Posted on 08/27/2007 6:40:48 PM PDT by blam
New book claims Merlin had Scottish roots
By David Sapsted
Last Updated: 1:52am BST 28/08/2007
Merlin the magician - hirsute confidant of King Arthur and the architect of Camelot - was, in fact, Scottish, according to a new book.
The English, Welsh and French have laid claim to Merlin the magician
Not only Scottish but, to be precise, hailing from Ardery Street, just off the Dumbarton Road, in the Partick area of Glasgow.
While the English, Welsh and even the French have laid claim to the wizard with the peaked hat for centuries, this is the first time that anyone has tried to shift Camelot north of the border.
But Adam Ardrey, amateur historian and one-time SNP candidate, claims that his six years of research prove that Merlin was actually born in the year 540 in the Lanarkshire town of Hamilton and moved to a house in what was then open countryside but, later, was to become the original home of Partick Thistle FC.
Some 1,500 years after McMerlin's birth, comedian Billy Connolly - himself, a little Merlinesque in appearance - grew up in the same area.
Ardrey, the author of Finding Merlin - The Truth Behind the Legend, maintains that Christian historians have concealed the truth of Merlin's Scottish roots. He also reckons that Arthur was no Sassenach but a Scottish warlord.
He accepts, though, that anyone who claims to study the Arthurian legends must be ready to be frowned upon in academic circles.
"As soon as you mention Arthur and Merlin, people laugh," he says. "No respectable Cambridge historian is going to be seen as the guy who studies their lives. But I'm not a professional historian, so I don't have a reputation to look out for. What I've tried to do is make sense of the history."
According to his book, Merlin was the son of a Scottish chief called Morken. He was no wizard but a scholar and politician with a wife named Gwendolin.
In 618AD, Mr Ardrey reckons that Merlin was assassinated on his way to Dunipace in Stirlingshire and lies buried at Drumelzier in the Borders.
Arthur, according to Ardrey's research, which started when he was trying to discover the origins of his surname at the National Library of Scotland, was a Scottish warlord born in 559.
"When I watch programmes or read books about Arthur and Merlin, the maps stop at the border. Yet four of Arthur's most famous battles were fought at Loch Lomondside," he says.
"In movies, he's portrayed as an English king when he's far from it. He made his reputation fighting against the English. When I found the evidence, I couldn't leave it alone."
Until now, most people have regarded Merlin as the creation of Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose 'History of the Kings of Britain' in the 12th century combined the Welsh traditions about a prophet named Myrddin with that of another prophet, Ambrosius.
After French and English romantics wrote about Arthur in the 13th century, Sir Thomas Malory published Morte d'Arthur'in 1485, portraying Merlin him as an adviser to Arthur.
Then Tennyson had him as the architect of Camelot in 'The Idylls of the King' only for Mark Twain to mock him in 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'.
Later, Hollywood got hold of the legend and all bets were off.
Now, the court of King Arthur has been wrapped in tartan. "I'm not saying you must believe this," says Mr Ardrey. "All I have done is the best I can with the evidence I've found. If I'm right, I'm right and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong."
My kind of bedtime stories... ;^)
I'll see your Ironcrust and raise you a fruitcake. Have you ever tried one of those from Corsicana? They're in the mini-Daisy Cutter class.
Quit yer whinging and eat yer Haggis!
A lot of mysteries from this period.
The best Merlin ever was Nicol Williamson from Excalibur. Case closed.
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I preferred Sam Neill as Merlin.
Merlin... Hmm.... I haven’t gone by that name in a few centuries...
And I’m definitely not Scottish!
Merlin is from Gilead, not was, is - he’s still around and is an operative in the Dimocrat Pahty.
You're thinking of his cousin Bruce.
We talk about this, and, voila, the next day, here comes a Merlin article.
prescience is such a burden.
:>)
Please elaborate. I love reading history with drama, and I've learned more from the FR threads (yours, blam's, SunkenCiv's) than I ever did in college.
So was 541 the year the Dark Ages began?
"Get your haggis, right here! Chopped heart and lungs boiled in a wee sheep's stomach! Tastes as good as it sounds. Good for what ails ya!"
I think it was 614, the year Mohammed was born.
I think they’ve got it down to April 21 of that year in fact.
In 541 AD vast areas of Western Europe were NOT CHRISTIAN.
I think Russia wasn’t initially Christianized in 988AD, and that was just the big dogs. The definitive book on the Volga River Vikings suggests the old ways were still in place right up to the 1700s when it came to Thor worship.
Mecca was quite isolated at that time ~ a "backwater", so to speak.
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