Scotland's Merlin

A Medieval Legend and its Dark Age Origins

Tim Clarkson

• Publisher: John Donald
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781907909382
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Who was Merlin? Is the famous wizard of Arthurian legend based on a real person? In this book, Merlin's origins are traced back to the story of Lailoken, a mysterious 'wild man' who is said to have lived in the Scottish Lowlands in the sixth century AD. The book considers the question of whether Lailoken belongs to myth or reality. It looks at the historical background of his story and discusses key characters such as Saint Kentigern of Glasgow and King Rhydderch of Dumbarton, as well as important events such as the Battle of Arfderydd. Lailoken's reappearance in medieval Welsh literature as the fabled prophet Myrddin is also examined. Myrddin himself was eventually transformed into Merlin the wizard, King Arthur's friend and mentor. This is the Merlin we recognise today, not only in art and literature but also on screen. His earlier forms are less familiar, more remote, but can still be found among the lore and legend of the Dark Ages. Behind them we catch fleeting glimpses of an original figure who perhaps really did exist: a solitary fugitive, tormented by his experience of war, who roamed the hills and forests of southern Scotland long ago.

1

GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH’S MERLIN

Historia Regum Britanniae

The traditional image of Merlin as the great wizard of Arthurian legend can be traced back to the twelfth century when he appeared in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (‘History of the Kings of Britain’), a work that quickly became a medieval bestseller. Geoffrey was a cleric – later a bishop – and a native of Wales, although his ancestry was most likely Norman or Breton rather than Welsh.¹ He was born c.1100, possibly at Monmouth in south-east Wales, but spent much of his life in England. In the early 1130s he published his earliest known work under the title Prophetiae Merlini (‘The Prophecies of Merlin’). This marked the beginning of the Merlin legend in the form familiar to most people today. It is essentially a collection of obscure prophecies supposedly uttered by Merlin, some of them predicting events that had already happened in Geoffrey’s own lifetime. Merlin was partly based on the young prophet Ambrosius or Emrys who appears in Historia Brittonum, a ninth-century ‘History of the Britons’ written in Wales. Ambrosius was in turn based on an even earlier figure – a historical military leader called Ambrosius Aurelianus who defended Britain against Anglo-Saxon invaders in the late fifth century. In a preface to the Prophetiae, Geoffrey claimed that Merlin and Ambrosius were one and the same, although his reasons for conflating the two are unclear. He first introduced this composite character in a story about the native British ruler Vortigern, another historical figure from post-Roman times who may have been a genuine contemporary of Ambrosius Aurelianus.² According to Geoffrey, Vortigern grew angry when his attempts to construct a new fortress were mysteriously thwarted. Each night, the newly-built foundations mysteriously disappeared. Vortigern was told by his counsellors that the problem could only be solved by locating a fatherless child and pouring its blood over the site. A suitable sacrifice, in the person of ‘Merlin Ambrosius’, was duly found at the town of Carmarthen in Wales and brought before Vortigern. Merlin, here depicted as a youth, informed Vortigern that the source of the problem was an ongoing fight between two dragons – one red, the other white – in a subterranean pool beneath the fort’s foundations. He further explained that the red dragon represented the Britons while the white represented their Saxon foes, before prophesying that the Saxons would ultimately emerge victorious as conquerors of Britain. The core elements of this episode were not invented by Geoffrey but were already well-known in Wales from a story about Vortigern and the boy-prophet Ambrosius. A version of this older tale had appeared in Historia Brittonum (hereafter HB), in which Ambrosius was found not at Carmarthen but in the kingdom of Glywysing (now Glamorgan).³ HB did not mention Merlin but provided a storyline for Geoffrey who borrowed it for his Prophetiae.

Prophetiae Merlini was distributed widely, gaining popularity not only in Britain but in Continental Europe. Many of the prophecies alluded to twelfth-century politics and were much discussed by Geoffrey’s contemporaries at home and abroad. It is little surprise that he incorporated the same material into his larger work Historia Regum Britanniae (hereafter HRB) where it appears as part of the narrative in Book VII.⁴ HRB gave additional information on Merlin, crediting him with magically transferring Stonehenge from Ireland to Britain and assigning him a role in Arthurian legend. This marked an important stage in his evolution as a literary character, for it connected him to King Arthur for the first time. His involvement with Arthur in HRB was, however, indirect: he used sorcery to enable Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon to spend a night with another man’s wife. The lady in question was Igerna, a Cornish noblewoman. She was unaware that she was sharing her bed with Uther, whom Merlin had cunningly disguised as her husband Gorlois. From this deceit the mighty Arthur was conceived. However, Merlin made no more appearances in HRB and is thus absent from the main Arthurian section which takes up a large part of the book.

