Mabon/Maponus in Annandale with Myrddin Sites
[Ladyward = Maporiton or 'Son's Ford'; Blatobulgium for its LO(CO) MABOMI inscription]
Tweed's Well and the Headwaters of the Annan, Tweed and Clyde Rivers
The Northern Myrddin or 'Phantom-man' (Geoffrey of Monmouth's Merlin) has a clearly defined "range" as defined by the places mentioned in the Myrddin poetry.[1] This stretches from Carwinley (Caer Gwenddolau) and Arthuret (Arderydd) in the south to Tinto Hill (mountain of Abercarf) and Nemphlar (Myrddin's apple tree) in the north. Bridging these sites is the upper Clyde and the entire length of the Annan. The Tweed sites associated with Merlin were, as I've shown before, relocated from identically named places in Liddesdale.
Annandale was the nucleus of the Kingdom of Rheged, and Rheged in the Urien poetry (BOOK OF TALIESIN) is referred to as the 'land of Mabon.' This is an alusion to the presence of Lochmaben in Annandale, and the Lochmaben Stane at Gretna Green.
I've recently done some work on the very real possibility that Mabon may be present at Dinas Emrys in Gwynedd. He would appear to have been referred to as Ambrosius, the 'Divine/Immortal One." For some details on this idea, please see the following links:
Geoffrey of Monmouth chose to identify his Merlin with the Ambrosius (Mabon?) at Dinas Emrys. The question we must naturally ask this: was his identification of Mabon of the North with a divinity at Dinas Emrys actually correct? In other words, was it more than just an instance of inventive storytelling?
Well, not really. There is ample evidence for seeing Myrddin as the ghost of a man who dies - perhaps of battle-panic - during the action at Arderydd. The agent of his death may well have been a pagan battle goddess like the Irish Nemhain (see below). This deified spirit (cf. the Roman concept underlying the Manes) eventually came to be identified with the northern god Mabon/Apollo Maponus.
Well, not really. There is ample evidence for seeing Myrddin as the ghost of a man who dies - perhaps of battle-panic - during the action at Arderydd. The agent of his death may well have been a pagan battle goddess like the Irish Nemhain (see below). This deified spirit (cf. the Roman concept underlying the Manes) eventually came to be identified with the northern god Mabon/Apollo Maponus.
I have previously touched upon Mabon's imprisonment in a maendy or 'stone house' as the prototype for Myrddin's entombment by the Lady of the Lake. Years ago I wrote about this, and am offering a selection from this material below:
In the Vulgate Merlin, the forest name of the Lady of the Lake is first given as the Forest of Briosque and only later as Broceliande, the name used by Chretien de Troyes. While Broceliande has been sought in various places, none of the candidates work geographically or etymologically. I would derive the Old French ‘Briosque’ from the –fries component of Dumfries, the town situated just West-Southwest of Lochmaben in Dumfriesshire. While once thought to be the ‘Fort of the Frisians’, authorities now correctly identify –fries with Gaelic preas, Angl. Pres(s), gen. phris, Angl. –fries, gen. pl. preas, (b)p(h)reasach, ‘bush, copse, thicket’. Spellings such as Dunfreisch, Droonfreisch, and Drumfriesche occasionally occur in old documents.
The second component is probably something similar to Welsh llwyn:
[bnth. Llad. lignum, cf. H. Lyd. loin, loen mewn e. lleoedd, ?Crn. Diw. loinou (ll.)]
eg. (bach. g. llwynyn, ll. llwynynnau) ll. llwynau, llwyni, llwynydd (bach. ll. (prin) llwynïos).
bush, shrub, brake, thicket; copse, grove, arbour; woods, forest; (esp. in love-poetry) the traditional rendezvous of lovers, symbol of love or romance.
Broceliande itself may be evident in compounds like Welsh prysglwyn, "shrub, shrubbery, bush, brake, undergrowth, thicket, copse, jungle, also fig." and brysglwyn, "thicket, copse, brushwood."
