Arlo

Arlo is a rare name with uncertain meaning. It was most likely a late 16th century creation by Elizabethan poet Sir Edmund Spenser, author of the epic poem “The Faerie Queene” (considered one of the greatest works of English literature). Arlo Hill is an Irish place name featured prominently in the later Books and cantos of the poem; Spenser got the name from an actual place in southern Tipperary, Ireland called the Glen of Aherlow which is Gaelic for “between two highlands” since that’s essentially where the secluded glen is situated. Arlo Hill is important in “The Faerie Queene” as the location where the poem climaxes in a final judgment scene among the old pagan gods. It is also the place where the moon goddess Diana is spied upon while bathing. Spenser asks his reader: “Of Arlo-hill (Who knowes not Arlo-hill?)” and goes onto to call it “the best and fairest Hill / That was in all this holy-Islands hights” referring to the former glory days of Ireland. In Spenser’s time the Glen of Aherlow was recaptured and occupied by Catholic Irish rebels and outlaws who rose up against Protestant English landowners (and in Spenser’s opinion, harassed them mercilessly). As a devout Protestant and a fervent supporter of Queen Elizabeth I, Spenser used Arlo Hill as an allegory to symbolize the Irish destruction of Eden or fallen paradise. After Diana is objectified by another god while bathing naked in a stream, she curses the pastoral Hill and abandons it to “Thieves and Wolves”. So while once “the best and fairest hill”, Arlo “…was made the most unpleasant, and most ill" (VII vi 36-55). Apparently, in “Faerieland” it all goes down on Arlo Hill. Spenser essentially anglicized the word Aherlow to Arlo. Most people, however, are unaware of this relatively obscure literary reference to Arlo; rather, the name is more commonly inspired by American folk artist Arlo Guthrie.