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Are not the interchangeability of names and the duplication of persons and places susceptible of a very simple explanation? Caerleon, or Carduel, was confused with Carlisle, each in itself a fitting and likely place for Arthurian exploits; the historians were grievously misled as to Winchester and the part it occupied in the romances; and we know now that various contradictions simply arose from the confusion in the minds of the chroniclers, who never seemed to have been quite certain whether Caledonia and Calydon were not one and the same, whether Camelot was inland or by the sea, whether Joyous Gard was a few days’ or a few months’ journey from Cornwall, whether Camelot was in England or in Wales, whether Arthur’s “owne castell” at Tintagel could be reached by “riding all night” from London, or whether Lyonnesse was Cornwall or Brittany. A hundred topographical complexities meet us wherever we look, and the sole conclusion of the matter is that Geoffrey and his successors inextricably mixed Scotch, Welsh, and Armoric details both in regard to the stories and the localities. The historians made no effort to be consistent in their allusions, to reconcile contradictory statements, or to account for abrupt changes of scene from the South-West to the North. While they endeavoured to concentrate Arthur’s kingdom in South Wales and Cornwall they made occasional sweeps to Berwick and Edinburgh, and annihilated the distance between Dover and Carlisle. To add to the confusion there were names, especially in the Lowlands of Scotland and in the West of England, of the same derivation, and, as Mr. Glennie has demonstrated, it is as easy to discover a Caledonian Caerleon, Avalon, or Camelot as it is to discover any of them in the district once called Cameliard. The unravelling of the skein, which became more and more entangled as new hands developed the romances, is now almost an impossibility. Arthur’s own name was changed, and it has been affirmed that he is still confused with Arthurius of Gwent, and with others of like name who were distinct persons. The conclusion of the whole matter must be that names in the romances are a source of error and confusion; that different significances were attached to them by the chroniclers themselves, and that if the truth be ever established totally new meanings may be expected.

Let me here give one instance of possible confusion of names, and broach a somewhat bold theory. The name Camelford, the scene of the last battle, is by some said to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon gafol, meaning “tribute,” the spot so called marking the ford where of old time tribute was paid. The name Guildford is also declared to have a similar signification, and, in fact, to be but a variation of Camelford. If this be so, a curious point arises. Guildford is mentioned towards the close of the Arthurian history. Sir Lancelot and the king having parted company, it is recorded that Arthur “departed towards Winchester with his fellowship. And so by the way the king lodged in a towne called Astolat, which is now in English called Gilford.” Upon this Mr. Aldis Wright observes: “Guildford in Surrey is no doubt the place alluded to; but I am not aware that the name of Astolat or Astolot (Caxton) is given to it in any authentic history.” It may be argued that King Arthur would be more likely to pass through Guildford, Surrey, than through Camelford, Cornwall. But his starting point is not certain, and it must be specially noted that the Winchester to which he was making his way was not Winchester in Hampshire but “Camelot, that is, Winchester” (Book XVIII., c. 9). The unauthorised and even absurd interpolation that Camelot was Winchester at once changes the whole argument. Disregarding this misleading explanation we find that Arthur was on his way to Camelot from one of his Courts, and if Camelot was in Somersetshire it is most likely that Camelford would be one of the intermediate stages. But the importance of the whole contention is this: Astolat, as frequently mentioned in connection with the “faire maide” Elaine and Sir Lancelot’s worthiest love episode, is undiscoverable. The name is unknown outside romance; and though we are assured that it is “now in English called Gilford,” no authority can be found for the assertion. Besides, Guildford in Surrey was rather beyond the borders of the British Kingdom, even granting occasional excursions to Middlesex and Kent. But if Guildford were synonymous with Camelford, as the derivation permits us to believe, then Astolat was none other than Camelford, and at once there are light and order where formerly prevailed obscurity and confusion. Another point worth mention is that, although tradition marks Camelford as the actual scene of important events in the Arthurian history, and although from its situation, its proximity to Tintagel, and its steep hill suitable to be crowned by a baron’s castle such as Sir Bernard of Astolat possessed, we may safely surmise that it was well known to the ever-journeying knights, yet the actual name of Camelford is never mentioned in the chronicles. As it was of Anglo-Saxon origin, this omission would easily be accounted for in the earliest records, while if Astolat was the traditional name it is at once clear how it could equally be applied to Camelford and to Guildford. We must of course remember that where the chroniclers themselves sought to elucidate they too often confused; the finger-posts they set up have started many upon weary and fruitless journeys, and the guidance offered with such confidence turns out most commonly to be the most random of guesses. If, however, we may place the slightest credence in the “Astolat, which is now in English called Gilford,” as much can be said for “Gilford” being “Gafolford” or Camelford, as for its being “Gyldeford” or Guildford. The stretch of low-lying level fields on either side of the Camel, the sharp-peaked hills in the distance, the dark meres among the hills, and the angry sea lashing against the rocks visible a mile or two away, all accord with the typical scenery of King Arthur’s realm, and make us not unwilling to believe that famous Astolat was here to be found.

