MERLIN'S MOUNTAIN(S) IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND

[from my book THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON]

Myrddin’s Mountain

In Geoffrey the Caledonian mountain Merlin remains unnamed. This is unfortunate, in that by finding this mountain we might learn a great deal more about Merlin’s identity...

Merlin’s Caledonian Wood mountain is mentioned in one other source: the 13th century French verse romance by Guillaume Le Clerc entitled Fergus of Galloway. The Fergus romance is distinguished by the author’s knowledge of Scottish geography. To quote from Cedric E. Pickford in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages:

“His [Guillaume’s] Scottish geography is remarkably accurate… In the whole range of Arthurian romance there is no instance of a more detailed, more realistic geographical setting.”

The modern translator of Fergus, the late D.D.R. Owen, has made similar remarks on this romance. The notes and synopses in his translation also remind the reader that various elements of the Fergus mountain episode were adapted from Chretien’s Yvain and Perceval and the Continuations of the latter.

But it remains true that only Fergus actually names Merlin’s mountain and purports to give us directions on how to get there. The hero Fergus starts his journey to the mountain not as Nikolai Tolstoy (in his The Quest for Merlin) claims at the Moat of Liddel, where Merlin fought and fled in madness, but at Liddel Castle at Newcastleton in Liddesdale. Tolstoy uses 1) Guillaume’s directions and the placement of King Rhydderch at Dumbarton 2) Merlin’s affinity with the stag in Geoffrey’s Life of Merlin 3) the incorrect positioning of Merlin’s Galabes springs (see below) and 4) the great height of the hill to select Hart Fell at the head of Annandale as Merlin’s mountain.

There are marked problems with each of these guidelines used by Tolstoy. Firstly, the directions given are incredibly vague and hence can be used to chart a course from the Moat of Liddel to just about anywhere:

“[Fergus] comes riding along the edge of a mighty forest… Fergus comes onto a very wide plain between two hills. On he rode past hillocks and valleys until he saw a mountain appear that reached up to the clouds and supported the entire sky…”

Secondly, Fergus’ mountain is given two names, neither of which match that of Hart Fell: Noquetran (variants Nouquetran, Noquetrant) and ‘Black Mountain’. The latter is obviously a poetic designation only, the primary name being Noquetran.

And thirdly, there is no edifice of any kind atop or on the flanks of Hart Fell which could have been referred to as ‘Merlin’s Chapel’. As described in the Fergus romance, this edifice must be an ancient chambered cairn. Such monuments are often associated with Arthurian characters.

The hill-name Noquetran is obviously a Norman French attempt at a Gaelic hill-name, with the first component being cnoc, English knock, ‘hill’. As the French render English bank as banque and check as cheque, Cnoc/Knock became Noque-.

The secret to correctly interpreting the –tran component of Noquetran lies in a closer examination of Professor Owen’s notes on the Fergus romance. For lines 773-93 he writes:

“This adventure [of the Noquetran] is largely developed from elements in C.II [the Second Continuation of Chretien’s Perceval]. There Perceval fights and defeats a Black Knight in mysterious circumstances. Earlier, he had found a fine horn hanging by a sash from a castle door. On it he gave three great blasts, whereupon he was challenged by a knight, the horn’s owner, whose shield was emblazoned with a white lion. Perceval vanquished this Chevalier du Cor and sent him to surrender to Arthur. At his castle he learned of a high mountain, the Mont Dolorous, on whose summit was a marvellous pillar… fashioned long ago by Merlin.”

For lines 4460 ff, Owen writes:

“Mont Dolorous, which also appears in C.II (see note to II. 773-93 above), is here associated with Melrose and is probably to be identified with the nearby Eildon Hills…”

In the Fergus romance, the Noquetran episode comes first. The horn hangs from a white lion (cf. the lion on the knight’s shield in the Perceval Continuation) in the Noquetran chapel, where Merlin had spent many a year. In front of the chapel is a bronze giant, apparently a statue, whose arms are broken off by Fergus, causing the giant’s great bronze hammer to fall to the ground. Later in the romance, Fergus goes to the Dolorous Mountain or the Eildons and encounters there a club-wielding giant in the Castle of the Dark Rock (reminiscent of the ‘Black Mountain’ name applied to the Noquetran).

As it happens, the Eildons are noteworthy for having three major ancient monuments atop two of their three hills. On the Eildon North Hill is the largest hill fort in Scotland, the probable oppidum of the Selgovae tribe. Here also is a Roman signal station.

