The Crystal Cave

AUTHOR'S NOTE

No novelist dealing with Dark Age Britain dares venture into the light without some pen-service to the Place-Name Problem. It is customary to explain one's usage, and I am at once less and more guilty of inconsistency than most. In a period of history when Celt, Saxon, Roman, Gaul and who knows who else shuttled to and fro across a turbulent and divided Britain, every place must have had at least three names, and anybody's guess is good as to what was common usage at any given time. Indeed, the "given time" of King Arthur's birth is somewhere around 470 A.D., and the end of the fifth century is as dark a period of Britain's history as we have. To add to the confusion, I have taken as the source of my story a semi-mythological, romantic account written in Oxford by a twelfth-century Welshman [Or (possibly) Breton], who gives the names of places and people what one might call a post-Norman slant with an overtone of clerical Latin. Hence in my narrative the reader will find Winchester as well as Rutupiae and Dinas Emrys, and the men of Cornwall, South Wales, and Brittany instead of Dumnonii, Demetae, and Armoricans.

My first principle in usage has been, simply, to make the story clear. I wanted if possible to avoid the irritating expedient of the glossary, where the reader has to interrupt himself to look up the place-names, or decide to read straight on and lose himself mentally. And non-British readers suffer further; they look up Calleva in the glossary, find it is Silchester, and are none the wiser until they consult a map. Either way the story suffers. So wherever there was a choice of names I have tried to use the one that will most immediately put the reader in the picture: for this I have sometimes employed the device of having the narrator give the current crop of names, even slipping in the modern one where it does not sound too out of place. For example: "Maesbeli, near Conan's Fort, or Kaerconan, that men sometimes call Conisburgh." Elsewhere I have been more arbitrary. Clearly, in a narrative whose English must be supposed in the reader's imagination to be Latin or the Celtic of South Wales, it would be pedantic to write of Londinium when it is so obviously London; I have also used the modern names of places like Glastonbury and Winchester and Tintagel, because these names, though mediaeval in origin, are so hallowed by association that they fit contexts where it would obviously be impossible to intrude the modern images of (say) Manchester or Newcastle. These "rules" are not, of course, intended as a criticism of any other writer's practice; one employs the form the work demands; and since this is an imaginative exercise which nobody will treat as authentic history, I have allowed myself to be governed by the rules of poetry: what communicates simply and vividly, and sounds best, is best.

The same rule of ear applies to the language used throughout. The narrator, telling his story in fifth-century Welsh, would use in his tale as many easy colloquialisms as I have used in mine; the servants Cerdic and Cadal would talk some kind of dialect, while, for instance, some sort of "high language" might well be expected from kings, or from prophets in moments of prophecy. Some anachronisms I have deliberately allowed where they were the most descriptive words, and some mild slang for the sake of liveliness. In short, I have played it everywhere by ear, on the principle that what sounds right is acceptable in the context of a work of pure imagination.

For that is all The Crystal Cave claims to be. It is not a work of scholarship, and can obviously make no claim to be serious history. Serious historians will not, I imagine, have got this far anyway, since they will have discovered that the main source of my story-line is Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain.

Geoffrey's name is, to serious historians, mud. From his Oxford study in the twelfth century he produced a long, racy hotch-potch of "history" from the Trojan War (where Brutus "the King of the Britons" fought) to the seventh century A.D., arranging his facts to suit his story, and when he got short on facts (which was on every page), inventing them out of the whole cloth. Historically speaking, the Historia Regum Brittaniae is appalling, but as a story it is tremendous stuff, and has been a source and inspiration for the great cycle of tales called the Matter of Britain, from Malory's Morte d'Arthur to Tennyson's Idylls of the King, from Parsifal to Camelot.

The central character of the Historia is Arthur, King of the first united Britain. Geoffrey's Arthur is the hero of legend, but it is certain that Arthur was a real person, and I believe the same applies to Merlin, though the "Merlin" that we know is a composite of at least four people — prince, prophet, poet and engineer. He appears first in legend as a youth. My imaginary account of his childhood is coloured by a phrase in Malory: "the well of Galapas, [So 'fontes galabes' is sometimes translated] where he wont to haunt," and by a reference to "my master Blaise" — who becomes in my story Belasius. The Merlin legend is as strong in Brittany as in Britain.

One or two brief notes to finish with.

I gave Merlin's mother the name Niniane because this is the name of the girl (Vivian/Niniane/Nimue) who according to legend seduced the enchanter in his dotage and so robbed him of his powers, leaving him shut in his cave to sleep till the end of time. No other women are associated with him. There is so strong a connection in legend (and indeed in history) between celibacy, or virginity, and power, that I have thought it reasonable to insist on Merlin's virginity.

Mithraism had been (literally) underground for years. I have postulated a local revival for the purpose of my story, and the reasons given by Ambrosius seem likely. From what we know of the real Ambrosius, he was Roman enough to follow the "soldiers' god." [Bede, the 7th C. historian, calls him "Ambrosius, a Roman." (Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation.)]

About the ancient druids so little is known that (according to the eminent scholar I consulted) they can be considered "fair game." The same applies to the megaliths of Carnac (Kerrac) in Brittany, and to the Giants' Dance of Stonehenge near Amesbury. Stonehenge was erected around 1500 B.C., so I only allowed Merlin to bring one stone from Killare. At Stonehenge it is true that one stone — the largest — is different from the rest. It comes originally, according to the geologists, from near Milford Haven, in Wales. It is also true that a grave lies within the circle; it is off center, so I have used the midwinter sunrise rather than the midsummer one towards which the Dance is oriented.

All the places I describe are authentic, with no significant exception but the cave of Galapas — and if Merlin is indeed sleeping there "with all his fires and travelling glories around him," one would expect it to be invisible. But the well is there on Bryn Myrddin, and there is a burial mound on the crest of the hill.

It would seem that the name "merlin" was not recorded for the falcon columbarius until mediaeval times, and the word is possibly French; but its derivation is uncertain, and this was sufficient excuse for a writer whose imagination had already woven a series of images from the name before the book was even begun.

Where Merlin refers to the potter's mark A.M., the A would be the potter's initial or trade mark; the M stands for Manu, literally "by the hand of."The relationship between Merlin and Ambrosius has (I believe) no basis in legend. A ninth-century historian, Nennius, from whom Geoffrey took some of his material, called his prophet "Ambrosius."

Nennius told the story of the dragons in the pool, and the young seer's first recorded prophecy. Geoffrey, borrowing the story, calmly equates the two prophets: "Then saith Merlin, that is also called Ambrosius..." This throwaway piece of "nerve," as Professor Gwyn Jones calls it, [Introduction to the Everyman ed. of History of the Kings of Britain] gave me the idea of identifying the "prince of darkness" who fathered Merlin — gave me, indeed, the main plot of The Crystal Cave.

My greatest debt is obviously to Geoffrey of Monmouth, master of romance. Among other creditors too numerous to name and impossible to repay, I should like especially to thank Mr. Francis Jones, County Archivist, Carmarthen; Mr. and Mrs. Morris of Bryn Myrddin, Carmarthen; Mr. G. B. Lancashire of The Chase Hotel, Ross-on-Wye; Brigadier R. Waller, of Wyaston Leys, Monmouthshire, on whose land lie Lesser Doward and the Romans' Way; Professor Hermann Bruck, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and Mrs. Bruck; Professor Stuart Piggott of the Department of Archaeology at Edinburgh University; Miss Elizabeth Manners, Headmistress of Felixstowe College; and Mr. Robin Denniston, of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., London.

February 1968 — February 1970. M.S.