On an unrelated note, if you’re a connoisseur of historical artifacts I happen to have the very stone that David used to kill Goliath, available for the mere purchase price of several million dollars. It’s definitely not just a rock I found in my backyard.
Anybody visiting Glastonbury today and seeing the shops full of new age tat will know that providing fake relics for tourists is still very much part of Glastonbury’s SOP.
The old age tat is pretty evident too.
This is what Glastonbury is like:
The Mendip councillor responsible for economic development suggested installing free wi-fi in the town centre to encourage tourists. As soon as the box went up, the new age shopkeepers started claiming they were suffering from blinding headaches and their chakras were being interfered with. This went on for several months at which point it was revealed that the box had not yet even been connected. The scheme was abandoned.
If you feel like laughing at Kentucky fundamentalists, visit Glastonbury, where the sheep are more intelligent than some of the locals.
(I do not live in Glastonbury. You haven’t got enough money to persuade me too, either.)
I can’t recall where I read there were, at one time, enough fragments of the True Cross floating around to make a whole forest of True Crosses, which is a miracle indeed.
After the loaves and fishes, they’re going to need toothpicks.
See also Shroud of Turin, various statues and relics rigged to cry, bleed, etc…
“…they invented the grave of a possibly fictional king and queen to get the tourists to come by and spend a penny.”
The shopkeepers won’t let you do that unless you buy something.
(“Spend a penny” was my grandmother’s euphemism for using the toilet. Most public toilets in Britain were pay toilets back in the day.)
Yes, it’s a joke.
Glastonbury is indeed full of hippies, but it’s a nice place to visit for the day.
I don’t remember where I read it, but I did hear that some abbey had the skull of the 14 year old Jesus for a relic.
No confirmation on whether it was sold to them by CMOT Dibbler or not.
Damned Southerners, stealing a Northern English hoax for themselves. 
It’s okay, I’ve still got Santa and The Easter Bunny.
At least they are real and pure - not some fantasy designed to get money out of me…
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose. It was the skull of John the Baptist.
I got the same feeling in Old Jerusalem, and other sites in the Holy Land. There are two places on the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized, for example, one on the Israel side and one on the Jordan side.
It’s like the “loaves and fishes” thing but with carpentry!
Many of the Holy Land’s pilgrimage sites date to the 4th Century, when Emperor Constantine’s mother declared them to be the places that various events happened, and founded monasteries there. St. Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, for instance, is at the foot of The One Real Official Mt. Sinai that Moses climbed, and you can see the Burning Bush there. (It’s not burning at the moment, but it actually has been The One Real Official Burning Bush since the 4th century, which is pretty impressive by itself.) And while there’s no way to tell if the mountain at the monastery is the one Moses climbed, there’s a set of stone steps going up it that some monk built for penance, and a mosque at the top (because by the time the Muslims got there, it was definitely the right mountain), and it’s worth the climb.
Tintagel’s another 13th C fake.
Friends, what I have here is a collection of solid gold plates engraved with God’s final word on earth. It’s definitely something I found in my backyard.
/Smith
I have been under the impression that Arthur hisself was a hoax, or at least an overhyped composite of characters. A fake grave for a mythical figure is just so meta.