But on Eildon Mid Hill is a large Bronze Age cairn. This ancient burial mound is situated on the Southwest flank of Eildon Mid Hill about 30m below the summit, at a height of some 395m OD. It has been much robbed and now appears as a low, irregular mound of stones, about 15m in diameter, from which a few boulders protrude to indicate the possible former presence of a cist.

More remarkable was the presence below the cairn of a group of seven bronze socketed axes. These axes are now in the Royal Museum of Scotland.

This group of seven socketed axes was found in 1982 on the lower western slopes of Eildon Mid Hill, Ettrick and Lauderdale District, Borders Region. Although recovered from redeposited soil, the axes probably represent a hoard of the Ewart Park phase of the late Bronze Age. The find reinforces what appears to be a significant local concentration of contemporary metalwork around the Eildon Hills.

In view of their discovery in redeposited soil we cannot be absolutely certain how the axes were originally deposited. However, their number, their proximity and their similar condition all suggest that they came from a hoard, probably close to their eventual find-spot. Whether the seven axes recovered in August 1982 comprised the whole hoard remains uncertain. On the other hand, it is possible, though less likely, that more than one separate deposit was originally involved.

These bronze axes immediately remind us of the bronze hammer in the Fergus romance’s account of Merlin’s Chapel. This being so, I would see in the name ‘Noquetran’ or Noquetrant a Gaelic cnoc or Anglicized ‘knock’ plus one of the following:

G. dreann – grief, pain (cf. Irish drean, sorrow, pain, melancholy);

or

G. treana, treannadh – lamentation, wailing.

In other words, Noquetran is merely a Gaelic rendering of the Old French Mont Dolorous, the famous Dolorous Mountain of Arthurian romance!

The Eildon Hills

The bronze hammer Fergus causes to be dropped near Merlin’s Chapel on the Noquetran is a folk memory of a bronze socketed axe being deposited on the slope below the Eildon Mid Hill cairn or, more probably, of such an axe being found on the site prior to Guillaume Le Clerc’s writing of the Fergus romance. Merlin’s Noquetran chapel is the Eildon Mid Hill Bronze Age cairn.

Melrose Mountain, Black Mountain and Castle of the Dark Rock are all designations for the Eildons. The hill-name Eildon is found in 1130 as Eldunum and in 1150 as Eldune. This could be (according to the Scottish place-name expert Watson) OE aelet + dunas, ‘fire hills’, or G. aill, ‘a rock, cliff’, plus OE dun, ‘a hill’. The Fergus romance’s ‘Castle of the Dark Rock’ (Li Chastiaus de la Roce Bise) may stand for the hill-fort on Eildon North Hill, with Eildon being perceived as composed of aill, rock, plus not dun, ‘hill’, but instead OE dun, a colour partaking of brown and black; ME dunne, donne, dark-coloured: Ir. Dunn, a dun colour: Wel. dwn, dun, swarthy, dusky: Gael. Donn, brown-coloured.

So why were the Eildons identified with the Dolorous Mountain/Noquetran? The answer may lie in part with Nikolai Tolstoy’s astute observation that the lion Fergus thinks should be roaming over the mountain-top, but which he finds inside the ‘chapel’ is an error or substitution for the god Lugos (Welsh Lleu, Irish Lugh). In Welsh, Lleu’s name could sometimes be spelled Llew, and the latter is the normal spelling for the Welsh word ‘lion’. Merlin’s associations with Lleu will be discussed below. For now, suffice it to say that the Dolorous Mountain got its name because the divine name Lugos or Lugh was at some point wrongly linked to Latin lugeo, ‘to mourn, to lament, bewail’. Such mistakes in language could easily have occurred when going from Celtic to Old French. It may even be that in preferring lugeo to Lugos, a pagan religious secret was being disguised and thus protected. [Note, however, that the Dolorous Mountain first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work, where it stands for Arthur’s Breguoin, mistakenly thought to represent Welsh bre, hill, plus gwyn, pain.]

The Dolorous Mountain is then, properly, ‘Lugos Mountain’. And the Lugos/Lugh/Lleu mountain in particular is Eildon Mid Hill, the highest of the Eildons, with its Bronze Age cairn. Such an identification of the Dolorous Mountain has implications for the Dolorous Garde of Lancelot, especially given that Lancelot himself is a late literary manifestation of the god Lugh, something first discussed long ago by the noted Arthurian scholar Roger Sherman Loomis.