It makes a great deal of sense to envisage Merlin and Viviane in the Dumfries region, as this was the home stomping grounds of Myrddin, the Welsh prototype for Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Merlin. Broceliande, then, is simply a name for Dumfries.
In this context it is necessary to mention the Locus Maponi or ‘place of [the god] Maponus’, identifiable with Lochmaben in Dumfries (or perhaps the Ladyward Roman fort near Lochmaben, or even with the Clochmabenstane just south at Gretna Green; see the listing for Mabon in Chapter 6).
As is well known, Mabon was the son of Modron, i.e. Matrona, the Divine Mother. This is the same Modron who is presented as the wife of Urien of Rheged, son of Nyfain. Nyfain (variants Nyuein, Nyven, Nevyn) is the most likely prototype for Nimue/Nineve/Nymue/Ninniane/Viviane/Vivien, the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian romance.
Nyfain’s name cannot, as some have thought, be an eponym for the ancient Novantae tribe, whose territory (roughly Dumfries and Galloway) was ruled over by Urien. The identification is etymologically impossible. But the name could very easily represent the Irish goddess Nemhain. Nemhain was one of the premiere battle-goddesses of Ireland, and was often paired with Macha, Morrigan and Badb. When asked about such an equation of names, Professor Peter Schrijver responded "That may well be correct. One could start from a form like *Nemani. There is no suffix problem."
There is a strong probability the “stone” under which Merlin was imprisoned by the Lady of the Lake in Broceliande is none other than the Clochmabenstane, once the site of a stone circle. Her “lake” may have been at nearby Lochmaben.
It was only after I had reviewed this earlier research when I realized what I had missed. Quite simply, Professor Owen Thomas Clancy's theory on a Uinniau or Finnian saint as the origin for Ninian (https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/inr.2001.52.1.1) was wrong. Given all the possible variants of Ninian, it is plain that it actually represents a Christianized - and masculinized - version of Nyfain/Nemhain. This and this alone would explain why Myrddin the 'Elf-man', a designation for Mabon/Apollo Maponus, is found associated with Ninian sites (like Tinto at Wiston and Molendinar, and doubtless Whithorn with its St. Martin, this last being a transparent substitute for the name Myrddin in several localities).
I had long suspected Nemhain/Nyfain was involved in the story of Myrddin. Once again, I'm mining from one of my earlier pieces on this Irish goddess and her role in generating potentially fatal battle-panic. This is very relevant for what we are told happened to Myrddin at the Battle of Arderydd:
In the Irish sources we are told of battle-panic and one of its unfortunate results. For example, when the great hero Cuchulainn faces the opposing armies of Ireland,
“He saw from him the ardent sparkling of the bright golden weapons over the heads of the four great provinces of Eriu, before the fall of the cloud of evening. Great fury and indignation seized him on seeing them, at the number of his opponents and at the multitude of his enemies. He seized his two spears, and his shield and his sword, and uttered from his throat a warrior’s shout, so that sprites, and satyrs, and maniacs of the valley, and the demons of the air responded, terror-stricken by the shout which he had raised on high. And the Neman confused the army; and the four provinces of Eriu dashed themselves against the points of their own spears and weapons, so that one hundred warriors died of fear and trembling in the middle of the fort and encampment that night.”
This passage is from W.M. Hennessey’s “The Ancient Irish Goddess of War”. Also from this source:
“Of the effects of this fear inspired by the Badb [or Nemhain] was geltacht or lunacy, which, according to the popular notion, affected the body no less than the mind, and, in fact, made its victims so that they flew through the air like birds.”
We learn more about the precise meaning of geltacht from the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language. There we are told
geltacht
Keywords: panic; terror; frenzy; insanity
In Thomas Kinsella’s translation of “The Tain”, we learn that
“The Nemain brought confusion on the armies and a hundred of their number [while asleep!] fell dead.”
