OF ARTHUR THE KING AND MERLIN THE ENCHANTER
“No matter whence we do derive our name,
All Brittany shall ring of Merlin’s fame,
And wonder at his Arts.”
_The Birth of Merlin_, Act III. sc. iv.
“He by wordes could call out of the sky
Both sunne and moone, and make them him obey;
The land to sea, and sea to maineland dry,
And darksome night he eke could turn to day;
That to this day, for terror of his fame
The feendes do quake when any him to them does name.”--_Spenser._
The fact that the name Art(h)us does not occur in the Gildas manuscript
has led to the inference that the king was unknown to that chronicler;
and the assumption that he is alluded to as Ursus (the Bear) tends to
confirm the theory of those who would affirm that he is no more than
a solar myth. It must be understood that the Arthur of romance, as
we now know him, was a character ever increasing in importance and
prominence as the history was re-written and elaborated; at first a
minor actor in the drama, he at length became the leading figure and
the centre around which all the other characters were grouped. The
Arthur of the historian Nennius is the original personage to whom all
the famed attributes have been accorded by subsequent writers. With
so much doubt and confusion, involving the identity of the person
himself, it is inevitable that even more doubt and confusion should
exist when we come to detailed events. Even the name of Arthur’s father
is variously given, a circumstance which caused Milton to question the
veracity of the whole history; and the date of his birth, of his death,
the age at which he died and other smaller points, lead to nothing but
endless contradiction. The number of his battles is variously given as
twelve and seventy-six; he is said to have wedded not one but three
Guineveres (Gwenhwyvar); his age at death varies from just over thirty
years to over ninety; and the date of the last battle is 537, 542, or
630.[12] King Arthur’s actual name may have been Arthur Mab-Uther; his
genealogical line has been traced back to Helianis, nephew of Joseph;
the year 501 is now usually accepted as the date of his birth; and
St. David, son of a prince of Cardiganshire, is mentioned not only as
his contemporary but as a near relative. If the Sagas were compared
with the Arthurian romances numerous points of resemblance could be
shown. Olaf is the Arthur of the story, Gudrun the Guinevere, and Odin
is the Merlin, while the city of Drontheim serves as Caerleon. The
story recounting how Arthur magically obtained his sword Excalibur
finds an exact parallel in the story of Sigmund, Volsung’s son; and
even the emblem of the dragon is not lacking,[13] for in the story
of the Volsung we learn that Sigurd’s shield bore the image of that
monster, “and with even such-like image was adorned helm, and saddle,
and coat-armour.” But again it must be remembered that Arthur’s kingdom
is reported to have extended to Iceland itself; in fact, the bounds of
his kingdom were only set by the chroniclers where their own definite
geographical knowledge ended.
“We cannot bring within any limits of history,” Sir Edward Strachey
has properly said, “the events which here succeed each other, when
the Lords and Commons of England, after the death of King Uther at
St. Albans, assembled at the greatest church of London, guided by
the joint policy of the magician Merlin and the Christian bishop
of Canterbury, and elected Arthur to the throne; when Arthur made
Caerleon, or Camelot, or both, his headquarters in a war against
Cornwall, Wales, and the North, in which he was victorious by the help
of the King of France; when he met the demand for tribute by the Roman
Emperor Lucius with a counterclaim to the empire for himself as the
real representative of Constantine, held a parliament at York to make
the necessary arrangements, crossed the sea from Sandwich to Barflete
in Flanders, met the united forces of the Romans and Saracens in
Burgundy, slew the emperor in a great battle, together with his allies,
the Sowdan of Syria, the King of Egypt, and the King of Ethiopia, sent
their bodies to the Senate and Podesta of Rome as the only tribute he
would pay, and then followed over the mountains through Lombardy and
Tuscany to Rome, where he was crowned emperor by the Pope, ‘sojourned
there a time, established all the lands from Rome into France, and gave
lands and realms unto his servants and knights,’ and so returned home
to England, where he seems thenceforth to have devoted himself wholly
to his duties as the head of Christian knighthood.”
This is the very monstrosity of fable, the grossness of which carries
with it its own condemnation. These facts, however, are not insisted
upon by Malory, though such claims for Arthur were made by the
credulous and less scrupulous writers. Romance has entirely remodelled
his character, and has filled in all the gaps in his life-story in
that triumphant manner in which Celtic genius manifests its power.