We know of five Lugh forts in Britain, four known and one unlocated. Of the former there is Dinas Dinlle in Gwynedd, Loudoun in East Ayrshire, Luguvalium or Carlisle in Cumbria and Lleuddiniawn or ‘Lothian’, land of the Fort of Lugh. Din Eidyn, modern Edinburgh, the capital of Lothian, preserves the name of Lugh’s mother in Irish tradition, Eithne. Luguvalium has been interpreted as containing a personal name *Lugovalos, ‘Lugos-strong’, but I believe this name is instead a descriptive of the fort itself as being ‘Strong as Lugh’.

Then there is the Lugudunum or ‘Hill-fort of Lugh’ of the Ravenna Cosmography. This place, according to Rivet and Smith’s The Place-Names of Roman Britain, is situated somewhere roughly between Chester-le-Street and South Shields. The only good candidate would seem to be Penshaw Hill, which the Brigantes Nation Website calls “the only triple rampart Iron Age hill-fort known to exist in the north of England.” Penshaw Hill is associated with the famous Lambton Worm, a monster not unlike the two worms or dragons of Lleu’s hill-fort of Dinas Emrys in Gwynedd, Wales.

According to Joseph Rogerson (The Farmer’s Magazine, 1835), the Melrose Lammas Fair (Christian substitute for the pagan Lughnasadh) was the largest in the south of Scotland.  It was held on the northern slope of the Eildons and as many as 30,000-50,000 lambs were shown.  Lammas was associated with St. Peter “in Chains”, i.e. St. Peter when he was imprisoned by Herod.  His being freed by an angel, according to James B. Jordan (“The Resurrection of Peter and the Coming of the Kingdom”, Biblical Horizons 34), portrayed a type of resurrection for Peter, recapitulating the resurrection of Jesus.  As I’ve shown that the death of Lugh fell on Imbolc (February 1; see below) on the opposite side of the solar year from Lughnasadh, we can say with a fair degree of confidence that not only were the Eildons a famous Lugh mountain, but that the celebration of Lughnasadh here had commemorated the rebirth of the sun god. 

The Eildons are noted for the stories of ‘Canobie’ or Canonbie Dick and Thomas the Rhymer of Ercildoune.

Canonbie is close to both the Carwinley of Myrddin’s/Merlin’s lord Gwenddolau and Arthuret Knowes, the scene of the Battle of Arfderydd in which Myrddin was driven mad. The 13th century Thomas is credited with meeting an elf-woman under the Eildon Tree (whose location is now marked by a stone) and being taken under the Eildons to the land of Faery. He is also credited with a prophecy concerning Merlin’s grave at Drumelzier:

“When Tweed and Powsail meet at Merlin’s grave, Scotland and England that day ae king shall have.”

The story of Canonbie Dick presents Thomas as a wizard from past days, and I will quote it in full:

“A long time ago in the Borders Region there lived a Horse Cowper called Canobie Dick. He was both admired and feared for his bold courage and rash temper. One evening he was riding over Bowden Moor on the West side of the Eildon Hills. It was very late and the moon was already high in the night sky.

He had been to market but trade that day had been poor and he had with him a brace of horses, which he had not been able to sell. Suddenly, he saw ahead of him on the moonlit road, a stranger. The stranger was dressed in a fashion that had not been seen for many centuries. The stranger politely asked the price of the horses.

Now Canobie Dick liked to bargain, and was not worried by the strange man’s looks. Why, he would have sold his horses to the devil himself, and cheated him as well, given half a chance. They agreed a price which the stranger promptly paid.

The only puzzle was that the gold coins he used to pay were as ancient as his dress. They were in the shape of unicorns and bonnet pieces. However, Canobie Dick shrugged his shoulders. Gold was gold. He smiled to himself, thinking that he would get a better bargain for the coins than the stranger had got for the horses.

When the stranger asked if he could meet him again at the same place, Canobie Dick was happy to agree. But the stranger had one condition: that he should always come by night and always alone.

After several more meetings, Canobie Dick became curious to learn more about his secret buyer. He suggested that ‘dry bargains’ were unlucky bargains and that they should seal the business with a drink at the buyer’s home.

‘You may see my dwelling if you wish,’ said the stranger; ‘but if you lose courage at what you see there, you will regret it all your life.’

Canobie Dick was scornful of the warning, after all he was well known for his courage and the stranger seemed harmless enough. The stranger led the way along a narrow footpath, which led into the hills between the Southern and central peaks to a place called the Lucken Hare. Canobie Dick followed but was amazed to see an enormous entrance into the hillside. He knew the area well but had never seen before such an opening or heard any mention of it.

