by Mike Ashley
Medraut, see Mordred.
Merlin/Merrillin/Merdyn/Myrddin. Magician and adviser of King Arthur. He was the offspring of a girl and demon of the air and was raised in a nunnery. His prophecies began in the last days of King Vortigern. He later raised Stonehenge. He put a glamour on Igraine so that she mistook Uther Pendragon for her husband Gorlois. Merlin became guardian to the young Arthur and later contrived the episode of the sword in the stone so that Arthur was recognized as the future High-King. He created the Round Table. He became enamoured of the enchantress Nimuë/Niniane, who imprisoned him in a cave.
Mordred/Medraut/Modred/Modreuant. The incestuous child of Arthur and his half-sister Morgause. He later attempted to seduce Guinevere and claimed the throne of Britain. He met in mortal battle with Arthur at Camlann.
Morgan le Fay/Morgana/Morgaine. Daughter of Gorlois and Igraine and half-sister of King Arthur. She was educated in the sorcerous arts and became Arthur’s major enemy, forever seeking the downfall of the Round Table. By hiding the scabbard of Excalibur, which had previously protected Arthur, she rendered him mortal. She was the mother of Owain.
Morgause/Margawse. Daughter of Gorlois, sister of Morgan le Fay, wife of Lot of Orkney, and mother by him of Gawain, Agravaine, Gaheris and Gareth. She was also the mother of Mordred by Arthur, her half-brother.
Nimuë/Niniane/Viviane/Vivienne. An enchantress who is perceived in a number of roles in the Arthurian legend. She is called the Lady of the Lake, the foster mother of Lancelot, who gave Excalibur to Arthur. She also became the lover of Merlin whom she imprisoned in a cave. She is seen by some as a sister to Morgause and Morgan and thus equated with Elaine of Garlot.
Ogier. A Danish knight in the service of King Charlemagne in the eighth century but whose adventures have become linked to Avalon and the magic of Morgan le Fay.
Olwen. Welsh princess, the daughter of a giant, for whom Kilhugh must perform a series of impossible tasks in order to win her hand.
Owain/Ewen/Uwaine/Yvain. Historical king of Rheged who lived at the end of the sixth century, and is remembered in the poems of Taliesin. In Celtic and Arthurian legend, becomes the son of Morgan le Fay and King Urien.
Palomides/Palamides. A Saracen who became one of the greatest Knights of the Round Table. A suitor for Queen Iseult he later became involved in the ceaseless search for the Questing Beast.
Parsival, see Percivale.
Pelles/Pelleas. The King of the Grail Castle and possibly synonymous with the Fisher King. He was the grandfather of Sir Galahad and is sometimes named as the brother of King Pellinore.
Pellinore. King of the Isles and one of the mightiest of the Knights of the Round Table who, in an early episode, overpowered Arthur and would have killed him had he not been enchanted by Merlin. He was involved in the search for the Questing Beast. He was the father of Sir Lamorack and, in some versions, also of Sir Percivale. He killed King Lot and was, in turn, killed by Sir Gawain.
Percivale/Parsival/Parzival/Peredur. The knight most closely associated with the quest for the Holy Grail. Early legends have him raised in the wilds of Wales, but later legends link him with King Pellinore.
Peredur, see Percivale.
Reinwen/Renwein. Daughter of Hengist, the Saxon invader and first King of Kent, who married Vortigern.
Rhydderch. A historical king of Strathclyde who ruled AD 580–612. Rhydderch fought with Urien against the Saxons.
Riothamus. A British king who ruled about AD 470 who has been linked with Arthur. He assisted the Romans against the Visigoths.
Taliesin. A legendary bard and prophet who has become closely linked with Merlin, though belongs to a later generation.
Tom Thumb. The dwarf son of Thomas the ploughman who becomes famous at the court of King Arthur.
Tristan/Tristram/Drustan. Son of King Melodias of Lyonesse and nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, whose wife, Iseult, he fell in love with. Banished from Cornwall he entered King Arthur’s court as one of the mightiest knights, until forced to flee to Brittany, where he married another Iseult.
Urien. King of Rheged in Cumbria at the end of the sixth century, and the father of Owain. He became enmeshed in Arthurian legend as the husband of Morgan le Fay.