The legendary Arthur is made to realise the sublime prophecies of
Merlin, and as those prophecies waxed more bold and arrogant in the
course of ages the proportions of the hero were magnified to suit them.
Merlin had cherished the hope of the coming of a victorious chief
under whom the Celts should be united, but the slaughter at Arderydd
when the rival tribes fought each other, almost destroyed all such
aspirations. Nevertheless the prophet foretold the continuance of
discord among the British tribes, until the chief of heroes formed a
federation on returning to the world, and his prediction concluded with
the haunting words: “Like the dawn he will arise from his mysterious
retreat.” Mr. Stuart Glennie calls Merlin a barbarian compound of
madman and poet, prophet and bard, but denies that he was a mythic
personage or a poetic creation. He was, like Arthur himself, an
actual pre-mediæval personage, and, as in the case of Arthur, we have
no means of determining his origin, his nationality, or the _locale_
of his wanderings. But if, as Wilson observes in one of his “Border
Tales,” tradition is “the fragment which history has left or lost in
its progress, and which poetry following in its wake has gathered up as
treasures, breathed upon them its influence and embalmed them in the
memories of men unto all generations,” we shall extract a residuum of
truth from the fanciful fables of which Merlin is the subject.
Myrdin Emrys, the Welsh Merlin, is claimed as a native of Bassalleg,
an obscure town in the district which lies between the river Usk and
Rhymney. The chief authority for this is Nennius; but according to
others the birthplace was Carmarthen, at the spot marked by Merlin’s
tree, regarding which the prophecy runs that when the tree tumbles
down Carmarthen will be overwhelmed with woe. What we know of Merlin
in Malory’s chronicle is that he was King Arthur’s chief adviser, an
enchanter who could bring about miraculous events, and to whom was
delivered the royal babe upon a ninth wave of the ocean; a prophet who
foretold his sovereign’s death, his own fate, and the infidelity of
Guinevere; a warrior, the founder of the Round Table, and the wise
man who “knew all things.” Wales and Scotland alike claim as their own
this most striking of the characters in the Arthurian story. Brittany
also holds to the belief that Merlin was the most famous and potent of
her sons, and that his influence is still exercised over that region.
Matthew Arnold, gazing at the ruins of Carnac, saw from the heights he
clambered the lone coast of Brittany, stretching bright and wide, weird
and still, in the sunset; and recalling the old tradition, he described
how--
“It lay beside the Atlantic wave
As though the wizard Merlin’s will
Yet charmed it from his forest grave.”
The Scotch Merlin, Merlin Sylvester, or Merlin the Wild, was Merdwynn
of the haugh of Drummelziar, a delightful lowland region, where the
little sparkling Pausayl burn bickers down between the heather-clad
hills until it mixes its waters with the Tweed. He is said to have
taken to the woods of Upper Tweeddale in remorse for the death of his
nephew, though it is more likely that he lost his reason after the
decisive defeat of the Cymry by the Christians of the sixth century.
Sir Walter Scott records that in the _Scotichronicon_, to which work
however no historic importance can be ascribed, as it is notoriously a
priestly invention, is an account of an interview betwixt St. Kentigern
and Merdwynn Wyllt when he was in this distracted and miserable state.
The saint endeavoured to convert the recluse to Christianity, for he
was a nature-worshipper, as his poems show. From his mode of life he
was called Lailoken, and on the saint’s commanding him to explain his
situation, he stated that he was doing penance imposed upon him by
a voice from heaven for causing a bloody conflict between Lidel and
Carwanolow. He continued to dwell in the woods of Caledon, frequenting
a fountain on the hills, enjoying the companionship of his sister
Gwendydd (“The Dawn”), and ever musing upon his early love Hurmleian
(The Gleam), both of whom were frequently mentioned in his poems. His
fate was a singular one, and has been confused with that of the Merlin
of Arthur. He predicted that he should perish at once by wood, earth,
and water, and so it came to pass; for being pursued and stoned by the
rustics--others say by the herdsmen of the Lord of Lanark--he fell from
a rock into the river Tweed, and was transfixed by a sharp stake--
“Sude perfossus, lapide percussus, et unda,
Hæc tria Merlinum fertur inire necem.
Sicque ruit, mersusque lignoque prehensus,
Et fecit vatem per terna pericular verum.”
