In Our Time - Merlin

Episode Date: June 30, 2005

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the legendary wizard Merlin. He was sired by an incubus and born of a virgin; he was a prophet, a shape-shifter, a king-maker and a mad man of the woods. Before Gandalf there was Merlin: the power behind Arthur and a literary sensation for centuries. In a literary career spanning 1500 years, Merlin, or originally Myrddin, put the sword in the stone, built Stonehenge, knew the truth behind the Holy Grail and discovered the Elixir of Life. "Beware Merlin for he knows all things by the devil's craft" say the poisoners in Malory's Morte D'Arthur; but he is also on the side of the good and is almost Christ-like in some of the versions of his tale, and his prophesies were pored over by the medieval Church. Who was Merlinus Ambrosius, as he is sometimes known? Where does his legend spring from and how has it been appropriated and adapted over time?With Juliette Wood, Associate Lecturer in the Department of Welsh at Cardiff University, Stephen Knight, Distinguished Research Professor in English Literature at Cardiff University, Peter Forshaw, Lecturer in Renaissance Philosophies at Birkbeck, University of London.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk, forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, it was claimed he was sired by an incubus and born of a virgin. He was a prophet, a shapeshifter, a kingmaker and a madman of the woods. In literary career spanning 1500 years, Merlin, or originally Merlin,

put the sword in the stone, built stonehenge, knew the truth behind the Holy Grail and discovered the elixir of life. Beware Merlin, for he knows all things by the devil's craft, say the poisoners in Mowry's Mort D'Arthur. But he's also on the side of the good, and is almost Christ-like in some of the versions of his tale, and his prophecies were poured over by the medieval church.

Who was, or indeed was Merlinus Ambrosius, as he's sometimes known? Where does his legend spring from, and how has he been appropriated and adapted over time? With me to discuss Merlin is Juliet Wood, Associate Lecturer in the Department of Welsh at the University of Wales in Cardiff, Stephen Knight, Distinguished Research Professor in English Literature at Cardiff University, and Peter Forshaw, lecturer in Renaissance Philosophers and Literature at Birkbeck University of London.

Juliet Wood, we've very early poems, they were transcribed much later, but the earliest mentions we can find from Merlin are in the Anales-Cambra, the Welsh Annals, compiled in the 10th century. Can you tell us what they said about him? Yes, it's really rather a bald reference. It simply says the Battle of Arfedere, and assigns it to 573. Now, the Welsh Annals... Arthderet is known Arthet. It's Arthoret.

It's now Arthrette in Cumbria. It's a very specific reference. It was certainly a historical battle. But what happens is a later version of the annals comes back and says Merlin went mad during this and Gwendoly died. So what we have is a historical reference and an indication that there is a, a legend about Merlin. And it's very interesting that this legend locates it around a historical

battle in a specific place, what was known as the Old North. The battles in 573, 18. The battles in 573. Now, we can't say whether a historical character Merlin was there, but it's very, very

interesting because in some of the later poetry, there are bits which sound like the sort of thing that a real bard, real heroic bard, would say about his dead lord. And at one point, Merlin says about Gwendoly, who has died, he says, pen, Tierneth, Gwyneth, Ladra of Mewyav, the chief of the kings of Gwyneth, the most generous lord and generosity was the key. And it's just the sort of thing that he would have said.

So one may have a historical bard. Now, the Welsh poets thought of Mirlin as one of their old bards, one of the Hengert. They really thought he existed. So you have a very interesting thing where you're developing this idea of perhaps a historical person, certainly in historical circumstances. Just to tell the listeners, we're talking about Welsh, we're talking about Cumbria, at that time, what is now, because it's all, what is now Cornwalley and what is now Wales and a lot of Lancashire and what is now Cumbria and inter-Skotland? The west side there was still, it's easiest to call it Welsh now, isn't it? It is. It is. In our terms for this conversation. And it was all, it was interrelated, interconnected chieftainates and kingdom.

