Loose Ends

Merlin and Nimue

Merlin took on Nimue as an apprentice. Malory says Nimue was the Lady of the Lake, but I think there must have been several Ladies of the Lake, unless every lake in Britain and France is joined in one huge underground pool. Anyway, Nimue learned all Merlin's stuff, after dragging him away from the delights of Camelot. She conned him into going into an underground cave, where she bound him with his own spells before taking off to do her own thing.

Merlin's Origins

Merlin was supposedly the offspring of an incubus (or is it succubus) and a princess. Hence his status as "Demon Spawn."


The Battle of the Dragons

When Merlin was a boy, there lived a stern king in Wales, hight Vortigern. He was trying to build a castle, but, every night, when his workmen went home, all the work they had done that day fell down. Vortigern would show up in the morning to find a mudhole. He posted overnight guards, but they always ran away. Finally, some obnoxious old wizard told him that he was lacking the one ingredient essential to the proper mix of cement--the blood of an innocent boy.

It took a while to find an innocent boy, but eventually somebody nabbed Merlin and dragged him up to the construction site. The king explained that they were going to kill him and put his body in the foundations to strengthen them.

Merlin thought fast.

"What we have here, Sire," he said, "is something totally Other. There are two dragons sleeping in an underground cave beneath your site, a red one and a white one, and at night they get up and fight. This reduces your day's labour to a mud pit, and explains why your guards are always missing in the morning."

"Really," said Vortigern, not buying this for an instant.

"Yes," quoth Merlin. "What you need to do is let them out, so they can fight their battle to the finish, and then you can build your castle. Try digging down deep in the middle of what will be your courtyard, and see what you find. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'!"

So Vortigern had his men dig. And they dug, and dug, and dug. The king was getting restless. The mud was getting wetter, and a testy time was being had by all. Finally, they came to a cave, and when they got inside, they came out pretty quick, with a couple of sleepy and very grumpy dragons hot on their tails. The dragons rose into the air in a shower of mud and scales, with a lot of flapping and sputtering. They fought. They fought for several days. By the time they had been at it for a while, you couldn't tell the white one from the red, there was so much blood everywhere.

Finally, the red dragon won, and the white fell dead on the ground.

King Vortigern and his men emerged from their hidey holes and asked Merlin, "What does this mean?"

Merlin said that the Red Dragon symbolized the Cymri (the Welsh word for the Welsh people), and the White, the Saxons. It meant that, try as they might, the Saxons would never beat the Welsh.

Which is why the Red Dragon is the symbol of Wales to this very day.




Other Outstories

There are dozens of stories I haven't gone into at all. Gawain and the Green Knight. Lancelot going mad and wandering in the forest. The Questing Beast. The Loathly Lady. Tristram and Isolde. The Grail Quest. The Fisher King. The Hunting of the Boar.


Scholars have been analyzing the stories for generations. Some are found in the Mabinogi, which is the Matter of Wales. The magical elements seem to be Pagan beliefs that held on well into Christian times.

For a modern retelling of the saga, I recommend Mary Stewart's series; "The Crystal Cave," "The Hollow Hills," "The Last Enchantment,"and "The Wicked Day." Told more or less from Merlin's perspective, the stories tie together very well. Marion Zimmer Bradley's "The Mists of Avalon," presents the stories as occurring in a cross-over from Paganism to Christianity, and as such, is very entertaining. T. H. White's "The Once and Future King" is a must-read.

But, online, free, gratis, and for nothing, you can read Malory, translated into modern English. Of course, the use of the word "modern" is laughable, as all the translator has done is replace the early spellings with ones we can actually pronounce. The book is still written in the manner of Malory, with minimal punctuation, and a few words we never hear at all, these days, and others whose meanings have changed considerably. It's not always easy to spot the referents for pronouns. Still, it's really not as difficult to read as you think it's going to be. And well worth the effort, in my opinion.

It has the added bonus of stretching your knowledge of English.