The grave of the Scotch Merlin is pointed out at Drummelziar, where it
is marked by an aged thorn-tree. On the east side of the churchyard the
Pausayl brook falls into the Tweed, and a prophecy ran thus:--“When
Tweed and Pausayl join at Merlin’s grave, Scotland and England shall
one monarch have.” And we learn accordingly that on the day of the
coronation of James VI the Tweed overflowed and joined the Pausayl at
the prophet’s grave. The predictions of this Merlin continued for many
centuries to impress the Scotch, and he seems to have had a reputation
equal to that of Thomas the Rhymer. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the
first to introduce a Merlin into the Arthurian romance, and whether
that Merlin had for a prototype Merdwynn Wyllt, or whether there was
in reality a Merlin of Wales, remains an open question. All that can
be said definitely is that similar deeds are ascribed to both, that
each occupies a similar place among his contemporaries, that their
rhapsodical prophecies partake of the same character, and that their
mysterious deaths have points in common. But it is contended that
the _vates_ of Vortigern and of Aurelius Ambrosius, the companion
and adviser of Uther Pendragon and of Arthur, was Myrdin Emrys, who
took his name from Dinas Emrys in the Vale of Waters, whose haunt was
the rugged heights of Snowdon, and who knew nothing of the Merlin
Caledonius who wandered about the heathery hills of Drummelziar, who
was present at the battle of Arderydd in 573, and who lamented in wild
songs the defeat of the pagans and the shattering reverse to the Cymric
cause. These poems, which bewail the fortunes of this unfortunate race,
seem to have found their way into the famous Ancient Books of Wales,
thus tending further to confuse the two Merlins, and resulting in the
old chroniclers ascribing the acts of both to the Myrdin Emrys of King
Arthur’s court. The late Professor Veitch’s poem on Merlin contains
some specimens of Merdwynn Wyllt’s verse, and sets forth his faith in
nature, tinged a little as it were by the Christianity of the era.
[Illustration: _Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle_]
MERLIN’S CAVE, TINTAGEL
[_To face p. 70_]
The Merlin of King Arthur was reputed to be a native of Carmarthen
among other places, and at three miles’ distance from the town may be
seen “Merlin’s Cave,” one of the traditional places of his mysterious
entombment. Merlin’s birth formed the subject of one of the apocryphal
plays of Shakespeare: the weird magician and worker of enchantment
would have been worthy of the masters’ own depiction. In the romances
he comes with mystery and awe, and he departs with mystery and shame.
“Men say that Merlin was begotten of a devil,” said Sir Uwaine; and
the maid Nimuë (Vivien) on whom he was “assotted,” grew weary of him,
and fain would have been delivered of him, “for she was afraid of
him because he was a devil’s son.” In that wondrously rich drama of
1662, “The Birth of Merlin,” the popular tradition is taken up that
the arch-magician was the son of the arch-fiend. The story introduces
Aurelius and Vortiger (Vortigern), the two Kings of Britain; Ut(h)er
Pendragon, the brother of Aurelius; Ostorius, the Saxon general; and
other historic characters of the era. The chief point of the plot
is the search for and identification of Merlin’s father; and, that
matter settled, the dramatist treats of Merlin’s supernatural skill,
his prophecies, and his aid of Vortiger in building the castle which
hostile fiends broke down by night as fast as it was built by day.
Merlin is represented as born with the beard of an old man, able to
talk and walk, and within a few hours of his birth explaining to his
mother that he reads a book “to sound the depth of arts, of learning,
wisdom, knowledge.”
“I can be but half a man at best,
And that is your mortality; the rest
In me is spirit. ’Tis not meat nor time
That gives this growth and bigness. No, my years
Shall be more strange than yet my birth appears.”
He prophesies forthwith, recognises his father, the Devil, at a glance,
gives proof of his miraculous powers in many ways; and proceeding to
Vortiger’s court baffles the native magicians, and shows the king
why his castle cannot be built by reason of the dragons in conflict.
He foretells that the victory of the white dragon means the ultimate
victory of the Saxons--“the white horror who, now knit together, have
driven and shut you up in these wild mountains,” and that the king
who won his throne by bloodshed must yield it to Prince Uter. The
prediction is verified, and after Vortiger’s death Merlin is sent for
to expound “the fiery oracle” in the form of a dragon’s head,
“From out whose mouth
Two flaming lakes of fire stretch east and west,
And ... from the body of the star
Seven smaller blazing streams directly point
On this affrighted kingdom.”