When all is told, when all the searching is ended, it is found that some half-dozen places only stand out pre-eminent from the host of localities in the West in each of which only a single seed seems to have germinated; and these half-dozen places, like the last citadels of the hero, resist every effort and assault of the invader to dislodge the traditions of Arthur. I have not attempted to write a history of these places, but only to say something of their aspect to-day and of the chief events and ancient traditions linked with their names. Now and again I mention facts of later date for the purpose of showing that these famous spots have continued to be the centres of activity and connected with great characters; but in the main I confine myself to the legends of Arthur and to the episodes of chivalry. To have attempted more would have entailed not only a far more comprehensive work, but the treatment of the subject in a more scientific spirit than is here displayed. The object has been to deal rather with the romantic side than with the technical, for which the deep scholarship of a Rhys or a Müller alone can be the qualification. It is necessary to premise also that of the most conspicuous Arthurian localities nothing but the bare tradition can be recorded. That tradition lives and is cherished, but its origin is undiscoverable. The sap lingers in the branches, but the roots are detached and lost. The legend is spread everywhere, but there are no verities. The visitor to the Arthurian scenes finds nothing but eponymous names and superstitions—indeed, the evidence present leads him to other conclusions than those he seeks. He looks for a British encampment, and he finds a post-Roman; he looks for a relic of Arthur, and he finds one of Antoninus. What is persistently ascribed to the British hero, or associated with his times, is either intangible or is irreconcilable with existing facts. Castles he is said to have inhabited were built centuries after his death, and there can only remain the free speculation that they mark the site of a former structure of which no trace remains and of which no record was made. Spots which are called King Arthur’s grave, or his seat, or his hunting-ground, or his camp, neither he nor his band, it often happens, could ever have been near. We look for persons, and we find a crowd of phantoms; we eagerly watch for demonstrations, and we find myth and fable; we hope to see the clear page of history, and we find a page that is undecipherable or blotted with shadows. Records are effaced, song and story delude, the track to truth is almost closed. Everything crumbles into dust at the touch, like Guinevere’s golden hair, and nothing is now left but the pure romance. And some of us may be content and almost glad to have it so.

CHAPTER III
OF ARTHUR THE KING AND MERLIN THE ENCHANTER

 
“No matter whence we do derive our name,
All Brittany shall ring of Merlin’s fame,
And wonder at his Arts.”
 

The Birth of Merlin, Act III. sc. iv.

 
“He by wordes could call out of the sky
Both sunne and moone, and make them him obey;
The land to sea, and sea to maineland dry,
And darksome night he eke could turn to day;
That to this day, for terror of his fame
The feendes do quake when any him to them does name.”—Spenser.
 

The fact that the name Art(h)us does not occur in the Gildas manuscript has led to the inference that the king was unknown to that chronicler; and the assumption that he is alluded to as Ursus (the Bear) tends to confirm the theory of those who would affirm that he is no more than a solar myth. It must be understood that the Arthur of romance, as we now know him, was a character ever increasing in importance and prominence as the history was re-written and elaborated; at first a minor actor in the drama, he at length became the leading figure and the centre around which all the other characters were grouped. The Arthur of the historian Nennius is the original personage to whom all the famed attributes have been accorded by subsequent writers. With so much doubt and confusion, involving the identity of the person himself, it is inevitable that even more doubt and confusion should exist when we come to detailed events. Even the name of Arthur’s father is variously given, a circumstance which caused Milton to question the veracity of the whole history; and the date of his birth, of his death, the age at which he died and other smaller points, lead to nothing but endless contradiction. The number of his battles is variously given as twelve and seventy-six; he is said to have wedded not one but three Guineveres (Gwenhwyvar); his age at death varies from just over thirty years to over ninety; and the date of the last battle is 537, 542, or 630.¹² King Arthur’s actual name may have been Arthur Mab-Uther; his genealogical line has been traced back to Helianis, nephew of Joseph; the year 501 is now usually accepted as the date of his birth; and St. David, son of a prince of Cardiganshire, is mentioned not only as his contemporary but as a near relative. If the Sagas were compared with the Arthurian romances numerous points of resemblance could be shown. Olaf is the Arthur of the story, Gudrun the Guinevere, and Odin is the Merlin, while the city of Drontheim serves as Caerleon. The story recounting how Arthur magically obtained his sword Excalibur finds an exact parallel in the story of Sigmund, Volsung’s son; and even the emblem of the dragon is not lacking,¹³ for in the story of the Volsung we learn that Sigurd’s shield bore the image of that monster, “and with even such-like image was adorned helm, and saddle, and coat-armour.” But again it must be remembered that Arthur’s kingdom is reported to have extended to Iceland itself; in fact, the bounds of his kingdom were only set by the chroniclers where their own definite geographical knowledge ended.

