The Last Enchantment

Author's Note

ACCORDING TO LEGEND, OF WHICH the main source is Malory's Morte d'Arthur, Merlin stayed above ground only a short while after Arthur was crowned. The period of battles and tournaments that follows the coronation can surely be taken to represent the actual battles fought by the historic Arthur. All that we know of the real war-leader, Arthur the Soldier (dux bellorum), is that he fought twelve major battles before he could count Britain safe from the Saxon enemy, and that eventually he died, and Mordred with him, at the battle of Camlann. The much-quoted account of the twelve battles occurs in the Historia Brittonum written by the Welsh monk Nennius in the ninth century.

Then Arthur fought against them in those days, with the kings of the Britons, but he himself was the leader of battles. The first battle was at the mouth of the river which is called Glein. The second, third, fourth and fifth, on another river, which is called Dubglas, and is in the region of Linnuis. The sixth battle was on the river which is called Bassas. The seventh was a battle in the wood of Celidon, that is Cat Coit Celidon. The eighth was the battle at Castellum Guinnion, in which Arthur carried the image of Saint Mary, ever Virgin, on his shoulders, and the pagans were put to flight on that day and there was a great slaughter of them through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and through the power of Saint Mary the Virgin, his mother. The ninth battle was fought at the City of the Legions. The tenth battle he fought on the river, which is called Tribuit. The eleventh occurred on the mountain, which is called Agned. The twelfth was the battle on Mount Badon, in which there fell together in one day 960 men in one onset of Arthur, and no one laid them low save himself alone. And in all the battles he remained victor.

Only two of these battles can be located with any kind of certainty: that in the Caledonian Forest — the Old Caledonian Forest that stretched down from Strathclyde into the modern Lake District — and the one at the City of Legions, which could be either Chester or Caerleon. I have contented myself with using Nennius' own place-names, and identifying only one other, the battle of the River Tribuit. It has been suggested that this is an early name of the River Ribble. There is a place where the old Roman road crosses the Ribble and heads toward the Aire Gap (the "Pennine Gap"). This is called Nappa or Nappay Ford, and local tradition remembers a battle there. The nearby camp that I have called "Tribuit" was at Long Preston; the other two in the Gap were of course Elslack and Ilkley. I also made use of a tradition that Arthur fought at High Rochester (Bremenium) in the Cheviots. Apart from these two "battle sites" I have inserted none in the map.

Blaise. According to Malory, Blaise "wrote down Arthur's battles word for word," a chronicle which, if it ever existed, has vanished utterly. I took the liberty of building in a destructive agent in the person of Gildas, the young son of Caw of Strathclyde and brother of Heuil. These are historic personages. We are told that Arthur and Heuil hated one another. Gildas the monk, writing in about A.D. 540, refers to the victory of "Mount Badon," but without mentioning Arthur by name. This has been interpreted as a sign, at the least, of disapproval of a leader who had shown himself no friend to the Church.

Merlin's illness. The episode in the Wild Forest is taken from the story of Merlin's madness as told in the Vita Merlini, a twelfth-century Latin poem commonly ascribed to Geoffrey of Monmouth. This is in part a retelling of the older Celtic "Lailoken" tale of the madman who roamed the Caledonian Forest. Merlin-Lailoken was present at the battle of Arfderydd (the modern Arthuret, near Carlisle), where his friend, the king, was killed. Driven mad by grief, he fled into the forest, where he eked out a wretched existence.

There are two poems in The Black Book of Carmarthen that are attributed to him. In one he describes the apple tree that shelters and feeds him in the forest; in the other he addresses the piglet which is his sole companion.

Guenever and Guinevere. Tradition asserts that Arthur had two wives of the same name, or even three — though this was probably only a conveniently poetic round number. The rape of Guinevere by Melwas (or Meleagant) occurs in the mediaeval romance Lancelot of Chréstien de Troyes. In Chrétien's story Lancelot has to cross a sword bridge leading to the hollow hill of faery — a version of the ancient rape fantasy that we find in the tales of Dis and Persephone, or Orpheus and Eurydice.

Guinevere, according to the mediaeval legends, suffered abduction from time to time as a matter of course, and equally as a matter of course was rescued by Lancelot. A modern reader can see how the stories rose around "the much-abducted queen." Mediaeval singers found in "King Arthur and his Court" a rich source of story-telling, and in time a long series of tales came to be hung around the central figures, much as the television series-writers hang their scripts today. Gradually, in the legends, Arthur himself fades into the background, and various new "heroes" take the center of the stage: Lancelot, Tristram, Gawain, Gereint. Lancelot, being purely fictional (and an invention some centuries later than the "Arthurian fact"), is made to fill the role of the Queen's lover so essential to the mediaeval romancers and their convention of courtly love.

But it is tempting to believe that the first of the "rape stories," the Queen's abduction by Melwas, was founded on fact. Certainly Melwas existed, and remains have been found of the right period that indicate strongholds on and near Glastonbury Tor. In my tale Bedwyr, whose name is linked with Arthur's long before "Lancelot" ever appears, takes the Lancelot role. In the character of Guinevere, as here drawn, I believe I was influenced by Chaucer's treatment of the "false" Criseyde.

Nimuë (Niniane, Vivien). Nor is there any necessity to attribute the same sort of "falseness" to Merlin's lover, Nimuë. The "betrayal" theme of this legend springs from the need to explain the death or disappearance of an all-powerful enchanter. My version of Merlin's end is based on a tradition which obtains still in parts of the "Summer Country." It was sent me many years ago by a Wiltshire correspondent. This version of the tale is that Merlin, with age drawing on, desired to hand on his magic powers to someone who could be Arthur's adviser after his death. For this he chose his pupil Nimuë, who showed herself adept. This tale not only allows the great enchanter his dignity, and a measure of common sense, but also explains Nimuë's subsequent influence over Arthur. The King would hardly otherwise have kept her near him, or accepted her help against his enemies.

Ninian. The "boy Ninian" episode was suggested by another incident found in the Vita Merlini. Here Merlin sees a youth buying shoes, and pieces of leather to repair them with to make them last longer. Merlin knows that the youth will have no need of the new shoes, as he will be drowned the same day.

Cerdic Elesing. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Cerdic and Cynric his son landed at Cerdices-ora with five ships. Cerdic was Elesing (the son of Elesa, or Eosa). The date given is A.D. 494.

Whatever doubt there may be about the dates of Cerdic's battles, or the locations of his first conquests (Cerdices-ora is thought to be Netley, near Southampton), all the chroniclers seem to agree that he was the founder of the first West Saxon monarchy from which Alfred was to claim descent. For Cerdic, and for the changing of the burial customs that Gereint suggests on page 105, see Hodgkin's History of the Anglo-Saxons, Vol. 1, Section IV.

Llud-Nuatha, or Nodens. The shrine of Nodens is still to be seen, at Lydney in Gloucestershire.

Merlin's song "He who is companionless," is based on the Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer.

Finally, for the many gaps in my knowledge of this enormous subject I can only beg forgiveness, and paraphrase what H. M. and N. K. Chadwick wrote in the preface to their Growth of English Literature: "If I had read more widely I should never have completed this book." More: if I had even known how much there was to read, I would never have dared to start to write at all. By the same token I cannot list all the authorities I have followed. But I can hope, in all humility, that my Merlin trilogy may be, for some new enthusiast, a beginning.

M.S.

Edinburgh, 1975-1979