“… that same night Net’s wives, Nemain and Badb, called out to the men of Ireland near the field of Gairech and Irgairech, and a hundred warriors died of fright.”[2]
In THE SAINTLY MADMAN: A STUDY OF THE SCHOLARLY RECEPTION HISTORY OF BUILE SHUIBHNE by Alexandra Bergholm, Department of Comparative Religion, University of Helsinki (2009), we are given a wonderful description of what happened to the title character when he was faced with the horror of battle:
“When the Battle of Mag Rath begins, Suibhne is suddenly alarmed by the cries of the two hosts, and the incident is depicted as follows:
…he looked up, whereupon turbulence (?), and darkness, and fury, and
giddiness, and frenzy, and flight, unsteadiness, restlessness, and
unquiet filled him, likewise disgust with every place in which he used
to be and desire for every place which he had not reached. His fingers
were palsied, his feet trembled, his heart beat quick, his senses were
overcome, his sight was distorted, his weapons fell naked from his
hands, so that through Ronan’s curse he went, like any bird of the air,
in madness and imbecility.”
It should be noted here immediately that the word translated ‘fury’ is nemhain, the goddess’s name used as a common noun.
When we come to the two accounts of the Battle of Arderydd, we see that the “Life of St. Kentigern” preserves the more authentic tradition (although highly Christianized, of course), while that found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Life of Merlin” is considerably diluted:
St. Kentigern’s Life –
“In the midst of that fray, the very sky began to gape open above my head, and I heard what seemed to be a great cracking sound, a voice in the sky saying to me, ‘Lailoken, Lailoken, since you alone are guilty of the blood of all your slain comrades, you alone shall suffer for their sins. You shall be handed over to the minions of Satan, and until the day of your death your companions shall be the beasts of the forest.’ And, as I turned my eyes to the source of the voice, I saw a brilliance so dazzling that no man could bear it. I also saw numerous battle formations of an army in the sky, much like the streaks of lightning. In their hands the warriors held burning lances and shining javelins whgich they brandished at me with bloodthirsty FURY [emphasis mine]. Then, as I turned away, a wicked spirit seized me and consigned me to live among the wild beasts of the forest, as you are my witness.”
Life of Merlin –
“Then, when the air was full of these repeated loud complainings [of Merlin’s grief], a strange madness came upon him. He crept away and fled to the woods, unwilling that any should see his going. Into the forest he went, glad to lie hidden beneath the ash trees. He watched the wild creatures grazing on the pasture of the glades. Sometimes he would follow them, sometimes pass them in his course. He made use of the roots of plants and of grasses, of fruit from ttrees and of the blackberries of the thicket. He became a Man of the Woods [‘silvester homo’, the Fer Caille title given to him in the story of Suibhne Geilt], as if dedicated to the woods. So for a whole summer he stayed hidden in the woods, discovered by none, forgetful of himself and of his own, lurking like a wild thing.”
The author Hennessey, like the Christian medieval audience of the Merlin story, did not realize that madness could be a poetic metaphor for a spectral death-state. It was not the demented body that fled like a bird through the forest after a battle, but the spirit of the warrior whose death was literally caused by the goddess Nemhain. And the fear she produced was so powerful it could literally kill.
And what of the theory that derives the name of St. Ninian's Candida Casa/Whithorn from that of Thomas Owen Clancy's proposed Uinniau/Finnain saint?[3] I would say it was wrong. My careful study of Ptolemy's map leads me to believe that the theory identifying Whithorn with the Classical period Leucovia is correct. The major indentation of the Ienae (or Icoa/Icoe) estuary between the Dee and Abravannus (clearly the Luce, as it is opposite Loch Ryan and defines The Rhinns peninsula) has to be Wigtown Bay, where both the Water of Fleet and the Cree debouch. While Leucovia would appear to be situated on the wrong side of Wigtown Bay to be Whithorn, when we take into account to remarkable distortion of Ptolemy's map (which has Britain north of Hadrian's Wall is tilted 90 degrees to the east) and the merging of The Machars with The Rhinns, I personally have no problem with Leucovia being Whithorn. Regardless what Leucovia actually meant in the ancient period (*luco- 'marsh' has been proposed), a leuco- name would have been interpreted by a later Latin writer (like a hagiographer) with the word for 'white.'
