Merlin: The Legend (King Arthur Documentary) | Timeline

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Merlin first appears interwork by Geoffrey of Monmouth Geoffrey of Monmouth was a historian part Welsh historian and Geoffrey's purpose was to create a myth for the new anglo-norman aristocracy because of course they had left France they had to justify why they were here and why they were conquering this new country and in order to do this he draws on Welsh tradition and he creates this powerful magician figure who becomes the person who organizes the birth of Arthur and looks after King Arthur [Music] he's not a real person he is a fiction in Geoffrey of Monmouth's mind he fuses two characters together one of them is the Wonder child Ambrosius the other is the Bard Maryland wilt and Geoffrey simply says that there was a character called mur Linus and roseus and suddenly you have mermen [Music] at fight the red dragon seems as if it's going to be defeated and when succeeds and the child says to the king this is your kingdom these are the British the red dragon eventually the Welsh and a successful white dragon the Saxons will defeat you for a time but in the end the British will be triumphant so it's a wonderful origin myth [Music] [Music] Jeffrey doesn't say Marilyn did this by magic he allows us to think this so Jeffrey's creating a magician simply by manipulating his audience by manipulating what his audience knew of Welsh tradition and by manipulating our real psychological need to kind of create these powerful figures [Music] [Music] blackbook of Kemal honest thought was written in the middle of the 13th century but it does contain poems written in the three centuries preceding his writing there are three poems in the Black Book of commandment that are associated in some way with the figure of Merlin the only poem in which he is specifically named as the famous um villain the discourse between modeling and Taliesin another sixth century figure who we assumed to be a historical figure they both have a chat about a battle that has been fought and about events that are to come some located in South Wales and some located in the old [Music] the other poems are loyal knife we're muddling the figure from the Old North addresses a pig and the Avicenna in which he addresses apple trees he has obviously lost his mind following a battle and you have a series of prophetic visions in which he foretells events that belong to a far later period of the period of the 11th century in Wales [Music] the Merlin that we see in this book is almost a tragic character he is obviously had some bad experiences in a battle he has become a figure who is living wild outside the boundaries of society where he is banished to the woods as it were living and scavenging amongst animals where he complains of having icicles in his hair with snow up to his thighs he is a very sorry character indeed and from the hardships that he had suffered out came this wisdom that was by other people respected and held in high esteem I think the idea of a man endowed with the ability to prophesy living in wild places a wild man in a wild place is really part of the mythology of every country on earth in northern climes of course he lives in a forest but in drier climes ellipse in the wilderness I mean John the Baptist for example you might say he's a wild man with wild ideas living in wild places I think that is a universal tradition but the people of Europe in particular focused in on Merlin in a very special way I think he sort of typifies the notion of the wild man in wild place [Music] it's what interesting about this wild figure is that he seems to go into frenzy and something which other people noticed and talked about these characters these Welsh poets who became taken over by something called Arwen which is poetic frenzies isn't as good a translation as any [Music] [Music] [Music] we start to see images of Merlin in the 13th 14th century manuscripts illustrations which we're having often seen books beautifully reproduced as if they're paintings hanging on a wall they're not of course they're often very tiny and their illustrations integrated into a text but within them one immediately notices the universality of the figure almost always old bearded the long gown a sort of a medieval hoody if you like that's the kind of image which crops up in many many cultures with many many different figures [Music] [Music] [Music] the stories of Merlin's life a sort of expanded stories of Merlin's like actually appear in French language romances so Merlin is no longer just a Welsh figure a local figure he's suddenly becoming a pan-european figure and then he becomes the subject of his own story a sweet to Merlin or the East to Adam Ella and falafels inish pasilla baby over the Laffer net the sort kill preset batch is a chavala play a play more pair and Cielo baby it in Maryland but cheesy and in it you have Merlin given a complete biography Merlin's birth story becomes very much more elaborated [Music] and one of the things which emerges I think in the French tradition is the complication of dealing with what is essentially a pagan tradition in a Christian context so you have the idea at the birth of Merlin that he's instantly baptized and he's drawn into that Christian tradition [Music] he finally falls in love with a young female magician and she seduces him into