Uther Pendragon/Uverian. The brother of Ambrosius Aurelianus whom he succeeded as High-King of Britain. He was the father of Arthur, by Igraine.
Vivian/Vivienne. see Nimuë/Niniane.
Vortigern. King of Britain whose reign preceded Ambrosius in the mid-fifth century. He invited Hengist to Britain to rid the land of Saxons, but Hengist in turn conquered Kent. Merlin first appears in Vortigern’s reign.
Ygraine, see Igraine.
Yseult, see Iseult.
Yvain, see Owain.
INTRODUCTION
MIKE ASHLEY
Merlin . . . the very name conjures up images of magic and mystery. And what a mystery. Perhaps even more than King Arthur, the real character and person of Merlin remains obscure, lost in fifteen centuries of tales retold. But as a creature of the imagination Merlin lives on, and will forever. We all love to dream, and in Merlin we have the forefather of all our dreams, the master of enchantments, the prophet and kingmaker. To Merlin, the all-seeing, the all-knowing, nothing was impossible. Merlin is the root and branch of all that is magic and wonder in the world.
This volume looks at both the life and character of Merlin and the world of magic and enchantment that surrounded him. Merlin was not the only being possessed of magic. The Arthurian world also brings us Morgan le Fay, the half-sister of Arthur, who learned her magic skills from Merlin, and who was the queen who ferried Arthur away to Avalon after the Battle of Camlann. There was also Vivienne, sometimes called Nimuë, who became the lover of Merlin and learned his magical craft, and at length imprisoned him in a cave or tomb where he remains trapped to this day. Some link both Vivienne and Morgan le Fay with the Lady of the Lake. To me there is no more glorious image in the whole of Arthurian literature, perhaps even the whole of fantasy, than when, after the battle of Camlann, Sir Bedivere is charged with throwing Excalibur back into the lake. He twice refuses, but the third time throws it far into the lake where an arm rises from the water, catches the sword, brandishes it three times, and then sinks into the lake. Pure magic. This anthology considers all of that mystery and magic from the earliest days of Merlin to his fate . . . and beyond. For magic never dies, and the influence of Merlin and Morgan le Fay lives on in other tales and legends down through the centuries.
I was delighted at the response from authors when I first sent out word of this anthology. My early researches had shown that whilst Merlin features heavily in many Arthurian stories, few have him as their central character. I wanted writers to explore Merlin’s life and character a little more deeply. The response was marvellous, the authors demonstrating their own fascination for Merlin and his influence on the Arthurian world. Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of The Mists of Avalon, reworked an extract from that book to present a story about the childhood of Nimuë. The Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis, who writes fiction under the name Peter Tremayne, recreated Merlin in the historical world of ancient Britain, and considered his early life. Robert Holdstock, who has been developing the myths of the Matter of Britain in his books Mythago Wood, Lavondyss and Merlin’s Wood, brings us his own interpretation of the scheming, artful Merlin, and of the origins of Arthur. Tanith Lee was the first to respond to my enquiries with a story which considers Merlin’s involvement in the quest for the Holy Grail. This raises some of the mystical aspects of Merlin’s world, which are further explored by Darrell Schweitzer, who tackled the thorny problem of the very nature of Merlin’s existence; Peter Valentine Timlett, who considers the mystical import of the Round Table; and Jessica Amanda Salmonson, who explores the enduring myth of the Dark Lady Nimuë. And that’s only half the contents. Inevitably some incidents arise in more than one story, each author developing their own interpretation. This is most true of how Arthur first received Excalibur, and it is fascinating to see the dif
ferent variations on that theme, all seeking to explore and explain the significance of that episode. And there are similar twice-told tales about Merlin and Nimuë and Merlin’s passing. The result is an intriguing exploration of the Merlin myth.
If that’s whetted your appetite, let me not detain you, but move on and I hope you enjoy the stories. You can always return here later. But if you wish to stay, I want to explore the literary and historical background to Merlin, partly to help set these stories in the context of the legend, but also for the sheer delight of trying to draw back the veils of time and see if we can catch some glimpse of the real Merlin.
