What Is The Truth Behind The Legend Of Merlin | Merlin - The Legend | Chronicle

[Music] [Music] merlin mythical hero and historical figure wise leader and madman antichrist and fighter of evil christian pagan magician scientist prophet and poet he is the person who has the magic to unlock our future he is gandalf he is dumbledore and harry potter he is the advisor of arthur and a powerful and naughty magician this tantalizing creature dances across the centuries still working his magic on us today through books and games and film and television from the poetry of tennyson to the fantasies of tolkien and middle earth his presence is inescapable so who is merlin he is not human but through magic he carries the aspirations and desires of humanity [Music] the popular image of merlin today is of a kindly old man with pointed hat long white beard with staff or wand weaving a little magic to amuse and to entertain but beneath the surface there is a dark complex significant figure merlin's origins are obviously buried deep in mythology and folklore but he makes himself visible to us for the first time in an obscure 12th century book the history of the kings of britain written by a little known clergyman and so the fictional legend begins merlin first appears in a work by jeffrey of monmouth jeffrey monmouth was a historian part welsh historian and jeffrey's purpose was to create a myth for the new anglo-norman aristocracy because of course they'd 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 he's not a real person he is a fiction in jeffrey of monmouth's mind he fuses two characters together one of them is the wonder child ambrosius the other is the bard mervyn wilt and jeffrey simply says that there was a character called merlinus ambrosius and suddenly you have [Music] merlin [Music] okay jeffrey's image of merlin is half human and half beast his mother is a nun his father is an incubus or evil spirit together they create a magical wonder child merlin young merlin quickly applies his magical powers in a legend that's been famous across the centuries in wales it tells of dragons beneath a castle tower that keeps collapsing they fight the red dragon seems as if it's going to be defeated and then succeeds and the child says to the king this is your kingdom these are the british the red dragon and eventually the welsh and the saxons the 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 merlin is a link with ancient times the historical storyteller jeffrey connects him with the most famous of prehistoric monuments stonehenge in order to establish merlin's true credentials jeffrey creates a myth of a great battle in which the most famous british general is killed merlin is asked to fashion a fitting memorial in the hero's honor he knows that the giant's dance in ireland is the greatest monument in the celtic world and he decides to transport it over to salisbury plain where it stands today jeffrey doesn't say merlin 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 jeffrey used many sources when compiling his history of the kings of britain but one of the most important was an iconic manuscript of welsh language poetry called the black book of camaville it is one of the national library of wales's most treasured possessions and is the rarest book of welsh poetry in existence in it we find our ancient merlin the black book of kamal and his thought was written in the middle of the 13th century but it does contain poems written in the three centuries preceding its writing [Music] there are three poems in the black book of kamala that are associated in some way with the figure of merlin the only poem in which he is specifically named is the famous umvivan the discourse between marvin and talia another 6th century figure who we assume 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 north carolina the other poems where muradin the figure from the old north addresses a pig and the avacenai 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 up [Music] the merlin that we see in this book is almost a tragic character he has 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 [Music] 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 dreyer climbs he lives in the wilderness i mean john the baptist for example you might say is 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 the wild place [Music] it's not 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 frenzy is as good a translation as any [Music] okay the wild man as a prophetic poet possessed of magical powers is a legend that spreads quickly throughout medieval literature and soon a very familiar image of merlin starts to appear we start to see images of merlin in the 13th 14th century manuscripts illustrations which we have and we often see in books beautifully reproduced as if their paintings hanging on or 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 with a long gown a sort of a medieval hoodie if you like [Music] that's the kind of image which crops up in many many cultures with many many different figures [Music] [Applause] [Music] now merlin is a figure that travels and like the british tales he gets exported throughout the french and norman world soon he inhabits the imagination of mainstream christian europe the stories of merlin's life the sort of expanded stories of merlin's life 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 the sweet the merlin or the eastward and si long von enish paseo baby or de and in it you have merlin given a complete biography merlin's birth story becomes very much more elaborated 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 the french story has none of the historical pretensions of earlier tales it is now high romance driven by love and lust 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 