Bardsey Island
Ynys Enlli
'Isle of the Currents', 'Tide-race Island'
A small island off the north coast of Wales. The English called it Bardsey Island, the isle of the bards. Tradition says the bards resorted there since they preferred solitude to the intrusion of foreign invaders.
Here Merlin is said to lie sleeping in a glass fortress, with the Thirteenth Treasures of the Island of Britain around him. He also has a throne there, on which to place Arthur when he returns. This is held to be the true throne of the Britons.
It has been suggested that Bardsey was the original Avalon. It contained an apple tree orchard, perhaps tended by monks in the Arthurian period. Only one tree remains on which a special kind of apple, known as the Bardsey apple, grows. It is a peculiar sort of apple, with the scent of lemon about it. According to tradition, the island had twenty thousand saints buried on it.
The English name, Bardsey, might be Scandinavian, where the more romantic idea would interpret the name as 'Isle of Bards'.