The portent causes terror, until Merlin, as interpreter, tells of
revolutions, the rise and fall of nations, and the changes in Britain’s
state which it signifies. Aurelius has been treacherously slain at
Winchester by the Saxons, and Prince Uter is to be his avenger. The
passage in which Merlin relates what is to come is one of singular
dignity and impressiveness. Seven rays are “speaking heralds” to the
island. Uter Pendragon is to have a son and a daughter. The latter will
be Queen of Ireland, while of the son “thus Fate and Merlin tells”--
“All after times shall fill their chronicles
With fame of his renown, whose warlike sword
Shall pass through fertile France and Germany,
Nor shall his conquering foot be forced to stand,
Till Rome’s imperial wealth hath crowned his fame
With monarch of the west; from whose seven hills
With conquest, and contributory kings
He back returns to enlarge the Briton bounds,
His heraldry adorned with thirteen crowns.
He to the world shall add another worthy,
And, as a loadstone, for his prowess draw
A train of martial lovers to his court.
It shall be then the best of knighthood’s honour
At Winchester to fill his castle hall,
And at his Royal table sit and feast
In warlike orders, all their arms round hurled
As if they meant to circumscribe the world.”
This is a noble passage, and sums up the leading points in King
Arthur’s history, as related in the Fabliaux, and at the same time
serves as evidence of the power of divination and eloquence of Merlin.
The matter of the prophecy was obviously taken from Malory, but the
dramatist introduced one strange variation in his story. Merlin,
indignant that his demoniac father should strive to harm his mother,
uses his art and magic spells to enclose the Devil in a rock--an idea
suggested, no doubt, by Merlin’s own fate. Furthermore, finding himself
called to aid Pendragon against the Saxons, Merlin conducts his mother
to a place of retirement called Merlin’s Bower, and tells her that when
she dies he will erect a monument--
“Upon the verdant plains of Salisbury--
(No king shall have so high a sepulchre)--
With pendulous stones that I will hang by art,
Where neither lime nor mortar shall be used,
A dark enigma to the memory,
For none shall have the power to number them.”
Here we become acquainted with the superstition that the megalithic
wonders of Stonehenge were Merlin’s workmanship, and that the
mysterious structure was his mother’s tomb. Another idea was that it
was the burial place of Uther Pendragon and Constantine. The drama, so
far as it relates to Merlin and Vortigern, closely follows the popular
tradition, though there are several variations of the story of the
castle which could not be finished, and its site, as might be expected,
is the subject of many contradictory declarations. The allegorical
meaning of the story is quite clear. To the heights of Snowdon, it
is said, Merlin led King Vortigern, whose castle could not be built
for meddlesome goblins. The wizard led the monarch to a vast cave and
showed him two dragons, white and red, in furious conflict. “Destroy
these,” he said, “and the goblins whom they rule will cease to torment
you.” Vortigern slew the dragons of Hate and Conspiracy, and his castle
was completed.[14]
The story of Merlin’s death has again led to much speculation upon the
recondite subject of the situation of the tomb in which his “quick”
body was placed by the guile of Nimuë, or Vivien, one of the damsels
of the lake. Malory distinctly avers that it was in Cornwall that the
doting wizard met his fate. He went into that country, after showing
Nimuë many wonders, and “so it happed that Merlin showed to her a rock,
whereat was a great wonder, and wrought by enchantment, that went under
a great stone.” By subtle working the maiden induced the wizard to go
under the stone to tell her of the marvels there, and then she “so
wrought him” that with all his own crafts he could not emerge again.
Some time afterwards Sir Bagdemagus, riding to an adventure, heard
Merlin’s doleful cries from under the stone, but he was unable to help
him, as the stone was so heavy that a hundred men could not move it.
Merlin told the knight that no one could rescue him but the woman who
had put him there, and, according to some traditions, he lives to this
day in the vault. Spenser, in the _Faërie Queene_, describes the tomb
as--
“A hideous, hollow, cave-like bay
Under a rock that has a little space
From the swift Tyvi, tumbling down apace
Amongst the woody hills of Dynevowr.”
The Tyvi is known to us as the Towy, and Dynevowr is Dynevor Park.
“There the wise Merlin, whilom wont, they say,
To make his wonne low underneath the ground,
In a deep delve far from view of day,
That of no living wight he might be found,
When so he counselled with his sprights around.”