love is sometimes foolish and it reflects another key trait in the merlin story the trapped entombed figure turns up in his native wales here he is still a legend and his magical attraction has never gone away merlin was born in camardon and according to the legend that he had a cave on the hill there somewhere that is where he lived and apparently it is also his tomb we can't see it it's been lost in time somewhere because according to the legend the cave was sealed up at that time only going back 1500 years and obviously mr grass over and is now completely lost do get quite a few people walking up dressed up as merlin probably frightened the sheep from the top as well they will kiss the earth that they believe he walked and they feel so strongly that learning guided them to this place which perhaps we think a bit strange but that is their beliefs we're all entitled to our beliefs [Music] berlin's origins are undoubtedly wealth the desire to sort of place him into martha and mothering is really a misinterpretation of a place name so i gather around mother now people are doing quite well out there [Music] but you know the name comes from moore the welsh for sea and then uh the old welsh word for city of fort and kair of course is a fort so it's the fort of the sea fort and has nothing to do with maryland 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 kamal which was a famous landmark in camardon for a couple of 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 camarden town itself i remember it as encasing concrete to the middle of railings around it that's when i first saw that and that was when with my mother back in 1973. eventually it was removed from involve yeah and this is what i've seen it since there is a story that merlin says that when camarden's oak shall tumble down then she'll fall come out in town and it's for that very reason that we don't have the whole oak here in the museum in abigail because the good towns people of kumar then were fearful that the worst would happen to the town if everything came here to abigail i think for some people it's a bit of a pilgrimage many many people particularly from the states they they're very inspired i think by merlin and arthur and they know about camarov and the links with the magician merlin the magician is constantly shape-shifting constantly changing adapting to answer the political and cultural needs of the age the tudors when they come to power in 1485 bring merlin in from the rugged wild and into the royal court the stories of companionship of merlin and arthur are used to unite the troubled kingdom this time the legend is retold by sir thomas mallory and his magisterial work la morta arthur the world of mallory is mort 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 advisor to arthur then the commons of carleon arose with clubs and stage and slew many nights but all the kings held out together with their knights that were left alive and so fled and departed and merlin came unto arthur and counseled him to follow them no further books at this time were all copied by hand and were rare artifacts owned by the rich and read only by a privileged few william caxton's printing press of 1478 changed all that mallory's mart arthur is very interesting in this context because it's one of the uh earliest printed books in english it was printed by caxton in 1485 and it was printed with illustrations with woodblock illustrations we're in the same tradition of 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 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 uh much more stable because you have something to refer to which is widely distributed so you've got a quite a specific development of the of the image of merlin is hooded with the beard and all the rest of it the popularity of mallory's printed book makes the arthurian tales one of the most well-known legends in existence the government of camelot with its institution of the round table becomes central to the story with knights such as lancelot and percival becoming defenders of the kingdom merle in the wise leads arthur to the magical sword excalibur and he becomes chief advisor to the new king merlin presides over every event offering council and prediction in equal measure he is even involved in arthur's birth in tintagel it is told in magical terms as uthappen dragon falls in love with iguana the wife of the duke of cornwall merlin consents to change with his appearance so that he will resemble her husband iguana is deceived they sleep together and arthur is born [Music] merlin's end of the bargain is that upon arthur's birth the boy is to be handed over to him in secret in a cave beneath tintagel castle he will then be able to give him the knowledge that will one day make him a worthy king of britain [Music] but of course the merlin legend can never stand still it's too fertile to get fixed in a particular image or role and the wise sage's magical powers begin to grip the imagination of the tudor dynasty merlin is now at the court of queen elizabeth the first he takes the form of a mages a man with secret knowledge and magical wisdom in this part of the legend he is a welshman called john d john d was uh known to the court of queen elizabeth and indeed he was a physician for queen elizabeth and did some 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 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 again it was a very very very sophisticated kind of magic and merlin becomes one of the figures associated with that this is the age of shakespeare's prospero and marlo's dr faustus it's the age of alchemy in the occult the pursuit of turning base metal into gold it's the renaissance when science and magic go hand in hand and john d looks to merlin for inspiration