Noted place-name expert Alan James agrees with me, saying
"My own view is that Leucovia was the name given firstly to some prominent 'status symbol' - more than just a promontory fort - set up by some chieftain on the headland of the Isle, and then to a trading-place in the bay below. The name might have prompted Candida Casa, or Nynia's church might have been a kind of symbolic rival. I think there are quite a lot of problems with Thomas's Nyniau/ Winniau equation (so does he, incidentally!), but in any case I think the 'white' connotation pretty stretched. There's no shortage of Gwin/ Finn saints, but none of them had white houses."
And that means there is no need to credit Whithorn to a Finnian saint.
The River Annan, the Goddess Anu and Nemhain
According to Rivet and Smith, the root of the River Annan, found as Anava in Ptolemy, is the same as that found in the Irish goddess name Anu. Anu herself is said to be one of the Morrigna, a group of goddesses named for the Morrigan that usually included the Morrigan herself plus a combination of the goddesses Macha, Babd and Nemhain. It is possible, therefore, that Nyfen mother of Urien of Rheged was just another name for the river goddess of Annandale - the Annandale of the Maponus shrine.
The Triple Death of Myrddin
Given that Myrddin's madness is a metaphor for a spectral state of existence, how do we account for his triple death?
Well, I still think there are two answers to this question. The first would allow for the same kind of confusion being present in the medieval mind as in our own, viz. the madness was not understood as a death-state. Were he believed to still be alive, then it became necessary in the literary tradition to conjure a death for him.
But the form of death invented brings us to our second answer. Were Myrddin the man identified at some point with a god like Mabon, then that god's seasonal death (and subsequent imprisonment) and rebirth would have been incorporated into Myrddin's story. The parallel between his triple death and that of the god Lleu has been discussed for a long time (see, for instance. Nilokai Tolstoy's THE QUEST FOR MERLIN). I have shown Lleu may have been present on the Tweed near Drumelzier (at Louden Knowe). The Arthurian romance FERGUS OF GALLOWAY places a lion in the chapel of Merlin atop the Noquetran, and this lion (llew in Welsh) is an error for Lleu. Lancelot of the Lake (Llwch Lamh-calad, i.e. the Irish Lugh) experiences Myrddin-like madness in the Vulgate. So there is definitely room for Lleu in the mix. The Welsh seem to have identified the two gods, placing both in death at Nantlle in Gwynedd, and having both take the form of predatory birds.
Merlin's imprisonment, like Mabon's, was of a seasonal nature. Such imprisonment was symbolic of the sun's "death" during Winter, when the world became the Waste Land. To heal the land (and the wounded king of sovereignty), the solar Grail had to be found and returned from the south to the north. The sun god of the summer half-year often has a rival in the myths, a dark companion who takes the goddess for the winter. Their contest for her is an everlasting one, with each being killed at the end of his half-year reign. This motif is quite evident in the MABINOGION tale "Math Son of Mathonwy", in which Lleu and Gronwy trade on and off with Blodeuwedd. Lleu is killed by his rival, but resurrected by the magic of Gwydion. He then exacts his revenge, slaying Gronwy by hurling his lightning-spear through a great, shield-shaped stone.
So, we need not fear that Myrddin the god remains trapped forever by the Lady of the Lake. He is let out by her periodically, i.e. for the summer season. At this time his madness ( = death) leaves him and he is sane again. But come winter his "twin" will slay him and he will abide once more, for an interval, in his Otherworld prison.
