Crystal Cave (57 page)

The following Easter, at the coronation feast, King Uther fell in love with Ygraine, wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. He lavished attention on her, to the scandal of the court; she made no response, but her husband, in fury, retired from the court without leave, taking his wife and men at arms back to Cornwall .

Uther, in anger, commanded him to return, but Gorlois refused to obey. Then the King, enraged beyond measure, gathered an army and marched intoCornwall , burning the cities and castles. Gorlois had not enough troops to withstand him, so he placed his wife in thecastle ofTintagel , the safest refuge, and himself prepared to defend thecastleofDimilioc . Uther immediately laid siege to Dimilioc, holding Gorlois and his troops trapped there, while he cast about for some way of breaking into thecastleofTintagel to ravish Ygraine. After some days he asked advice from one of his familiars called Ulfin. "Do thou therefore give me counsel in what wise I may fulfill my desire," said the King, "for, and I do not, of mine inward sorrow shall I die." Ulfin, telling him what he knew already — that Tintagel was impregnable —

suggested that he send for Merlin. Merlin, moved by the King's apparent suffering, promised to help. By his magic arts he changed Uther into the likeness of Gorlois, Ulfin into Jordan, Gorlois' friend, and himself into Brithael, one of Gorlois' captains. The three of them rode to Tintagel, and were admitted by the porter. Ygraine taking Uther to be her husband the Duke, welcomed him, and took him to her bed. So Uther lay with Ygraine that night, "and she had no thought to deny him in aught he might desire." That night, Arthur was conceived.

But in the meantime fighting had broken out at Dimilioc, and Gorlois, venturing out to give battle, was killed. Messengers came to Tintagel to tell Ygraine of her husband's death. When they found "Gorlois,"

apparently still alive, closeted with Ygraine, they were speechless, but the King then confessed the deception, and a few days later married Ygraine.

Uther Pendragon was to reign fifteen more years. During those years he saw nothing of his son Arthur, who on the night of his birth was carried down to the postern gate of Tintagel and delivered into the hands of Merlin, who cared for the child in secret until the time came for Arthur to inherit the throne ofBritain .

Throughout Arthur's long reign Merlin advised and helped him. When Merlin was an old man he fell dotingly in love with a young girl, Vivian, who persuaded him, as the price of her love, to teach her all his magic arts. When he had done so she cast a spell on him which left him bound and sleeping; some say in a cave near a grove of whitethorn trees, some say in a tower of crystal, some say hidden only by the glory of the air around him. He will wake when King Arthur wakes, and come back in the hour of his country's need.

No novelist dealing with Dark AgeBritain dares venture into the light without some pen-service to the Place-Name Problem. It is customary to explain one's usage, and I am at once less and more guilty of inconsistency than most. In a period of history when Celt, Saxon, Roman, Gaul and who knows who else shuttled to and fro across a turbulent and divided Britain, every place must have had at least three names, and anybody's guess is good as to what was common usage at any given time. Indeed, the "given time" of King Arthur's birth is somewhere around 470 A.D., and the end of the fifth century is as dark a period ofBritain 's history as we have. To add to the confusion, I have taken as the source of my story a semi-mythological, romantic account written in Oxford by a twelfth-century Welshman [Or (possibly) Breton], who gives the names of places and people what one might call a post-Norman slant with an overtone of clerical Latin. Hence in my narrative the reader will findWinchester as well as Rutupiae and Dinas Emrys, and the men ofCornwall , South Wales, andBrittany instead of Dumnonii, Demetae, and Armoricans.

My first principle in usage has been, simply, to make the story clear. I wanted if possible to avoid the irritating expedient of the glossary, where the reader has to interrupt himself to look up the place-names, or decide to read straight on and lose himself mentally. And non-British readers suffer further; they look up Calleva in the glossary, find it is Silchester, and are none the wiser until they consult a map. Either way the story suffers. So wherever there was a choice of names I have tried to use the one that will most immediately put the reader in the picture: for this I have sometimes employed the device of having the narrator give the current crop of names, even slipping in the modern one where it does not sound too out of place. For example: "Maesbeli, near Conan's Fort, or Kaerconan, that men sometimes call Conisburgh." Elsewhere I have been more arbitrary. Clearly, in a narrative whose English must be supposed in the reader's imagination to be Latin or the Celtic of South Wales, it would be pedantic to write of Londinium when it is so obviously London; I have also used the modern names of places like Glastonbury and Winchester and Tintagel, because these names, though mediaeval in origin, are so hallowed by association that they fit contexts where it would obviously be impossible to intrude the modern images of (say) Manchester or Newcastle. These "rules" are not, of course, intended as a criticism of any other writer's practice; one employs the form the work demands; and since this is an imaginative exercise which nobody will treat as authentic history, I have allowed myself to be governed by the rules of poetry: what communicates simply and vividly, and sounds best, is best.

The same rule of ear applies to the language used throughout. The narrator, telling his story in fifth-century Welsh, would use in his tale as many easy colloquialisms as I have used in mine; the servants Cerdic and Cadal would talk some kind of dialect, while, for instance, some sort of "high language" might well be expected from kings, or from prophets in moments of prophecy. Some anachronisms I have deliberately allowed where they were the most descriptive words, and some mild slang for the sake of liveliness. In short, I have played it everywhere by ear, on the principle that what sounds right is acceptable in the context of a work of pure imagination.

For that is all The Crystal Cave claims to be. It is not a work of scholarship, and can obviously make no claim to be serious history. Serious historians will not, I imagine, have got this far anyway, since they will have discovered that the main source of my story-line is Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain.

