The Legends of King Arthur (2001–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Merlin - full transcript
[music playing]
NARRATOR: The name of Merlin
is forever linked in our minds
to King Arthur.
One without the other
would be unthinkable.
The king could not rule without
his wizard, his chief counselor
to guide and advise him.
Yet until the 12th century,
they existed in folktales
as separate,
independent characters
with no connection whatsoever.
Of the two, it is Merlin who
seems to belong completely
in the land of myth, whereas
Arthur crosses from history
to myth and back again.
Yet there is more
actual documentary
support for Merlin's
historical existence
than there is for Arthur's.
The magician still has
the power to surprise us.
[solemn music]
Everyone knows about Merlin.
He is the archetypal
sorcerer, magus, seer.
He has supernatural
powers, can see the future.
possessing wisdom and
cunning beyond human limits,
he knows the secrets
of the universe
and holds the key
to the elements.
He is a shapeshifter who can fly
and become invisible at will.
He speaks the languages
of all living things,
and understands the
spirits of land and water.
Time is no barrier to him.
There is a prevalent image
of him as a very old man,
with flowing robes,
white hair and beard.
This is how he has evolved.
But it is vastly different
from his earliest appearances
in the ancient Welsh
legends, where he is instead
a wise child with
no Earthly father,
a precociously gifted youth,
a wild man of the woods.
RONALD HUTTON: Merlin's role
in the whole Arthurian legend
is to add the biggest single
injection of supernatural glitz
into the story.
He is there to provide
a kind of third level
between Arthur and his
world and the world
of God, Jesus, and Heaven.
In other words, that
kind of unexpected,
that mysterious
factor in life which
some call destiny, some call
magic, some call sorcery.
Merlin is not only
the representative,
he's actually in control.
ARTHUR PENDRAGON:
There is always
somebody in the wings who
is advising a chieftain
or a king about the politics.
You can't do that.
You can't do that.
There is also a magical adviser.
And in the case of a pagan
king, there would be a Merlin.
MAGNUS: Merlin
actually represents
most of Dark Age life.
He is there.
He believes in the mysticism.
He believes in the spirits
of the woods, the trees.
But there is also Christianity.
So it proves that Dark
Age life wasn't a defined
one thing or the other.
Not definitely Christian
as we understand it.
Not definitely pagan
as we understand it.
You've got a happy
mix of both religions.
And that is
represented by Merlin.
[music playing]
NARRATOR: The venerable advisor
we recognize as Arthur's guide
and mentor is largely a
Victorian construction, thanks
to Tennyson and his
ideals of the king
and the artistic
Pre-Raphaelite Movement.
That Merlin is reminiscent
of some ancient schoolmaster,
respected, but eccentric.
We have affection
for the old boy.
But we have no idea how long
he has occupied his position,
nor how he got there
in the first place.
This program will attempt to
trace the origins of Merlin,
the master illusionist.
[music playing]
Merlin emerged into the
public eye in the 12th century
as if from nowhere.
This was thanks to
Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Geoffrey was born in Wales
around the year 1100.
As a child, he must have been
captivated by the ancient Welsh
tales of heroes
and kings, monsters
and gods, bloody battles
and weird enchantments.
Not surprisingly,
he grew up to be
a natural storyteller
who liked to think
of himself as a historian.
By entering the church
as a teaching canon,
he was able to follow
his great love of writing
and the study of ancient books.
[clerics chanting]
At this time, the
church was undoubtedly
the greatest guardian
of all manner
of manuscripts and texts.
So Geoffrey's writing career was
never short of source material.
And of course, the
tales of his childhood
still rang in his ears like
the sound of submerged bells.
As a youth, Geoffrey was very
familiar with stories and poems
about a seer called Myrddin.
As his first literary effort,
he used these to put together
a small book,
which was, he said,
a direct translation of
this seer's prophecies
from the old Welsh into Latin.
Of course, Geoffrey's educated
and influential readership
would have been as
well able to read Latin
as their own Norman French.
In fact, to write in Latin was
the only option for an author
seeking popular success.
It was the universal
language of literature
and the hallmark of
a proper education.
In the process of
translation, Geoffrey
turned the name
Myrddin into Merlinus,
known to us as Merlin.
He could have substituted a
simple D for the Welsh double D
and added the Latin suffix us.
Myrddin would then
have become Merdinus,
and the prophet, as
well as Geoffrey, would
have been a laughing stock.
Merda is the Latin for
excrement, to put it politely.
Merdinus would have been
immortalized as the shitty one.
His name would almost
literally have stunk.
Geoffrey was far
too astute an author
to burden such a
compelling figure
as Merlin with a comedy name.
This little book was called
"The Prophesies of Merlin"
or "Prophetia Merlini".
And the public lapped it up.
Not as a work of fiction,
but as an actual book
of predictions about the future,
the Nostradamus of its day.
So respected was
this book that he
continued to be consulted
in all seriousness
for several centuries.
That is, until the real
Nostradamus came on the scene.
In the Middle Ages, people
believed the prophecy, read it.
And indeed, it was even
used for political warfare,
so to speak, when Edward I
claimed the throne of Scotland.
Among other documents, which
his learned clerics consulted,
was the "Prophecy of
Merlin" and Geoffrey
of Monmouth's
history, which was you
could interpret it
which way you liked.
It says things like, when
the boar shall uproot
the forests of Caledonia, then
the eagle shall fly forth,
et cetera.
And they were clearly
intentionally vague.
NARRATOR: For a long while,
interested in Merlin's
prophecies did not fade away.
In Italy, Merlin was
even given equal footing
with the biblical Isaiah.
Scholars analyzed his
sayings exhaustively.
Other writers produced further
fake prophecies attributed
to Merlin, a practice
debunked by Shakespeare
when he wrote "King Lear".
Even as late as
the 17th century,
the astrologer
William Lilly chose
to publish his own predictions
under the pseudonym
Merlinus Anglicus Julia.
Naturally, Geoffrey made
sure that Merlin, speaking
from centuries past, gave
some uncannily accurate
prophecies about future events.
But he also took care so
that much of what Merlin had
supposedly foreseen
was ambiguous, obscure,
or downright indecipherable.
As ever, Geoffrey probably did
include some factual material.
But his method was to
put pseudo prophecies
in the mouth of Merlin,
things that had already
happened by Geoffrey's time.
Like the loss of Henry I's son
in the disaster of the sinking
of the White Ship.
To his readers, that
must have made Merlin
look very genuine as a prophet.
It lent credibility
to the gibberish
that Geoffrey also
made Merlin utter
in terms of the further future.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: In the earliest
form of such prophecies--
and one of the
early Merlin poems
is cast like this-- is
where he prophecized
the succession of kings
who was yet to come
and reign over the island.
There were surviving
versions, of course,
like most prophecies,
worked out backwards.
Written at the time of
the last king on the list,
and then a prophet
in earlier times
is made to foretell the
kings who will come.
And no doubt, that happened.
But one can't say, this must
go back to some original form.
And presumably, two genuine
prophecies that were
uttered, how far those
prophecies were received.
Authentic inspiration or
accurate, one can't say.
NARRATOR: Strangely, not
one of Geoffrey's readers
ever saw through his
prophecies after the event.
Here is an example of Geoffrey's
portentous-sounding prophecies.
A giant, snow white in
color and gleaming bright,
will beget a people
which is radiant.
Maybe Geoffrey got the symbolism
from an authentic text,
but it is impossible
to see where
truth ends and fantasy begins,
so expertly did he mix the two.
But we must remember
that Geoffrey did not
pluck Merlin out of thin air.
Myrddin was a genuine
historical figure as
far as Geoffrey was concerned.
He invented the name and
initiated the fame that
was to turn the profit of
ancient Welsh tradition
into an immortal magician.
The book of the
prophecies of Merlin
was so successful that
Geoffrey incorporated it
into his new work.
Called the "Historia
regum Britanniae"--
or "History of the
Kings of Britain"--
it purported to reveal the
entire early history of Britain
with particular
emphasis on King Arthur.
Though, in fact,
much of it was legend
dressed as history by Geoffrey.
Even so, this was to
be one of the most
important and influential
books of the Middle Ages,
with far-reaching effects on
the course of real history.
Into this book Geoffrey inserted
Merlin and his prophecies,
adding other information
about his life.
In this way, Merlin reached
an even larger audience.
And it was the popularity
of the "Historia"
that caused his fame to grow
and to spread all across Europe.
More importantly, it
linked him with King Arthur
for the first time.