Very strongly. It was all, they were all, they were all, British chieftains, all sort of small British kingdoms, speaking a language which would turn into modern Welsh and modern and modern Cornish. So you think there's enough in that battle in 573, you think there's enough to say, well, yes, he could have been there. And because there's other names from there. But can we just say the element that comes there too is that he saw his friends or his king or someone or other very close to him, killed in the butt, went mad and took to the woods

as hermits did, but he took the woods as a wild man. He did. The wild man is quite interesting because the wild man, particularly in Celtic, very often goes mad during a battle. This is a specific thing. He has some sort of traumatic experience and he's driven out into the wild. And in Merlin's case, he's driven out into the Caledonian woods, which again puts him back in sort of Cumbria, Scotland area. But rather like the hermits, he kind of lives in the woods and he prophesies. He has things to say. But he's very interesting because he's a mediator figure, because he was a king or he was a warrior, and now he's a wild man. But he's not a wild man by choice. He's a wild man because he's gone mad, whereas the hermits make a deliberate choice to go into the woods. So you get this wonderful sort of liminal, ambiguous figure who can mediate between the life of the life of contemplation, the internal life and the life of public service, the life of the power, the life of the king. And here he is. He's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a he's a he.

He's a perfect example of this. And as I say, there's something very Celtic about this particular figure because the reason he goes mad is a battle. Stephen Knight, can I come to you about this? I would like to talk about the Black Book of Command in a minute, but just to take the Celtic reference and the frenzy, I brought up in the tradition which we were brought up around the state, writing is all, reading is all, that's how we remember.

But in the Celtic tradition, it was still a very powerful oral tradition. And we think, well, to remember that over 500 years is nonsense. You can't remember. But you could pass on. Caesar observed that when he came over the Celts of their fantastic genealogies and how they could reach back. And again and again, when we've looked at older civilizations through this program, the strength of the memory. So do you think that what Judith has been talking about is possible to have been transferred orally? There's no doubt that's the case. Indeed, it's clear that in Bardic training schools, druidic training schools, I mean memory was acculturated was developed. This just went on into the Renaissance and indeed

into more modern periods. And the whole complex that Juliet's been talking about, was there a real Mardin, what happened and so on, is clearly a story that operated in an oral context. I mean, the story of the early Arthur may well be a parallel. And when in the Black Book of Kermarthen, we get these short poems that Juliet's been speaking about. They were put together in about 1,200.

Yes, and they may date in their present form from perhaps an earlier period. These may well be the poems which were inserted into a traditional saga that was spoken and perhaps never written down. Irish has many examples. And maybe the poems were preserved because of their importance.

But we certainly have an oral culture in this period exchanging stories, mixing them up, preserving the best bits, giving them to somebody else. And it's intriguing that some of the most dynamic myths in British history

Merlin, Arthur, come from this very period. There's sometimes called the Dark Ages, but following you is perhaps better call the oral ages. The Black Book of Camarthen. Can you give us an example of one or two of poems which you may have included in Merlin? Well, yes, there's stanzas. They're quite enigmatic stanzas,

but that seems to be characteristic of early Celtic poetry. It's almost as if they're aryas. We've lost the text of this opera, but we've remembered the arias because they were so intense. there's a particularly one I like where the Mörn Mörn Ucht, the madmirlin, the sage, is speaking to a pig who is his companion, his only companion. There's some address to the apple tree he's living in at the time,

but some of the pig. And I like this one. It goes, O little pig, I do not sleep easy because of the sadness that is upon me. Two score in ten years I have borne the pain. It is a sad appearance that I have. May Jesus give me the support of the. the kings of the heavens, noblest lineage.

I saw Gwynn Tholai as a splendid lord, gathering spoils on every border. Under the red earth, he is silent, the chief of the rulers of the north, which I think is the phrase that Juliet used before. Peter Forshaw, nobody's had more influence on the myth of Merlin than Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century. Can you tell us about him and how he got to Merlin? briefly, Geoffrey of Monmouth, 12th century writer, a canon who eventually became Bishop of Saint-Asaf in 1152, died of 1155,

and it's true his history of the Kings of Britain is the work that really is responsible for promulgating the story of Merlin. It's a Latin text. Merlin was chosen instead of Mirudin because the name sounds... Are you going to explain this? He was called Meridin originally. Yes. But that translates into something that we don't.

like to talk about. No, it doesn't. Mad might give you a clue if you speak French. He changed the D to L and so we have a lovely Merlin. We do indeed. We do indeed. Name instead of a not so nice word.