The Origins of Merlin
Merlin’s appearance in the ancient writings is patchy, for although some events later ascribed to him are referred to by Nennius in the ninth century, Merlin himself is not named. The Merlin we know was born fully fledged in the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey was a cleric and teacher who lived from about 1090 to 1155, for most of that time being resident in Oxford. He tells us that he was fascinated with the ancient tales of the kings of Britain but was unable to learn much about them until a friend of his, Walter, the Archdeacon of Oxford, gave him an ancient little book written in Welsh which gave a complete history of the kings of Britain. This Geoffrey chose to translate into Latin. Unfortunately this original book has vanished over the years and it is impossible to know how much Geoffrey derived from that source and how much was either of his own muddled research or the product of his own imagination. He started his translation around the year 1130. This was a period of much interest in the early tales and legends. A few years earlier William of Malmesbury had produced his Gesta Regum Anglorum, another history of the kings of Britain, which mentioned the deeds of King Arthur, and at the same time Caradoc of Llancarfan was writing his Vita Gildae, the life of St Gildas, a monk and contemporary of Merlin. This biography mentions Arthur and Guinevere and makes the first links between Arthur and Glastonbury.
Geoffrey found himself pressured to complete his book, but he was determined to be thorough. In order to satisfy demand, in particular that of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, Geoffrey hurriedly completed a translation of another text he was consulting, the Prophetiae Merlini, or the Prophecies of Merlin, which he issued in 1134. This text he later incorporated into his major work, the Historia Regum Britanniae, or the History of the Kings of Britain, which was eventually completed in 1136. It proved instantly popular with a couple of hundred known copies (and probably many more now lost) in circulation before the end of the century.
This book, which seeks to give the kings of Britain a pedigree going back as far as 1200 BC and the Fall of Troy, devotes much of its space to the story of King Arthur, which is itself presaged by the story of Merlin. Although throughout the book history and imagination fight for supremacy, the appearance of Merlin seems to have allowed Geoffrey to pull out all the stops and deliver a tale for the telling.
We are in fifth-century Britain. The British king Vortigern, whose name was synonymous with evil and corruption, had invited the armies of the Saxon king Hengist to Britain to help fight the Picts. The Saxons took advantage of the situation and Vortigern soon found his kingdom under threat. He fled to the Welsh mountains where he attempted to build a fortress, but no matter how hard he tried the fortress kept crumbling. He consulted his advisers who told him to seek out a boy with no father who should be killed and his blood sprinkled over the site. Vortigern’s soldiers sought high and low and eventually, at Carmarthen, found Merlin, a boy of about eight or nine. Vortigern learned that Merlin’s mother, though herself of royal birth, was a nun who had been visited by demons or incubi, leading to the birth of Merlin. Merlin was aware of the threats against him, but he not only revealed to Vortigern the reason why his tower could not be built, but also issued his prophecies of the future of Britain.
Thus Merlin appears as a supernatural agent, the offspring of demons. This episode had also appeared in the Historia Brittonum of Nennius, but there the character of Merlin is called Ambrosius, presumed to be Ambrosius Aurelianus, the general or leader of the British. This anomaly has been reconciled by some by referring to Merlin as Merlin Ambrosius, or Merlin the Divine.
The French poet, Robert de Boron, who was the first to convert the so-called history of Merlin into genuine romance in the 1190s, made more of this background. He suggested that the demons were seeking to place an anti-Christ on earth, a being of total evil to combat the good that was spreading with Christianity. Their plans were thwarted, though, when they impregnated a nun. This resulted in Merlin being a mixture of old-world paganism and modern Christianity, which perfectly depicts the anguish and turbulence of the Arthurian world.
Merlin remains, thereafter, a schemer. His prophecies begin to come true. Vortigern had previously usurped the throne from King Constantine whose sons, Uther and Aurelianus, had fled to safety in France. Now mature, they return to Britain, besiege Vortigern in his fortress which is set on fire, and the usurper perishes. In celebration Aurelianus, now king, seeks to establish a monument. Uther is despatched to Ireland with Merlin to bring back a massive stone circle. Through his magical arts, Merlin dismantles the circle, transports it to Britain and resurrects it on Salisbury Plain – Stonehenge.
Aurelianus dies after a short reign and his brother, Uther, becomes king. Merlin now schemes to arrange the birth of Arthur. Uther desires Ygraine, the wife of Gorlois, duke of Cornwall. Merlin conjures up a glamour which transforms Uther into Gorlois and Ygraine, so deceived, welcomes him to her chamber. Thus Arthur is conceived. In making this arrangement with Uther, Merlin had ordained that he would raise the child. It is Arthur’s boyhood with Merlin that forms the basis of T. H. White’s humorous and beguiling novel The Sword in the Stone.