Geoffrey’s skill as a writer, coupled with his ability to weave fragments of folklore into a dramatic story, made HRB an instant bestseller. It has been described as ‘the most influential book ever to have come out of Wales’.⁵ To the medieval reader it offered an exciting account of two thousand years of British history, presented as a narrative peppered with all kinds of political intrigue. Among the kings whose exploits it describes are Brutus the Trojan (from whom Britain was supposedly named), the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, the tragic King Lear of Shakespearean fame and, of course, the mighty Arthur himself. The reader soon realises that this is not history but pseudo-history, a work of imagination in which the real and the legendary are seamlessly interwoven. However, while its value as a historical source might be minimal, HRB’s impact on medieval literature cannot be overstated. Geoffrey’s colourful version of Britain’s early history was eagerly received and widely disseminated by the literate circles of the day. The fact that more than 200 medieval copies of HRB still survive is a testament to its popularity. In the mid 1150s, Geoffrey’s original Latin text had become the basis for another work, the Roman de Brut (‘Romance of Brutus’), a verse chronicle in French composed by the Norman poet Wace. This held particular appeal for twelfth-century audiences by highlighting virtues such as chivalry and courtly love, hence its influence on later Arthurian romances. Wace also introduced significant new elements such as King Arthur’s Round Table but chose to omit the prophecies of Merlin. His work provided the basis for Layamon’s Brut, an adaptation written in English in the early years of the thirteenth century. Layamon added more new material to the story devised by Geoffrey but neither he nor Wace developed the character of Merlin much further.⁶

Sometime around the year 1200, the Burgundian poet Robert de Boron used Wace’s Merlin for his own narrative poem Merlin, the second part of a verse trilogy on the legend of the Holy Grail. The first part, Le Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal, tells of how the sacred cup that once held Christ’s blood was brought by Joseph of Arimathea to the ‘Vales of Avalon’. It is the only part of the trilogy that survives complete and was later rendered into prose with the new title Joseph d’Arimathie. Of the sequel, Merlin, only the first 504 lines have survived but the rest of the narrative is known from a prose version, perhaps written by Robert himself, which still exists in a number of manuscripts. Nothing of the third item in the original verse trilogy – an account of the Grail knight Perceval – has been preserved but it, too, was rendered into a prose version which is extant today. Although Robert’s Merlin has much in common with the character in HRB, he takes a more central role in Arthur’s story, becoming mentor and guardian to the young king.⁷ Robert developed Merlin’s personality more fully, giving him a somewhat light-hearted aspect and casting him not only as a master of prophecy but also as a trickster and shapeshifter. Throughout Robert’s work, the underlying theme is Christian, with Merlin being divinely appointed to encourage mankind’s obedience to God’s will. It is Merlin who initiates the holy quest for the Grail, the cup used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper. Familiar elements from HRB include the two dragons engaged in subterranean combat, the ruler Vortigern (here called ‘Vertigier’), the transfer of Stonehenge from Ireland and the conception of Arthur. Arthur’s father Uther (‘Uter’) also appears, becoming king after defeating the Saxons in battle and – at Merlin’s instigation – ordering the Round Table to be made. The new elements include a magical sword firmly embedded in an anvil on a block of stone. Fixed there by Merlin’s sorcery, the sword bore on its blade an inscription saying that only the rightful king would be able to draw it out. Despite many men taking up the challenge, only Arthur was successful. The episode of the sword in the stone marked the end of Robert de Boron’s original Merlin poem, but the narrative continues in the prose version. The contents of the final part of Robert’s verse trilogy, the lost Perceval, are similarly known from its retelling in prose. Perceval was a knight of the Round Table who embarked on a quest to find the Grail, having various adventures along the way. In some of these he was assisted by Merlin. Later, after Perceval had taken up residence in the Grail castle, Merlin told him about Arthur’s military victories and tragic death before he himself retired to a nearby forest.