telling her all his secrets and after she learns all his secrets she shuts him up in a cave sometimes it's a glass cave and Merlin is not dead but kind of in hiding for all eternity [Music] Merlin is falling in Milan and according to the legend that he had a cave on the hill there somewhere that is really lived and huntresses also has to we can't see it has been lost in China somewhere because according to the legend the cave received up at that time only went back 1,500 years this is mr. brass over and is now completely lost we do get quite a few people walking up dressed up as Merlin probably frighten the sheep on the top as well they because the earth that they believe he walked up they feel so strongly enough learning and guided them to in his face perhaps we think of it strange factors their beliefs with all take the dough beliefs [Music] merlyn's our engines are undoubtedly weld the desire to sort of place him in Kumasi and medellin Caravela be is really a misinterpretation of a place name so I gather and father now people replied well after that but you know the named modern comes from more the Welsh for sea and then the old Welsh word for city of fort and kyer of course is a fort so it's the fort of the sea fort and has nothing to do a Merlin at all but when you begin to try to make sense of placing to give them a person particularly a mythical person of remarkable powers is a very appealing idea and you find it all over the place [Music] this chunk of wood well this is one of the fragments of the kamala oak which was a famous landmark in Carmarthen for a couple hundred years it's ended up here because the oak tree was poisoned in the 19th century because it became too much of a popular gathering point and someone living in the neighborhood decided to poison it and although it was propped up for many years eventually it had to be removed the largest part you can find within come and tell me itself I remember it as encasing concrete to the metal of Wheeling's own debt that's when I first saw that and that was when my mother back in 1973 eventually it was removed from the airport yeah and this is we have seen it sense there is a story that Merlyn says that when commands okay shall tumble down then shall fall Kamal in town and it's for that very reason that we don't have the whole Oh here in the museum and a big wheelie because the good townspeople of Kemal they were fearful that this the worst would happen to the town if everything came here to allegory I think for some people it's a bit of a pilgrimage many many people particularly from the States they were very inspired I think by Newland and after and they know about Marvin and the links with the magician [Music] [Music] the world of Mallory is Morte d'Arthur so it exists on the cusp of the modern world and I think this is very significant for Merlin and the direction that Merlin takes because within this modern world there's always a desire for the certainties of the world that was left behind you get this hunger is really not too strong a word for it for the certainties of the world that came before and Merlin in many ways represents these certainties a world where magic is possible in which wisdom is possible in which there is a connection to the natural world but he's particularly important as the adviser to offer [Music] Amara's Morte d'Arthur is very interesting in this contest because it's one of the earliest printed books in english it was printed by Caxton in 1485 and it was printed with illustrations with wood block illustrations we're in the same tradition of an inter an integrated image picture with a text but it's gone from the one-off manuscript into the printed book and of course then the dissemination starts on quite a different basis because although books are expensive they do get disseminated much more widely and what that means in particular is that the visual image of particular characters becomes much more stable because you have something to refer to which is widely distributed so you've got quite a a specific development of the of the image of Merlin as hooded with the beard and all the rest of it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] John Dee was known to the court of Queen Elizabeth indeed he was a physician for Queen Elizabeth and it's an astrology for Queen Elizabeth you get this idea of Merlin the magician he becomes much much more of a magician and he's taken up with this idea of magic particularly ritual magic now ritual magic is essentially magic of an intellectual and literate kind and certainly in the Renaissance there was a great deal of interest in ritual magic searching for hidden treasure searching for the meaning of life for many and kanuk was a very very very sophisticated kind of magic and Merlin becomes one of the figures associated with that [Music] [Music] and you certainly have a number of books that jongdae wrote in this curious curious language because he felt that he was communicating with angelic presences and this was all what this ritual magic was was like it was kind of accessing something beyond the human in the early 18th centuries of Classical period very urbane writing a wild places were considered to be disgusting in fact early descriptions of people going through mountains and drawing down the curtains of their coach less their sensibility should be injured by seeing such uncouth places but