“We cannot bring within any limits of history,” Sir Edward Strachey has properly said, “the events which here succeed each other, when the Lords and Commons of England, after the death of King Uther at St. Albans, assembled at the greatest church of London, guided by the joint policy of the magician Merlin and the Christian bishop of Canterbury, and elected Arthur to the throne; when Arthur made Caerleon, or Camelot, or both, his headquarters in a war against Cornwall, Wales, and the North, in which he was victorious by the help of the King of France; when he met the demand for tribute by the Roman Emperor Lucius with a counterclaim to the empire for himself as the real representative of Constantine, held a parliament at York to make the necessary arrangements, crossed the sea from Sandwich to Barflete in Flanders, met the united forces of the Romans and Saracens in Burgundy, slew the emperor in a great battle, together with his allies, the Sowdan of Syria, the King of Egypt, and the King of Ethiopia, sent their bodies to the Senate and Podesta of Rome as the only tribute he would pay, and then followed over the mountains through Lombardy and Tuscany to Rome, where he was crowned emperor by the Pope, ‘sojourned there a time, established all the lands from Rome into France, and gave lands and realms unto his servants and knights,’ and so returned home to England, where he seems thenceforth to have devoted himself wholly to his duties as the head of Christian knighthood.”

This is the very monstrosity of fable, the grossness of which carries with it its own condemnation. These facts, however, are not insisted upon by Malory, though such claims for Arthur were made by the credulous and less scrupulous writers. Romance has entirely remodelled his character, and has filled in all the gaps in his life-story in that triumphant manner in which Celtic genius manifests its power. The legendary Arthur is made to realise the sublime prophecies of Merlin, and as those prophecies waxed more bold and arrogant in the course of ages the proportions of the hero were magnified to suit them. Merlin had cherished the hope of the coming of a victorious chief under whom the Celts should be united, but the slaughter at Arderydd when the rival tribes fought each other, almost destroyed all such aspirations. Nevertheless the prophet foretold the continuance of discord among the British tribes, until the chief of heroes formed a federation on returning to the world, and his prediction concluded with the haunting words: “Like the dawn he will arise from his mysterious retreat.” Mr. Stuart Glennie calls Merlin a barbarian compound of madman and poet, prophet and bard, but denies that he was a mythic personage or a poetic creation. He was, like Arthur himself, an actual pre-mediæval personage, and, as in the case of Arthur, we have no means of determining his origin, his nationality, or the locale of his wanderings. But if, as Wilson observes in one of his “Border Tales,” tradition is “the fragment which history has left or lost in its progress, and which poetry following in its wake has gathered up as treasures, breathed upon them its influence and embalmed them in the memories of men unto all generations,” we shall extract a residuum of truth from the fanciful fables of which Merlin is the subject.

Myrdin Emrys, the Welsh Merlin, is claimed as a native of Bassalleg, an obscure town in the district which lies between the river Usk and Rhymney. The chief authority for this is Nennius; but according to others the birthplace was Carmarthen, at the spot marked by Merlin’s tree, regarding which the prophecy runs that when the tree tumbles down Carmarthen will be overwhelmed with woe. What we know of Merlin in Malory’s chronicle is that he was King Arthur’s chief adviser, an enchanter who could bring about miraculous events, and to whom was delivered the royal babe upon a ninth wave of the ocean; a prophet who foretold his sovereign’s death, his own fate, and the infidelity of Guinevere; a warrior, the founder of the Round Table, and the wise man who “knew all things.” Wales and Scotland alike claim as their own this most striking of the characters in the Arthurian story. Brittany also holds to the belief that Merlin was the most famous and potent of her sons, and that his influence is still exercised over that region. Matthew Arnold, gazing at the ruins of Carnac, saw from the heights he clambered the lone coast of Brittany, stretching bright and wide, weird and still, in the sunset; and recalling the old tradition, he described how—

 
“It lay beside the Atlantic wave
As though the wizard Merlin’s will
Yet charmed it from his forest grave.”
 