Yeah, yeah, quite. Let's continue. Lowered the tone there. Anyway, the history of the Kings of Britain, which was, people tend to say, was composed around 1136, 1138, is the most well-known

text that presents first of all, a sort of legendary founding of the kingdom of Britain, beginning with Brut, the great grandson of Ineus coming over from Italy, and leading up to particularly King Arthur and Merlin's involvement with the birth of King Arthur. Can you give us some of just some flavour of him, perhaps better to do it specifically anecdotal, one or two of the stories that Geoffrey tells about Merlin and brings to the table? I suppose most, well, how has he introduced? Basically, we have Vortigern, who's a leader of the Gouisset,

who has made an alliance with the Saxons, and the Saxons are taking advantage of this and despoiling the kingdom. Vortigern's magicians say, you've got to build the tower for protection. The tower, unfortunately, keeps sinking. The foundations just won't hold. And so they say you need to find a young boy who doesn't have a father. Kill him, sprinkle his blood on the foundations, and they will hold. Anyway, eventually Mervyn is found in Kamarthan.

Because he supposed not to have a father. And rather than being killed, he convinces the magicians that they're wrong and says, okay, dig and what do you find underneath the foundations. There's a pool. Drain the pool. What do you find? You find two dragons. And Merlin then explains what the dragons are.

One is red, what is white. The red represents the Britons. and the white, the Saxons, and this problem has to be resolved. So he enters as a fully-fledged magician. And a very young one too. Yes. There's a lot of Christ-like associations, aren't there?

No father, stunning his elders with his knowledge when he was young, divining things that others did not know. Yes, yeah, even younger than, I mean, Christ in the temple in Luke is 12 years old. Merlin's even younger. How does Geoffrey at Monmouth get Merlin to meet up with Arthur? Well, he does a typical Jeffrey thing. The character he borrows isn't called Merlin. It's called Ambrosius.

And Geoffrey just boldly says, oh, well, Arthur's magician is called Melinus Ambrosius. Hey, presto, we have this figure. You know, you have to hand it to Geoffrey. He is never at a loss. Good story, and if it was a good story, Geoffrey would find a way to do it. And there's power to it too,

because he's addressing us to the Norman Lords, and he's telling the story of the Celtic people of Britain who've been defeated by the Anglo-Saxons. So in a way, it's a sort of displaced eulogy of the Norman Lords for crushing the Anglo-Saxons. And so the Norman lords who've never been kings before and the French have a Charlemagne myth, he's sort of giving them an Arthur myth,

which is sort of they borrow, as the Normans did everywhere. So it's interestingly a sort of fictional political origin. And Merlin is, as in so many of these stories, is the agent who makes it happen. He's very much the pivot. And again, this wild man. figure is exactly that. He's a pivot between the world of the king and the world

of contemplation. But also providing the history as Peter was saying, I mean he moves Stonehenge from Ireland to salt's a replaying. He engineers this movement. Mary Stewart thought that meant he'd been trained as an engineer in the Roman army. But you are just used to it. It is a lovely idea. Right. Can we move on to

the prophecies, a few more of the prophecies, Peter for sure. Heron makes a nest in the branches of an oak and lays three eggs from which hatch a fox, a wolf and a bear. Now then, what's your prophesying there? Yeah, okay, fox wolf and the bear. It goes on because, is it the wolf

who assumes an ass's head kills his mother and then fights with brothers? Prophecy, I'd say that's a really grotesque internecine conflict, but that's as far as I can go. I couldn't attribute it to any particular event. Also the prophetia, Malina, the prophecy of Mirla, at Jeffrey wrote, is actually very like European prophecies, the tradition of European prophecies with the use of these animals.

And actually very unlike the Welsh prophecies associated with Merlin, which are very much more formal. I mean, he would say things like, Oyen, Pachelen, you know, listen to me, oh, little pig. And the prophecy element is not quite so over the top. So clearly Geoffrey had different sources for this, and it's probably the fact that he got hold of the Merlin's story after he'd written his story of Britonium.

