MALORY'S MERLIN

Part of the interest of the ballads that have come down to us is their sense of a Christian perspective overlying a much older view of things.   Thus, for instance, in The Wife of Usher’s Well we have the Martinmass and the tree of Paradise, but also a sense of ancient sacred wells, and pagan nature curses.  And Malory’s Merlin is a similarly interesting blend of contrary traditions.

            Merlin appears within a page or two of Le Morte Darthur to sort out King Uther’s problems: ‘”Well, my lord,” said Sir Ulfius, “I shall seek Merlin, and he shall do you remedy…”’

            This abrupt reference without explanation is similar to the introduction of John the Baptist into Mark’s Gospel.  And for much the same reason; in each case the narrator can assume pre-existing familiarity with the subject matter on the part of his audience.   Malory from time to time comments “as it says in the French book”, thus highlighting his own role as collator of a range of diverse material.    In Merlin’s case, Malory could draw on the French Suite de Merlin and on Geoffrey of Monmouth, giving the wizard a long ancestry back into a pagan past.

 

One of Merlin’s pagan characteristics is his love of disguise; stretching back, probably,  into traditions of the shape changer.  When Ulfius finds him, he is disguised as a beggar.  And when Balin and Balan encounter him, he is again “disguised so that they knew him not.”  On another occasion he appears to Arthur as an archer, “befurred in black sheepskins”, and holding wild geese.  Sometimes, this appears to be just for the fun of the thing, but the power can also be used for morally dubious purposes: as when Merlin enables King Uther to look like the Duke of Cornwall – Merlin himself disguised as the Duke’s follower, Sir Jordanus to add authenticity – so that the Duke’s wife is tricked into sleeping with the King. 

The duplicity of the coupling is continued in its outcome: the offspring being collected, unchristened, at birth by Merlin for fostering with Sir Ector.  The non-christening is a red herring – Arthur is baptised shortly afterwards by a holy man – but the secrecy about his origins leads directly to the bloody civil war Arthur is obliged to wage against the rebel kings who refuse to accept his authority.  Why should they: they do not know about his parentage.  It’s the sort of behaviour you might find in the Old Testament, but there the relevant prophet would be inveighing against it, rather than being personally implicated.   

At other times, however, Merlin appears to have more moral purposes for his disguises: as when he appears to Arthur first as a child of fourteen and then as an old man, in order to test his responses.  Seeing Merlin as the latter, Arthur is willing to listen to him, and Merlin points out that if Arthur had been willing to listen to the child as well, he might have learned much.  Truth can come in many forms.  And Arthur seems to take this on board: he later makes a point, for example, of consulting with a range of advisers before declaring war on the Emperor of Rome.

Christianity, in accommodating itself to paganism, blessed some strands and demonised others.  In Merlin, the Christian tradition did both.  The Lady Nenive fears Merlin because “he was a devil’s son”: the product, that is to say, of an incubus and a human mother.  This doubtful parentage, curiously enough, does not appear to make him evil in any significant sense; other than to account for his magical powers.  Once the issue with King Uther is behind him, Merlin gives sound political advice to those who need it, and holds the fragile structure of the warring society together while he is still in a position to do so. 

Merlin appears to defer to the Archbishop of Canterbury over the issue of finding a new king, but it is Merlin rather than the Archbishop who is Arthur’s moral and spiritual adviser:    “the most part the days of his life he was ruled much by the counsel of Merlin,”  When God disapproves of aspects of  Arthur’s behaviour – excessive slaughter of the enemy in the war against the  eleven kings, or Arthur’s unintentional incest with his half-sister – it is Merlin whom God sends to reprimand him, much like Nathan the prophet reprimanding David.   And if we define a prophet as one who not only comments on the contemporary situation but who also predicts the future, then Merlin really comes into his own. 