The Scotch Merlin, Merlin Sylvester, or Merlin the Wild, was Merdwynn of the haugh of Drummelziar, a delightful lowland region, where the little sparkling Pausayl burn bickers down between the heather-clad hills until it mixes its waters with the Tweed. He is said to have taken to the woods of Upper Tweeddale in remorse for the death of his nephew, though it is more likely that he lost his reason after the decisive defeat of the Cymry by the Christians of the sixth century. Sir Walter Scott records that in the Scotichronicon, to which work however no historic importance can be ascribed, as it is notoriously a priestly invention, is an account of an interview betwixt St. Kentigern and Merdwynn Wyllt when he was in this distracted and miserable state. The saint endeavoured to convert the recluse to Christianity, for he was a nature-worshipper, as his poems show. From his mode of life he was called Lailoken, and on the saint’s commanding him to explain his situation, he stated that he was doing penance imposed upon him by a voice from heaven for causing a bloody conflict between Lidel and Carwanolow. He continued to dwell in the woods of Caledon, frequenting a fountain on the hills, enjoying the companionship of his sister Gwendydd (“The Dawn”), and ever musing upon his early love Hurmleian (The Gleam), both of whom were frequently mentioned in his poems. His fate was a singular one, and has been confused with that of the Merlin of Arthur. He predicted that he should perish at once by wood, earth, and water, and so it came to pass; for being pursued and stoned by the rustics—others say by the herdsmen of the Lord of Lanark—he fell from a rock into the river Tweed, and was transfixed by a sharp stake—

 
“Sude perfossus, lapide percussus, et unda,
Hæc tria Merlinum fertur inire necem.
Sicque ruit, mersusque lignoque prehensus,
Et fecit vatem per terna pericular verum.”
 

The grave of the Scotch Merlin is pointed out at Drummelziar, where it is marked by an aged thorn-tree. On the east side of the churchyard the Pausayl brook falls into the Tweed, and a prophecy ran thus:—“When Tweed and Pausayl join at Merlin’s grave, Scotland and England shall one monarch have.” And we learn accordingly that on the day of the coronation of James VI the Tweed overflowed and joined the Pausayl at the prophet’s grave. The predictions of this Merlin continued for many centuries to impress the Scotch, and he seems to have had a reputation equal to that of Thomas the Rhymer. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the first to introduce a Merlin into the Arthurian romance, and whether that Merlin had for a prototype Merdwynn Wyllt, or whether there was in reality a Merlin of Wales, remains an open question. All that can be said definitely is that similar deeds are ascribed to both, that each occupies a similar place among his contemporaries, that their rhapsodical prophecies partake of the same character, and that their mysterious deaths have points in common. But it is contended that the vates of Vortigern and of Aurelius Ambrosius, the companion and adviser of Uther Pendragon and of Arthur, was Myrdin Emrys, who took his name from Dinas Emrys in the Vale of Waters, whose haunt was the rugged heights of Snowdon, and who knew nothing of the Merlin Caledonius who wandered about the heathery hills of Drummelziar, who was present at the battle of Arderydd in 573, and who lamented in wild songs the defeat of the pagans and the shattering reverse to the Cymric cause. These poems, which bewail the fortunes of this unfortunate race, seem to have found their way into the famous Ancient Books of Wales, thus tending further to confuse the two Merlins, and resulting in the old chroniclers ascribing the acts of both to the Myrdin Emrys of King Arthur’s court. The late Professor Veitch’s poem on Merlin contains some specimens of Merdwynn Wyllt’s verse, and sets forth his faith in nature, tinged a little as it were by the Christianity of the era.