Distinguishing between a god that is being seasonally killed and a man who is being sacrificed to that god is no easy matter. And this is precisely because a man sacrificed to a deity symbolically represents that deity. A concept difficult for us to grasp. But archaeology has examples for us. Lindow Man is a good one. And literature is sometimes unambiguous. Men were sacrificed to Odin by being hung and pierced with a spear - an action performed by the god himself.
What exactly was thought to happen to Myrddin the man after death is not something we can really know. This is especially true if we are merely talking about a deified dead man, a member of the Manes. The Irish story of Suibhne Geilt or Suibhne the Mad offers us a sad portrait of a wandering ghost whose haunts are the wilds, the places uninhabited by living men. He has company, but only that of his fellow spirits. When he returns to life (or is, by some mechanism, confined by the living), the 'Hag of the Mill' (the goddess as cailleach) drives him back into madness (death), so that he again flits from tree to tree like a bird, making the kind of prodigious leaps of which only a phantom is capable. Suibhne is specifically said to be a king. There is no suggestion that he is a folklore version of an ancient pagan deity. Still, he is pagan, and patently anti-Christian, and his affliction is portrayed as a punishment by God administered by St. Ronan.
Merlin is similarly presented as being captured and even restrained, or otherwise forced into human society, as a means of staving off or controlling his madness. But he always manages to escape back into the wild, rejoining the host of the Wild Ones.
We should not make the mistake and read into this any kind of shamanistic practice - something that is often engaged in by those espousing neopagan beliefs. They rather indiscriminately draw the parallel between a shaman's entering an ecstatic state and leaving his body to Myrddin's intermittent fits of madness. But a shamanistic spirit-journey was embarked upon for a profound purpose. Usually, the shaman was voyaging to the Otherworld to obtain a cure for illness or he had some other critical purpose in mind. Something which was needed to benefit his people, to restore the balance between the worlds, etc. There is nothing of that evident in anything we find in the Myrddin/Merlin tradition.
Yet another element may complicate the evolution of the character we now know as Merlin. His epithet Llallawg or Llallogan is derived from the same root as W. ellyll. This is a good description of at least one application of this word in the notes to Triads 63 and 64 in Bromwich. There is it suggested the animal spirit of a warrior may be something akin to what is manifested during the berserker rage of an Odinic Viking (or of the similar ulfhednar, 'wolf-skins'). Here are Bromwich's remarks:
We might imagine that this same animal spirit that takes over a man when he is fighting in a battle might later be what survives him after death in battle.
Vaticination is also often dependent on the induction of ecstatic trance. Myrddin was a part of Welsh prophetic tradition (see A.O.H. Jarman's "The Merlin Legend and the Welsh Tradition of Prophecy" in THE ARTHUR OF THE WELSH, ed. by Bromwich, Jarman and Roberts). His prophecies delivered from the rock of Molendinar were "extremely obscure and virtually unintelligible", and accompanied by "wailing and shouting in a loud voice" ("St. Kentigern and Lailoken", Cotton MS Titus A. XIX). Such utterances were thus a product of his madness. Prophecy from madness was akin to that obtained through divine inspiration. An example of this last would be Taliesin, who imbibed from Ceridwen's magical cauldron.
What we appear to have, therefore, in the character of Myrddin are several motifs that have been clumsily spliced. First, we have men dying of goddess-induced battle-panic whose spirits reside like wild animals in the forest or other waste places. Their madness is a metaphor for a spectral existence, a shadowy continuance of life experienced outside of the physical body. Second, we have men exhibiting battle-frenzy as if they had become various kinds of dangerous animals. Third, we have solar deities who seasonally die and are reborn, the cycle continuing eternally as the sacred round of the year turns. Men who were sacrificed to such deities symbolically became this or that god and so enjoyed the same annual resurrection. Geoffrey of Monmouth's identification of Myrddin/Merlin with Ambrosius of Dinas Emrys, a Divine/Immortal One who had himself come to be associated with Mabon (and Lleu?) of Gwynedd, had a major impact on the evolution of the former as a literary figure. And four, insane utterances could be construed as prophecies. Prophecy was the province of gods like Apollo, and Maponus was identified in the Roman period with Apollo.
