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."
Merlin is a Scot, eh...alright, I can go along with that.
If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap.
Nah, that was the Stone of Scone, the namesake of all those tasteless Scottish pastries.
Not news to me. I've known it since I was a wee bairn.
My turn to say hmmmm.
His chronology is subject to some argument since it is difficult to place the Battle of Badon after 499 (most likely around 495) and thus also difficult to place Arthur's final termination much later than 515.
On the other hand, Merlin may have been a later Arthurian figure in Arthur's second period and have then survivied Arthur's death by some extended period. I haven't read Ms. Goodrich's books in some time and have forgotten where she put him on the time line.
And the fact that these people were based north of the wall does not preclude them from having significant action in England where the enemy (the Saxon's) were located. Most of the serious students view Arthur as a calvery military officer who was able to take the military action to the enemy everywhere on the island that he found them.
hmmmmm ping
Of course I’ll have another Scotch! What do ya mean that wasn’t what we were discussing? Oh! Never mind....
I am under the impression that in the 6th century all Scots lived in Scotia (Ireland), and only entered Great Britain by way of Dalriada at the end of the first millennium AD. In the 6th Century what is now Scotland was inhabited by northern Britons (Welsh), and Picts.
Ah...so Merlin could very well have lived in what is today modern-day Scotland and still have been Welsh (which much tradition says he is).
As your description implies, he most likely would certainly not have been "Scottish".
Quite a few books, legends, poems and stories abound about Merlin and the Arthurian legends. Not all of them from the British Isles. “Orlando Furioso” is pretty good, Merlin, Mordred and Morgan Le Fey all show up several times in it, as well as mention of Arthur and various knights. It tells a set of stories about the period of Charlemagne and the driving of the Muslims from France and Europe.
I was amazed that the scope of the tales take in everything from Arthus’s Court to the Emperor of Cathay.
‘Welsh’ was the Anglo-Saxon word for ‘stranger’, which is what the Germanic invaders called the native Britons. The Britons were pushed west into Wales and Cornwall, and south to Brittany (Armorica). At the time of the Battle of Badon Hill, the Anglo-Saxon invasion was about half completed.
Quite a few books, legends, poems and stories abound about Merlin and the Arthurian legends. Not all of them from the British Isles. “Orlando Furioso” is pretty good, Merlin, Mordred and Morgan Le Fey all show up several times in it, as well as mention of Arthur and various knights. It tells a set of stories about the period of Charlemagne and the driving of the Muslims from France and Europe.
I was amazed that the scope of the tales take in everything from Arthus’s Court to the Emperor of Cathay.
Boadica also had such a surname. Translated in that long dead language her name means Queen Arthur!. This goes a long way toward explaining why (s)he didn't get so upset over a noble knight tending to the wife's needs.
This flips right off the planet into a recent story that in the early Middle Ages (a Dark Age thing) it was common throughout Europe for same-sex marriage to be recognized.
It's noteworthy that the writer has Merlin being born the year the world ended ~ 541 AD.
Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” is a 16th century work, in which he gathers ideas from many pre-existing works of European literature. It is an intellectual construct and of no use in determining the facts of history. It is, I understand, a great work of literary art.
Gay BS!! In Christian Europe it was a capital crime!
>>Nah, that was the Stone of Scone, the namesake of all those tasteless Scottish pastries.
Anyone for battle bread? I’ve got some Ironcrusts(R)-”the toast with the most.”
THUD!
next you’ll tell me harry potter is australian!
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