The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (61 page)

Besides the reference to Myrddin in
Armes Prydein
, several poems were attributed to Myrddin, which, in translation, are “The Apple-trees”, “The Greetings”,
“The Dialogue of Myrddin and Taliesin”, “The Conversation of Myrddin with Gwenddydd his sister”, “The Song of Myrddin in his Grave” and “Commanding
Youth”. The first three were included in the
Black Book of Carmarthen
which in its final form dates from about 1250, but which derives from sources at least two or three centuries
earlier. These poems contain some prophecies, but they also contain more personal data. The prophecies, as Geoffrey developed them, do not concern us greatly in this book. They deal mostly with the
domination of the British by the Saxons and the subsequent resurgence of the British. They can be linked to the idea of Arthur’s passing, to return in time of need. As with all so-called
“prophecies”, however, these are often made to seem as if they relate to sometime in the distant future, when quite often they can be related to contemporary events, especially if the
texts are more recent than they seem. Much attributed to a sixth-century Merlin seems far more apt to a ninth or tenth century soothsayer.

Geoffrey introduces Merlin by adapting the story from Nennius, and having Vortigern’s men track down Merlin rather than Ambrosius. He makes Merlin the grandson of a king of Demetia
(Dyfed). From the start, he was creating a false history for Merlin that would later cause him problems. However, at this stage Geoffrey’s story fits his requirements neatly. He tells us that
Vortigern, who is having problems building his fortress, is told to find a boy without a father. This his men do, encountering Merlin quarrelling with another boy in Kaermerdyn. There has been some
suggestion that the name Myrddin was itself a mistake, derived from the British name for Carmarthen –
Caer Mirdin
derived from the Latin
Maridunum
, “fort by the
sea”. It is surprising that Geoffrey did not use the name of Menw, the enchanter in
Culhwch and Olwen
, who is wounded in the hunt for the Giant Boar. He is a shapechanger and a
prototype for Merlin.

The rest of Geoffrey’s story of Merlin (
see
Chapter 9) centres
on how Merlin transforms Uther into Gorlois, leading to the seduction of Ygraine and the birth
of Arthur. Geoffrey also has Merlin construct Stonehenge from stone magically brought from Ireland. Thereafter, however, Merlin vanishes from Geoffrey’s story. The later episodes, such as the
Sword in the Stone, Merlin’s involvement with the Lady of the Lake, taking Arthur to receive Excalibur after his first sword is broken, and his death at the hands of Niniane, are all products
of later writers, mostly Robert de Boron, and are discussed below.

Geoffrey evidently found more material about Myrddin, since he returned some years later, around 1150, to write his
Vita Merlini.
However, most of this contradicted what he had said
before, because he had by now encountered tales about the real Myrddin. Geoffrey sought to bluff it out and managed to merge the two stories sufficiently to satisfy his patrons, including
Alexander’s successor as bishop of Lincoln, Robert de Chesney. But the joins creak rather, and have torn apart over the years.

It was in the
Vita Merlini
that Geoffrey drew upon the poems attributed to Myrddin and other ancient tales relating to the Battle of Arderydd in 573, which we covered in Chapter 7. We
learn that Merlin has a wife, Gwendolyn, and that his sister Ganieda (Gwenddydd) is the wife of King Rodarch (Rhydderch Hael of Strathclyde). Geoffrey tells briefly of the rivalry between Peredur,
“prince of North Wales”, and Gwenddoleu, “king of Scotland”, and of the ensuing battle in which Rhydderch was also involved. With the death of Gwenddoleu and of three or
four of his brothers in the battle, Merlin loses his wits and rushes into the Caledonian forest. The queen, his sister, asks a travelling musician to find him. This he does, and through his music
rids Merlin of his madness.

Merlin returns to court, but the sight of so many people threatens to turn his wits again. He desires to return to the woods, but Rhydderch will have none of this and has Merlin chained. Merlin
becomes introspective and refuses to talk. However, when Merlin sees Rhydderch pluck a leaf from his wife’s hair, he laughs. He refuses to explain why he laughed until released, and then
reveals that Ganieda has been unfaithful. Ganieda believes she can prove her innocence by demonstrating Merlin’s madness. She has a young boy disguised in three
different ways and has Merlin predict how each boy will die. He makes three different predictions, the proof his sister needs to show he talks madness. It is only in later years when the child,
then a young man, dies from all three causes that everyone recognizes Merlin’s talent.