And again, Geoffrey wasn't going to let go of a good story, so he writes Vita Melinae. What Jordan says about Europe's important, because Geoffrey's Latin is superb Latin. Milton didn't believe it was written in the 12th century because it was so good. He thought it was written at the time of Virginus. Yeah, and it's, that's, this book was fantastically popular.

There are what, 60 to 70, 12th century manuscripts of it. It was amazing. And it was read as a European text as it compines the Bible. It cross refers to the Bible and to classical history. And so it carries Arthur and Merlin with it, with its power. Not only in translation, apparently a lot of people read this in Latin. Presumely clerks were reading it orally and translating it to their lords. And so Merlin is driven by Geoffrey's genius.

We keep being arrested, I do anyway I was reading for this programme, by specific anecdotes, for instance, where Merlin meets his sister Gagnéide in the woods and laughs at her because she has leaves in her and he says you've been making love to

underneath a tree which has been scattered with leaves and then various things ensue. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, she attempts revenge, doesn't she? You can tell she's his sister, she's no full, and she brings in a young boy and says, all right, predict his death. says he will die by falling from a rock.

So she has the boy taken out, has him, changes his clothes, says, what about this boy? And he says, ah, he's going to die in a tree. Then she takes the boy out and cross-dresses him, interestingly, and says, what about this lady? And Merlin says, woman or not, this person will die in water. And she says, ah, that's all nonsense. How could I be an adulteress? Years later, the boy has grown up and is out hunting, a stag, and he falls from a rock, catches in a tree and hangs

and his face and shoulders are in the water and he drowns. And this just in the story proves Merlin's power. And this, as you say, this motif remains. Actually, in some Celtic versions, it is actually Merlin who suffers the three-fold death. I'm about to say the three-fold death keeps coming up, doesn't it? And it's he himself.

Merlin who does this. And actually, some of Merlin's cognates, the Scottish Merlin as well, the Lalacin figure dies in this way. So it's clear, it's a folk motif, which is brought in. We've talked about, we've talked a little about Merlin the Christ idea coming into money. What about the Antichrist idea, Peter?

In about 1200, Robert DeBerourne and painter, Dark Merlin as almost Antichrist. Yes, yeah. Where the devils, very much annoyed by the harrowing of hell, decide to create an anti-Christ. So we have this pure virgin who gives birth to Merlin through an incubus. So rather than God and Mary,

we have a devil and the Virgin Mary. Sorry, and Merlin's mother. Merlin is half devil and half... Half devil and half human. And this is another thing. He's trapped between evil and good. And that's another layer to the ambivalry. It is, because there is a mischievous quality to him.

He is a trickster figurants on many levels. But at the same time, Robert de Boron Christianizes him, a priest sprinkles, his mother's womb when she's pregnant, and then he's baptized as soon as he's born. So actually he's rescued. and can be a Christian. Yes, that's right.

He's saved from the darkness and becomes an agent. He keeps that trickster quality, and he often teases King Arthur and humiliates King Arthur even, but it's in the service of good. And Robert de Boron, really, I mean, Jeffrey Monmouth, you know, great figure. Robé is very important, and we know a little about him. But what Robert does is use Merlin, not to, you know, Moose Stonehenge or established King Arthur,

but to bring the whole Grail story into the story. into the context. Because it's Merlin who tells the story of the Grails to the Christian. Rob's first poem, the one is the Joseph, which tells the story of Joseph Arimathea, the cup, the grail, the last supper dish, whatever it is, preserving it and sending it to the West. And I think you've dealt with this before another programme.

