"Scotland's Merlin" by Tim Clarkson

Clarkson, an "independent researcher and historian", claims that the figure of Merlin, the wizard in the Arthurian legends, may in part have been based upon a man called Lailoken.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote Historia Regum Britanniae, the best-selling (there are still over 200 extant manuscripts of this work written c 1136), work which popularised the legends of King Arthur and introduced 'Merlin' to the Arthurian court, also wrote a later work Vita Merlini in which the subject of the biography was involved in a battle, on the side led by Peredur K of Gwynedd, allied with Rodarch, k of Cambrians against Guennolous, K of Scottish forces. He went bonkers following the battle, seeking solitude in the forest. When discovered he was made captive by Rodarch. Here he noticed that the King’s wife had a leaf in her hair and correctly deduced that she had been committing adultery. This got him returned to the forest. Geoffrey also says that Merlin came from Carmarthen.

The Black Book of Carmarthen, compiled c1250, includes poems by a first person narrato called Myrddin) without trappings of Arthuriana but mentioning a battle in which he fought at Arfderydd in northern Britain and subsequent flight in madness to Coed Celyddon; the forest of Celyddon. One of his prophecies concerns a battle fought in 1198 and therefore it can be concluded that the poem was composed after that.

So the hypothesis is that there was a chap called Myrddyn whose name Gdeoffrey changed to Merlin possibly to avoid the Norman-French connotation of 'merde' = 'shit'.

These tales about Myrddin/ Merlin seem to echo tales about a chap called Lailoken who fought in a battle fought in a plain between Lidel and Carwannock and then fled into the wilderness. Lailoken foresees a threefold death in which he is stoned by shepherds, falls into a river and is impaled on a stake which keeps his head below water so he drowns. Another theme is that he sees that the King’s wife has a leaf in her hair and correctly deduces she has been committing adultery.

The battle of Ardferydd which is mentioned three times by 'Merlin' in the Black Book of Carmarthen was a historical battle fought in 573. The battlefield has been identified (though this is still under dispute) as near the modern Carwinley, a hamlet at the confluence of the rivers Esk and Liddel.

Rhydderch Hael aka Roderc was a historical character associated with Alt Clut - the Rock of Clyde = Dun Breatann = Fortress of the Britons = Dumbarton. He had a palace at Pernech = Partick where dwells a madman called Laloecen.

So there seems a sufficient number of similarities to dismiss the possibility of coincidence and accept that thesis that Merlin and Lailoken are the same character.

Coincidentally, there is another 'wild man' of the same period, in the Irish chronicles, called Suibhne (pronounced Sweeney). He too went mad and vanished into the woods, wandering naked following a battle. He literally flew from the battlefield. At one point he went to Britain and met another wild man of the woods called Alladhan (is this Lailoken?). The poetry romance that tells this story was used as the basis for some of the poems allegedly spoken by Mad King Sweeney, a character in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds; ‘Swim-Two-Birds is the English version of the name of a ford in the River Shannon that Sweeney allegedly visited.

Like many of the books of this genre, this is liberally padded and the final conclusion has to be that there is too little evidence to be certain whether the tale told is true or false. However, there was sufficient evidence for me to accept the thesis. And I enjoyed the read: the material i much better organised than many similar books and ther author avoids preposterous claims. 

August 2026; 136 pages and three appendices

Published in 2016 by John Donald

Novels and books about Magic and Magicians reviewed in this blog.

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"Legends of Alexander the Great " translated and edited by Richard Stoneman

This compilation of legends about Alexander the Great is set in India. He and his army encounter terrible monsters including hippopotami, gold-digging ants, scorpions, dragons, and the terrible Odontotyrannus; they hear of dog-headed men and men whose head is beneath their shoulders. Alexander meets the Brahmans, naked philosophers who have no possessions and who lecture him on his greed and his ambition. There are extracts from better known works which refer to Alexander, such as the Confessio Amantis by John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer who plays a bit part in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, a play co-written by Shakespeare based on a work by Gower, and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

Good fun. It was particularly interesting to note how these different works quoted (with citation) one another.