This is my best take on one of the most mysterious - and most beloved - personages in Arthurian legend.
And what of the theory that derives the name of St. Ninian's Candida Casa/Whithorn from that of Thomas Owen Clancy's proposed Uinniau/Finnain saint?[3] I would say it was wrong. My careful study of Ptolemy's map leads me to believe that the theory identifying Whithorn with the Classical period Leucovia is correct. The major indentation of the Ienae (or Icoa/Icoe) estuary between the Dee and Abravannus (clearly the Luce, as it is opposite Loch Ryan and defines The Rhinns peninsula) has to be Wigtown Bay, where both the Water of Fleet and the Cree debouch. While Leucovia would appear to be situated on the wrong side of Wigtown Bay to be Whithorn, when we take into account to remarkable distortion of Ptolemy's map (which has Britain north of Hadrian's Wall is tilted 90 degrees to the east) and the merging of The Machars with The Rhinns, I personally have no problem with Leucovia being Whithorn. Regardless what Leucovia actually meant in the ancient period (*luco- 'marsh' has been proposed), a leuco- name would have been interpreted by a later Latin writer (like a hagiographer) with the word for 'white.'
Noted place-name expert Alan James agrees with me, saying
"My own view is that Leucovia was the name given firstly to some prominent 'status symbol' - more than just a promontory fort - set up by some chieftain on the headland of the Isle, and then to a trading-place in the bay below. The name might have prompted Candida Casa, or Nynia's church might have been a kind of symbolic rival. I think there are quite a lot of problems with Thomas's Nyniau/ Winniau equation (so does he, incidentally!), but in any case I think the 'white' connotation pretty stretched. There's no shortage of Gwin/ Finn saints, but none of them had white houses."
And that means there is no need to credit Whithorn to a Finnian saint.
The River Annan, the Goddess Anu and Nemhain
According to Rivet and Smith, the root of the River Annan, found as Anava in Ptolemy, is the same as that found in the Irish goddess name Anu. Anu herself is said to be one of the Morrigna, a group of goddesses named for the Morrigan that usually included the Morrigan herself plus a combination of the goddesses Macha, Babd and Nemhain. It is possible, therefore, that Nyfen mother of Urien of Rheged was just another name for the river goddess of Annandale - the Annandale of the Maponus shrine.
The Triple Death of Myrddin
Given that Myrddin's madness is a metaphor for a spectral state of existence, how do we account for his triple death?
Well, I still think there are two answers to this question. The first would allow for the same kind of confusion being present in the medieval mind as in our own, viz. the madness was not understood as a death-state. Were he believed to still be alive, then it became necessary in the literary tradition to conjure a death for him.
But the form of death invented brings us to our second answer. Were Myrddin the man identified at some point with a god like Mabon, then that god's seasonal death (and subsequent imprisonment) and rebirth would have been incorporated into Myrddin's story. The parallel between his triple death and that of the god Lleu has been discussed for a long time (see, for instance. Nilokai Tolstoy's THE QUEST FOR MERLIN). I have shown Lleu may have been present on the Tweed near Drumelzier (at Louden Knowe). The Arthurian romance FERGUS OF GALLOWAY places a lion in the chapel of Merlin atop the Noquetran, and this lion (llew in Welsh) is an error for Lleu. Lancelot of the Lake (Llwch Lamh-calad, i.e. the Irish Lugh) experiences Myrddin-like madness in the Vulgate. So there is definitely room for Lleu in the mix. The Welsh seem to have identified the two gods, placing both in death at Nantlle in Gwynedd, and having both take the form of predatory birds.