With Merlin’s prophecies we are very much in the territory of Macbeth.  (Malory would not have known this; although Merlin, being prophetic, might have).  If you are given a vision of the future, is that a future that will happen regardless of what you do, or is it a future that will happen unless you intervene to prevent it?   A pagan fatalism, in other words, is contrasted with a Christian concept of human choice and free will.   This need not have been intentional.  Those who admire the golden patina of the Acropolis marble sometimes forget that this is an accident of time: in its heyday, the Parthenon would have been brightly, even gaudily, painted.  In the same way, what looks like a theological exploration may simply have arisen from Malory’s imperfect attempt to impose order on his rambling French sources, and failing to tie up all the loose ends. But intentional or other wise, what we have is an extraordinarily interesting example of the fate/free will problem. 

The issue with King Pellinore is an early exercise in predicting the future.   Pellinore is making a nuisance of himself by fighting passers-by.  The greenhorn Griflet undertakes to challenge him.  Merlin is against permitting this. ‘“It were a pity to lose Griflet for he will be a passing good man when he is of age…  And if he adventure his life…”      Here, it seems, Merlin is simply saying what any one with an eye to spotting talent might say: that Griflet has potential and should wait a bit, and not risk his life.  And King Arthur can remove the risk by not making him a knight.  The inexperienced Arthur  uses his free will, and asserts his independence, by foolishly knighting  Griflet, who equally foolishly takes off after Pellinore.  Insofar as Merlin has made a prediction he gets it both right and wrong.  Griflet is desperately wounded but, “through good leeches he was healed and saved.”

In the next phase Arthur, deciding to sort out King Pellinore himself, and riding out accordingly, “was ware of three churls chasing Merlin, and would have slain him.”  The lack of explanation is part of the charm of the narrative, as if while walking down the High Street one rescued an acquaintance – an event so routine as not to require explanation – from the three yobs who had set on him.  It seems a sort of rule of thumb in Le Morte Darthur that unknown males will attack each other on sight.  Malory’s contemporary audience would doubtless have been reminded of the Wars of the Roses.  (Modern readers will be familiar with the concept through television images of city centres when the pubs close). Merlin responds, significantly that, ‘”I could have saved myself and I willed.”  (Italics mine).   But thou art more near thy death than I am, for thou goest to thy deathward, and God be not thy friend.”’  As a prophecy, this is much more clear cut than with Griflet: “Don’t do it, or you will die!”  Arthur, of course, ignores it.

When Pellinore duly overpowers Arthur, Merlin offers him a choice: ‘”Knight, hold thy hand, for and thou slay that knight thou puttest this realm in the greatest damage that ever was realm.”

Pellinore, hearing it’s King Arthur, raises his sword to kill him “for dread of his wrath” and in perfect exercise of his free will.  However, the fulfilment of this particular prophecy about Arthur would invalidate the others made about him. Merlin, therefore, is obliged to make fate take a hand by casting Pellinore into an enchanted sleep. This enables Merlin to make his simplest and most direct prediction about the future: ‘”…he is but asleep and will awake within this hour.”

Although Merlin makes it known – why didn’t he do so in the first place? – that Arthur is Uther Pendragon’s son, the civil war continues.  Arthur realises he needs to marry to settle things down.  Is there a particular woman?  asks Merlin, as if he doesn’t know.  When Arthur cites Guenivere, Merlin wishes it could be some other damosel, but he appreciates that once a man’s heart is set, there’s no going back.  Merlin, after all, should know: since he later makes the same mistake himself.

Merlin proceeds to warn Arthur that Guenivere will be “not wholesome for him” because Lancelot – whom at this stage Arthur hasn’t even met – will love her, and she him.  And this makes a nonsense of Merlin’s question.  For how can he know this will happen if he didn’t know who Arthur would choose?   And if he did  know who Arthur would choose, why bother to ask the question?  Perhaps in the hope that Arthur will change his mind; only he can’t change his mind, because of the prophecy about Guenivere and Lancelot.  Here we are in deep theological waters about foreknowledge indeed, and Merlin doesn’t know his way out of them any more than Malory does. 

