Merlin & Arthurian Legend

We’ll be back in business soon.

“Lo! What hearts have men! they never mount

As high as woman in her selfless mood.”

—Vivien being snarky to Merlin in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King

enchantedsleeper:

Merlin and Nimue (Vivian).

Nimue tricked Merlin into telling her all his secrets, and then put him in an enchanted sleep. The stories go that she either locked him away inside of a tree, or underground in a crystal cavern.

As Alfred Lord Tennyson concludes the scene in The Idylls of the King, 

“Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm

Of woven paces and of waving hands,

And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,

And lost to life and use and name and fame.

       Then crying, ‘I have made his glory mine,’

And shrieking out ‘O fool!’ the harlot leapt

Adown the forest, and the thicket closed

Behind her, and the forest echo’d ‘fool.’”

Tennyson calls Vivien a “harlot,” but the forest approves her declaration that Merlin is a fool. Vivien has outwitted the wizard, and Nature approves her ingenuity…..although Tennyson does not.

And nor did the Merlin writers. Oh well. 

Arthur was not one of those interesting characters whose subtle motives can be dissected. He was only a simple and affectionate man, because Merlyn believed that love and simplicity were worth having.

—T. H. White, The Once and Future King, “The Queen of Air and Darkness”

“Nobody succeeds in thwarting justice, Agravaine.”

—King Arthur, T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, “A Candle in the Wind”

“Do you think that you can stop the consequences of a bad action, by doing good ones afterwards? I don’t. I have been trying to stopper it down with good actions, ever since, but it goes on in widening circles. It will not be stoppered.”

—King Arthur, T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, “A Candle in the Wind”

Leodogran, the King of Cameliard, 

Had one fair daughter, and none other child; 

And she was fairest of all flesh on earth,

Guinever, and in her his one delight.

…so begins Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King, “The Coming of Arthur.” I love how, for Tennyson, it all begins with Queen Guinevere and ends with Queen Victoria. 

He was only a man who had meant well, who had been spurred along that course of thinking by an eccentric necromancer with a weakness for humanity. Justice had been his last attempt—to do nothing which was not just. But it had ended in failure. To do at all had proved too difficult. He was done himself. 

Arthur proved that he was not quite done, by lifting his head. There was something invincible in his heart, a tincture of grandness in simplicity.

—T. H. White, The Once and Future King, “A Candle in the Wind”

“Did you know,” Merlyn asked rather wistfully, “that I was one of the Old Ones myself? My father was a demon, they say, but my mother was a Gael. The only human blood I have comes from the Old Ones. Yet here I am denouncing their ideas of nationalism, being what their politicians would call a traitor.” 

—Merlyn to Arthur, T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, “The Queen of Air and Darkness”

Do you know what is going to be written on your tombstone? Hic jacet Arthurus Rex quandam Rexque futurus. ….It means, the once and future king.

—Merlyn to King Arthur, T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, “The Queen of Air and Darkness”

Why can’t you harness Might so that it works for Right?

—King Arthur, T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, “The Queen of Air and Darkness”

“To doubt her fairness were to want an eye, 

To doubt her pureness were to want a heart—

Yea, to be loved, if what is worthy love

Could bind him, but free love will not be bound.”

—Lancelot, ironically speaking simultaneously about Elaine and Guenevere in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King, “Lancelot and Elaine”

I know the sorrows before you, and the joys, and how there will never again be anyone who dares to call you by the friendly name of Wart. In the future it will be your glorious doom to take up the burden and to enjoy the nobility of your proper title: so now I shall crave the privilege of being the very first of your subjects to address you with it—as my dear liege lord, King Arthur.

—Merlyn to King Arthur, T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, “The Sword in the Stone”

King Pellinore closed his eyes tight, extended his arms in both directions, and announced in capital letters, “WHOSO PULLETH OUT THIS SWORD OF THIS STONE AND ANVIL, IS RIGHTWISE KING BORN OF ALL ENGLAND.”

“Who said that?” asked Sir Grummore.

“But the sword said it, like I tell you.”

“Talkative weapon,” remarked Sir Grummore skeptically. 

—T. H. White, The Once and Future King, “The Sword in the Stone”