in his mysterious writings and we certainly have a number of books that john d 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 centuries that followed cool reason and powerful religion pushed out magic and wild nature was something to be tamed in the early 18th century the sort of classical period at the very urbane writing wild places were considered to be disgusting in fact there are descriptions of people going through mountains and drawing down the curtains of their coach lest their sensibility should be injured by seeing such uncouth places but as the 18th century progresses you get particularly artists delighting in wild places a newly prosperous age needed an ancient past that could rival the empires of greece and rome it looked to the ruins of the british and celtic world and in particular to the tales and traditions of the druids and the bards in the 17th century and especially then through the 18th century you get the antiquarian movement growing which looks at ancient britain and the interesting ancient britain revives and specifically of the druid figure and the illustrations draw on that figure and you get a whole strain of druidical and bardic imagery its most potent uh image probably uh 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 the hood the flowing robes and the the oak leaves which of course crucial in the in the idea that they had about the bardic tradition in that period he is to all intents and purposes merlin [Music] mountainous wales becomes a significant landscape in the british imagination it was known as a place where poets mattered carrying the memory of the nation one image had huge impact the suicide of a lombard who defied the invading armies of edward the first when he defeated the welsh and slaughtered their poets on a rock whose haughty brow frowns oral conway's foaming flood robed in the sable garb of woe with hugged eyes the poestard his beard and whorey hair streamed like a meteor to the troubled air or thee o king their hundred arms they wave revenge on thee in horsa murmur's breath vocal no more since cambria's fatal day to highborn heart or soft human insulin from gray's poem from that point you've got an absolute float of high art images and of popular art printed images there's a 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 picture called solitude you've got a picture of druidic figures one figure in particular the standard figure the hooded figure the beard the staff you've got druidical mysteries going on in the background [Music] and one of the most celebrated reductions of it of course is the john martin image of the last bird [Music] john martin was fascinated by apoc apocalyptic imagery of all sorts 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 way way way up high on the top of the mountain and so forth it's quite an extreme rendition of the story [Music] the one which we tend to think of now is thomas jones's the bard of 1777 which is an extraordinarily powerful image and a beautiful image which combines the specifics of the myth of the last part you've got the armies of edward 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 conway below committing suicide [Music] but you've also got very prominent 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 [Music] i thought it was something from the old testament before i read the explanation yeah it's got a sort of religious feel about it isn't it something apocalyptic from the uh especially the way he's lit up oh do you get the light on welsh hills like that uh yeah so that's uh yeah identifies it too it's kind of dramatic how it's focused on the one person um he reminds me of merely some sort of wizard the celtic revival of the 18th century inspired the creation of an event focused on ancient druidic tradition the seat of the bards the aesthetic was established and today it is still a place for bards druids and poets with their staffs flowing robes and garlands of oak leaves the mysticism and defiant spirit of merlin looks like it's still alive and well [Music] my role is that the archdruid i write a great teleporter myself and i am i am reckoned in my locality uh to be somewhat of a mistake because if somebody wants a poem to celebrate or in memory or something they will come to me because it is still found in in wales that they think you have some sort of mystic quality well i suppose that not everything and everybody can write to him i suppose in that sense there is a certain amount of mysticism [Applause] [Music] [Applause] papa medieval fantasies also colored the imagination of the 19th century romances castles and chivalry were infinitely preferable to brutal modern reality for artists and poets the muse of the past is crucial in preserving the human soul suddenly you get this idea of merlin not as a repository of wisdom not as an ancient god but as a romantic artist and so it's magician as artist merlin as artist now alfred lord tennyson's famous retelling of the arthurian legends creates a merlin that is the symbol for the suffering artist unlike the stern victorian patriarchs in their black frock coats this exotic merlin is overwhelmed by the seductive wiles of a woman there is no fool like an old fool [Music] a storm was coming but the winds were still and in the wild woods of broccoli and before an oak so hollow huge and old it looked a tower of ivy mason work at merlin's feet the wily vivian lay [Music] then in one moment she put forth the charm of woven paces and of waving hands and in the hollywood 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 oh fool the harlot leapt down the forest and the thicket closed behind her and the forest echoed food [Music] it's perfect for the 19th century because you get these strong gender polarities here is the masculine