The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (62 page)

ESTOIRE DE MERLIN or
PROSE
MERLIN
(Vulgate Cycle), anon. (French, early 1230s).

This follows, so far as we know, Robert’s original
Merlin
up to the point where Arthur is declared king, but then adds a variety of interlinked stories and a
continuation, including how Arthur became the father of Mordred. Before Arthur pulled the sword from the stone he was infatuated with own half-sister, the wife of King Lot. Lot is called to a
council of kings early one morning and leaves his wife asleep. Arthur climbs into her bed and she, in her half-sleep, believes him to be her husband, and Mordred is conceived. Anna learns the truth
the next day, but the secret is otherwise not revealed. The story also tells how Leodegran, the father of Guenevere, had his evil way with his seneschal’s wife, who then gave birth to a girl
who was the exact image of Guenevere except for a birthmark like a king’s crown in the small of her back. This explains the “false” Guenevere who appears in the Vulgate
Lancelot.
The plan to substitute the false Guenevere as Arthur’s queen is also repeated.

We also see how Merlin sows the seed of his own doom when, disguised as a young squire, he travels through the Forest of Briosque and meets a beautiful young maiden called Vivian [Niniane]. He
impresses her with his tricks and she wishes to learn magic from him. He agrees in return for her love.

We follow Merlin as he helps Arthur battle the rebel kings, the Saxons and Claudas in Gaul (
see
Chapter 17), the last of which is the background to the origins of Lancelot.

Finally Merlin tells Arthur that he is leaving. He visits his old mentor Blaise one last time and returns to Vivian with whom he wants to stay. He teaches Vivian all he
knows, and she decides to keep Merlin all to herself. One day, in the Forest of Broceliande, while he sleeps, she conjures up a tower of stone about him that no magic can break and there he
remains, trapped. She visits him every day to ensure that he has no desire to leave.

Arthur is upset at Merlin’s departure and sends the knights to look for him. Only Gawain meets with any success, and hears Merlin’s voice as he passes through the Forest of
Broceliande, but is unable to see him. Merlin tells him what has happened and that it cannot be undone, and bids Gawain return to Arthur.

The story ends with the facts behind the birth of Lancelot, and leads directly into the Vulgate
Lancelot.

→ An English verse adaptation was made by Henry Lovelich as
Merlin
(
c
l430s) which strengthens Merlin’s role as a proto-John the Baptist to the advent of
the Holy Grail. Merlin dictates the Grail book to Blaise and is instrumental in creating the Round Table as the third of the Grail tables. At about the same time, an anonymous author adapted the
Vulgate
Merlin
in a version known as the Prose
Merlin
, which portrays Merlin as coming from northern Britain.

SUITE DU MERLIN
(Post-Vulgate Cycle), anon (French, late 1230s).

This is a more extensive version of the
Estoire de Merlin
, with several new episodes, many of them with a fantastic or satirical element, such as the Questing Beast, a
hybrid monster which sounds like a pack of hounds and which everyone is keen to hunt for the thrill of the chase. The Beast was pursued mostly by Pellinore and, after his death, by Palamedes. It
was in battle against Pellinore that Arthur broke his sword, the one pulled
from the stone. As a consequence Merlin took him to see the Lady of the Lake and Arthur thereby
acquired Excalibur. Although Arthur liked the sword Merlin advised him that it was the scabbard that held the power and that he would remain unharmed all the time he retained it. Morgan le Fay
later schemed with Accolon of Gaul to kill Arthur. She stole Excalibur and gave a false Excalibur to Arthur. Arthur was only saved by the intervention of the Lady of the Lake. Although Arthur
regained Excalibur, Morgan stole the scabbard.

The
Suite
’s version of Mordred’s conception is different from that in the
Estoire.
Here it is placed a month after Arthur’s coronation. Although Anna does not
know she is Arthur’s sister (in fact half-sister), Arthur presumably does, because he honours her due to her noble lineage. The
Suite
makes it clear that here Arthur has literally sown
the seeds of his own destruction. The
Suite
shows Arthur in a further poor light when, after Merlin has predicted the birth of one whose actions will destroy the kingdom, Arthur gathers
together all the newly born children and locks them in a tower. Herod-like, he had intended to have them killed, but a dream caused him to cast them loose in a ship which, thanks to God’s
guidance, washed up safely and the children were housed in the Castle of Boys. Unbeknown to Arthur, Mordred had not even made it to Arthur’s tower. His boat was shipwrecked on its way to
Arthur and Mordred; the only survivor, was rescued by a fisherman and raised by Nabur the Unruly with his son Sagremor.

The
Suite
tells a different version of the story of the “Knight of the Two Swords”, this time incorporated as a
raison d’être
for the Grail Quest. As in the
original story a lady comes to Arthur’s court with a sword girded round her waist which she is unable to remove or even draw from its scabbard. Only a knight who is pure of heart can withdraw
the sword, but whoever does so must return the sword to her. None of the knights can do it until Balin (here called Balain), a humble knight from the north, succeeds. Balin, however, keeps the
sword. The Lady of the Lake comes to the court to ask for justice against Balin who killed her brother, but Balin uses his new sword to behead her. Arthur is outraged and Balin leaves Camelot in
order to prove himself and gain Arthur’s forgiveness. He takes part in Arthur’s war against King Lot and shows great courage. Lot almost kills Arthur, but he is
saved by Pellinor, who kills Lot, setting in train another sequence of events that will lead to Pellinore’s own doom many years later.

