MERLIN AND THE STAG: A CLOSER LOOK AT MYRDDIN AS MARS BELATUCADROS

Merlin transformed as a stag at the court of Julius Cesar, Paris, BNF fr. 749, f. 260 (c. 1300)

A few days ago I wrote this post:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/03/myrddin-of-stags-and-carvetii-god.html

At the time, I was really only interested in a possible relationship between Myrddin and the chief god of the Carvetii or 'Stag-people', Belatucadros.  I had not bothered to treat of Merlin's appearance in later Arthurian romance as the stag.  The motif itself has been dealt with in great detail by Lucy Patton in her "The Story of Grisandole: A Study in the Legend of Merlin (https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/456828.pdf)." For a study of the story in the context of the Wild Man of Medieval European tradition, see "The Wild Man: Medieval Myth and Symbolism
by Timothy Husband and Gloria Gilmore-House  (https://books.google.com/books?id=LFDD4nuC1HoC&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=%22the+wild+man%22%2B%22stags%22&source=bl&ots=PLuO-n4pTS&sig=ACfU3U2tefs-6XuIikXsXWmyJT3RsYI6AA&hl=en&ppis=_e&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiG4vLomcXoAhXdGTQIHa1LBFIQ6AEwEHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20wild%20man%22%2B%22stags%22&f=false)."

What is significant about the 'Story of Grisandole' is that Merlin actually takes the form of a stag.  This is only implied in the episode featuring Guendoloena in Geoffrey of Monmouth's VITA MERLINI. There the madman rides on the back of a stag, leading an army of stags, hinds and goats.  He slays Guendoloena's husband by pulling an antler off his mount and hurling it at his rival.

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a learned man and there is no denying his creative genius, especially when it came to mining disparate sources to produce a unique synthesis.  But I still am wondering if we are to lay all of this at Geoffrey's feet. The Carwinley of Myrddin's lord Gwenddolau was, according to the best judgment of scholars of Roman Britain, probably within the northernmost part of the Carvetii kingdom.  Arthuret, site of the Arderydd battle, was quite a bit further south and almost certainly was within Carvetii lands.  If, then, the Geoffrey's account is not a total fiction, and it is not merely a coincidence that Merlin leads an army of deer in a place where the warriors would have belonged to the Stag-people, then I think we must seriously consider the possibility that by slaying his rival with horn the transformed mad man was at least acting in the role of Belatucadros.

Of course, it is not necessary to turn Myrddin into a deity.  He may well have been simply a Carvetii warrior-poet or chieftain who perished (or was sacrificed) at or near Arderydd and who then went on to exist in spectral form in the Scottish Lowland wood.  Such a form could take that of birds or animals and, in his case, doubtless that of a stag.

Belatucadros altar

(https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/918)