And that proved to
be a partnership
more powerful and
enduring than Geoffrey
could ever have imagined.
[music playing]
Geoffrey put Merlin's
first appearance
at the time of Vortigern
a chieftain in the days
after the Romans left.
As a usurping leader of
the Britain's, Vortigern
had made the fatal mistake
of inviting Saxon mercenaries
into the country as auxiliary
troops against an alliance
of enemies from the north.
Predictably, the Saxons
didn't just do the job
they had been hired for.
They stayed on and settled
more and more of their people
on the lands they had
been paid to defend.
Finally, Vortigern
lost control of them
as they went on a rampage,
massacring the British
and despoiling the country.
So Vortigern himself had to flee
to the safety of the mountains
of Northwest Wales.
His magicians advised him
to build a strong fortress.
But the wall was no sooner built
then it collapsed each night.
In the face of this
bad omen, the magicians
prescribed the blood of
a boy without a father
to be sprinkled on
the foundation stones.
In nearby Carmarthen, they
found the young Merlin,
whose mother was the
daughter of the king
of the Welsh kingdom of Dyfed.
She had been impregnated
by an incubus demon
while living with the
nuns at a local convent.
So Merlin had no
Earthly father, which
qualified him for the role
of sacrificial victim.
The strange circumstances
of his conception
meant that he was
also a wonder child,
product of a union between the
Earthly and the supernatural.
And his powers were soon
demonstrated before Vortigern.
Merlin demonstrated
the shortcomings
of the local magicians
by correctly identifying
the true reason for
the collapsing walls,
an underground pool
in which lay two
dragons, one red the other
white, sealed in stone.
Once the pool was drained,
the dragons fought.
And as they struggled for
supremacy, a spirit of prophecy
took hold of Merlin.
Under its influence, he
uttered many strange sayings.
These were the "Prophetia
Merlini" that Geoffrey
had put in his first book.
[music playing]
Merlin explained the red
dragon symbolized the Britons.
And the white one was
their enemy, the Saxons.
The white dragon would
prevail for a while,
but ultimately, the red
dragon would throw it back
across the sea it came from.
He foresaw the rise of a
leader who would hold back
the invaders for a
time, meaning Arthur,
not yet born at that point.
And lastly, after many
cryptic predictions,
he warned Vortigern that the
rightful princes, Aurelius
and Uther, exiled offspring
of the last Roman ruler
Constantine, were
returning to claim
back the kingdom and his life.
Then he drove Vortigern from
the site of the fortress
and took it for himself.
This act of violence
is commemorated
at Dinas Emrys, or the
Ambrosius Fort near Beddgelert
in North Wales.
The rest of the prophecy
was swiftly fulfilled.
Vortigern was
killed and Aurelius
took back the kingship.
Already, Merlin had proved
himself, even as a youth,
to be greater than any
mere court magician.
After establishing
his credentials,
Merlin helped the
new King Aurelius
to put up a fitting memorial
over the mass grave of
the murdered British leaders.
For this, he
traveled to Ireland,
where there stood a
huge circle of standing
stones raised by giants.
Using secret arts, Merlin
dismantled the circle
and had the stones
shipped to Britain.
[music playing]
At Salisbury Plain,
they were reerected
to enclose the burials.
That is Geoffrey's
explanation for Stonehenge.
RONALD HUTTON: We can only
guess why Geoffrey of Monmouth
believed that the great
stones of Stonehenge
were brought from Ireland.
It must be plain that we know
that the big stones of which he
was speaking are
those things that
are the main body
of the monument,
and they came from Wiltshire
about 15, 20 miles north.
What seems to have happened
is that Geoffreys people,
the people to whom he spoke,
knew of similar big stones
existing on the plain
of Kildare in Ireland.
And so Geoffrey simply
linked them both together.
He wasn't much into archeology.
And it's the only lead he
had that these stones exist
somewhere else, so
it made a good story.
NARRATOR: Merlin went on
to interpret the appearance
of a comet in the
form of a fiery dragon
as heralding the
death of Aurelius,
the ascendancy of Uther, and
the coming of King Arthur.
He then played his
well-known leading part
in bringing about
Arthur's conception
by helping Uther
Pendragon to deceive
the wife of the Duke of
Cornwall into sleeping with him
at the fortress of Tintagel.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY:
The Duke of Cornwall
is away fighting with his forces
somewhere else in Cornwall,
and Uther is changed
by Merlin magically
into the shape of Gorlois,
as the Duke of Cornwall,
[inaudible] gets into
Tintagel and lies
one night with the Duchess
and then goes away.
So she never knows that
it wasn't her own husband.
And that night was
conceived the infant Arthur.
There's
No question in my mind that this
reflects the theme found over
and over again in
ancient Celtic mythology
whereby a King is believed
to be the son of a god--
or the god, Lugh--
who sleeps with the
queen on the night
that the new king is conceived.
And this was a matter
of pride that kings
were each the son of the god.
And that with their
story, it seems to me
is told by Geoffrey
as a rationalization
of a much earlier,
genuinely mythical story.
RONALD HUTTON: By the time
you get to the 12th century,
the developed legend of
Merlin makes it easy to see
where his power comes from.
He is demonic.
His mom was human.
She has a red hot
affair with a demon,
and Merlin is
therefore half a demon.
And so he is bigger and
stronger than a human being.
He can lift gigantic rocks
without any difficulty.
And his magical powers
stream from that.
So he is a being who
exists in the very limits
of the human world.
He is partly something
that isn't human at all.
And that easily
explains what he does.
NARRATOR: Apart from
the Vortigern narrative,
all the other elements
were concocted by Geoffrey
to add to the Merlin legend.
Yet in them, there are echoes
of real events and real people.
Aurelius, for example,
is a corruption
of Ambrosius Aurelianus
Roman-Britain's
last general, and a
contemporary of Vortigern.
Also, the site of the mass
grave of the British leader's
murdered by the Saxons
was said by Geoffrey to be
near Amesbury in Wiltshire.
Amesbury is one of a number
of towns and villages
in southwest England to carry
the distinctive place name
element Ambrose
within it, perhaps
indicating the area controlled
by the British troops
of Ambrosius.
As for Tintagle,
recent archeology
has shown that it was
an important stronghold
with military and
commercial connections
from Roman times onwards.
Not an unsuitable
place for the begetting
of a king like Arthur.
These are faint echoes,
but audible even now.
Geoffrey was just passing
them on without understanding
their significance.
After arranging
Arthur's conception,
Merlin's story in the "Historia"
came to an abrupt end.
For a modern reader, the idea
of losing an essential character
halfway through the book
may come as a shock,
but Geoffrey had no
more to say about him
in that particular book.
So perhaps his original
source material had dried up.
Nor did Geoffrey give any hint
that Merlin and Arthur ever
met.
It would be left to the later
medieval romance writers,
such as Malory,
to promote Merlin
by making him Arthur's
guide and mentor,
and to elaborate on his
supernatural powers.
But Geoffrey could
take the credit
for taking an obscure Welsh
seer and transplanting him
into the fertile soil
of the Arthurian legend.
Geoffrey's other
achievement had been
to present Merlin as a prophet.
Not in the Christian sense
of biblical apocalypse,
but in a general spirit
of visionary foresight.
Merlin made it acceptable
to speculate on the future
without restriction
and opened the door
to an army of astrologers,
seers, and clairvoyants
eager to emulate him.
RONALD HUTTON: One of the most
remarkable things about him
for a student of
medieval literature
is that in many ways, it's a
thoroughly unmedieval figure.
By the time you get to
Malory's time of 15th century,
he just doesn't fit.
He's not a bishop.
He's not a
conventional holy man.
He's actually
something far weirder.
He's a magician.
And only by suggesting that
he's part demon and by getting
rid of him before the end
can you make him digestible
in the Arthurian legend.
MAGNUS: Merlin in the
end the legends is quite
an ambiguous figure anyway.
You have to remember that
Merlin is not Christian.
His powers are
definitely not Christian.
So you're actually dealing
with old world magic
here from the Roman days,
from the Celtic days.
So his place in the
legends is quite strange.
Everything else is
so heavily Christian.
He is not.
But his art, his magical
abilities offer the good.
They counter the magical art
from the bad, the Mordreds
and everything else.
He's a counterbalance.
Because Christianity
doesn't have too much
that is magical in its belief.
They need a magical
counterbalance
to the magic powers of paganism.
And he represents this.
[music playing]
NARRATOR: Towards
the end of his life,
Geoffrey did return to the
story of Merlin once more.