Balin then sets out on the adventure that leads to the Dolorous Stroke. He takes a strange knight under his protection but the knight is killed by an invisible enemy. Merlin reveals that the
invisible foe was Garlon the Red, brother of King Pellam. When Balin reaches Pellam’s castle he succeeds in killing Garlon. Pellam pursues Balin in revenge and as he is chased through the
castle Balin seizes a weapon to hand, which happens to be the Bleeding Lance. He strikes Pellam with it, wounding him through the thighs, and that is the Dolorous Stroke that lays the land to
waste, and creates the need for the Grail Quest. Eventually Balin and his brother Balan kill each other in a duel. Merlin takes his sword, the one Balin had taken from the Lady of the Lake, and
embeds it in a slab of marble which he magically sets to float around the world, to return when needed by Galahad.

In this version, the death of Merlin is made more sinister. Merlin loves Niviene but their relationship has not been consummated, and Niviene, who feigns love for Merlin to obtain as much
knowledge as possible, has no wish to consummate it. Merlin tells Niviene of a couple who had loved each other madly and are buried together in a tomb in a house in the woods. He takes her there
and shows her the couple under the stone slab of the tomb. Niviene has steadily been enchanting Merlin so that he weakens and that night she binds him and has him buried in the tomb and the stone
replaced. Merlin lives long enough to tell Bagdemagus the story when he passes by some days later.

LES PROPHÉCIES DE MERLIN,
Richart d’Irlande (French, 1270s).

Not related to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s original work, this was purportedly a translation from Latin created for the Emperor
Frederick II, though it
was in fact composed at least two decades after the Emperor’s death. So whilst it appears to be predictions about political events in Italy and Palestine, it was really an opportunity for an
after-the-event commentary, seeking political reform. There are some three hundred utterances apparently made by Merlin to various of his former colleagues, including many spoken from his tomb
after he was incarcerated by Niniane.

ARTHOUR AND MERLIN
, anon. (English,
c
l280s), 9,938 lines.

The earliest story of Merlin to be composed in English, a language that the author seems to have felt obliged to write in, rather than being comfortable with it. It may even
have been composed by two poets, and certainly from two or more sources, as there is a sudden change of pace and mood following the crowning of Arthur. The poem follows the standard story of
Merlin’s birth, through his service to Uther, the creation of the Round Table, the birth and youth of Arthur and, after his coronation, his wars against the rebel kings.

16

THE HOLY GRAIL

This book is only concerned with the Grail in how it relates to Arthur, and not whether the Grail exists and where it might be today. What we want to find out is how and why
the Grail legend became so closely associated with Arthur, whether there might be any historical relevance, and how the Grail legend affected the stories and legend of Arthur. As we shall see,
during the thirteenth century the Grail story dominated the Arthurian romance almost to the point of excluding Arthur himself, and concentrated on his knights, especially Lancelot, Gawain and
Perceval. We need to explore the origins of the Grail legend and see what associations there may have been with Arthur before Chrétien de Troyes lit the fuse that began the Grail quest.

1. The origins of the Grail

The first reference to the Grail appears in Chrétien de Troyes’s
Conte du Graal
written in the 1180s. I cover this story in detail below and mention it here
in order to get a time fix and to see how Chrétien describes it. He says that the Grail was of “fine pure gold”, and set with “precious stones of many kinds.” He also
says that the company are served from the Grail, and the overall impression is that he is describing a platter or tray. Although we have come to think of the Grail as a chalice, that description
does not occur in Chrétien’s work but only in Robert de Boron’s. As the Grail story progresses, with its different interpreters, the Grail becomes several things including a
container which seems
to glow with the spirit of Christ. The word most commonly used to describe the Grail is a “vessel”, clearly a container of some kind, but
nothing more specific than that.

Thanks to Robert de Boron, the Grail became associated with the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and with which he performed the sacrament with the wine representing his blood.
After Christ’s crucifixion, when Joseph of Arimathea was given custody of Christ’s body, Robert de Boron states that he took a few drops of Christ’s blood into the Grail and thus
it became a symbol of rebirth and salvation. Anyone who was pure and free of sin and who could attain the Grail was thus assured of eternal life.

One matter is consistent, though – the Grail is able to feed all who are assembled with whatever they want and however much they want. This is an ancient concept and goes back at least as
far as the Greek story of the horn of plenty, the cornucopia, which Zeus gave to Amalthea in gratitude for helping raise him, and which gave its possessor anything he desired. In the Christian
story it equates to Christ’s miracle of feeding the five thousand and in Celtic myth to Daghda’s cauldron. The Daghda was one of the mightiest of Irish gods, the chief deity of the
Tuatha Dé Danann, a magical race subsequently equated with the fairies. The Daghda had the power over life and death, represented by his club, a blow with one end of which meant death, and
with the other meant life. He also had a cauldron which provided an inexhaustible supply of food. Both the club and the cauldron have their equivalents in the Grail story with the Holy Lance of
Longinus and the Grail.

The cauldron had many mystical properties to the early Celts. It was seen as a symbol of rebirth, and cauldrons served as funerary urns for burial and rebirth in the Otherworld. In the second
branch of the Mabinogion,
Branwen
,
Daughter of Llyr
, a cauldron is given to the Irish king Matholwch by Bendigeid Vran, from which the bodies of dead warriors, boiled overnight, arise
as new the next day. Bendigeid Vran is better known as Bran the Blessed, and features in Robert de Boron’s first Grail story as the Keeper of the Grail and the first Fisher King. According to
the ancient pedigrees Bran was the father of Beli who married Anna, the cousin of the Virgin Mary (
see
Table 3.2
). He was the
ancestor of both Cunedda and Coel Hen, and
thereby of most of the later British kings. Bran’s grandson was Afallach, or Aballach, a name equated by some with Avalon. He appears in the
Quest of the Holy Grail
and in later
stories as King Evelach, or Evelake.