Continuations of Robert’s works on the Matter of Britain included a retelling of the Perceval legend – possibly a prose version of his own Perceval poem – together with L’Estoire de Merlin, ‘The Story of Merlin’ (hereafter EM), the Suite de Merlin and Livre d’Artus, ‘The Book of Arthur’. However, in the Suite de Merlin and EM the Merlin story has a rather different ending. These two texts introduced a new female character, the wily maiden Viviane, with whom the wizard fell in love. Completely infatuated, the elderly Merlin divulged the secrets of his magic to his much younger lover, who then used her new-found skills to imprison him in an enchanted cave or tomb. EM represents one of the five volumes of the Vulgate Cycle, a major prose collection of Arthurian romance compiled in the early thirteenth century by one or more anonymous authors. The other volumes of the Vulgate are L’Estoire del Saint Graal, Queste del Saint Graal, L’Estoire de Lancelot and La Mort Artu.⁸ Written in French, the entire collection became hugely popular across Europe and survives today in more than 140 copies, not all of which are complete. In England, the Vulgate material on Merlin inspired home-grown adaptations such as Of Arthour and of Merlin – an anonymous poem of the late thirteenth century written in Middle English – and the prose Merlin (c.1450) which was essentially an English translation of EM. The publication of such works suggests that Merlin continued to attract interest as a significant character in his own right and had not been pushed into the background by King Arthur.⁹ He plays a significant role in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, an eight-part work written in Middle English prose and completed c.1470. What Malory gave his readers was an English version of the whole Vulgate Cycle, with additional material of his own. In 1485, some fourteen years after Malory’s death, the work was published by printing pioneer William Caxton. It went on to enjoy widespread fame and has exerted a profound influence on subsequent Arthurian literature.¹⁰ It nevertheless diminished Merlin’s role at Arthur’s court, turning the powerful wizard and prophet of the French romances into little more than an adviser. However, it is to Malory that we largely owe the portraits of Arthurian characters still recognisable today: the chivalric king, his wife Guinevere, Sir Lancelot of the Lake, Sir Gawain and other knights of the Round Table. Alongside them stands Merlin in what is, to the modern observer, his most familiar guise: a wise counsellor and minister, yet one somewhat reduced in potency. The mighty seer and sorcerer of the older tales seemingly had no place in Malory’s vision.¹¹

Vita Merlini

The previous section considered Merlin’s popularity in medieval literature from the twelfth century onwards and noted his emergence as an important figure in the Arthurian legend. It brought the story up to the fifteenth century and to Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. We saw that Merlin’s international fame can be traced back to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae which lay at the root of subsequent retellings. We now turn to another of Geoffrey’s works, the Vita Merlini (‘Life of Merlin’), a narrative poem that failed to gain the same wide acclaim as HRB. It appeared a dozen or more years later, probably around 1150, and cast its central character in a different light. In HRB, the reader was presented with the prophet and sorcerer Merlin, a young Welshman from Carmarthen who performed such feats as moving Stonehenge across the Irish Sea and arranging King Arthur’s conception. In Vita Merlini (hereafter VM), we meet Merlin in later life, in a time when ‘many years and many kings had come and gone’.¹² Moreover, with this new version of the legend Geoffrey introduced the concept of a northern Merlin, shifting the primary geographical setting from Wales and south-west England to the Forest of Calidon and the kingdom of Cumbria. These two places, as we shall see, lay in Scotland. How Merlin came to be involved in northern affairs is explained at the beginning of the poem. Indeed, VM is such a significant text for our present study that a detailed summary of its narrative is required here. Geoffrey’s verses not only tell us about his new ‘Scottish’ Merlin but give a number of important signposts to the original legend that lay in the background.

VM begins by telling us that ‘Merlin the Briton’ was famed around the world as a king and prophet. The geographical context is initially similar to that in HRB, for we are told that Merlin served the leaders of Demetia – the kingdom of Dyfed in South Wales – as their chief seer and law-giver. However, the focus soon moves northward, to a war between the Britons and the Scots. On one side of this conflict stood Peredur (Peredurus), ruler of the North Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd and paramount leader of the British forces. Against him marched Guennolous, the ruler of Scotland. A date and venue for a decisive battle was arranged and, when the time came, the opposing armies met on the field. The location is not named but it clearly lay somewhere in the North. Alongside Peredur marched his three brothers, together with his ally Rodarch (Rodarchus), king of the Cumbrians. In the same entourage was Merlin who, having left his home in Wales, had ‘come to the war with Peredur’. The ensuing clash of arms turned into a ferocious bloodbath, with heavy losses on both sides. Peredur’s brothers were slain during a brave charge through the Scottish line, while Peredur and Rodarch ‘killed the enemy before them with their dread swords’. Witnessing so much carnage proved too much for Merlin. Overcome by grief and horror, he lamented for the young warriors who had been cut down in their prime: ‘O glory of youth, who will now stand by my side in battle to turn back the princes who come to do me ill and their hordes that press upon me?’ The slaughter ended when the Britons eventually chased the Scots from the field. Merlin, now weeping inconsolably, ordered his companions to bury Peredur’s brothers in a chapel. This did nothing to assuage his grief. Indeed, he became even more distraught. ‘He threw dust upon his hair, tore his clothes and lay prostrate on the ground, rolling to and fro.’ No comfort would he take from anyone, not even from Peredur and the other leaders.