as the eighteenth century progresses you get particularly artists delighting in wild places in the 17th century and especially then through the 18th century you get the antiquarian movement growing which looks at ancient Britain and the interest in ancient Britain revised and specifically of the druid figure and the illustrations draw on that figure and you get a whole strain of druidical and bardic imagery it's most potent image probably is the 18th century image which is where you get a figure who's labeled as the chief druid but in fact he's a complete Merlin figure with the beard a hood the flowing robes and the the oak leaves which of course crucial in me in the idea that they had about the Bartok tradition in that period years to all intents and purposes Merlin [Music] [Music] [Music] from Grey's poem from that point you've got an absolutely float high art images and of popular art printed images does it particularly I think potent image which has not really been noticed much by art historians which was made in the early 1760s by Richard Wilson it's a bit recalled solitude you've got a big driven druidic figures one figure in particular the standard figure that the hooded figure that the beard the staff you've got druidical mysteries going on in the background and one of the most celebrated reductions of it of course is the John Martin image of the last bard John Martin was fascinated by a pop apocalyptic imagery of all sort so it's not so much I don't think in his case the specifics of the last part it's just an apocalyptic image which he took to great extremes because Wales has become Switzerland the bard is perched and way way way way up high on the top of the mountain and so forth it's quite an extreme rendition of the story [Music] [Music] the one which we tend to think of now is Thomas Jones's at the pocket of 1777 which is an extraordinary powerful image and a beautiful image which combines the specifics of the myth of the last part you've got the army spent with the first in there they're very very small and you've got the bard about to throw himself off the cliff into the river calmly below committing suicide but you've also got very prominently displayed Stonehenge in there and Thomas Jones had just in fact visited Stonehenge he'd gone down from London where he lived to have a look at Stonehenge so it's a very specific reference to the British bardic tradition I've thought it was something from the Old Testament before I read the explanation religious feel about it isn't it something apocalyptic from the lit up how do you get the light on Welsh Hills like that - yeah that's yeah identifies it too this kind of dramatic how it's focused on the one person he reminds me of with some sort of wizard [Music] [Music] my role is at the arts to it I write a great deal apart myself and I am I am reckoned in my locality to be somewhat of a mistake because if somebody wants a poem to celebrate though in memory or something they will come to me because it is still founded in ways that they think you have some sort of mystic quality well I suppose look not American and we believe a right to poems I suppose in that sense the business and the mysticism [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] suddenly you get this idea of Merlin not as a repository of wisdom not as an ancient bard but as a Romantic artist so it's magician is artist Merlin as artists now [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's perfect for the 19th century because you get these strong gender polarities here is the masculine patriarchal Marilyn with all of its own certainties giving way to this very very seductive very very attractive but slightly dangerous power of femininity [Music] I've always been drawn to the character I first started reading in my childhood reading the Algerian legends [Music] okay so I'm just gonna come up with some kind of image of Merlin I think it's gonna be Merlin the dreamer as an old man towards the end of his days in a state of fairly pleasant imprisonment really he's been hidden beguiled by this enchantress I think the reason this particular aspect of the character appeals to me is that night I quite like to end my days in the same way sort of resting benissa an ancient fallen tree dreaming and in an enchanted wood okay the occasional visit from a young enchantress [Music] the other really potent group of images in the late 19th century coming out of England are the images which are associated with the pre-raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts movement in particular burne-jones there are several burne-jones images which became particularly familiar the very famous image of the beguiling of Merlin there the Merlin figure doesn't look like Merlin at all he's a young man infatuated with a woman well of course he's because he's burne-jones and burne-jones is using with the arthur in narrative to make his own point about his own life there that's that that's how the painting is usually read anyway [Music] it was very popular in Germany Germany was very very interested in Romanticism and really took romanticism into all kinds of directions and their two are interested in the etherion world they were interested in the stories of Arthur and in Germany Merlin kind of goes into a very strange direction because he becomes the kind of embodiment of ancient wisdom but also the embodiment of