patriarchal merlin 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 arthurian legends [Music] okay so i'm just going to come up with some kind of image of merlin i i think it's going to be merlin the the dreamer [Music] as an old man towards the end of his days in a state of um fairly pleasant imprisonment really he's been been beguiled by this enchantress i think the reason uh this particular aspect of the character appeals to me is that i i quite like to end my days in the same way sort of resting beneath an ancient hawthorne tree dreaming and in an enchanted wood the occasional visit from a young enchantress the artist invents a merlin that carries his own dream world within in the 19th century the pre-raphaelite painters made merlin and his medieval world into a version of their own lives 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 burn jones there are several burn 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 uh uh uh infatuated with a woman well of course he's because he's burned jones and burn jones is using the arthurian narrative to make his own point about his own life there that's that that's how the painting is usually read anyway it was very popular in german adrian and he was very very interested in romanticism and really took romanticism into all kinds of directions and they too were interested in the arthurian world they were interested in in the stories of arthur um 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] disturbingly powerful merlin was perfect for nazi purposes knights in gleaming armor riding through the german forests were an iconic image for national identity the old stories gave a glass of tradition to the brutalities of the third reich's aspirations and atrocities himmler and the knights of the ss wanted the nazi state spiritual and ideological center to be the historic vevelsberg castle at its core would be a round table inspired by the arthurian legends himmler saw himself as a merlin type figure that would advise his king the fuhrer it's kind of himmler's personal view of nature as power and the arthurian world as a stable world in which these kind of you know teutonic nazi knights could operate [Music] the second world war hit europe dreadfully if you look at what has been written after that would say that reworking a myth in things like tolkien cs lewis is a kind of use of myth in order to make sense of today [Music] fantasy writers like c.s lewis and j.r.r tolkien drew on the complex associations of merlin to wage a literary war against the totalitarian horror of nazi germany merlin the wizard becomes a fighter in the battle of good versus evil [Music] the dreaming spires gave birth to powerful fictions lewis and tolkien two little-known oxford dons influenced each other greatly and between them they created some of the most popular fiction ever written [Music] these fantasies were actually discussed by c.s lewis and by his friend j.r.r tolkien in a pub in oxford which is known as the burden baby the famous inklings would get together quite 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] for lewis the good is divine and will always win we see this in the last of his fantasy trilogy the hideous strength where soulless industrialists try to take over oxford a group of academics react to this by bringing merlin back to life in order to free the power of divine magic and to act the evil industrialists [Music] tolkien took a very different track j.r 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 figure of gandalf who now looks like all of the elements of merlin we've seen developing over the ages alan lee has illustrated the lord of the rings books bringing to life the many characters his talents were also used by the director peter jackson on the film trilogy and he helped to create the image of gandalf when i finished working on the lord the rings one of the props that i designed which was scandal staff was was given to me as a parting gift and and this is it and it um has a tobacco pouch which contains flints i don't know if these were ever brought out on film but so we can you can light his pipe the pipe able to be stowed away in amongst the roofs 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 gandalf this favorite incarnation of merlin is now worth billions of dollars worldwide here we are in the 21st century and merlin's back he's the daddy of the wizards berlin 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 it's dominated by technology but merlin's even got in on that [Music] our modern merlin is now a valuable commodity he is a creature of contemporary culture turning up in film television video games trinkets and tat so merlin has now become really coinage in modern culture it's a modern figure which speaks to everyone uh because you find him in harry potter both in dumbledore and in harry potter himself suddenly you know children can do what all children want to do which would be 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 terrible feelings you have and get through to reach the 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 or hope for or wish for [Music] when i see films and i see people book writing books and stories or anything to do with me i think here comes another one here comes another one it's endless shall i read it shall i watch it it's endless but it's good stuff it just makes me laugh because 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 um they've named me george vernon well my parents did but i always knew it wasn't my name and then i think i was four or five they gave me a middle name merlin 99.9 is merlin the one percent 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 um it's merlin that can paint uh george car paint it's merlin that creates smelling that can write so that's