Clearly, his interest
had never waned.
Before his "Historia", he had
lifted an account of the child
prophet and Vortigern from
an earlier ninth century
collection of tales put together
by a Welsh monk, Cornelius.
In this earlier
version, the young seer
was just called Ambrosius.
But for reasons best
known to himself,
Geoffrey decided to
refer to him as Merlin,
who was also called Ambrosius.
He also changed the place
where the boy was found
from Glamorgan to Carmarthen
because he wanted to emphasize
the link between the town's
name, Carmarthen, meaning
Myrddin's Fort, and a prophet
called Myrddin, after whom
it was reputedly named.
At that stage, Geoffrey
probably knew nothing
of the true Myrrdin other
than his fame as a seer,
and his connection with
the town of Carmarthen.
What he did was a
typical writer's trick.
He enriched the tale
of Vortigern's Fortress
by identifying that mysterious
prophet with the boy Ambrosius.
This was to cause him
some embarrassment
when he returned to the subject
of Merlin some years later.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: In the "History
of the Kings of Britain",
Geoffrey makes Merlin
prophesy to King
Vortigern, the British
tyrant living about 450 AD.
But when he comes
some 20 years later,
15 years later to write his
life of Merlin, it's clear--
not that it would be
clear to the listeners
because they wouldn't have
a history handbook by them,
but it's all happening at
the end of the sixth century.
That's nearly 150 years later.
So even by his standards,
they couldn't really
have been contemporaries.
And this was explained away
not towards the end of the 12th
century, it was
meaning there must
really have been two Merlin's.
One who prophesied
to Vertigern, and one
who lived in the
forests and went mad,
according to the Welsh legend.
NARRATOR: Although Geoffrey
could never bring himself
to publicly admit that his
Merlin was based on two quite
separate figures, he put his
freshly acquired knowledge
into a new installment
of Merlin's career,
a long poem in Latin
entitled "Vita Merlini",
or "The Life of Merlin".
Beginning after the
death of Arthur,
the poem restated the
northern tales surrounding
a real historical figure called
Myrddin Wyllt, one of the three
bards of the ancient Britons.
The other two being
Aneirin and Taliesin.
This Merlin is the subject of
many early poems and stories
which tell, with some variation,
of how he was a warrior
bard who fought in a
bloody battle in 573 AD
at a place called Arthuret
right near Carlisle.
[scream]
[swords clash]
It was a battle between two
kings of North Britain, one
Christian and the other pagan.
[swords clash]
It is not clear
which side Myrddin
was on, though the Christian
king was said to hate bards.
[swords clash]
The carnage of that
battle drove him insane,
and he fled into the nearby
great wood of Caledon,
keeping away from human
contact and living
off the fruits of the forest.
[panting]
It was a self-imposed
exile in which
he suffered the
snow and the ice,
and was unable to escape from
his terrified imaginings.
According to one version, he
even slept with his shield
at his shoulder and
his sword on his thigh.
According to another, he had
a little pig for a companion.
In the oldest existing
document of the Myrddin legend,
a text of a poem called "The
Apple Trees" in the Black
Book of Carmarthen.
He was described as
having joined the company
of other wild men, and that he
lived in fear of persecution
by the Christian King Rhydderch.
The amount of detail contained
in these narrative poems
is unbelievably valuable
given that they probably
do give an accurate picture
of sixth century Britain,
with kingdoms breaking
down and constantly
warring with each
other, a society
on the brink of disintegration.
But more exciting still
is the realization
that these documents provide
a very strong basis for belief
in the historical Merlin.
ARTHUR PENDRAGON: With
a lot of the writings,
there is a lot of inspiration
that comes through
and lots of people
write, and write
supposedly from
knowledge, or supposedly
from ancient documents.
Whereas what one
could say in the,
in the modern language of
the Aquarian Age age is they
were channeling.
And because of that, it
doesn't make it any more
or less provable or truth.
What you've got is
knowledge coming
through in one way or another.
It doesn't necessarily
have to come
through by the written word.
It can come through
by the oral tradition,
or it can come through
in a spiritual sense
through channeling.
And I suppose that's
a leap of faith.
RONALD HUTTON:
Ironically, it's much
more likely there
was a real Merlin
originally than a real Arthur.
Because the root
story, the story
of the warrior who goes nuts and
acquires the gift of prophecy
refers to a real battle,
a battle that's given
a date very early chronicles.
It's up on Hadrian's Wall
near modern Carlisle.
You can actually find the ruins
of an old fortress of just
that date in just
the right place
which almost certainly
was the place
over which they were fighting.
And this is a struggle
between two genuine kingdoms,
with what seemed like
historical princes in charge.
So the chance is that the
prince who died actually
had a follower who skedaddled,
and went mad with disgrace.
It's very high indeed.
NARRATOR: It is unfortunate
for the Arthur legend
that this Merlin must
have lived at least
60 years or so after Arthur's
recorded death at Camlann.
So they could never
have met in the flesh.
But their worlds of
existence almost touched,
and that is remarkable enough.
Most people would have been
prepared to put money on Merlin
as a fictional rather
than an actual figure.
As we have shown, the evidence
points in the other direction.
And what is more,
it is backed up
by some interesting
coincidences.
[birds tweeting]
The story of Myrddin as found
in the early Welsh poems
was the embodiment of
a very ancient concept
of the wild man of the woods.
This concept can be found as
far back as the Babylonian epic
of Gilgamesh.
There are also Indian
tales of wild hermits
living in the desert.
One good example of
the archetypal wild man
was the biblical
Nebuchadnezzar, who
was driven out of
the society of men
as a punishment
for his arrogance.
He ate grass, and his hair and
nails grew long and unkempt.
These exiles into wildernesses,
whether of desert,
mountain, or
forest, were usually
prompted by some penitential
or religious urge.
And this was true
also of the legends
of wild men found in Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland.
There is one Scottish version
of the wild man story that
runs so close to
the tale of Myrddin
that it must surely be
cut from the same cloth.
It is to be found in a
12th century biography
the Life of Kentigern
compiled by a Cumbria monk
called Jocelyn.
He understood the old
British languages,
and was able to make sense
of the sixth century world
that Kentigern inhabited.
Kentigern was busy establishing
the Christian church
in the Strathclyde area
of Scotland from about 570
AD to his death in 612 AD.
His patron was the
King of Strathclyde,
Rhydderch, whom the Welsh
Myrddin feared so greatly.
Both Kentigern and Rhydderch
are genuine historical figures.
[foreboding music]
He related that
Saint Kentigern met
a naked hairy madman while
praying in a wood one day.
This madman was called Lailoken.
And he told the Saint that
he had been driven insane
because he had been responsible
for the bloody slaughter of all
the dead at a battle
fought nearby.
RONALD HUTTON: He starts off
as a warrior who goes crazy
because the lord
to whom he's sworn
loyalty has been killed
in a battle from which
the Myrddin figure has run.
His actual name is Lailoken,
and lie low is what he does.
He goes mad in the woods, and
gradually gets the sanity back
but with the force of prophecy.
And he then wanders
back out of the woods,
and is accepted as a
holy man by people.
[birds tweeting]
NARRATOR: Lailoken
later reappeared
at one of Kentigern's masses,
shouting out wild prophecies.
[dramatic music]
He foretold a new uprising
of the Celtic peoples,
and the death of
the King himself.
His last appearance
before Kentigern
was to demand the sacrament,
as he was destined
to die a threefold death
that very day by cajoling,
piercing, and drowning.
Kentigern was unsure of
whether to receive this pagan
lunatic into the
church, but he agreed
to give him the holy sacrament.
[men shouting]
Later that day,
Lailoken was attacked
by shepherds of a
neighboring kingdom who
stoned and beat him to death.
At the moment of death, his
body fell into the River Tweed
where it was impaled
on fishermen's stakes
as he drowned under the water.
The triple death he had seen
for himself was fulfilled.
[waves crashing]
[somber music]
He had asked to be buried
where the River Powsail ran
into the River Tweed
at Drumelzier, a place
with a name possibly derived
from old Celtic words
for the "Dun of Myrddin"
meaning Merlin's Fort.
The name Lailoken has a
parallel Welsh form, Llallogan,
which is coupled with the name
Myrddin in the Welsh poems,
and has the possible
meaning twin or brother.
It seems likely that
the legend of Lailoken
must have migrated to
Wales from the north
at some time between the
sixth and 11th centuries.