Geoffrey's name is, to serious historians, mud. From his Oxford study in the twelfth century he produced a long, racy hotch-potch of "history" from the Trojan War (where Brutus "the King of the Britons" fought) to the seventh century A.D., arranging his facts to suit his story, and when he got short on facts (which was on every page), inventing them out of the whole cloth. Historically speaking, the Historia Regum Brittaniae is appalling, but as a story it is tremendous stuff, and has been a source and inspiration for the great cycle of tales called the Matter of Britain, from Malory's Morte d'Arthur to Tennyson's Idylls of the King, from Parsifal to Camelot.

The central character of the Historia is Arthur, King of the first unitedBritain . Geoffrey's Arthur is the hero of legend, but it is certain that Arthur was a real person, and I believe the same applies to Merlin, though the "Merlin" that we know is a composite of at least four people — prince, prophet, poet and engineer. He appears first in legend as a youth. My imaginary account of his childhood is coloured by a phrase in Malory: "the well of Galapas, [So 'fontes galabes' is sometimes translated] where he wont to haunt," and by a reference to "my master Blaise" — who becomes in my story Belasius. The Merlin legend is as strong in Brittany as in Britain .

One or two brief notes to finish with.

I gave Merlin's mother the name Niniane because this is the name of the girl (Vivian/Niniane/Nimue) who according to legend seduced the enchanter in his dotage and so robbed him of his powers, leaving him shut in his cave to sleep till the end of time. No other women are associated with him. There is so strong a connection in legend (and indeed in history) between celibacy, or virginity, and power, that I have thought it reasonable to insist on Merlin's virginity.

Mithraism had been (literally) underground for years. I have postulated a local revival for the purpose of my story, and the reasons given by Ambrosius seem likely. From what we know of the real Ambrosius, he was Roman enough to follow the "soldiers' god." [Bede, the 7th C. historian, calls him "Ambrosius, a Roman." (Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation.)]

About the ancient druids so little is known that (according to the eminent scholar I consulted) they can be considered "fair game." The same applies to the megaliths of Carnac (Kerrac) inBrittany , and to the Giants' Dance of Stonehenge near Amesbury.Stonehenge was erected around 1500 B.C., so I only allowed Merlin to bring one stone from Killare. AtStonehenge it is true that one stone — the largest — is different from the rest. It comes originally, according to the geologists, from near Milford Haven, in Wales. It is also true that a grave lies within the circle; it is off center, so I have used the midwinter sunrise rather than the midsummer one towards which the Dance is oriented.

All the places I describe are authentic, with no significant exception but thecaveofGalapas — and if Merlin is indeed sleeping there "with all his fires and travelling glories around him," one would expect it to be invisible. But the well is there on Bryn Myrddin, and there is a burial mound on the crest of the hill.

It would seem that the name "merlin" was not recorded for the falcon columbarius until mediaeval times, and the word is possibly French; but its derivation is uncertain, and this was sufficient excuse for a writer whose imagination had already woven a series of images from the name before the book was even begun.

Where Merlin refers to the potter's mark A.M., the A would be the potter's initial or trade mark; the M stands for Manu, literally "by the hand of."The relationship between Merlin and Ambrosius has (I believe) no basis in legend. A ninth-century historian, Nennius, from whom Geoffrey took some of his material, called his prophet "Ambrosius."

Nennius told the story of the dragons in the pool, and the young seer's first recorded prophecy. Geoffrey, borrowing the story, calmly equates the two prophets: "Then saith Merlin, that is also called Ambrosius..." This throwaway piece of "nerve," as Professor Gwyn Jones calls it, [Introduction to the Everyman ed. of History of the Kings of Britain] gave me the idea of identifying the "prince of darkness" who fathered Merlin — gave me, indeed, the main plot of The Crystal Cave.

My greatest debt is obviously to Geoffrey of Monmouth, master of romance. Among other creditors too numerous to name and impossible to repay, I should like especially to thank Mr. Francis Jones, County Archivist, Carmarthen; Mr. and Mrs. Morris of Bryn Myrddin, Carmarthen; Mr. G. B. Lancashire of The Chase Hotel, Ross-on-Wye; Brigadier R. Waller, of Wyaston Leys, Monmouthshire, on whose land lie Lesser Doward and the Romans' Way; Professor Hermann Bruck, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and Mrs. Bruck; Professor Stuart Piggott of the Department of Archaeology at Edinburgh University; Miss Elizabeth Manners, Headmistress of Felixstowe College; and Mr. Robin Denniston, of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., London.

February 1968 — February 1970. M.S.

Edwin Muir's poem "Merlin" is reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd., from the Collected Poems, 1921-58.

Thepoemon page 241 is a free translation of verses appearing in Barzaz Breiz; Chants Populaires de laBretagne , by the Vicomte de la Villemarqué (Paris, 1867).

The Legend of Merlin is based on the translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain which was first published in the Everyman's Library, Vol. 577, by J. & M. Dent in 1912.

Mary Stewart, one of the most popular novelists writing today, was born in Sunderland,County Durham,England , but home was wherever her father, a clergyman of the Church of England, was called.

After boarding-school, she received a B.A. with honours in Literature fromDurhamUniversity and went on for her M.A. At the beginning of World War II, she was asked to return to her Alma Mater as a lecturer, and gave six lectures a week, eked out her small salary by teaching sixth form at a boys' public school, and spent three night-shifts a week in the Royal Observer Corps until hostilities ended.

It was at a dance celebrating V-E Day that she met a young Geology professor named Stewart; within two months they were married. Professor Stewart, F.R.S., is now Head of the Department of Geology in theUniversityofEdinburgh and is on the Council of Scientific Policy. Mrs. Stewart has had a meteoric career of her own, beginning with the publication in 1954 of her first novel, Madam, Will You Talk?, and culminating in this magical story about Merlin, the enchanter: The Crystal Cave. In 1968 she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.