Meanwhile Merlin has returned to the woods, and it is from there that he utters various prophecies and where he also meets Taliesen. We learn from that meeting that Arthur had been taken to
Avalon, the Isle of Apples, by Morgan and her sisters. We also learn that the steersman of the boat was Barinthus, already known in legend as “the Navigator”, and associated with
Manannan mac Lyr, the sea divinity related to the Isle of Man. As Barrind, he also appears in the story
The Voyage of St Brendan
as the sailor who first discovered the Blessed Isles and
urged Brendan to go there.

Merlin remains in the woods till his final days, when he is joined by his sister and a disciple called Maeldin. We do not learn of his death, but from his own musings we can believe that when he
died he wanted to be buried by an old oak tree that he had watched grow from an acorn.

Although Geoffrey fused these two Merlins into one, many knew this was not correct. The first to say so was Gerald of Wales, writing in about 1220, who said that there was one prophet Merlin
Ambrosius (
Myrddin Emrys
), who lived in the time of Vortigern and Arthur, and another called Merlin Celidonius (after the forest) or Merlin Silvestris. Silvestris also means “of the
trees”, but Gerald believed this name had something to do with an air monster that Merlin encountered and which drove him crazy. This Merlin is also called Merlin the Wild (
Myrddin
Wyllt
).

So were there two Merlins and, if so, were they both real? And what was Merlin’s real name?

2. The original Merlin

At the time Geoffrey published his
Vita Merlini
, there were those who would have recognised in his portrayal of Merlin the identity of another mad man of the woods called
Lailoken (or Llallogan by the Welsh). He lived at the time of St. Kentigern (
c
550–612), and
was known as a troublemaker whose malicious plots resulted in the
battle of Arderydd and the death of his lord, Gwenddoleu. He had a vision of angels casting spears at him (possibly Gerald’s air monster), and declared that he would spend the rest of his
life living with the beasts. He went mad and fled into the woods, but would occasionally appear on a rock overlooking Glasgow when Kentigern was preaching and utter his own predictions, including
that of his own death. There are also notable parallels with Geoffrey’s Merlin and his prediction of the young boy’s triple death. Lailoken is kept in chains and refuses to speak until
he reveals the queen’s adultery. Infuriated, the queen arranges for some local shepherds to stone Lailoken to death, at which point he falls upon a sharp stake in a pond with his head in the
water, and thus dies a triple death.

Whilst much of this may also be legend, there is no reason to doubt that at the time of Kentigern there was a wild man living in the forests near Glasgow who spouted prophecies. This would make
him contemporary with the battle of Arderydd, and presumably he lived sufficiently long enough to earn a reputation. Geoffrey’s version suggests that Merlin the Wild outlived King Rhydderch,
but the king did not die until about 614 and it is questionable whether he was involved at Arderydd. This Merlin would also be contemporary with Artúir of Dyfed, although there is no reason
why these two would have met. Geoffrey makes Merlin the grandson of a king of Dyfed, but this is almost certainly the sixth century equivalent of an urban myth, associating the name with
Carmarthen.

There is, remarkably, a pedigree for Myrddin, albeit a late one. Triad 87, “Three Skilful Bards”, distinguishes between the two Merlins, naming, in addition to Taliesin, Myrddin
Emrys and Myrddin ap Morfryn. Even if we accept that this triad dates from after Geoffrey’s work, he makes no mention of Myrddin’s father Morfryn, a name which occurs elsewhere as the
grandson of Mar (
see
Table 3.3
). This gives him a possible life span of around 520–590, which fits in with the other known dates.

The question remains, however, as to whether Myrddin ap Morfryn is identical with Lailoken and, if so, why the two names? The name
Lailoken
, as
Llallogan
, apparently has the
separate meaning as an ordinary noun, in addition to being a name, of
“friend”, or even “twin”, suggesting a close friend. This raises the inevitable
idea that perhaps Myrddin and Lailoken were twins and used this in some of their deceptions. Or that Merlin had a split personality, so that Lailoken was the Hyde to Myrddin’s Jekyll. More
feasible is that Lailoken was used as a nickname because Myrddin was so close to Gwenddoleu. The simplest explanation of all, of course, is that the pedigree was contrived after Geoffrey’s
account in order to legitimize Myrddin (although the family is that of Lailoken), and that there only ever was one Lailoken/Myrddin. However, this does not explain the existence of Myrddin by name
in the Welsh tales and poems prior to Geoffrey. There must have been a Welsh Myrddin who later became confused (by Geoffrey) with Lailoken.