The Merlin of King Arthur was reputed to be a native of Carmarthen among other places, and at three miles’ distance from the town may be seen “Merlin’s Cave,” one of the traditional places of his mysterious entombment. Merlin’s birth formed the subject of one of the apocryphal plays of Shakespeare: the weird magician and worker of enchantment would have been worthy of the masters’ own depiction. In the romances he comes with mystery and awe, and he departs with mystery and shame. “Men say that Merlin was begotten of a devil,” said Sir Uwaine; and the maid Nimuë (Vivien) on whom he was “assotted,” grew weary of him, and fain would have been delivered of him, “for she was afraid of him because he was a devil’s son.” In that wondrously rich drama of 1662, “The Birth of Merlin,” the popular tradition is taken up that the arch-magician was the son of the arch-fiend. The story introduces Aurelius and Vortiger (Vortigern), the two Kings of Britain; Ut(h)er Pendragon, the brother of Aurelius; Ostorius, the Saxon general; and other historic characters of the era. The chief point of the plot is the search for and identification of Merlin’s father; and, that matter settled, the dramatist treats of Merlin’s supernatural skill, his prophecies, and his aid of Vortiger in building the castle which hostile fiends broke down by night as fast as it was built by day. Merlin is represented as born with the beard of an old man, able to talk and walk, and within a few hours of his birth explaining to his mother that he reads a book “to sound the depth of arts, of learning, wisdom, knowledge.”

 
“I can be but half a man at best,
And that is your mortality; the rest
In me is spirit. ’Tis not meat nor time
That gives this growth and bigness. No, my years
Shall be more strange than yet my birth appears.”
 

He prophesies forthwith, recognises his father, the Devil, at a glance, gives proof of his miraculous powers in many ways; and proceeding to Vortiger’s court baffles the native magicians, and shows the king why his castle cannot be built by reason of the dragons in conflict. He foretells that the victory of the white dragon means the ultimate victory of the Saxons—“the white horror who, now knit together, have driven and shut you up in these wild mountains,” and that the king who won his throne by bloodshed must yield it to Prince Uter. The prediction is verified, and after Vortiger’s death Merlin is sent for to expound “the fiery oracle” in the form of a dragon’s head,

 
“From out whose mouth
Two flaming lakes of fire stretch east and west,
And … from the body of the star
Seven smaller blazing streams directly point
On this affrighted kingdom.”
 

The portent causes terror, until Merlin, as interpreter, tells of revolutions, the rise and fall of nations, and the changes in Britain’s state which it signifies. Aurelius has been treacherously slain at Winchester by the Saxons, and Prince Uter is to be his avenger. The passage in which Merlin relates what is to come is one of singular dignity and impressiveness. Seven rays are “speaking heralds” to the island. Uter Pendragon is to have a son and a daughter. The latter will be Queen of Ireland, while of the son “thus Fate and Merlin tells”—

 
“All after times shall fill their chronicles
With fame of his renown, whose warlike sword
Shall pass through fertile France and Germany,
Nor shall his conquering foot be forced to stand,
Till Rome’s imperial wealth hath crowned his fame
With monarch of the west; from whose seven hills
With conquest, and contributory kings
He back returns to enlarge the Briton bounds,
His heraldry adorned with thirteen crowns.
He to the world shall add another worthy,
And, as a loadstone, for his prowess draw
A train of martial lovers to his court.
It shall be then the best of knighthood’s honour
At Winchester to fill his castle hall,
And at his Royal table sit and feast
In warlike orders, all their arms round hurled
As if they meant to circumscribe the world.”
 

This is a noble passage, and sums up the leading points in King Arthur’s history, as related in the Fabliaux, and at the same time serves as evidence of the power of divination and eloquence of Merlin. The matter of the prophecy was obviously taken from Malory, but the dramatist introduced one strange variation in his story. Merlin, indignant that his demoniac father should strive to harm his mother, uses his art and magic spells to enclose the Devil in a rock—an idea suggested, no doubt, by Merlin’s own fate. Furthermore, finding himself called to aid Pendragon against the Saxons, Merlin conducts his mother to a place of retirement called Merlin’s Bower, and tells her that when she dies he will erect a monument—

 
“Upon the verdant plains of Salisbury—
(No king shall have so high a sepulchre)—
With pendulous stones that I will hang by art,
Where neither lime nor mortar shall be used,
A dark enigma to the memory,
For none shall have the power to number them.”
 