It took root in the
kingdom of Dyfid,
and the name Myrddin
replaced that of Lailoken.
How this happened is
mystery, but it all
adds up to an impressive body
of evidence for the real Merlin,
with so many connecting pieces
of the verifiable historic past
in their proper places.
[eerie music]
It is therefore possible to
say with confidence that Merlin
existed as a bard and a
prophet in the sixth century,
that he was probably
not a Christian,
and that he was in
some way attached
to the retinue of the pagan
King of Carlisle, Quenderlau.
Most importantly, he was
known by some Saint Kentigern,
and hated by the Christian
King of Strathclyde.
The sum of these facts and
implications is inescapable.
Merlin as Myrddin had his origin
in the old Celtic kingdoms
of the north, not in Wales.
Myrddin has been so
intimately linked
with Britain and the British
people for so many centuries,
that it is not
surprising that a very
old Welsh text describes
Britain as "Clas Myrddin"
or Merlin's enclosure.
This has the sound
of an ancient claim
to territory and authority, like
the force exerted by the druids
of the ancient Celtic world.
To complete our
search for Merlin,
we need to look at the powerful
currents of ritual and belief
swirling beneath the surface.
Because, unlike stories
and even history,
they rarely change
in the human psyche.
We need to understand what
drives the ancient traditions.
[rousing music]
[sounds of thunder]
In a glass case in
the British Museum,
the crouching figure of a
bearded man nearly 2000 years
dead sleeps on in a prison
with invisible walls,
buffered with air.
Though strangely
flattened, his features
are startlingly recognizable.
His skin has taken on the dark
stain of the peat bog which
preserved his body in
its dark immortality
as the centuries
pressed down on him.
[foreboding music]
He was found on Friday
the 1st of August, 1984
on Lindow Moss near Manchester.
All the modern science that
could be brought to bear on him
was deployed in order
to find out his secrets.
Soon it had been established
that he lived and died
in the first century
AD, that he had been
in prime physical condition,
his hair, beard and nails
well trimmed and
beautifully manicured.
He had eaten a mouthful or so
of a burnt portion of barley
and bannock in which tiny
particles of mistletoe pollen
were present.
He was naked from the
waist up, at least,
and wore an armband of fox fur.
He had received three carefully
aimed blows to the head.
[sword slicing]
His jugular vein had
been precisely severed
to drain his body of blood.
[sword slicing]
He had been garroted
with a sinew cord which
had three knots it,
first choking him,
and then breaking his neck.
Finally, he had been pitched
forward into a pool of water
about four feet deep
as a symbolic drowning,
before he was given a final
resting place in the peat bog.
[somber music]
He died a triple
death justice Myrddin
Wyllt did 500 years later.
RONALD HUTTON: In 1984,
the well-preserved body
of half a man was found in
a peat bog in Northeastern
Cheshire near
Manchester, and was
interpreted by some as
a sacrificial victim
of druids in the Iron Age.
And therefore some
people have linked
him to Merlin because
some people now
link druids to Merlin.
In fact, the evidence
is even more difficult
than might at first appear.
Some pathologists have
challenged the idea
that there were a number
of wounds upon him, which
supports the idea of sacrifice.
The dating is haywire
because bodies
deposited in peat bogs
can take on the data
of the peat around them.
And so we may be
looking at Merlin,
we may be looking at the
victim of a druid sacrifice,
we may be looking at a mugging
victim who was chucked in there
by robbers and stripped
of his clothing,
at any time in
centuries on either side
of the date of the druids.
We just don't know.
[chatter]
NARRATOR: Clues
about the real Merlin
come from a Celtic world,
a world which first came
to the attention of
classical commentators
several hundred
years before Christ.
Once, it had stretched from
the Black Sea in the east
to Ireland in the west, from
the shores of the Baltic
down through to
the Mediterranean.
Though it was never
an empire, or even
a federation of
nations, just tribes
of people with a shared
language and cultural
traditions in common, people
who traded and communicated
across a continent.
The Celts had a great
feeling for the number three.
It reverberated throughout
their lives, their decoration,
their art, their poetry.
Three classes of learned men,
druids, bards, and seers.
Triskeles on their horse
trappings, their weapons.
The past, the
present, the future.
Cascades of meaningful threes
in everything they saw and did.
Including a sacrifice
to appease their gods.
The triple death was a special
ritual, heavy with meaning,
and not done routinely.
ARTHUR PENDRAGON: The three
goes back to what, what we now
term Maiden, Mother, and Crone.
Father, Son, Holy Ghost.
Truth, honor, and justice.
It doesn't matter.
There is a ways a triad
within the whole pagan thing.
There is a triad.
And the way we can look at
that from a very personal point
of view is there is
always the male or female,
there is always the
sun or the moon,
there are always the opposites,
but in order to observe and see
the opposites, one has
to stand at a third point
in trigonometry.
Therefore there
is always a triad,
and there is always three
bards, there is always
three magicians, there is
always three Arthurian ages,
there is always three.
NARRATOR: Celtic society
was held together
by the power of the druids.
They were not just
priests, but statesmen
who controlled the tribes.
Judges who mediated
between chiefs and kings.
Teachers and bards who held the
secrets of the Celtic people
in their heads, and pass them
on by word of mouth only.
[men shouting]
They dealt in ancient wisdom,
and their authority was
greater than that of any king.
They had access to other worlds.
All of these attributes
can be identified
in the career and
life of Merlin,
whether fictional or real.
He was a wise man, a
prophet with second sight,
a trusted counselor to Arthur.
And in the northern tales
especially, his druidic aspects
seem all too obvious.
He was a pagan in
fear of persecution.
He lived apart as a hermit, in
a wilderness with only creatures
to talk to.
He had abandoned his role as
advisor and bard to the King
through madness.
In the fifth and
sixth centuries,
the Roman decline in Britain
had caused an upsurge
of Celtic traditions.
And despite the overtly
Christian veneer,
the old ways which it
never quite disappeared
found new paths
back into society.
Once again, no king
would have felt
complete without his druid
advisor, bard, or seer.
This is the echo we
hear in Merlin's cave.
[men shouting]
This is why the Romans tried to
wipe out the entire druid class
in Britain.
Not because of any
religious squeamishness,
but because they knew who held
the real power in the land.
Without the druids, the
Celtic tribes were a people
with their heads cut off.
RONALD HUTTON: There is
pretty well no chance at all
that Merlin was a druid.
There is no evidence
that druids existed
in Britain after the
first century of this era.
They stay much
longer in Ireland,
but nobody's ever claimed
that Merlin was Irish.
So the tendency to identify
Merlin with a druid
is an example of the
modern way in which we try
and contextualize our early
Christian figures as something
pagan, to get a sense
of something rooted
and organic and
natural continuous
in an island in which
our present culture
is anything but any of those.
MAGNUS: The fact that there is
somebody in Romano-Britain that
is claiming to be
a druid would have
almost been a death sentence.
The Romans went out
of their way to try
and exterminate the druids.
What could have
actually happened
is he could have taken
on almost druid abilities
without the name because
he was in contact
with the spirits of the wood,
the spirits in the stream.
So it would look to us
as if he was a druid.
The distinction,
then, would have been
very startlingly different.
He would have not
have claimed to have
been a druid around
anybody that was
related to the Romano-British.
They were not keen
on druids at all.
[sword slicing]
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: There
is no record of toll
of any violent confrontation
between Christians and druids
in Britain, and no special
reason to think that there
was a great confrontation.
So it's quite conceivable
he was a druid,
perhaps one might even call
him the last of the druids.
It would be a mistake to think
that because Britain had become
predominantly Christian
in the sixth century
that paganism simply vanished.
[inspiring music]
NARRATOR: Merlin manages to
be both sorcerer and priest
at once, following a
lonely path of knowledge
like his fellow
druids before him.
What draws us to him,
finally, is our inability
to keep him in our sights,
like the stag in the forest,
or the salmon upstream.
RONALD HUTTON: Merlin's
basic pulling power
is that he stands in
the very limits of what
is potential to human beings.
And given the fact that, to our
modern technology, two things
are still elusive, one
is knowledge of death,
and the other is magic in
the old fashioned sense.
Somebody who has power over
magic is absolutely dazzling.
ARTHUR PENDRAGON: We see
Merlin all around us.
We see Merlin as Gandalf
in Lord of the Rings.
We see Merlin everywhere, much
the same as we see Arthur.
What we know of either of them
as a person is very little.
But what we know of their
ethics, and what we do know
is they seem to
work well together.