Merlin's imprisonment, like Mabon's, was of a seasonal nature. Such imprisonment was symbolic of the sun's "death" during Winter, when the world became the Waste Land. To heal the land (and the wounded king of sovereignty), the solar Grail had to be found and returned from the south to the north. The sun god of the summer half-year often has a rival in the myths, a dark companion who takes the goddess for the winter. Their contest for her is an everlasting one, with each being killed at the end of his half-year reign. This motif is quite evident in the MABINOGION tale "Math Son of Mathonwy", in which Lleu and Gronwy trade on and off with Blodeuwedd. Lleu is killed by his rival, but resurrected by the magic of Gwydion. He then exacts his revenge, slaying Gronwy by hurling his lightning-spear through a great, shield-shaped stone.
So, we need not fear that Myrddin the god remains trapped forever by the Lady of the Lake. He is let out by her periodically, i.e. for the summer season. At this time his madness ( = death) leaves him and he is sane again. But come winter his "twin" will slay him and he will abide once more, for an interval, in his Otherworld prison.
Distinguishing between a god that is being seasonally killed and a man who is being sacrificed to that god is no easy matter. And this is precisely because a man sacrificed to a deity symbolically represents that deity. A concept difficult for us to grasp. But archaeology has examples for us. Lindow Man is a good one. And literature is sometimes unambiguous. Men were sacrificed to Odin by being hung and pierced with a spear - an action performed by the god himself.
What exactly was thought to happen to Myrddin the man after death is not something we can really know. This is especially true if we are merely talking about a deified dead man, a member of the Manes. The Irish story of Suibhne Geilt or Suibhne the Mad offers us a sad portrait of a wandering ghost whose haunts are the wilds, the places uninhabited by living men. He has company, but only that of his fellow spirits. When he returns to life (or is, by some mechanism, confined by the living), the 'Hag of the Mill' (the goddess as cailleach) drives him back into madness (death), so that he again flits from tree to tree like a bird, making the kind of prodigious leaps of which only a phantom is capable. Suibhne is specifically said to be a king. There is no suggestion that he is a folklore version of an ancient pagan deity. Still, he is pagan, and patently anti-Christian, and his affliction is portrayed as a punishment by God administered by St. Ronan.
Merlin is similarly presented as being captured and even restrained, or otherwise forced into human society, as a means of staving off or controlling his madness. But he always manages to escape back into the wild, rejoining the host of the Wild Ones.
We should not make the mistake and read into this any kind of shamanistic practice - something that is often engaged in by those espousing neopagan beliefs. They rather indiscriminately draw the parallel between a shaman's entering an ecstatic state and leaving his body to Myrddin's intermittent fits of madness. But a shamanistic spirit-journey was embarked upon for a profound purpose. Usually, the shaman was voyaging to the Otherworld to obtain a cure for illness or he had some other critical purpose in mind. Something which was needed to benefit his people, to restore the balance between the worlds, etc. There is nothing of that evident in anything we find in the Myrddin/Merlin tradition.
Yet another element may complicate the evolution of the character we now know as Merlin. His epithet Llallawg or Llallogan is derived from the same root as W. ellyll. This is a good description of at least one application of this word in the notes to Triads 63 and 64 in Bromwich. There is it suggested the animal spirit of a warrior may be something akin to what is manifested during the berserker rage of an Odinic Viking (or of the similar ulfhednar, 'wolf-skins'). Here are Bromwich's remarks:
Vaticination is also often dependent on the induction of ecstatic trance. Myrddin was a part of Welsh prophetic tradition (see A.O.H. Jarman's "The Merlin Legend and the Welsh Tradition of Prophecy" in THE ARTHUR OF THE WELSH, ed. by Bromwich, Jarman and Roberts). His prophecies delivered from the rock of Molendinar were "extremely obscure and virtually unintelligible", and accompanied by "wailing and shouting in a loud voice" ("St. Kentigern and Lailoken", Cotton MS Titus A. XIX). Such utterances were thus a product of his madness. Prophecy from madness was akin to that obtained through divine inspiration. An example of this last would be Taliesin, who imbibed from Ceridwen's magical cauldron.
