thousand Masonic conspiracies.
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Melusine



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In the Bay of Douarnenez off Brittany, there is reputed to lie the sunken city of Ker-Is which may once have had links with Mont-St-Michel.

The legend says that the city of Ys was in the Bay of Douarnenez. The so-called place Pouldavid, a few kilometres to the East of the City of Douarnenez, is the French form of "Poul Dahut", the "hole of Dahut" in Breton, and indicates the place where the princess was flooded into the waves.

It is also said that the city of Ys was the nicest capital of the world and that Lutece was called Paris because "Par Ys" in Breton means "like Ys". Two popular Breton proverbs testify that :

Abaoue ma beuzet Ker Is
N'eus kavet den par da Paris

Since was drowned the City of Ys
Nobody found an equal in Paris
Pa vo beuzet Paris
Ec'h adsavo Ker Is

When Paris will be engulfed
Will re-emerge the City of Ys
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Jaq White



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I have read of connections with Ys (Ker-Is) and other sunken cities, especially connected with the Grail story, such as Tristan and Iseult (.....or should that be Yseult? )

Tristan was said to come from fabled Lyonesse, a land that sank beneath the waves long ago. This too is dismissed as the stuff of legend, but we can still see 'Tristan's Island' ('Insula Trestanni') on the Brittany Coast, once part of the ancient kingdom of Leon and by the legendary city of Ys that was also submerged by the sea.

Where does Ys fit with the Templars? I have found no link to the city and the Templars, other than the Grail story and the links suggested to the submerged island of the but the imagery of Templars and Cistercians all relates to the Light - the feminine light of the Dawn and the Lily, the bringer of light.

Even the most prominent names associated with them from the beginning and the end, Bernard de Clairvaux (an assumed surname) and the Sinclairs...Nant Eos Mansion and the Cistercian Strata Florida in Wales, legendary resting place of "the Grail", brought by the Cistercians. The Abbey was built on land owned by the "Clare" family. Coincidences?
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Seaking



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Talking of the Breton and Spanish Finisteres, the French writer Guy-Rene Doumayrou illustrated that a ley line links the Northern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela (the great stone of El Padron as a marker) to Stonehenge in Britain. Brittany's Isle de Sein lies at the centre of this leyline
.
Interestingly Sein can mean both breast and centre

From the same Spanish city , Doumayrou also traced a line through the sacred site of Rocamadour in France to Le Puy en Velay and yet another to Toulouse, St Gilles and Nice.
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