the old order and unfortunately in some ways the embodiment of a new world order which takes on Aryan overtones so you get this idea of Merlin the powerful magician with the emphasis really on power [Music] [Music] it's kind of Himmler's personal view of nature as power and at the etherion world as a stable world in which these kind of you know Teutonic Nazi Knights could operate [Music] the Second World War hit Europe draped if you were dead bodies but say that we were underneath buildings like tal Cambridge campus Lewis is a kinda use of me in order to make sense of today [Music] [Music] [Music] these fantasies were actually discussed by CS Lewis and by his friend JRR tolkien in a pub in Oxford which is known as the burden baby the famous Inklings would get together regularly and talk about their philosophy and their fantasies and out of it really emerged this new image of Merlin this image of Merlin as good [Music] [Music] tokine took very different Tolkien Merlin isn't actually called Merlin it's called Gandalf and for Tolkien we're not talking about the divine here we're in a quite different kind of world Gandalf is almost a classical image of Merlin and that he is the advisor he advises the other the other members of the fellowship particularly the little hobbits so it's almost as if you have Merlin and the baby Arthur again which Tolkien was very very attracted to and here is this big figure of Gandalf who now looks like all of the elements of Maryland we've seen developing over the ages [Music] [Music] when I finish working on the halter it's one of the props that I designed which was scandal staff was was given to me as a as a parting gift and this is it and it has a tobacco pouch which contains Flint's I don't know if these were ever brought out on film but so you can take your lightest pipe the pipe able to be stowed away in amongst the roof yeah so it's quite an appropriate gift really I'm very happy to have this I met my mentor of six years in the New Zealand version of middle-earth [Music] here we are in the 21st century and Merlin's back he's the daddy of the Wizards Merlin is the original and yet we are transforming him for our own needs now he is we are in a world where there's not much religion it's very rational it's very mundane is dominated by technology but Merlin's even got in on that [Music] [Music] so Merlin has now become really coinage in modern culture it's modern figured which speaks to everyone because you find him in Harry Potter both in Dumbledore and Harry Potter himself suddenly you know children can do what all children want to do which has been magicians themselves when you think of Merlin Merlin helps them to get through the bad times and get in there and so without magic you really cannot overcome some of the turbo feelings you have and get through to reach your goals that you want I think magic is important because not just in books and stuff but if there was no magic in real life then there's really nothing to look forward to I look for wish for [Music] [Music] when I see films and I see people book writing box and stories or anything to do with me nothing here comes another one here comes another one it's endless shall I read it child watch it is endless but it's good stuff it just makes me laugh cuz I'm here right in front of them under their noses [Music] I'm not playing a part I am Merlin it is me it's inside it's fantastic they've named me George Vernon my parents did but I always knew it wasn't their name and then I think I was four or five they gave me a middle name Merlin [Music] 99.9% is Merlin the 1% hello George how are you all right it's time to brush your teeth that sort of thing you know anything more than that and George will blow a fuse tie your shoelaces George I can do that it's Merlin that can paint George can paint its Merlin that creates it smelling that can right so that's the creative energies the Merlin the biggest thing I can do is to to show my artwork to make people think to look at a painting to go into a painting bring up big questions mathematically visually hollowly you name it it gets the person and lifts them on a higher level [Music] oh the Energy's here to go on and on I'm not immortal in the sense that I'm flesh and blood right the spirit will will go somewhere else we too now in the modern world late twentieth century beginning of the 21st century we're also in a period where we feel disconnected particularly we feel disconnected from nature we feel disconnected from government disconnected even from society and Merlin has changed to answer this as well [Music] [Music] you call a new Asia to life but there are many people now who have much more open-minded about to say that the power of nature and Nepal will be having ourselves in the power of prophecy these people coming to a certain time now where there's a lot of prophecies coinciding in this particular time so Muniz prophecies are well other relevance today because it's rooted in the Celtic belief that whole life is all of life is a circle a great circle [Music] [Music] people are very very interested in somehow getting into a spiritual nature and Merlin has really become a song well of course this kind of reflects something that was associated with the earliest Merlin Merlin who was taken over by the Arwen who has taken over by this poetic ecstasy and this has translated into a yet another