[birds chirping]
[solemn music]
NARRATOR: The name of Merlin
is forever linked in our minds
to King Arthur.
One without the other
would be unthinkable.
The king could not rule without
his wizard, his chief counselor
to guide and advise him.
Yet until the 12th century,
they existed in folktales
as separate,
independent characters
with no connection whatsoever.
Of the two, it is Merlin who
seems to belong completely
in the land of myth, whereas
Arthur crosses from history
to myth and back again.
Yet there is more
actual documentary
support for Merlin's
historical existence
than there is for Arthur's.
The magician still has
the power to surprise us.
[solemn music]
Everyone knows about Merlin.
He is the archetypal
sorcerer, magus, seer.
He has supernatural
powers, can see the future.
possessing wisdom and
cunning beyond human limits,
he knows the secrets
of the universe
and holds the key
to the elements.
He is a shapeshifter who can fly
and become invisible at will.
He speaks the languages
of all living things,
and understands the
spirits of land and water.
Time is no barrier to him.
There is a prevalent image
of him as a very old man,
with flowing robes,
white hair and beard.
This is how he has evolved.
But it is vastly different
from his earliest appearances
in the ancient Welsh
legends, where he is instead
a wise child with
no Earthly father,
a precociously gifted youth,
a wild man of the woods.
RONALD HUTTON: Merlin's role
in the whole Arthurian legend
is to add the biggest single
injection of supernatural glitz
into the story.
He is there to provide
a kind of third level
between Arthur and his
world and the world
of God, Jesus, and Heaven.
In other words, that
kind of unexpected,
that mysterious
factor in life which
some call destiny, some call
magic, some call sorcery.
Merlin is not only
the representative,
he's actually in control.
ARTHUR PENDRAGON:
There is always
somebody in the wings who
is advising a chieftain
or a king about the politics.
You can't do that.
You can't do that.
There is also a magical adviser.
And in the case of a pagan
king, there would be a Merlin.
MAGNUS: Merlin
actually represents
most of Dark Age life.
He is there.
He believes in the mysticism.
He believes in the spirits
of the woods, the trees.
But there is also Christianity.
So it proves that Dark
Age life wasn't a defined
one thing or the other.
Not definitely Christian
as we understand it.
Not definitely pagan
as we understand it.
You've got a happy
mix of both religions.
And that is
represented by Merlin.
[music playing]
NARRATOR: The venerable advisor
we recognize as Arthur's guide
and mentor is largely a
Victorian construction, thanks
to Tennyson and his
ideals of the king
and the artistic
Pre-Raphaelite Movement.
That Merlin is reminiscent
of some ancient schoolmaster,
respected, but eccentric.
We have affection
for the old boy.
But we have no idea how long
he has occupied his position,
nor how he got there
in the first place.
This program will attempt to
trace the origins of Merlin,
the master illusionist.
[music playing]
Merlin emerged into the
public eye in the 12th century
as if from nowhere.
This was thanks to
Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Geoffrey was born in Wales
around the year 1100.
As a child, he must have been
captivated by the ancient Welsh
tales of heroes
and kings, monsters
and gods, bloody battles
and weird enchantments.
Not surprisingly,
he grew up to be
a natural storyteller
who liked to think
of himself as a historian.
By entering the church
as a teaching canon,
he was able to follow
his great love of writing
and the study of ancient books.
[clerics chanting]
At this time, the
church was undoubtedly
the greatest guardian
of all manner
of manuscripts and texts.
So Geoffrey's writing career was
never short of source material.
And of course, the
tales of his childhood
still rang in his ears like
the sound of submerged bells.
As a youth, Geoffrey was very
familiar with stories and poems
about a seer called Myrddin.
As his first literary effort,
he used these to put together
a small book,
which was, he said,
a direct translation of
this seer's prophecies
from the old Welsh into Latin.
Of course, Geoffrey's educated
and influential readership
would have been as
well able to read Latin
as their own Norman French.
In fact, to write in Latin was
the only option for an author
seeking popular success.
It was the universal
language of literature
and the hallmark of
a proper education.
In the process of
translation, Geoffrey
turned the name
Myrddin into Merlinus,
known to us as Merlin.
He could have substituted a
simple D for the Welsh double D
and added the Latin suffix us.
Myrddin would then
have become Merdinus,
and the prophet, as
well as Geoffrey, would
have been a laughing stock.
Merda is the Latin for
excrement, to put it politely.
Merdinus would have been
immortalized as the shitty one.
His name would almost
literally have stunk.
Geoffrey was far
too astute an author
to burden such a
compelling figure
as Merlin with a comedy name.
This little book was called
"The Prophesies of Merlin"
or "Prophetia Merlini".
And the public lapped it up.
Not as a work of fiction,
but as an actual book
of predictions about the future,
the Nostradamus of its day.
So respected was
this book that he
continued to be consulted
in all seriousness
for several centuries.
That is, until the real
Nostradamus came on the scene.
In the Middle Ages, people
believed the prophecy, read it.
And indeed, it was even
used for political warfare,
so to speak, when Edward I
claimed the throne of Scotland.
Among other documents, which
his learned clerics consulted,
was the "Prophecy of
Merlin" and Geoffrey
of Monmouth's
history, which was you
could interpret it
which way you liked.
It says things like, when
the boar shall uproot
the forests of Caledonia, then
the eagle shall fly forth,
et cetera.
And they were clearly
intentionally vague.
NARRATOR: For a long while,
interested in Merlin's
prophecies did not fade away.
In Italy, Merlin was
even given equal footing
with the biblical Isaiah.
Scholars analyzed his
sayings exhaustively.
Other writers produced further
fake prophecies attributed
to Merlin, a practice
debunked by Shakespeare
when he wrote "King Lear".
Even as late as
the 17th century,
the astrologer
William Lilly chose
to publish his own predictions
under the pseudonym
Merlinus Anglicus Julia.
Naturally, Geoffrey made
sure that Merlin, speaking
from centuries past, gave
some uncannily accurate
prophecies about future events.
But he also took care so
that much of what Merlin had
supposedly foreseen
was ambiguous, obscure,
or downright indecipherable.
As ever, Geoffrey probably did
include some factual material.
But his method was to
put pseudo prophecies
in the mouth of Merlin,
things that had already
happened by Geoffrey's time.
Like the loss of Henry I's son
in the disaster of the sinking
of the White Ship.
To his readers, that
must have made Merlin
look very genuine as a prophet.
It lent credibility
to the gibberish
that Geoffrey also
made Merlin utter
in terms of the further future.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: In the earliest
form of such prophecies--
and one of the
early Merlin poems
is cast like this-- is
where he prophecized
the succession of kings
who was yet to come
and reign over the island.
There were surviving
versions, of course,
like most prophecies,
worked out backwards.
Written at the time of
the last king on the list,
and then a prophet
in earlier times
is made to foretell the
kings who will come.
And no doubt, that happened.
But one can't say, this must
go back to some original form.
And presumably, two genuine
prophecies that were
uttered, how far those
prophecies were received.
Authentic inspiration or
accurate, one can't say.
NARRATOR: Strangely, not
one of Geoffrey's readers
ever saw through his
prophecies after the event.
Here is an example of Geoffrey's
portentous-sounding prophecies.
A giant, snow white in
color and gleaming bright,
will beget a people
which is radiant.
Maybe Geoffrey got the symbolism
from an authentic text,
but it is impossible
to see where
truth ends and fantasy begins,
so expertly did he mix the two.
But we must remember
that Geoffrey did not
pluck Merlin out of thin air.
Myrddin was a genuine
historical figure as
far as Geoffrey was concerned.
He invented the name and
initiated the fame that
was to turn the profit of
ancient Welsh tradition
into an immortal magician.
The book of the
prophecies of Merlin
was so successful that
Geoffrey incorporated it
into his new work.
Called the "Historia
regum Britanniae"--
or "History of the
Kings of Britain"--
it purported to reveal the
entire early history of Britain
with particular
emphasis on King Arthur.
Though, in fact,
much of it was legend
dressed as history by Geoffrey.
Even so, this was to
be one of the most
important and influential
books of the Middle Ages,
with far-reaching effects on
the course of real history.
Into this book Geoffrey inserted
Merlin and his prophecies,
adding other information
about his life.
In this way, Merlin reached
an even larger audience.
And it was the popularity
of the "Historia"
that caused his fame to grow
and to spread all across Europe.
More importantly, it
linked him with King Arthur
for the first time.
