Tarn Wadling
Tarn Wadling (formerly spelled Turnewathelane, Terne Wathelyne,[1] among others) was a lake between Carlisle and Penrith, near the village of High Hesket[2] in Cumbria, England.
[3] Throughout the Middle Ages and in later folklore the tarn was associated with spectral appearances and functioned as a liminal place between the regular world and fairyland; it occurs in three Arthurian poems, all involving Sir Gawain.
It is drawn considerably larger than Windermere, though that lake is almost forty times bigger; this can be explained, says Kathleen Coyne Kelly, following Daniel Birkholz's argument in The King's Two Maps (2004), by the political interest that underlies the Gough Map, which was used by Edward I of England to confirm his claims to Wales and Scotland.
[7] As a fishery, its documented reputation goes back until at least the thirteenth century, when Carlisle's prior claimed a tithe on all fish from the lake.
[8][9] In the early fourteenth century, John de Crumwell, keeper of the forests north of the river Trent, allowed the Bishop of Carlisle to take fifty pike from the lake so he could restock his own ponds.
At the time it covered about a hundred acres and belonged to a William Henry Milbourne, who also owned Armathwaite Castle.
Hutchinson noted the quality of the carp, and gave a description of the lake that,[10] as F. H. M. Parker pointed out in 1909, already indicated it was precariously situated:[9] This lake is in a remarkable situation, bordering upon a declivity, which descends towards the river for near a mile, and lies about six hundred perpendicular feet above the level of Eden, capable of being drained by a cut over a very narrow bank of earth.
[10] The boggy area was suitable for growing cranberries,[11] and important finds of beetles were made there, including the first Notiophilus rufipes in the British Isles.
[12] Some of these details—the carp, the waterfowl—are also found in a description from 1802, quoted by David E. Bynum:Tarn-wadling spreads its waters on a naked and barren common, about one mile west from the river Eden, at Armathwaite, above which it rises 600 feet perpendicular.
In the southern part is an area, about 1/3 of the total property, which was planted in 1998, with Scots pine, oak, ash and cherry.
[2] Access for pedestrians and woodland managers is via an unclassified road that runs east from the A6, near High Hesket, toward Armathwaite.
[20] Parker, writing in 1909, connected the lake[9] to a giant who lived nearby in Castle Hewen, which is associated with Sir Ewen Caesarius, reportedly the killer of the dangerous wild boar of Inglewood Forest.
[8] The lake occurs in three Arthurian poems (usually mentioned as being near Inglewood Forest, another Arthurian setting) involving Sir Gawain; according to Thomas Hahn, its importance is much greater than its size might warrant—it is also alluded to as a setting in The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle and The Greene Knight.
She mentions that she is in hell right now (Jean E. Jost notes the similarity to Mephistopheles's claim in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus), having fallen low into the lake with Lucifer.
[22] Richmond, in a discussion of The Awntyrs off Arthure and Sir Isumbras argues that the literary function of the tarn (like other bodies of water in late medieval romance) reflects a belief in the understanding of such watery locations as "explicitly alien, yet intimately physical embodiments of divine power in the natural world".