They dismounted and tethered their horses. His guide stopped and fixed his gaze on Canobie Dick. ‘You may still return,’ he said. Not wanting to be seen as a coward, Canobie Dick shook his head, squared his shoulders and followed the man along the passage into a great hall cut out of the rock.

As they walked, they passed many rows of stables. In every stall there was a coal black horse, and by every horse lay a knight in jet black armour, with a drawn sword in each hand. They were as still as stone, as if they had been carved from marble.

In the great hall were many burning torches. But their fiery light only made the hall more gloomy. There was a strange stillness in the air, like a hot day before a storm. At last they arrived at the far end of the Hall. On an antique oak table lay a sword, still sheathed, and a horn. The stranger revealed that he was Thomas of Ercildoun [Thomas the Rhymer] the famous prophet who had disappeared many centuries ago.

Turning to Canobie Dick he said, ‘It is foretold that: ‘He that sounds the horn and draws that sword, shall, if his heart fails him not, be king over all broad Britain. But all depends on courage, and whether the sword or horn is taken first. So speaks the tongue that cannot lie.’’

The stillness of the air felt heavy. Canobie Dick wanted to take the sword but he was struck by a supernatural terror, such as he had never felt before. What, he thought, would happen if he drew the sword; would such a daring act annoy the powers of the mountain?

Instead he took the horn and with trembling hands put it to his lips. He let out a feeble blast that echoed around the hall.

It produced a terrible answer. Thunder rolled and with a cry and a clash of armour the knights arose from their slumber and the horses snorted and tossed their manes. A dreadful army rose before him. Terrified, Canobie Dick snatched the sword and tried to free it from its scabbard. At this a voice boomed:

‘Woe to the Coward, that ever he was born,

Who did not draw the sword before he blew the horn.’

Then he heard the fury of a great whirlwind as he was lifted from his feet and blasted from the cavern. He tumbled down steep banks of stones until he hit the ground. Canobie Dick was found the next morning by local shepherds. He had just enough trembling breath to tell his fearful tale, before he died.”

A similar story is told of Alderley Edge in Cheshire, only in that version the wizard is Merlin and the sleeping knights are King Arthur and his men. My guess is that in the case of the Canonbie Dick story, Thomas the Rhymer has taken the place of Merlin. This is not a new supposition, but combined with my identification of Myrddin’s Noquetran with Eildon Mid Hill as the Dolorous Mountain, the argument is significantly strengthened. Fergus was written around 1200 CE, while Thomas is thought to have lived c. 1220-1298. At some point Thomas was substituted for Merlin at his chapel/cairn on Eildon Mid Hill.

If I am right and the Eildons are Merlin’s Mountain at the centre of the great Celyddon Wood, then we can allow for the Celyddon as being thought of as the ancient woodland which covered much of the area surrounding the Eildons. When we combine this with the fact that Merlin was obviously wandering in the wood in the vicinity of Drumelzier when he was captured by Meldred, it is fairly obvious that the Celyddon, which in this context means merely a great forest of the Scottish Lowlands, extended for a considerable distance.

Indeed, we know there were four great ancient forests surrounding the Eildon Hills: the Jedforest, whose Capon Tree oak is one of the oldest such trees in all of Britain; Teviotdale itself, which was covered by huge oaks and ash trees in the 12th century; the Ettrick Forest of Selkirkshire; and the Lauder Forest, an immense forested track encompassing Lauderdale that still existed up until the 17th century. Apples, or rather crab-apples, the very species of tree Merlin takes refuge under in the early Welsh poetry, were also present in this region. The St. Boswell’s Apple is thought to be 150 years old and is the largest of its kind in Scotland. Thomas the Rhymer, taken to Fairyland at the Eildons, is given an apple by the Queen of Fairy.

The Scottish Lowland Celyddon Wood may have come about as a relocation of the real Caledonia in the Highlands because of the name of the Caddon Water.  This river shows early forms (spellings) that are all but identical to that of Celyddon.  The Caddon Water empties into the Tweed not far west of the Eildons.  

The Pre-Romance Mountain of Myrddin

While the Eildons would seem to be the location of Merlin’s Mountain according to the late “Fergus” romance, there is evidence of another Scottish Lowland mountain in the earlier Welsh poetry.  This particular mountain would have been the true, original mountain, the prototype of all those that succeeded it.

The reference to the location of this mountain is found in Gwasgargerd vyrdin yny bed, the “Separation-Song of Myrddin in the Grave” of the Red Book of Hergest.  There Myrddin says:

‘Gwasawg, your cry to Gwenddydd

was told to me by the wild men of the mountain

in Aber Caraf.’