the creative energy is the merlin [Music] 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 colourly you name it it gets the person and lifts them on a higher level [Music] oh the energy's here it'll go on and on i'm not immortal in the sense that i'm i'm flesh and blood right the spirit will go somewhere else we too now in the modern world late 20th century beginning of the 21st century we're also in a period where we feel disconnected uh 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] the merlin we need to help us connect with this sometimes confusing and bewildering world is the merlin of nature of earth and fire and of an ancient knowledge the merlin of the old world is now in the new age you can call it news if you like but there are many people now who are much more open-minded about um should say the the power of nature and that power we have in ourselves and the power of prophecy these people are coming to a certain time now where there's a lot of prophecies coinciding in this particular time so merlin's prophecies are our relevance today because it's rooted in a celtic belief that whole life all of life is a circle a great circle [Music] people now are very very interested in somehow getting into a spiritual nature and merlin has really become a shaman well of course this kind of reflects something that was associated with the earliest merlin merlin who was taken over by the arwyn who was taken over by this poetic ecstasy and this has translated into yet another aspect of maryland merlin as new age shaman and this is certainly in the 21st century the most widely known image of merlin [Music] merlin the shaman the witch doctor the pagan performing his ritual rights dancing with beasts and with fire in touch with the mysteries of the earth he is once again at stonehenge creating myth and magic for those that need it come here and and express yourself experiment with with who you are and and and it's okay to let it hang out to jump up and down to yell and screen to meditate to play music to dance to chant that it's all okay and from that it increases the possibility of who a person can be people have the opportunity to experience their own inner magic you know and allow that to flower in their lives sometimes even the non-believers are affected i'm always really cynical about the new age so people dressed in purple naked at the solstice uh it's so commercialized as well the dream catches the tie dye all that business and yeah i was in america recently um having my usual treat of a manny and a pedi having my nails done in a suburb of chicago and there's a young chinese lad painting my toenails he says where are 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 it still has this huge grip on the imagination and in his eyes he could see merlin and for somebody 4 000 miles away in a nail salon in chicago merlin was real in some modes i thought merlin is a title as opposed to a particular person and there are merlin's throughout history and there are merlin's today or legend of king arthur and of the merlin 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 a druid then he would have taught that the balance of the landscape and the role of kingship as rather a father to the people rather than a dictator to the people one of the appeals of maryland's wisdom is the fact that it's so unspecific um 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 why we keep going back to it uh 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] we now come full circle to the land of fiction and to monmouthshire where jeffrey first penned his story and to merlin a character of the imagination reincarnated over the ages in his many forms i don't see murder so much as around me i see merlin as in me because you know we are all creatures of the past and products of our conceptual futures and merlin 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 of berlin well this is in many ways extraordinary because it illustrates again part of the merlin concept it brings us back to the early druidic phenomenon you know the oak trees and this is a bowl of oak for example and the face of paganism uh life-loving lip licking excitement and joy and medium merlin as an old man a rather debilitated gerontocrat living in the korean camelot in the court and deeply smitten smoking in love with the strange wicked little nymphet called morgan le fay 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 wilds in her childhood wilds 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 her she turns herself in an oak tree and buries him forever as well as he deserves to be we're hearing is the pilgrim berlin that i love very much it's merlin when he sees battle and blood and war in iraq and murder and mayhem in out of there is hides away in shame runs in the woods becomes an eco warrior lives on 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 all conspicuous consumption and became a man of the woods a proper hero figure for today merlin's legend will continue through time to the end of time simply because we need him [Music] what attracts us to merlin is 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 as we need him to change [Music] i think that myth is one of the essential parts of human imagination a world without myth would not be a human well and merlin if he fits into that is a necessary figure

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

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Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, who was merlin, merlin the wizard, king arthur, king arthur documentary, camelot arthur, wizard folklore, folklore documentary, are wizards real, chronicle

Id: SSRUOIAydaI

Length: 58min 7sec (3487 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 07 2021