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MerlinTHIS PAGE HAS MOVED TO https://sianechard.ca/web-pages/merlin/ AND IS NO LONGER BEING MAINTAINED HERE. PLEASE VISIT ITS NEW LOCATION FOR UPDATED CONTENT, LINKS, AND IMAGES. Siân Echard, University of British Columbia |
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This page contains a few of the texts, Welsh and Latin, that I have referred to in class when talking about Merlin. It is not intended to trace the whole of Merlin’s development, or to list every source; it is simply meant to give you a taste of Merlin’s early history. You may also want to visit our course page on The Arthur of the Welsh. The picture at the top of the page is the Battersea Cauldron, which is now in the British Museum. Read more about it here. |
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In the account in Nennius, the boy orders Vortigern’s men to dig under the tower. They discover a lake, with two vessels in it. Between the vessels is a cloth, along with a white worm and a red worm. The two worms awake, and fight, and the boy explains the meaning:
Merlin makes his prophecy to prevent Vortigern from killing him to use his blood to cement the stones of his tower. The tower, and hence the location of Merlin’s prophecies, is traditionally given as Dinas Emrys, in Snowdonia in northern Wales. There is a page for Dinas Emrys Castle on the Castle Wales site, and an exploration of references to, and the archaeology of, the site at Early British Kingdoms: Dinas Emrys. |
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As with Arthur, so with Merlin: it is Geoffrey who fills in many of the details of Merlin’s story, attributing to him such feats as moving Stonehenge from Ireland to England, and giving Uther the appearance of Gorlois so that he can sleep with Ygerna. Geoffrey seems once again, however, to have been working at least in part from Welsh traditions. In his Vita Merlini, Merlin, driven mad after a battle in which his men are killed, laments their loss in this way:
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[The images from NLW MS Peniarth 1 appear by permission of the National Library of Wales] There is a Welsh poem preserved in the Black Book of Carmarthen which connects Merlin with apples. The poem is traditionally called Yr Afallennau. It is immediately followed by Yr Oianau, in which the speaker addresses a pig. The third Merlinian poem (and the only one of the three that actually names Merlin) is the Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin, or the Conversation between Merlin and Taliesin. Click the thumbnails above to go to the National Library of Wales site to see pages from the digital version of the Black Book (the NLW has reorganized their digital material, so the thumbnails now open the main manuscript viewer; use the Contents sidebar to navigate to the correct folio). Folio 24v (the left thumbnail) is the opening of Afallenau. Folio 29v, the middle thumbnail, is from Oianau (the poem begins on folio 26v), and the right thumbnail is folio 3v of the Ymddiddan (the poem begins on folio 1r). Taliesin also appears in Geoffrey’s Vita Merlini, and he and Merlin do have a long conversation. Below is the first stanza in translation of Yr Afallennau ; note that the speaker also addresses a pig:
Click here to learn more about medieval Welsh poetry, on a page I created for another class. |
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You have already seen Merlin’s prophecies in the Historia regum Britannie. This is a common presentation of Merlin in early Welsh literature. In the poem Armes Prydein Fawr [The Great Prophecy of Britain ], the name “Myrdin” appears at the beginning of one stanza. The image is the section of the manuscript which includes the name: the first line begins “Dysgogan myrdin kyferueyd hyn.” Note that while the manuscript (the Book of Taliesin, now MS Peniarth 2 in the National Library of Wales) is a fourteenth-century copy, the poem is much earlier, usually dated to c. 930 - 937. The section below of Armes Prydein deals with the arrival of the Saxons: you can see the word “saesson” in the eighth line, second word from the left. The Welsh word for “English” today is “Saeson” (the noun) and “Saesneg” (the adjective).
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Click the hyperlink to see the Book of Taliesin online. The detail above of NLW MS Peniarth 2, folio 6r, appears by permission of the National Library of Wales; you can navigate to this particular folio using the Contents sidebar in the manuscript viewer (for now, the thumbnail opens a direct link, but the NLW is redoing its digital material, so this link may not persist. | |
Geoffrey of Monmouth would have known some Welsh Myrddin material, and it is clear that Welsh prophetic verse is behind his depiction of Merlin as prophet, in both the Historia and in the Vita Merlini. Unlike the Historia, the Vita did not circulate widely (it survives in only one manuscript). It was written much later than the Historia (around 1150), and seems to have been intended for a small, select audience, perhaps of like-minded literary friends. It tells the story of Merlin’s madness and its cure, and along the way, there is a good deal of prophecy, spoken by both Merlin and his sister Ganieda. Below are a few examples. The translations are my own; if you would like to read the whole of the Vita Merlini, there is an edition, with facing-page translation, by Basil Clarke: Life of Merlin: Vita Merlini (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1973). An older (1925) edition and translation by John Jay Parry is online at Sacred Texts. Finally, a translation also appears in our class text, by Michael Faletra. | |
Merlin chastises the British:
Merlin predicts social anarchy after the arrival of the Normans:
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