This is in the same time as the West has lost the Holy Lands, and this is presumably a mythical displacement. Okay. But then in the Merlin, he says that Merlin knows this story, and tells it, and not only establishes King Arthur, but says, you can do better than that. And chivalry, secular chivalry, is suddenly confronted with Christian chivalry,

and Merlin is the sort of the prophet of this. And Arthur's round table, which here Merlin establishes, is an conscious trinitarian image of the grail table, which is itself a replica of the Last Supper table. So we have another threefold structure. So mythical structure. It's not so interesting. Merlin keeps coming in at times of crisis

because the early material in Cumbria is the point at which the Saxons were pressing in and the whole of the British, the Celtic world in Britain was going to fall apart. Then we get another kind of outpouring at a time when the Anglo-Normans come in and I again having to settle their own civilization in Britain and then we get it again when the crusades go badly.

So again, Merlin is such a perfect figure for resolving problems on a narrative level. Yeah, I'm just going to Thomas Mallory. In 1470, when Mallory did is more doubt that, he's giving a romanceman, isn't it? He said the romance for the age. Is he really bothered with what's what in terms of historical? I think he's quite unaware of it.

History is the same word of story, of course. They're not too worried about this. It's Renaissance scholars who say, you know, history is one thing, story is another. But what Mallory does do, is he uses, one of the two narrative, there's not any two merlins, there's all the two narrative merlins. One, the one that Robert de Boron uses, is this sage merlin who exists right through the Arthurian world,

and he's always there, and at the very end, when Arthur's court has collapsed and Arthur has disappeared mysteriously, and Percival still living with the grail, merlin sort of goes into the woods, this time, not in distress, but in a sort of Merlin research centre, it's rather attractive, which he calls an esplumois, which means a marlain. Moulting cage. He's a Merlin, you see. He's very clever stuff. And so that's the Merlin all the way through, guiding us, helping us. The other Merlin narrative that Geoffrey has used and Marrory uses, and is in some of the French, is Merlin sets up King Arthur and then disappears.

He is entrapped by Nimuei. He has a witness. Vivian, Linyan, okay. And it seems to me that Merlin, the setter up and disappearer, he enables us to speak politically or militarily on chivalric ways and the other Merlin who's all the way through gives us a more sort of evaluative moral even

Christian take on it. We can we go up to the tutors now Peter Forsyworth you may not be referred for this and John D the magician at the court of Elizabeth I first and a man of very influential advisor

a strange and powerful man we've talked about in the program we did an alchemy but he was very taken with the idea of Merlin, as of himself been a Merlin figure? Well, he was Welsh of Welsh descent. He was very much aware that the House of Tudor were of Welsh descent,

and he saw a revival of the Arthurian mythos as really a way of bolstering up Elizabeth's reign, really. And this whole idea of Arthur returning, Arthur coming back, Arthur is in Avalon and hasn't died. It's sort of displaced onto legitimising Elizabeth's reign.

We know that John D definitely had manuscript copies of both Geoffrey's prophecies and also actually of other texts attributed to Merlin to do with alchemy. But he very much, as a Welshman, finds this revival of interest very significant. It would actually fit in with your theory that it's hauled out when there's trouble brewing. Elizabeth is being oppressed, being threatened by enemies from abroad. We have to constantly reimagine and recognise how powerfully threatened she was by nations much, much bigger than us. And they were after her.

There's also another interesting little sort of kick here in that prophecy was very often a basis for political unrest. So the kings, particularly the Tudor kings, tried to control prophecy. And Henry VIII actually sent spies into, Wales to find out what they're up to. And one of them came back and said, oh, after Mass, the Welsh hang around in the churchyard and hear stories about Merlin. So clearly there's this real historical sort of little anecdote that Merlin is still a focus for prophecies. These probably weren't the

medieval poems because no one would have understood them. But for prophecies, that would have had a political implications, not necessarily pro-Tudor either. Definitely. Certainly, I think that's one reason why Dee is determined to bring these to support Elizabeth because Henry the 8th had real problems. Catholics sometimes use these prophecies as a way of destabilising his rule.