From other references in the early poetry we know that Gwasawg was a ‘supporter’ of the Christian champion Rhydderch Hael, King of Strathclyde. The name is a diminutive of Welsh gwas, ‘lad, servant’.

As it turns out, St. Kentigern as a boy (see Chapter 8 of Jocelyn's Vita) is called servuli, from servulus, a dim. of Latin servus, with a meaning 'sevant-lad, young slave'.

As Kentigern is brought into close connection with Myrddin as Lailoken in the saint's life, and Kentigern's royal patron was Rhydderch, I'm proposing that Gwasawg is a Welsh rendering of servuli and that the former is thus St. Kentigern himself.

Note that Myrddin is said to be chased by the hunting-dogs of Rhydderch, and Kentigern or *Cuno-tigernos means "Hound Lord."

While Aber Caraf has been rendered by at least one translator as Aber Craf (Peter Goodrich, The Romance of Merlin, 1990), a location in south-central Wales, we can be sure it is actually to be found in Lowland Scotland. 

We have seen how Merlin/Lailoken is present in both the region of Glasgow and at Drumelzier on the Tweed.  It has long been thought that his mountain must have been somewhere between these two places, and most likely at or not far from the sources of the Clyde and Tweed, a sort of symbolic ‘center’ of the southern ‘Caledonian Wood’. 

I would identify the mountain in Aber Caraf with Tinto Hill (2320 feet / 707 meters), which looms over ancient Abercarf, now called Wiston.  Abercarf, according to the Scottish Place-Name Society’s “Brittonic Language in the North”, is from aber, ‘confluence’, plus garw, ‘rough’, derived from the name of the Garf Water, a tributary of the upper Clyde.

Tinto Hill

However, when I asked Alan James, the author of BLITON, as to the possibility that Abercarf could instead contain carw, 'stag', he responded:

"Quite right. As to the merits of the two interpretations, I'm agnostic. The phonology of either wouldn't be difficult to explain. Garw and Gaelic garbh are of course pretty common in river-names, and I'm rather less eager than some place-name scholars to see animals, e.g. carw, in such names, but there certainly are parallels."

Just a few kilometers upstream on the Clyde from the Garf Water is Hartside and Hartside Burn.  Red Deer were once plentiful here. 

Given Myrddin's association with the stag in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Life of Merlin" (see Chapter 5), and his placement historically at Arferderydd/Arthuret in Cumbria in what was the northwestern limit of the ancient Carvetti (Stag-people) territory, a mountain at the confluence of the Stag Water would make a lot of sense.

Tinto Hill is situated between Drumelzier to the east and Glasgow to the northwest.  It is also only a few miles north-northwest of the headwaters of the Clyde and Tweed.  Thus it just happens to stand exactly where we would expect the hill of Myrddin to be found. 

The hill’s name was discussed long ago by W. J. Watson in his GENERAL SURVEY OF AYRSHIRE AND STRATHCLYDE, History of the Celtic Placenames of Scotland, 1926 (reprinted 1993 by BIRLINN, Edinburgh, ISBN 1 874744 06 8):

“Tinto appears in 'Karyn de Tintou,' 'Kaerne de Tintou,' c. 1315 (RMS); in Macfarlane it is Tyntoche once, Tynto thrice; in Scots, Tintock, as also in the Retours ; it is for teinteach, 'place of fire'…”

Atop Tinto Hill is Tinto Cairn, of Bronze Age date and the largest summit cairn in all of Scotland.  Details on the hill and cairn can be found here:

http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/47525/details/tinto+cairn/

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/biggar/tinto/index.html

http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/search_item/image.php?service=RCAHMS&id=47525&image_id=SC342977

Different reasons have been supplied for why this hill is called ‘place of fire’. One suggests it gets its name from the fact that its exposed red Felsite rock can be given a fiery glow by the setting sun.  This geology is discussed here:

http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/gcrdb/GCRsiteaccount401.pdf

Another possible explanation is that the hill was used for beacon fires or even for Beltane fires:

“Long a beacon post and a place of Beltane fires, it took thence its name of Tinto, signifying the ‘hill of fire’.” [Groome, 1885, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland]

I would say these apparently conflicting ideas are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, it may precisely have been the red-glowing color of the rocks in the light of the setting sun that drew people to this mountain as being particularly sacred, and they may then have used it for Beltane fires. 

It would surely be significant if Myrddin were thought to be communing with the ancestral ghosts at a huge Bronze Age cairn atop a mountain known as the Place of Fire.  This would intimately connect him with seasonal Beltane rites.