Others say that the guileful damsel led her doting lover to Snowdon,
and there put forth the charm of woven paces and of waving hands until
he lay as dead in a hollow oak. Sometimes an eldritch cry breaks upon
the ear of the climber as he nears the summit of Snowdon: it is Merlin
lamenting the subtlety of his false love, which doomed him to perpetual
shame.
There is the Carmarthen cave, and there is a “Merlin’s Grave” four
miles from Caerleon, both of which are shown as Merlin’s resting-place.
But ancient bards told another strange tale of the fate of the “boy
without a father,” whose blood had once been sought to sprinkle upon
the cement for the bricks of Vortigern’s castle. They declared that
the enchanter was sent out to sea in a vessel of glass, accompanied
by nine bards, or prophets, and neither vessel nor crew was heard of
again--which is not surprising. But Lady Charlotte Guest, in her notes
to the _Mabinogion_, boldly transports the scene of Merlin’s doom to
the Forest of Brécéliande, in Brittany, one of the favoured haunts of
romance and the delight of the Trouvères. Vivien, to whose artifices
he succumbed, is said to have been the daughter of one Vavasour, who
married a niece of the Duchess of Burgundy, and received as dowry
half the Forest of Briogne. It was when Merlin and Vivien were going
through Brécéliande hand in hand that they found a bush of white thorn
laden with flowers; there they rested, and the magician fell asleep.
Then Vivien, having been taught the art of enchantment by Merlin,
rose and made a ring nine times with her wimple round the bush; and
when the wizard woke it seemed to him that he was enclosed in the
strongest tower ever made--a tower without walls and without chains,
which he alone had known the secret of making. From this enmeshment
Merlin could never escape, and, plead as he would, the damsel would not
release him. But it is written that she often regretted what she had
done and could not undo, for she had thought the things he had taught
her could not be true. This, however, seems to be an interpolation.
Sir Gawain, travelling through the forest, saw a “kind of smoke,” and
heard Merlin’s wailing voice addressing him out of the obscurity.
The wonders of the Forest of Brécéliande were sufficiently believed
in of old time that we find the chronicler Wace actually journeying
to the spot to find the fairy fountain and Merlin’s tomb. Another
variation of the story is that Merlin made himself a sepulchre in
the Forest of Arvantes, that Vivien persuaded him to enter it, and
then closed the lid in such manner that thereafter it could never be
opened. Matthew Arnold, sparing and reticent in speech, as is his wont,
describes Merlin’s fate with subdued force and subtle charm, putting
the story in the mouth of desolate Iseult, who told her children of
the “fairy-haunted land” away the other side of Brittany, beyond the
heaths, edged by the lonely sea; and of
“The deep forest glades of Broce-liand,
Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps,
Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps.”
Very cunningly and mystically has the poet told of Vivien’s guile as
she waved a wimple over the blossom’d thorn-tree and the sleeping
dotard, until within “a little plot of magic ground,” a “daisied
circle,” Merlin was made prisoner till the judgment day. Celtic
mythology, Renan tells us, is nothing more than a transparent
naturalism, the love of nature for herself, the vivid impression of
her magic, accompanied by the sorrowful feeling that man knows. When
face to face with her, he believes that he hears her commune with him
concerning his origin and destiny. “The legend of Merlin mirrors this
feeling,” he continues. “Seduced by a fairy of the woods, he flies with
her and becomes a savage. Arthur’s messengers come upon him as he is
singing by a fountain; he is led back again to court, but the charm
carries him away. He returns to his forests, and this time for ever.”
“La forêt de Brocelinde,” writes Emile Souvestre, in that fascinating
and half-pathetic work, _Les Derniers Bretons_, “se trouve située dans
le commune de Corcoret, arrondissement de Ploërmal. Elle est celebrée
dans les romans de la table ronde. C’est là que l’on rencontre _la
fontaine de Baranton, le Val sans retour, la tombe de Merlin_. On sait
que ce magicien se trouve encore dans cette forêt, où il est retenu par
les enchantements de Viviane à l’ombre d’un bois d’aubépine. Viviane
avait essayé sur Merlin le charme qu’elle avait appris de lui-même,
sans croire qu’il pût opérer; elle se desespéra quand elle vit qui
celui qu’elle adorait était à jamais perdu pour elle.” This statement
is not confirmed in the English romance, and is opposed wholly to
the sentiment of the story as conceived by Tennyson and other modern
writers. “On assure que Messire Gauvain (Gawain) et quelques chevaliers
de la table ronde cherchèrent partout Merlin, mais en vain. Gauvain
seul l’entendit dans la forêt de Brocelinde, mais ne put le voir.”