During Uther’s reign the Saxons recommence their incursions into Britain. After Uther’s death, the nobles clamour to have Arthur declared king of Britain for, despite his youth, they believe that he is the man to save the island. Geoffrey of Monmouth makes no mention of the incident of the sword in the stone. That appears to be the invention of Robert de Boron who describes how Merlin magically embeds a sword in an anvil which is set upon a stone (not in the stone itself) and challenges the nobles to remove it. He who succeeds shall be king. Needless to say, Merlin’s magic ensures that Arthur alone succeeds.
This sword is not the same as Excalibur. Merlin later introduces Arthur to Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake, who gives Arthur the sword. She advises him that the scabbard is more important than the sword, and that provided the scabbard is safe, Arthur will not be defeated. The later plotting of Morgan le Fay ensures that the scabbard is lost and thereafter Arthur’s fate is sealed.
Throughout the early part of Arthur’s reign Merlin is always there, behind the scenes, twisting and shaping events, perhaps to his own advantage, perhaps to Arthur’s. Interestingly, the creation of this role was the job of the later romancers, starting from Robert de Boron, and not Geoffrey of Monmouth. After Arthur has become king, Merlin does not feature again in Geoffrey’s History. However, after he had completed that work, Geoffrey discovered more about Merlin, or Myrddin in his own language, and in about 1150 published the Vita Merlini, or Life of Merlin. This is a different Merlin from the one described in the History, and Geoffrey may have regretted his haste in completing the earlier work. His later researches had unearthed the story of the British bard, Myrddin, whose name Geoffrey had taken and linked with other legends. Did Geoffrey realize what he had done, or was he just careless in his research? Rather than contradict his earlier work, Geoffrey fudged some of the facts and timescales, and consequently gave us two different portrayals of the character Merlin: one of the kingmaker and magician, the other the poet who descends into madness. The result amongst his readers, though, was not confusion but fascination.
For this later tale, Geoffrey drew upon various poems attributed to sixth-century bards, Aneirin and Talieson, though purported to be by Merlin himself. These tell of a Merlin living a century aft
er the death of Arthur. He became allied to King Gwenddolau and, after that king’s death at the battle of Arderydd, Merlin, feeling guilty for not saving his king, suffers bouts of madness and flees to the Caledonian forest where he lives like a Wild Man.
In the work of the romancers, Merlin’s fate is much more exciting. He falls in love with the beguiling Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake. Having learned his magical craft she lures him to a cave (in other legends a tower or a forest) and there imprisons him. Undying, his spirit remains ensnared down through the centuries.
That, then, is the story of Merlin in its simplest outline. We have a magician, born of demons, who shapes the fate of kings but who falls, himself, for the love of a young girl, and is ensnared by his own magic. Perhaps he lives on, but racked by guilt he flees into the forests where he lives like an animal and becomes mad.
Merlin appears as both friend and foe, as representative of good and evil, of paganism and Christianity. He may be wise but he is not someone to be trusted, and in the end he becomes a victim of his own schemes.
Such is the fabric of legend and romance. But was Merlin purely the invention of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Robert de Boron, or was there a real man, or men, behind the tales?
The Real Merlin?
Like Arthur’s, Merlin’s story becomes entwined with a number of recorded historical events that may at least give us a starting point to identify when he lived. We are told that he was about eight or nine when Vortigern’s soldiers found him, and this followed the Saxon invasion of Britain under Hengist. Hengist’s arrival in Britain is usually dated to about AD 449.
Just to set it in context, it might be useful to check out how that date relates to others who were living near or at that time, and who are likely to be better known. To be honest there aren’t many. We are really at the dawn of the Dark Ages. There was, though, St Patrick. Although his dates are uncertain it is probable that he arrived in Ireland sometime around 432 on his mission to convert the Irish to Christianity. He at length established a bishopric at Armagh around the year 454 and died around 461. If Merlin existed, Patrick may well have known him or known of him. Attila the Hun was also alive. He had become king of the Huns in 434, and after ravaging most of eastern Europe he invaded France in 451. The following year he invaded Italy and Rome itself was only saved by the intercession of the pope, Leo I, regarded as one of the greatest of the early popes.