aspect of Merlin Merlin as New Age Psalm unless is certainly in the 21st century the most widely known image of Merlin [Music] [Music] come here and express yourself experiment with with who you are and and and and it's okay to let it hang out to jump up and down to yell and scream to meditate to play music to dance to chant that is all okay and from that it increases the possibility for personally have the opportunity to experience their own inner magic you know and allow that to flower in their lives I'm always really cynical about the new age it's all people dressed in purple semi naked at the Solstice it was so commercialized as well the dreamcatchers the tie-dye all that business and yet was in America recently having my usual treat of a mani and a pedi having my nails done in a suburb of Chicago and there's a young Chinese lad painted my toenails he says where you from I said I'm from Wales is it near stonehenge i said well it is yeah quite near have you been there yes yeah he said did you feel the energy and all of a sudden he sort of stopped mid toenail paint with his eyes shining and at that point I thought it's not just a place by the side of the motorway where tourists go he still has this huge group for the imagination and in his eyes he could see Merlin and for somebody four thousand miles away in a nail salon in Chicago Merlin was real in some modes of thought Merlin is a title as opposed to a particular person and there are Merlin's throughout history and there are millions today if the myth if the myth or legend of King Arthur in its a moaning attached to that have a basis in in reality then he does look to be a druid like character and he taught a king to fit the model role which was the role of the jury then he would have taught that the balance of the landscape and the role of kingship as rather father to the people rather than a dictator to me one of the appeals of Merlin's wisdom is the fact that it's so an unspecific it isn't the wisdom of science it's the wisdom of science and more it isn't just the wisdom of paganism it's the wisdom of paganism and more it isn't just Christianity it is more than that so however we feel that any of our specific realms of knowledge let us down Merlin always has more than more than that we're not quite sure what it is and I think this is this is what we keep going back to it but whenever we feel that science isn't enough religion isn't enough there is Merlin with you know yet more knowledge to kind of carry us on the beauty of Merlin is that he's the ultimate blank canvas you can paint whatever picture you like on him and people have been doing it for thousands of years you think he's the definitive wizard and yet if you look at the origins he's an amalgam of all sorts of characters and stories and myths [Music] [Music] [Music] I don't see madam so much as around me I see Merlin as in me because you know we are all creatures of the past's and products of our conceptual futures and Myrlie was such a wise man such a varied man so many interesting facets for a fascination that I have in the fantasies that people have a Merlin well this is in many ways extraordinary because it illustrates again part of the Merlin concept it brings us back to the early druid ik phenomenon you know the oak trees and this is a bowl of oak for example and the face of paganism life-loving lip-licking excitement and joy merriment Merlin is an old man a rather debilitated gerontocracy living in : Camelot in the court and deeply smitten smote him in love with the strange wicked little nymphet called Morgan la Fey who's in the castle half-sister of King Arthur and there you can see Morgan in his lap Merlin the old man deeply in love Morgan in her wild you know childhood wiles has him by the beard and he's trapped by her and in fact when he consummates his love for her in exchange for knowledge that he gave him she turns herself in an oak tree and carries him forever as well he deserved to be well here is the kids of Milan that I love very much it's Merlin when he sees battle blood and war the Iraq and murder and mayhem in RV dairies hides away in shame runs in the woods becomes an eco-warrior live the roots and fruits and branches and shares his life with a pig because pigs were better than the royal court he was in fact an early communist who abandoned all luxury or conspicuous consumption and became a man of the woods a proper hero figure for today [Music] what attracts us to memorize the fact that he is undying he is this kind of universal eternal figure he is this figure of legend he's this figure of myth and it's that which allows him to change change [Music] I think that MIT is one of the essential parts of human imagination the world without myth would not be a human well and Merlin if he fits into that is a necessary figure [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 325,948

Rating: 4.2387595 out of 5

Keywords: history documentary, TV Shows - Topic, documentary history, History, 2017 documentary, Documentary, Celtic, stories, BBC documentary, Documentaries, Arthurian, wizard, Mythical, art and literature, Merlin, Merlin The Legend, Documentary Movies - Topic, Full length Documentaries, Full Documentary, real, Welsh, Channel 4 documentary, The Mythical Roots of Merlin The Legend

Id: In0wnzO0Sko

Length: 58min 16sec (3496 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 18 2018