Some great lines:

• “A chapati is best eaten from the edges inwards rather than from the centre outwards.” (p xvii)
• “Once you have started inventing strange hybrids it is not hard to go on.” (p xix)
• from Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle
• “A soldier named Zefirus discovered some water in a hollow rock; he filled his own helmet with it and brought it to me [Alexander], being more zealous for my life than for his own. Then I called together the whole army and in the sight of them all I poured away the water. I thought that if the army saw me drinking it would only make them feel even more thirsty.” (p 6)
• from On the Wonders of the East [Pharasmanes to Hadrian]
• “There are found ants the size of dogs, with feet like locusts. They are red and black and they dig for gold.” (p 21)
• from Palladius On the Life of the Brahmans
• “How many kings of foolishness do you think rule over fools? Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, tongue, stomach, genitals, the entire flesh of your body. There are many of them within, like implacable mistresses and insatiable tyrants, making endless demands; desires, avarice, love of pleasure, murder, assassination, meanness, dispute: to all of these and more men or enslaved, for these they kill and are killed.” (p 40)
• “Your mind is your tongue and your brains are in your lips.” (p 40)
• “You surround yourselves with many possessions and take pride in them, blind to the fact that none of them can help you to the truth: gold does not sustain the soul, nor fatten the body; quite the contrary, it darkens the soul and emaciates the body.” (p 41) 
• “Every human desire ceases when it is satisfied, because this is inherent in nature. But the desire for wealth knows no satiety, because it is against nature. That is why you adorn yourselves with it and glory in it, regarding yourselves as superior to other men. And that is why you take as your own what belongs to everyone” (p 41) 
• “The groans of the wronged will be the punishment of the wrongdoers.” (p 43)
• “Desire is the mother of penury ... It is miserable because it never finds what it seeks, is never content with what it has, but is tortured with lust for what it does not have.” (p 45) 
• “I do not eat fish like a lion, the flesh of other animals does not rot within me, I do not become a grave of dead animals.” (pp 45 - 46)
• “He who wishes to please everybody must be the slave of everybody.” (p 51)
• from The Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus
• “If one man would carrying a lit torch and other men were to come and light other torches from the first: it would not lose its own light.” (p 57)
• “We are not dwellers in this world here as if we expected to be here forever; rather we are sojourners, here for a temporary visit.” (p 64)
• “The only glory to be found in blindness and poverty is that blindness does not see what it lacks and poverty has no way of getting it.” (p 66)

October 2017; 104 pages

"Ragnarok" by A. S. Byatt

Byatt tells the story of a thin girl, evacuated with her mother during WWII and missing her airman father, who reads two books: Pilgrim's Progress and Asgard and the Gods. This last tells her the story of the Viking Gods, of Odin and Thor and Baldur and Loki, of wolves and sea serpents and bareserk warriors, of frost and forests and night.

Byatt has written a poem in prose form. Her images are intense and lyrical, her descriptions of seaweed and hedgerows are colourful and fresh. The great thing about the Norse Gods, which she brings out, is how vulnerable they are. Odin is one-eyed having sacrificed the other eye to buy prophesies from the head of Mimir, Tyr the hunter has his hand bitten off by Fenrir the wolf, Loki is captured and tied and has poison dripping into his face, Baldur is killed. And they are doomed. The world will end at Ragnarok and all of time is hurrying towards this finish.

This is a book filled with wonderful writing, fabulous, haunting characters (Hel, goddess of the underworld, has a face and a body which is half alive and half dead) and mysteries. What was the word whispered by Odin into the ear of his dead son? What will come after the destruction of Ragnarok?

Byatt has written a beautiful book. November 2015; 171 pages

Also reviewed by A S Byatt: Possession a delightful, Booker winning novel about a literary researcher tracing the details of an unknown and illicit Victorian love affair.