Here we become acquainted with the superstition that the megalithic wonders of Stonehenge were Merlin’s workmanship, and that the mysterious structure was his mother’s tomb. Another idea was that it was the burial place of Uther Pendragon and Constantine. The drama, so far as it relates to Merlin and Vortigern, closely follows the popular tradition, though there are several variations of the story of the castle which could not be finished, and its site, as might be expected, is the subject of many contradictory declarations. The allegorical meaning of the story is quite clear. To the heights of Snowdon, it is said, Merlin led King Vortigern, whose castle could not be built for meddlesome goblins. The wizard led the monarch to a vast cave and showed him two dragons, white and red, in furious conflict. “Destroy these,” he said, “and the goblins whom they rule will cease to torment you.” Vortigern slew the dragons of Hate and Conspiracy, and his castle was completed.¹⁴

The story of Merlin’s death has again led to much speculation upon the recondite subject of the situation of the tomb in which his “quick” body was placed by the guile of Nimuë, or Vivien, one of the damsels of the lake. Malory distinctly avers that it was in Cornwall that the doting wizard met his fate. He went into that country, after showing Nimuë many wonders, and “so it happed that Merlin showed to her a rock, whereat was a great wonder, and wrought by enchantment, that went under a great stone.” By subtle working the maiden induced the wizard to go under the stone to tell her of the marvels there, and then she “so wrought him” that with all his own crafts he could not emerge again. Some time afterwards Sir Bagdemagus, riding to an adventure, heard Merlin’s doleful cries from under the stone, but he was unable to help him, as the stone was so heavy that a hundred men could not move it. Merlin told the knight that no one could rescue him but the woman who had put him there, and, according to some traditions, he lives to this day in the vault. Spenser, in the Faërie Queene, describes the tomb as—

 
“A hideous, hollow, cave-like bay
Under a rock that has a little space
From the swift Tyvi, tumbling down apace
Amongst the woody hills of Dynevowr.”
 

The Tyvi is known to us as the Towy, and Dynevowr is Dynevor Park.

 
“There the wise Merlin, whilom wont, they say,
To make his wonne low underneath the ground,
In a deep delve far from view of day,
That of no living wight he might be found,
When so he counselled with his sprights around.”
 

Others say that the guileful damsel led her doting lover to Snowdon, and there put forth the charm of woven paces and of waving hands until he lay as dead in a hollow oak. Sometimes an eldritch cry breaks upon the ear of the climber as he nears the summit of Snowdon: it is Merlin lamenting the subtlety of his false love, which doomed him to perpetual shame.

There is the Carmarthen cave, and there is a “Merlin’s Grave” four miles from Caerleon, both of which are shown as Merlin’s resting-place. But ancient bards told another strange tale of the fate of the “boy without a father,” whose blood had once been sought to sprinkle upon the cement for the bricks of Vortigern’s castle. They declared that the enchanter was sent out to sea in a vessel of glass, accompanied by nine bards, or prophets, and neither vessel nor crew was heard of again—which is not surprising. But Lady Charlotte Guest, in her notes to the Mabinogion, boldly transports the scene of Merlin’s doom to the Forest of Brécéliande, in Brittany, one of the favoured haunts of romance and the delight of the Trouvères. Vivien, to whose artifices he succumbed, is said to have been the daughter of one Vavasour, who married a niece of the Duchess of Burgundy, and received as dowry half the Forest of Briogne. It was when Merlin and Vivien were going through Brécéliande hand in hand that they found a bush of white thorn laden with flowers; there they rested, and the magician fell asleep. Then Vivien, having been taught the art of enchantment by Merlin, rose and made a ring nine times with her wimple round the bush; and when the wizard woke it seemed to him that he was enclosed in the strongest tower ever made—a tower without walls and without chains, which he alone had known the secret of making. From this enmeshment Merlin could never escape, and, plead as he would, the damsel would not release him. But it is written that she often regretted what she had done and could not undo, for she had thought the things he had taught her could not be true. This, however, seems to be an interpolation. Sir Gawain, travelling through the forest, saw a “kind of smoke,” and heard Merlin’s wailing voice addressing him out of the obscurity. The wonders of the Forest of Brécéliande were sufficiently believed in of old time that we find the chronicler Wace actually journeying to the spot to find the fairy fountain and Merlin’s tomb. Another variation of the story is that Merlin made himself a sepulchre in the Forest of Arvantes, that Vivien persuaded him to enter it, and then closed the lid in such manner that thereafter it could never be opened. Matthew Arnold, sparing and reticent in speech, as is his wont, describes Merlin’s fate with subdued force and subtle charm, putting the story in the mouth of desolate Iseult, who told her children of the “fairy-haunted land” away the other side of Brittany, beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea; and of