And that proved to
be a partnership
more powerful and
enduring than Geoffrey
could ever have imagined.
[music playing]
Geoffrey put Merlin's
first appearance
at the time of Vortigern
a chieftain in the days
after the Romans left.
As a usurping leader of
the Britain's, Vortigern
had made the fatal mistake
of inviting Saxon mercenaries
into the country as auxiliary
troops against an alliance
of enemies from the north.
Predictably, the Saxons
didn't just do the job
they had been hired for.
They stayed on and settled
more and more of their people
on the lands they had
been paid to defend.
Finally, Vortigern
lost control of them
as they went on a rampage,
massacring the British
and despoiling the country.
So Vortigern himself had to flee
to the safety of the mountains
of Northwest Wales.
His magicians advised him
to build a strong fortress.
But the wall was no sooner built
then it collapsed each night.
In the face of this
bad omen, the magicians
prescribed the blood of
a boy without a father
to be sprinkled on
the foundation stones.
In nearby Carmarthen, they
found the young Merlin,
whose mother was the
daughter of the king
of the Welsh kingdom of Dyfed.
She had been impregnated
by an incubus demon
while living with the
nuns at a local convent.
So Merlin had no
Earthly father, which
qualified him for the role
of sacrificial victim.
The strange circumstances
of his conception
meant that he was
also a wonder child,
product of a union between the
Earthly and the supernatural.
And his powers were soon
demonstrated before Vortigern.
Merlin demonstrated
the shortcomings
of the local magicians
by correctly identifying
the true reason for
the collapsing walls,
an underground pool
in which lay two
dragons, one red the other
white, sealed in stone.
Once the pool was drained,
the dragons fought.
And as they struggled for
supremacy, a spirit of prophecy
took hold of Merlin.
Under its influence, he
uttered many strange sayings.
These were the "Prophetia
Merlini" that Geoffrey
had put in his first book.
[music playing]
Merlin explained the red
dragon symbolized the Britons.
And the white one was
their enemy, the Saxons.
The white dragon would
prevail for a while,
but ultimately, the red
dragon would throw it back
across the sea it came from.
He foresaw the rise of a
leader who would hold back
the invaders for a
time, meaning Arthur,
not yet born at that point.
And lastly, after many
cryptic predictions,
he warned Vortigern that the
rightful princes, Aurelius
and Uther, exiled offspring
of the last Roman ruler
Constantine, were
returning to claim
back the kingdom and his life.
Then he drove Vortigern from
the site of the fortress
and took it for himself.
This act of violence
is commemorated
at Dinas Emrys, or the
Ambrosius Fort near Beddgelert
in North Wales.
The rest of the prophecy
was swiftly fulfilled.
Vortigern was
killed and Aurelius
took back the kingship.
Already, Merlin had proved
himself, even as a youth,
to be greater than any
mere court magician.
After establishing
his credentials,
Merlin helped the
new King Aurelius
to put up a fitting memorial
over the mass grave of
the murdered British leaders.
For this, he
traveled to Ireland,
where there stood a
huge circle of standing
stones raised by giants.
Using secret arts, Merlin
dismantled the circle
and had the stones
shipped to Britain.
[music playing]
At Salisbury Plain,
they were reerected
to enclose the burials.
That is Geoffrey's
explanation for Stonehenge.
RONALD HUTTON: We can only
guess why Geoffrey of Monmouth
believed that the great
stones of Stonehenge
were brought from Ireland.
It must be plain that we know
that the big stones of which he
was speaking are
those things that
are the main body
of the monument,
and they came from Wiltshire
about 15, 20 miles north.
What seems to have happened
is that Geoffreys people,
the people to whom he spoke,
knew of similar big stones
existing on the plain
of Kildare in Ireland.
And so Geoffrey simply
linked them both together.
He wasn't much into archeology.
And it's the only lead he
had that these stones exist
somewhere else, so
it made a good story.
NARRATOR: Merlin went on
to interpret the appearance
of a comet in the
form of a fiery dragon
as heralding the
death of Aurelius,
the ascendancy of Uther, and
the coming of King Arthur.
He then played his
well-known leading part
in bringing about
Arthur's conception
by helping Uther
Pendragon to deceive
the wife of the Duke of
Cornwall into sleeping with him
at the fortress of Tintagel.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY:
The Duke of Cornwall
is away fighting with his forces
somewhere else in Cornwall,
and Uther is changed
by Merlin magically
into the shape of Gorlois,
as the Duke of Cornwall,
[inaudible] gets into
Tintagel and lies
one night with the Duchess
and then goes away.
So she never knows that
it wasn't her own husband.
And that night was
conceived the infant Arthur.
There's
No question in my mind that this
reflects the theme found over
and over again in
ancient Celtic mythology
whereby a King is believed
to be the son of a god--
or the god, Lugh--
who sleeps with the
queen on the night
that the new king is conceived.
And this was a matter
of pride that kings
were each the son of the god.
And that with their
story, it seems to me
is told by Geoffrey
as a rationalization
of a much earlier,
genuinely mythical story.
RONALD HUTTON: By the time
you get to the 12th century,
the developed legend of
Merlin makes it easy to see
where his power comes from.
He is demonic.
His mom was human.
She has a red hot
affair with a demon,
and Merlin is
therefore half a demon.
And so he is bigger and
stronger than a human being.
He can lift gigantic rocks
without any difficulty.
And his magical powers
stream from that.
So he is a being who
exists in the very limits
of the human world.
He is partly something
that isn't human at all.
And that easily
explains what he does.
NARRATOR: Apart from
the Vortigern narrative,
all the other elements
were concocted by Geoffrey
to add to the Merlin legend.
Yet in them, there are echoes
of real events and real people.
Aurelius, for example,
is a corruption
of Ambrosius Aurelianus
Roman-Britain's
last general, and a
contemporary of Vortigern.
Also, the site of the mass
grave of the British leader's
murdered by the Saxons
was said by Geoffrey to be
near Amesbury in Wiltshire.
Amesbury is one of a number
of towns and villages
in southwest England to carry
the distinctive place name
element Ambrose
within it, perhaps
indicating the area controlled
by the British troops
of Ambrosius.
As for Tintagle,
recent archeology
has shown that it was
an important stronghold
with military and
commercial connections
from Roman times onwards.
Not an unsuitable
place for the begetting
of a king like Arthur.
These are faint echoes,
but audible even now.
Geoffrey was just passing
them on without understanding
their significance.
After arranging
Arthur's conception,
Merlin's story in the "Historia"
came to an abrupt end.
For a modern reader, the idea
of losing an essential character
halfway through the book
may come as a shock,
but Geoffrey had no
more to say about him
in that particular book.
So perhaps his original
source material had dried up.
Nor did Geoffrey give any hint
that Merlin and Arthur ever
met.
It would be left to the later
medieval romance writers,
such as Malory,
to promote Merlin
by making him Arthur's
guide and mentor,
and to elaborate on his
supernatural powers.
But Geoffrey could
take the credit
for taking an obscure Welsh
seer and transplanting him
into the fertile soil
of the Arthurian legend.
Geoffrey's other
achievement had been
to present Merlin as a prophet.
Not in the Christian sense
of biblical apocalypse,
but in a general spirit
of visionary foresight.
Merlin made it acceptable
to speculate on the future
without restriction
and opened the door
to an army of astrologers,
seers, and clairvoyants
eager to emulate him.
RONALD HUTTON: One of the most
remarkable things about him
for a student of
medieval literature
is that in many ways, it's a
thoroughly unmedieval figure.
By the time you get to
Malory's time of 15th century,
he just doesn't fit.
He's not a bishop.
He's not a
conventional holy man.
He's actually
something far weirder.
He's a magician.
And only by suggesting that
he's part demon and by getting
rid of him before the end
can you make him digestible
in the Arthurian legend.
MAGNUS: Merlin in the
end the legends is quite
an ambiguous figure anyway.
You have to remember that
Merlin is not Christian.
His powers are
definitely not Christian.
So you're actually dealing
with old world magic
here from the Roman days,
from the Celtic days.
So his place in the
legends is quite strange.
Everything else is
so heavily Christian.
He is not.
But his art, his magical
abilities offer the good.
They counter the magical art
from the bad, the Mordreds
and everything else.
He's a counterbalance.
Because Christianity
doesn't have too much
that is magical in its belief.
They need a magical
counterbalance
to the magic powers of paganism.
And he represents this.
[music playing]
NARRATOR: Towards
the end of his life,
Geoffrey did return to the
story of Merlin once more.