What we appear to have, therefore, in the character of Myrddin are several motifs that have been clumsily spliced. First, we have men dying of goddess-induced battle-panic whose spirits reside like wild animals in the forest or other waste places. Their madness is a metaphor for a spectral existence, a shadowy continuance of life experienced outside of the physical body. Second, we have men exhibiting battle-frenzy as if they had become various kinds of dangerous animals. Third, we have solar deities who seasonally die and are reborn, the cycle continuing eternally as the sacred round of the year turns. Men who were sacrificed to such deities symbolically became this or that god and so enjoyed the same annual resurrection. Geoffrey of Monmouth's identification of Myrddin/Merlin with Ambrosius of Dinas Emrys, a Divine/Immortal One who had himself come to be associated with Mabon (and Lleu?) of Gwynedd, had a major impact on the evolution of the former as a literary figure. And four, insane utterances could be construed as prophecies. Prophecy was the province of gods like Apollo, and Maponus was identified in the Roman period with Apollo.
This is my best take on one of the most mysterious - and most beloved - personages in Arthurian legend.
[1]
The fragments of the Life of St. Kentigern place Lailocen (= W. Llallawg/Llallogan, epithets of Myrddin) on the Tweed and Powsail/Drumelzier Burn (a relocation for the Liddesdale Willow Pool and Tweed/Tweeden Burn) and at the Molendinar Burn in Glasgow. While the Tweed sites do seem to be due to false tradition, it is worth noting that the Clyde, Annan and Tweed all rise from the same general location in the Lowther Hills. The headwaters of the Annan and Tweed, especially, are very near to each other. This region may have once been seen as the "sacred center" of the Lowland 'Caledonian Wood.'
[2]
Once again, I believe there is a strong possibility that Myrddin began as just a man who perished as a result of the panic brought on by a deity such as Nemhain. He may only later have come to be identified with Mabon. See https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/myrddin-cult-of-dead-vs-cult-of-saints.html for Myrddin as a deified ghost. The very name Myrddin, 'Phantom-man', may also have contributed to this motif. When Geoffrey of Monmouth identified Merlin/Myrddin with Ambrosius the 'Divine/Immortal One' at Dinas Emrys, who was a boy, this may have been done because the boy in question was the 'Divine Son' Mabon. I discussed the presence of Mabon at Dinas Emrys here: https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/was-dinas-emrys-fort-of-mabonmaponus.html, https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/st-curig-at-dinas-emrys-proof-positive.html.
[3]
See https://api.research-repository.uwa.edu.au/portalfiles/portal/14262963/O_Neill._Six_Degrees_of_Whiteness_Finbarr_Finnian_Finnian_Ninian_Candida_Casa_and_Hwiterne.pdf.
[2]
Once again, I believe there is a strong possibility that Myrddin began as just a man who perished as a result of the panic brought on by a deity such as Nemhain. He may only later have come to be identified with Mabon. See https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/myrddin-cult-of-dead-vs-cult-of-saints.html for Myrddin as a deified ghost. The very name Myrddin, 'Phantom-man', may also have contributed to this motif. When Geoffrey of Monmouth identified Merlin/Myrddin with Ambrosius the 'Divine/Immortal One' at Dinas Emrys, who was a boy, this may have been done because the boy in question was the 'Divine Son' Mabon. I discussed the presence of Mabon at Dinas Emrys here: https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/was-dinas-emrys-fort-of-mabonmaponus.html, https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/st-curig-at-dinas-emrys-proof-positive.html.
[3]
See https://api.research-repository.uwa.edu.au/portalfiles/portal/14262963/O_Neill._Six_Degrees_of_Whiteness_Finbarr_Finnian_Finnian_Ninian_Candida_Casa_and_Hwiterne.pdf.
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