The district of Brocelinde, or Brécéliande, is rich in antiquities,
dolmens and menhirs being found together with other relics of early
times and the mysterious workers of the stone age. To add to the scenic
attractions of the locality there are ruined castles, the remains of
machicolated walls, ancient chateaux, and churches dating back many
centuries. It is fitting that here, therefore, romance should maintain
one of its strongholds and that traditions of the master-magician
should linger.
There is yet one other legend which should be noted. It represents the
magician as perpetually roaming about the wood of Calydon lamenting
the loss of the chieftains in the battle of Arderydd; while yet
another tells of a glass house built for him in Bardsey Island by his
companion, the Gleam, in which house of sixty doors and sixty windows
he studied the stars, and was attended by one hundred and twenty bards
to write down his prophecies. Never was such a confusion of traditions
and fancies, never were so many deluding will-o’-the-wisps to lead
astray whosoever would strive to investigate the truth of Merlin’s
story. That story with its abundance of suggestion makes us think of
the apt words of John Addington Symonds, who said that the examination
of these mysterious narratives was like opening a sealed jar of
precious wine. “Its fragrance spreads abroad through all the palace
of the soul, and the noble vintage upon being tasted courses through
the blood and brain with the matured elixir of stored-up summers.”
One needs some such consolation as this for the vexation of finding
seemingly inextricable confusion.
Warrior though he was, and all-powerful by reason of his supernatural
gifts, Merlin is yet represented as being a peace-maker and as paying
allegiance to a “master.” He ended the great battle between Arthur and
the eleven kings, when the horses went in blood up to the fetlocks, and
out of three-score thousand men but fifteen thousand were left alive.
Of this sanguinary battle of Bedgraine, Merlin gave an account to his
master Blaise, or Bleys, journeying to Northumberland specially to do
so and to get the master to write down the record; all Arthur’s battles
did Blaise chronicle from Merlin’s reports. Attempts have been made
to identify Blaise (the Wolf) with St. Lupus, Bishop of Troyes. The
more impressive part which Merlin plays in the Arthurian drama is as
prophet and necromancer. His sudden comings and goings, his disguises,
his solemn warnings, his potent interventions, all these combine to
strengthen the idea of unequalled influence and of awesome personality.
He figures prominently in the story of Sir Balin le Savage, and it was
his hand which wrote the fitting memorial of the two noble brothers.
Merlin it was again who counselled the king to marry, and who brought
Guinevere to London from Cameliard, darkly predicting at the same time
that through the queen Arthur should come to his doom.
An ancient Cornish song, to be found in the original dialect, but in
reality a Breton incantation which has come down to us from the far
ages out of the abundance of Armoric lore, describes Merlin the Diviner
attended by a black dog and searching at early day for
“The red egg of the marine serpent,
By the seaside in the hollow of the stone.”
Asked whither he is going he responds:
“I am going to seek in the valley
The green watercress and the golden grass,
And the top branch of the oak,
In the wood by the side of the fountain.”
A warning voice bids him turn back and not to seek the forbidden
knowledge. The cress, the golden grass, the oak branch, and the red
egg of the marine serpent are not for him. “Merlin! Merlin!” cries the
voice,
“Retrace thy steps,
There is no diviner but God.”
It is like a moral message from Goethe’s _Faust_.
There is no doubt that Merlin’s death, which is no death, but a blind
grovelling and eternal uselessness, was the mark of scorn put upon
the magician who might have been prepotent, but who prostituted his
powers--a feebleness and a degradation which were intolerable to the
sturdy race who prized courage above all other qualities, and were
incapable of realising the meaning of defeat or despair. That the
counsellor should himself turn fool, and that the man of supernatural
gifts should be prone to the weakness of nature, would be obnoxious
to the Celtic imagination, and have its sequel in ribald allusion and
endless taunts. The disaster which overtakes Merlin is one fitting
for the coward or the buffoon, and is a fate altogether foreign to
the ancient idea of that which was fitting for the hero, the bard, or
the sage. It is noticeable that all the former services of Merlin are
forgotten in judging him upon the closing despicable episode in his
career and consigning him to timeless indolence and impotence. Shorn
of his strength, a prisoner, living but “lost to use and fame,” Mage
Merlin in his cave, victim to his own folly and a woman’s wiles, awaits
the last doom.