In
Bloodline of the Holy Grail
, Laurence Gardner explains the confusion by revealing that the name “Merlin” was a title, not a personal name, and was borne by the king’s
prophet or seer. According to Gardner, Taliesin had been the Merlin of Britain and was succeeded by Emrys, son of Ambrosius, who was the Merlin of Arthur. He also makes this Merlin the nephew of
Artúir of Dyfed, whose sister Niniane had married Ambrosius. In this genealogical maze, Gardner makes Merlin Emrys the cousin of the Scots king Aedan (father of Artúir of Dál
Riata). Thus in one knot Gardner ties together the Myrddin of Dyfed with Emrys Wledig (Ambrosius), along with the Scottish connection.

The noted Welsh scholar A.O.H. Jarman is convinced there only ever was one Myrddin, and that the evidence comes in the poem “The Conversation of Myrddin with Gwenddydd his Sister”,
often referred to simply as
Cyfoesi.
This poem, which is primarily a series of prophecies, dates from perhaps the tenth century and was used by Geoffrey in his
Vita Merlini.
The title
identifies Myrddin as the brother of Gwenddydd, but during the poem the sister also refers to her brother, from whom she has now become estranged, as “my Llallogan Fyrddin”.
Fyrddin
is the suffix of Carmarthen, known in Welsh as
Caerfyrddin
, evolving from
Caermyrddin.
Myrddin is thus given a joint name. Jarman’s conclusion is that the name
Myrddin had originally been created to identify the non-existent individual after whom Caermyrddin had gained its name – its derivation from the Latin having by then been forgotten. This
Myrddin was then identified with the
northern British Lailoken whose story had permeated down into Wales, but thanks to Geoffrey further confusing him with Emrys Wledig,
Myrddin took on a new, though totally bogus, identity.

In truth, therefore, we must say that Myrddin never existed, but his alter ego Lailoken quite probably did. Whether the pedigree given to him (as Myrddin), showing a descent from Mar, is
legitimate or bogus we cannot tell.

3. Merlin of the romances

Having created Merlin Geoffrey did surprisingly little with him. That in itself is an argument for showing that Geoffrey was working from other sources, and thus had no cause to
weave Merlin further into the Arthurian legend. As a consequence Merlin’s existence seems incomplete.

The spinners of the Grail legend found in Merlin the ideal individual to serve both as the prophet of the Grail and the means through which events leading to the Grail quest could be brought
about after five centuries. This process was helped by Wace making Merlin the creator of the Round Table, and that was the link that Robert de Boron needed. The first part of Robert’s
trilogy,
Joseph d’Arimathie
, is discussed elsewhere (
see
Chapter 16). The second part is the following:

MERLIN
, Robert de Boron (France, late 1190s or early 1200s) Only a fragment of Robert’s original poem survives, but its content is preserved in the first part of
the prose redaction known as the
Suite du Merlin
(or the
Huth Merlin
) from the 1230s and in the Dutch translation
Boec van Merline
by Jacob van Maerlant (completed by
1261).

Robert tells of Merlin’s birth. Demons wish to create a prophet to rival Christ, a form of anti-Christ. An incubus impregnates the daughter of a wealthy man, but she confesses to her
priest, Blaise, who by making the sign of the Cross at the child’s birth is able to neutralize the evil. Nevertheless, the young Merlin, who has a hairy body, is still half-human, half-demon
and has both perfect knowledge of the past and visions of the future. He thus knows the story of the Grail and of the future design for Arthur.

Robert then retells the story as related by Geoffrey of
Monmouth dealing with Vortigern (here called Vertigier) and his tower, and the roles played by Merlin, the Pendragon
(Ambrosius) and Uter. We see Merlin’s role in aiding the Pendragon and creating the Round Table. The Round Table is a duplicate of the Grail Table, itself fashioned after the Last Supper
Table. Merlin also works the glamour that allows Uter to appear to Ygerne in the guise of her husband. The story follows the traditional tale of Arthur’s birth and upbringing to the point
where he pulls the sword from the stone and proves himself the rightful heir.