Clearly, his interest
had never waned.
Before his "Historia", he had
lifted an account of the child
prophet and Vortigern from
an earlier ninth century
collection of tales put together
by a Welsh monk, Cornelius.
In this earlier
version, the young seer
was just called Ambrosius.
But for reasons best
known to himself,
Geoffrey decided to
refer to him as Merlin,
who was also called Ambrosius.
He also changed the place
where the boy was found
from Glamorgan to Carmarthen
because he wanted to emphasize
the link between the town's
name, Carmarthen, meaning
Myrddin's Fort, and a prophet
called Myrddin, after whom
it was reputedly named.
At that stage, Geoffrey
probably knew nothing
of the true Myrrdin other
than his fame as a seer,
and his connection with
the town of Carmarthen.
What he did was a
typical writer's trick.
He enriched the tale
of Vortigern's Fortress
by identifying that mysterious
prophet with the boy Ambrosius.
This was to cause him
some embarrassment
when he returned to the subject
of Merlin some years later.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: In the "History
of the Kings of Britain",
Geoffrey makes Merlin
prophesy to King
Vortigern, the British
tyrant living about 450 AD.
But when he comes
some 20 years later,
15 years later to write his
life of Merlin, it's clear--
not that it would be
clear to the listeners
because they wouldn't have
a history handbook by them,
but it's all happening at
the end of the sixth century.
That's nearly 150 years later.
So even by his standards,
they couldn't really
have been contemporaries.
And this was explained away
not towards the end of the 12th
century, it was
meaning there must
really have been two Merlin's.
One who prophesied
to Vertigern, and one
who lived in the
forests and went mad,
according to the Welsh legend.
NARRATOR: Although Geoffrey
could never bring himself
to publicly admit that his
Merlin was based on two quite
separate figures, he put his
freshly acquired knowledge
into a new installment
of Merlin's career,
a long poem in Latin
entitled "Vita Merlini",
or "The Life of Merlin".
Beginning after the
death of Arthur,
the poem restated the
northern tales surrounding
a real historical figure called
Myrddin Wyllt, one of the three
bards of the ancient Britons.
The other two being
Aneirin and Taliesin.
This Merlin is the subject of
many early poems and stories
which tell, with some variation,
of how he was a warrior
bard who fought in a
bloody battle in 573 AD
at a place called Arthuret
right near Carlisle.
[scream]
[swords clash]
It was a battle between two
kings of North Britain, one
Christian and the other pagan.
[swords clash]
It is not clear
which side Myrddin
was on, though the Christian
king was said to hate bards.
[swords clash]
The carnage of that
battle drove him insane,
and he fled into the nearby
great wood of Caledon,
keeping away from human
contact and living
off the fruits of the forest.
[panting]
It was a self-imposed
exile in which
he suffered the
snow and the ice,
and was unable to escape from
his terrified imaginings.
According to one version, he
even slept with his shield
at his shoulder and
his sword on his thigh.
According to another, he had
a little pig for a companion.
In the oldest existing
document of the Myrddin legend,
a text of a poem called "The
Apple Trees" in the Black
Book of Carmarthen.
He was described as
having joined the company
of other wild men, and that he
lived in fear of persecution
by the Christian King Rhydderch.
The amount of detail contained
in these narrative poems
is unbelievably valuable
given that they probably
do give an accurate picture
of sixth century Britain,
with kingdoms breaking
down and constantly
warring with each
other, a society
on the brink of disintegration.
But more exciting still
is the realization
that these documents provide
a very strong basis for belief
in the historical Merlin.
ARTHUR PENDRAGON: With
a lot of the writings,
there is a lot of inspiration
that comes through
and lots of people
write, and write
supposedly from
knowledge, or supposedly
from ancient documents.
Whereas what one
could say in the,
in the modern language of
the Aquarian Age age is they
were channeling.
And because of that, it
doesn't make it any more
or less provable or truth.
What you've got is
knowledge coming
through in one way or another.
It doesn't necessarily
have to come
through by the written word.
It can come through
by the oral tradition,
or it can come through
in a spiritual sense
through channeling.
And I suppose that's
a leap of faith.
RONALD HUTTON:
Ironically, it's much
more likely there
was a real Merlin
originally than a real Arthur.
Because the root
story, the story
of the warrior who goes nuts and
acquires the gift of prophecy
refers to a real battle,
a battle that's given
a date very early chronicles.
It's up on Hadrian's Wall
near modern Carlisle.
You can actually find the ruins
of an old fortress of just
that date in just
the right place
which almost certainly
was the place
over which they were fighting.
And this is a struggle
between two genuine kingdoms,
with what seemed like
historical princes in charge.
So the chance is that the
prince who died actually
had a follower who skedaddled,
and went mad with disgrace.
It's very high indeed.
NARRATOR: It is unfortunate
for the Arthur legend
that this Merlin must
have lived at least
60 years or so after Arthur's
recorded death at Camlann.
So they could never
have met in the flesh.
But their worlds of
existence almost touched,
and that is remarkable enough.
Most people would have been
prepared to put money on Merlin
as a fictional rather
than an actual figure.
As we have shown, the evidence
points in the other direction.
And what is more,
it is backed up
by some interesting
coincidences.
[birds tweeting]
The story of Myrddin as found
in the early Welsh poems
was the embodiment of
a very ancient concept
of the wild man of the woods.
This concept can be found as
far back as the Babylonian epic
of Gilgamesh.
There are also Indian
tales of wild hermits
living in the desert.
One good example of
the archetypal wild man
was the biblical
Nebuchadnezzar, who
was driven out of
the society of men
as a punishment
for his arrogance.
He ate grass, and his hair and
nails grew long and unkempt.
These exiles into wildernesses,
whether of desert,
mountain, or
forest, were usually
prompted by some penitential
or religious urge.
And this was true
also of the legends
of wild men found in Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland.
There is one Scottish version
of the wild man story that
runs so close to
the tale of Myrddin
that it must surely be
cut from the same cloth.
It is to be found in a
12th century biography
the Life of Kentigern
compiled by a Cumbria monk
called Jocelyn.
He understood the old
British languages,
and was able to make sense
of the sixth century world
that Kentigern inhabited.
Kentigern was busy establishing
the Christian church
in the Strathclyde area
of Scotland from about 570
AD to his death in 612 AD.
His patron was the
King of Strathclyde,
Rhydderch, whom the Welsh
Myrddin feared so greatly.
Both Kentigern and Rhydderch
are genuine historical figures.
[foreboding music]
He related that
Saint Kentigern met
a naked hairy madman while
praying in a wood one day.
This madman was called Lailoken.
And he told the Saint that
he had been driven insane
because he had been responsible
for the bloody slaughter of all
the dead at a battle
fought nearby.
RONALD HUTTON: He starts off
as a warrior who goes crazy
because the lord
to whom he's sworn
loyalty has been killed
in a battle from which
the Myrddin figure has run.
His actual name is Lailoken,
and lie low is what he does.
He goes mad in the woods, and
gradually gets the sanity back
but with the force of prophecy.
And he then wanders
back out of the woods,
and is accepted as a
holy man by people.
[birds tweeting]
NARRATOR: Lailoken
later reappeared
at one of Kentigern's masses,
shouting out wild prophecies.
[dramatic music]
He foretold a new uprising
of the Celtic peoples,
and the death of
the King himself.
His last appearance
before Kentigern
was to demand the sacrament,
as he was destined
to die a threefold death
that very day by cajoling,
piercing, and drowning.
Kentigern was unsure of
whether to receive this pagan
lunatic into the
church, but he agreed
to give him the holy sacrament.
[men shouting]
Later that day,
Lailoken was attacked
by shepherds of a
neighboring kingdom who
stoned and beat him to death.
At the moment of death, his
body fell into the River Tweed
where it was impaled
on fishermen's stakes
as he drowned under the water.
The triple death he had seen
for himself was fulfilled.
[waves crashing]
[somber music]
He had asked to be buried
where the River Powsail ran
into the River Tweed
at Drumelzier, a place
with a name possibly derived
from old Celtic words
for the "Dun of Myrddin"
meaning Merlin's Fort.
The name Lailoken has a
parallel Welsh form, Llallogan,
which is coupled with the name
Myrddin in the Welsh poems,
and has the possible
meaning twin or brother.
It seems likely that
the legend of Lailoken
must have migrated to
Wales from the north
at some time between the
sixth and 11th centuries.
It took root in the
kingdom of Dyfid,
and the name Myrddin
replaced that of Lailoken.