Significantly, although he knows the effects will be disastrous, once King Arthur’s choice is made Merlin duly contacts Guenivere’s father to bring about the marriage.   It is another aspect of the effectiveness with which Merlin is portrayed that although he is magical, he is also very human.  And in this particular task he is no different from any other political adviser who, sensing that his superior has made an unwise decision, is nevertheless obliged to carry it out.  Merlin illustrates precisely that devotion to duty, and the resultant conflict of loyalty, that brings about the ruinous final outcome and gives the story its peculiar force.  Malory, after all, writes as one who had experienced The Wars of the Roses.

The danger from Morgan le Fey is a slightly different issue.  Morgan knows about the qualities of Excalibur and its accoutrements. Merlin warns Arthur of the need for vigilance: “for he told him how the sword and the scabbard should be stolen by a woman from him, that he most trusted.”  What’s the point of vigilance, one might ask, if the things are going to be stolen anyway?  To switch mythologies for a moment, the answer is the same as that given for the army of heroes in Valhalla.  Yes that army will be defeated in the final battle, but without its existence that end would come a great deal sooner. If vigilance cannot prevent the theft, then it can delay its occurrence.      If human action cannot change the big events, yet it can influence them.

Merlin’s two greatest prophecies relate to Arthur’s final destruction, and to his own.  The consequences of Arthur’s incest will reach far beyond himself: ‘“for ye have lain by you sister, and on her ye have begotten a child that shall destroy you and all the knights of the realm.”’ Despite his sin, however, Arthur will die ‘“a worshipful death,”’ whereas Merlin’s fate will be, ‘”to be put in the earth, quick.”   (‘Alive’, that is to say: not ‘soon’, or ‘rapidly’). 

By degrees, Merlin fleshes out the details of Arthur’s fate: “the prophecy that there should be a great battle beside Salisbury, and Mordred his own son should be against him.”   and “Merlin told King Arthur that he that should destroy him and all his lands should be born on Mayday.”                                                                                                                                                

In an episode that recalls both Herod and Oedipus, Arthur has all the known male children born on Mayday cast out to sea in an open boat: “and some were four weeks old, and some less.”   Mordred, of course, survives, is fostered, and is later brought to Arthur’s court.  The parents who have lost their children blame Merlin.   

 

Merlin’s demise is a wonderful exercise in realistic psychology.  King Pellinore – still making a nuisance of himself, but inadvertently this time - brings to the Court Nenive, one of the damosels of the Lady of the Lake. At the sight of her “Merlin fell on a dotage”: managing to imply simultaneously that he is both doting and senile.

If Merlin is besotted with her, then she, in her turn “…made Merlion good chere tylle sche had lerned of hym all manner of thynges that sche desyred.”   Including, presumably, the means of his destruction:  a nice blend of women’s lib and the only way of getting rid of him.

            Merlin again warns the king that he – Merlin – will be “put in the earth quick” and predicts how much the King will miss him.  Arthur, reasonably enough, asks why Merlin can’t use his crafts to ensure it doesn’t happen, but is told it cannot be.

            In this respect, Merlin is just like the elderly millionaire who, in a cool moment, is perfectly well aware that the pretty young thing is really only after his money; but yet in her presence is totally unable to help himself.  

            Having crossed the Channel together, Merlin shows Nineve – while they are sightseeing - a great cavern beneath a stone. She invites him to demonstrate what’s in there, and promptly traps him: thereby freeing herself permanently of his attempts to seduce her.

 

Thereafter, Merlin simply fades from the story, but is still present as an absence.  In a very real sense, by bringing about the one prophecy, he ensures the fulfilment of the other.  For, deprived of his best counsellor, Arthur is powerless to prevent the chain of events that will lead to The Round Table’s inevitable destruction.