In 1539, for example, the priest was executed for preaching from the prophecies of Merlin. He strides through the century and Dryden gets held over in the 17th century. We have a rather neoplatonic Merlin. That's right, it is. Dryden's, first of all, it's Arthur the British Worthy, 1690s.

and Merlin is a major figure He's sort of deus ex machinare And sort of in charge And he's in charge He heals Arthur's beloved's eyesight She's blind She's emmeline, she's not Guinevere She's a bit posher than that

But he presides But it's very patriotic It's a patriotic It's a patriotic neoplatism and magic And it's all on St George's Day And these are in Britons And they sing at the end The beautiful song

Percell song, Fairest Isle All Isles Excelling So it's a patriotic Merlin 18th century and we do know of that, but as we go on, I think that becomes less interesting. Tennyson particularly, interesting.

I mean, Tennyson uses the sets Arthur up and disappears Merlin, presumably because Tennyson wants to speak as a Christian humanist. We've got to solve these problems ourselves in a human way. Well, let's talk about the idols of the king. Why does Merlin disappear so, Julia? Again, I think it's because Tennyson wants to bring in this Christian idea. this Christian idea. So it's the 19th century now.

Just the 90, precisely. Again. 0.0.0.1% who wasn't clocked that. It is, and again, this is a time of change. And again, Merlin comes in as a representative of the old and esteemed way of life. Tennyson had a very romantic view of the Middle Ages.

Again, a 19th century romantic view of the Middle Ages. And this world of the Middle Ages and all that was good is in a sense handed on by MoMA to the muscular Christianity that Tennyson espoused. And not the interest in ladies, however. No, because the sex comes in here, doesn't it? Rather in Victorian time.

But he gets seduced here, Peter Fawshod, doesn't it? Can you tell us about that and why you think that came in then? Yeah, Merlin and Vivian is the poem in the Idols of the King, where we have a young Vivian who comes to Arthur's court. Flirts with Arthur doesn't get anywhere with him. decides to seduce instead Merlin, who's the greatest at the court, the magician there. He sees through her pretty much, but nevertheless she keeps on, flatters him very much. In the end, they leave the court, and she really just bamboozles him at the end into giving him a certain charm,

which whoever has can imprison the other person. Well, you've been talking a lot in this programme about what this, what this, what this means then at that time. So what does that mean then, Juliet? The seduction. I think again it was this Victorian idea of the femtetatat. You had good women and you had fatalistic women.

And of course Guinevere was one of those and Vivian was one of those. But it's interesting. The Welsh at this time, in Welsh you are still getting stories about Merlin and there's one in which Merlin's sister comes to him and it's very much a prophecy one. She offers him wine

and milk and water. And with the water he prophecies. So you still have this alternative idea where Merlin's sister is not the femme fatale. So even at that late date, you've got an ambiguous view of Merlin. And at the end of the 19th century, he falls into the hands of the analyst and psychonelist, doesn't he Stephen? Yes, that's right. And what do they say about him and women? He's seen the sort of patriarchal, but also these women are not only seduces. Nimiue is very clever. Vivian is very Clever. And Tennyson has written about, his previous poem was the princess in which he rejected the idea of a university for women. And so Merlin is, I think, seen as a representative of elderly patriarchy with wisdom, which has a limited wisdom and can be disturbed by sexuality.

He can be something deluded by sexuality. And so Freudians and indeed I think, I defer to others in his Jungians, see this as the least as the least. limits of wisdom represented in the story. He's the intellectual function in many ways, and Vivian, the seductress, is passion, is emotion. And on a Jungian level, I suppose, or the psychological level, it's a conflict on one level idealised intellect and gutsy passion. And you race you through towards the end of the 20th century

and sort of takes over the screen there because Gandalf is Merlin by another name. He didn't call him Merlin because he didn't want the baggage. Is that right? Absolutely. Rather like Geoffrey of Monmouth, here is this wonderful. character. Tolkien wanted him, so he just changed his name. I mean, there was a precedent for it. He changed his name because he didn't want to bring in the

whole, he didn't want to bring in the Arthurian. He was creating an Anglo-Saxon tradition, and he didn't want to get it mixed up with the Celtic tradition. So he changed Merlin's name. Thank you all, very much indeed. Thank you very much of Julie Wood, Stephen Knight and Peter Forshaw. Next week we'll be talking

about Christopher Marlow, thought by some in his day to be a greater writer than Shakespeare. Was he a spy? Was he assassinated? We'll talk about it next Thank you for listening.