Merlin’s grief continued for three days, until ‘a strange madness’ compelled him to seek solitude in the forest. Alone and in secret, so that his departure went unobserved, he vanished among the trees. There he began to live as a wild creature, foraging for roots and berries and observing the ways of animals. ‘He became,’ wrote Geoffrey, ‘a Man of the Woods, as if dedicated to the woods [. . .] forgetful of himself and of his own, lurking like a wild thing.’ For an entire summer, Merlin dwelt in the forest, surviving on plants and fruit, until the onset of winter deprived him of food. He lamented the fact that he could no longer pick apples from the trees that had formerly sustained him. Even the leaves that had previously sheltered him from the rain were now fallen. Wild pigs and boars snatched freshly-dug turnips out of his hands. He compared his plight to that of his ‘dear companion’, an old grey wolf so weakened by hunger and age that it could no longer hunt for meat. Eventually, the sound of Merlin’s mutterings reached the ears of a traveller passing through the forest. This fellow attempted to make contact, but Merlin evaded him and disappeared.

Meanwhile, a number of men from King Rodarch’s court were scouring the countryside in search of Merlin. They had been sent out by Ganieda, the king’s wife, who was Merlin’s sister. Understandably concerned for her brother’s welfare, Ganieda hoped to bring him to the safety of her house. One member of the search-party encountered the traveller who had seen Merlin and learned that the crazed fugitive was lurking ‘in the dense-wooded valleys of the Forest of Calidon’. The searcher at once headed off into the trees, eventually finding Merlin on top of a mountain. There, among a dense growth of hazels and thorns, he saw the wild man sitting on the grass beside a spring, bemoaning the cold grip of winter and wishing for a change of season. Keeping hidden from view, the searcher began strumming a guitar and singing a lament, hoping this might soothe Merlin’s strange mood. He sang about the grief of Guendoloena, Merlin’s wife, for the husband whom she missed. He compared Guendoloena’s tears to those of Ganieda, who likewise wept for a beloved brother. The tactic worked, for Merlin gradually emerged from his madness and ‘recollected what he had been’. He wished then to be escorted to King Rodarch’s court, where both his wife and sister were waiting for him. There was much joy and celebration at his arrival, which VM describes as a ‘homecoming’. The nobility turned out in great numbers to welcome him. Unfortunately, the clamour and the crowds completely overwhelmed him, pitching him back into madness. He felt an urge to return to the woods, so Rodarch ordered that he be put under secure guard to prevent his escape. The king begged Merlin to calm down ‘and not hanker after the forest and an animal life under the trees, when he might wield a royal sceptre and rule a nation of warriors’. Lavish gifts of clothes, horses and treasure were presented as inducements, but Merlin refused them all, insisting that they should be given instead to poorer men than he. Then he said: ‘But I put above these things the woodland and spreading oaks of Calidon, the high hills, the green meadows at their foot – those are for me, not these things. Take back such goods, King Rodarch! My nut-rich forest of Calidon shall have me. I desire it above all else.’

Frustrated by Merlin’s stubbornness, the king clapped him in chains. The additional restraint only served to increase Merlin’s despondency. He did, however, laugh unexpectedly when he saw the king remove a leaf that had got caught in Queen Ganieda’s hair. Rodarch insisted on knowing the cause of this sudden mirth, but Merlin refused to explain. Only when his chains were removed and he was granted permission to go back to the woods did he give the reaso...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Plates
• List of Maps and Genealogical Table
• Introduction
• 1 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Merlin
• 2 Myrddin Wyllt
• 3 Lailoken
• 4 The Battle of Arfderydd
• 5 Christianity and Paganism
• 6 Wild Man and Seer
• 7 Arthuriana
• 8 Scottish Merlins
• 9 Scotland’s Merlin: Fact or Fiction?
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index