How this happened is
mystery, but it all
adds up to an impressive body
of evidence for the real Merlin,
with so many connecting pieces
of the verifiable historic past
in their proper places.
[eerie music]
It is therefore possible to
say with confidence that Merlin
existed as a bard and a
prophet in the sixth century,
that he was probably
not a Christian,
and that he was in
some way attached
to the retinue of the pagan
King of Carlisle, Quenderlau.
Most importantly, he was
known by some Saint Kentigern,
and hated by the Christian
King of Strathclyde.
The sum of these facts and
implications is inescapable.
Merlin as Myrddin had his origin
in the old Celtic kingdoms
of the north, not in Wales.
Myrddin has been so
intimately linked
with Britain and the British
people for so many centuries,
that it is not
surprising that a very
old Welsh text describes
Britain as "Clas Myrddin"
or Merlin's enclosure.
This has the sound
of an ancient claim
to territory and authority, like
the force exerted by the druids
of the ancient Celtic world.
To complete our
search for Merlin,
we need to look at the powerful
currents of ritual and belief
swirling beneath the surface.
Because, unlike stories
and even history,
they rarely change
in the human psyche.
We need to understand what
drives the ancient traditions.
[rousing music]
[sounds of thunder]
In a glass case in
the British Museum,
the crouching figure of a
bearded man nearly 2000 years
dead sleeps on in a prison
with invisible walls,
buffered with air.
Though strangely
flattened, his features
are startlingly recognizable.
His skin has taken on the dark
stain of the peat bog which
preserved his body in
its dark immortality
as the centuries
pressed down on him.
[foreboding music]
He was found on Friday
the 1st of August, 1984
on Lindow Moss near Manchester.
All the modern science that
could be brought to bear on him
was deployed in order
to find out his secrets.
Soon it had been established
that he lived and died
in the first century
AD, that he had been
in prime physical condition,
his hair, beard and nails
well trimmed and
beautifully manicured.
He had eaten a mouthful or so
of a burnt portion of barley
and bannock in which tiny
particles of mistletoe pollen
were present.
He was naked from the
waist up, at least,
and wore an armband of fox fur.
He had received three carefully
aimed blows to the head.
[sword slicing]
His jugular vein had
been precisely severed
to drain his body of blood.
[sword slicing]
He had been garroted
with a sinew cord which
had three knots it,
first choking him,
and then breaking his neck.
Finally, he had been pitched
forward into a pool of water
about four feet deep
as a symbolic drowning,
before he was given a final
resting place in the peat bog.
[somber music]
He died a triple
death justice Myrddin
Wyllt did 500 years later.
RONALD HUTTON: In 1984,
the well-preserved body
of half a man was found in
a peat bog in Northeastern
Cheshire near
Manchester, and was
interpreted by some as
a sacrificial victim
of druids in the Iron Age.
And therefore some
people have linked
him to Merlin because
some people now
link druids to Merlin.
In fact, the evidence
is even more difficult
than might at first appear.
Some pathologists have
challenged the idea
that there were a number
of wounds upon him, which
supports the idea of sacrifice.
The dating is haywire
because bodies
deposited in peat bogs
can take on the data
of the peat around them.
And so we may be
looking at Merlin,
we may be looking at the
victim of a druid sacrifice,
we may be looking at a mugging
victim who was chucked in there
by robbers and stripped
of his clothing,
at any time in
centuries on either side
of the date of the druids.
We just don't know.
[chatter]
NARRATOR: Clues
about the real Merlin
come from a Celtic world,
a world which first came
to the attention of
classical commentators
several hundred
years before Christ.
Once, it had stretched from
the Black Sea in the east
to Ireland in the west, from
the shores of the Baltic
down through to
the Mediterranean.
Though it was never
an empire, or even
a federation of
nations, just tribes
of people with a shared
language and cultural
traditions in common, people
who traded and communicated
across a continent.
The Celts had a great
feeling for the number three.
It reverberated throughout
their lives, their decoration,
their art, their poetry.
Three classes of learned men,
druids, bards, and seers.
Triskeles on their horse
trappings, their weapons.
The past, the
present, the future.
Cascades of meaningful threes
in everything they saw and did.
Including a sacrifice
to appease their gods.
The triple death was a special
ritual, heavy with meaning,
and not done routinely.
ARTHUR PENDRAGON: The three
goes back to what, what we now
term Maiden, Mother, and Crone.
Father, Son, Holy Ghost.
Truth, honor, and justice.
It doesn't matter.
There is a ways a triad
within the whole pagan thing.
There is a triad.
And the way we can look at
that from a very personal point
of view is there is
always the male or female,
there is always the
sun or the moon,
there are always the opposites,
but in order to observe and see
the opposites, one has
to stand at a third point
in trigonometry.
Therefore there
is always a triad,
and there is always three
bards, there is always
three magicians, there is
always three Arthurian ages,
there is always three.
NARRATOR: Celtic society
was held together
by the power of the druids.
They were not just
priests, but statesmen
who controlled the tribes.
Judges who mediated
between chiefs and kings.
Teachers and bards who held the
secrets of the Celtic people
in their heads, and pass them
on by word of mouth only.
[men shouting]
They dealt in ancient wisdom,
and their authority was
greater than that of any king.
They had access to other worlds.
All of these attributes
can be identified
in the career and
life of Merlin,
whether fictional or real.
He was a wise man, a
prophet with second sight,
a trusted counselor to Arthur.
And in the northern tales
especially, his druidic aspects
seem all too obvious.
He was a pagan in
fear of persecution.
He lived apart as a hermit, in
a wilderness with only creatures
to talk to.
He had abandoned his role as
advisor and bard to the King
through madness.
In the fifth and
sixth centuries,
the Roman decline in Britain
had caused an upsurge
of Celtic traditions.
And despite the overtly
Christian veneer,
the old ways which it
never quite disappeared
found new paths
back into society.
Once again, no king
would have felt
complete without his druid
advisor, bard, or seer.
This is the echo we
hear in Merlin's cave.
[men shouting]
This is why the Romans tried to
wipe out the entire druid class
in Britain.
Not because of any
religious squeamishness,
but because they knew who held
the real power in the land.
Without the druids, the
Celtic tribes were a people
with their heads cut off.
RONALD HUTTON: There is
pretty well no chance at all
that Merlin was a druid.
There is no evidence
that druids existed
in Britain after the
first century of this era.
They stay much
longer in Ireland,
but nobody's ever claimed
that Merlin was Irish.
So the tendency to identify
Merlin with a druid
is an example of the
modern way in which we try
and contextualize our early
Christian figures as something
pagan, to get a sense
of something rooted
and organic and
natural continuous
in an island in which
our present culture
is anything but any of those.
MAGNUS: The fact that there is
somebody in Romano-Britain that
is claiming to be
a druid would have
almost been a death sentence.
The Romans went out
of their way to try
and exterminate the druids.
What could have
actually happened
is he could have taken
on almost druid abilities
without the name because
he was in contact
with the spirits of the wood,
the spirits in the stream.
So it would look to us
as if he was a druid.
The distinction,
then, would have been
very startlingly different.
He would have not
have claimed to have
been a druid around
anybody that was
related to the Romano-British.
They were not keen
on druids at all.
[sword slicing]
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: There
is no record of toll
of any violent confrontation
between Christians and druids
in Britain, and no special
reason to think that there
was a great confrontation.
So it's quite conceivable
he was a druid,
perhaps one might even call
him the last of the druids.
It would be a mistake to think
that because Britain had become
predominantly Christian
in the sixth century
that paganism simply vanished.
[inspiring music]
NARRATOR: Merlin manages to
be both sorcerer and priest
at once, following a
lonely path of knowledge
like his fellow
druids before him.
What draws us to him,
finally, is our inability
to keep him in our sights,
like the stag in the forest,
or the salmon upstream.
RONALD HUTTON: Merlin's
basic pulling power
is that he stands in
the very limits of what
is potential to human beings.
And given the fact that, to our
modern technology, two things
are still elusive, one
is knowledge of death,
and the other is magic in
the old fashioned sense.
Somebody who has power over
magic is absolutely dazzling.
ARTHUR PENDRAGON: We see
Merlin all around us.
We see Merlin as Gandalf
in Lord of the Rings.
We see Merlin everywhere, much
the same as we see Arthur.
What we know of either of them
as a person is very little.
But what we know of their
ethics, and what we do know
is they seem to
work well together.
[birds chirping]
[solemn music]