Of Arthour and of Merlin anon late-thirteenth or early-fourteenth century, a partial Middle English retelling of the early-thirteenth century Old French Prose Lestoire de Merlin Translated and retold in Modern English prose by Richard Scott-Robinson This romance has been translated and retold from the Middle English verse romance Of Arthour and of Merlin found in National Library of Scotland MS Advocates 19.2.1, the Auchinleck Manuscript, ed- ited by O D McCrae-Gibson for the Early English Text Society, 1973 and 1979, published by Oxford University Press. Copyright © Richard Scott-Robinson, 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this document may be repro- duced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy- ing, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author. The download of a single copy for personal use, or for teaching purposes, does not require permission. [email protected] Of Arthour and of Merlin anon late-thirteenth or early-fourteenth century Jhesu Crist Heuen-king · Al ous graunt gode ending · And seynt Marie Þat swete Þing · So be at our bigining · And help ous at our need · And leue ous wele to spede · Þat we habbeÞ ever to don · And scheld ous fram our fon – Jesus Christ, King of Heaven, grant us all a good ending; and Saint Mary, that sweet thing, help us to live our lives well and shield us from our foes. Children who are set to their books receive great benefit from this in later life, for they can see and understand much of God’s truth, which will protect them from sin and suffering and allow them to see, if they open their minds to it, that they will never die. Those who know French and Latin are at a great ad- vantage in this. But I will say no more of French and Latin, I shall speak in English. Those who were born in England should be able to understand English. Noblemen use French but every Englishman under- stands English, and I even know of some noblemen who speak English and have no French, so I will be- gin my tale for their sake, with God’s permission. I will speak English, and may God protect us. I shall begin this romance. In England, there was a king, a very noble man named Constans. He was valiant in battle and full of wisdom, a man of great honour, with the reputation of a prince and conqueror, for King Angys of Denmark, and many other mighty heathens as well, were constantly at war with him, but he overcame them all and drove them out of his land so that they dared not face him in battle again. The king had three sons: Constantine, Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon. But the eldest son Constantine had chosen the Church as his vocation; he loved God and holy works, and for this reason he implored his father to let him be a monk at Winches- ter and to make Aurelius Ambrosius, his brother, or Uther Pendragon, his other brother, heir to the throne instead. The king was reluctant to do this; but nonetheless, Constan- tine entered the monastery at Winchester, without his father’s blessing. Soon afterwards, as I find it written, the king fell ill and seemed close to death. He sent for all his noblemen, and when they were assembled he said: ‘Gentlemen, all of you, I am going to die. Therefore I ask you, for the love of me, for God’s love and for charity, when I am dead and rotten in clay, help my children and take Constantine, my eldest son, and give him the ring and crown and obey him as your lord.’ They all agreed to do this. The king had a steward whose name was Vortigern. He was a powerful and intelligent man, but avaricious and deceitful as well. He had served the king for a long while and because of his strength and courage, the king had relied upon him in many of his con- flicts. Now, he gave him lands and wealth in order that he might look after his children when he was gone; the king The Middle English tale Of Arthour and made him swear that he would educate and protect his chil- of Merlin is an abridgement of the Old dren. Vortigern swore that he would do this. (And when the French Lestoire de Merlin, the second part king was dead, this traitor soon reneged upon his pledge of a huge prose epic known as the Vulgate Cycle. It deals with the reigns of Vortigern, and did the children harm, which was a great pity.) Uther Pendragon and King Arthur, cul- minating, or rather coming to an abrupt The king died and was buried at Winchester. Earls and bar- and rather premature halt, as King Arthur ons at once followed the wishes of the late king and made is consolidating his rule over the kings Constantine their king, and because he was a monk, he was of Britain and at the same time fighting called King Moyne thereafter. But the steward, Sir Vorti- pagans who are swarming over his lands like vermin, turning it into a wasteland. gern, was not pleased with this at all and spoke against it as angrily and forcefully as he dared. Running through this entire story is the character of Merlin. He is the power Word of this soon reached King Angys, who quickly gath- behind the throne, the druid enchanter who can cause tents to collapse and fire to ered warriors from Denmark and Saxony to wage war against consume them, the shape-changer who can King Moyne. He filled many longships with princes and no- appear now as a child, now as an old man, blemen, they set mast and sail and soon arrived at England’s as a learned clerk and now as an invincible shores. (England at this time was called Great Britain.) warrior and standard-bearer, leading King Arthur and his knights into battle. And as The Britains, who are now the English, quickly got news of these battles unfold, they assume more and more of a mythological feel. King Arthur’s this. King Moyne implored Vortigern to exercise his pow- struggle culminates in a fight against a er and to assume the role of steward, as he had done be- swarm of giants who are fourteen feet tall, fore, but Vortigern said no. He made some excuse why he led by their ruler King Rion who can lift in one hand a mace that no man should be couldn’t fight, and no amount of silver or gold would tempt able to lift at all. He is seventeen feet tall. him. His motive was treason, pure and simple. He wanted This version of the story in the White Book to be king himself. of Mottistone is identical to the one found King Angys arrived with a great army. King Moyne marched in National Library of Scotland MS Advo- cates 19.2.1, the Auchinleck Manuscript. to confront him and fighting broke out very quickly, with broken spears and shattered shields and many knights knocked from their horses. But our men and King Moyne were overcome and had to flee to Winchester with a great deal of sorrow and despair that such slaughter had befall- en England. Many knights had been killed, and a great number of men lost their lives. King Angys quickly overran castles and towns, one after another, and put his own men inside to defend them from ours, and sent for every able-bodied man he could find, young and old, to help him secure his position. There were at this time many kings in the country whom King Constance had forced to pay homage and whose kingdoms had been absorbed into his own realm, and many of them were distressed that things had turned out as they had. They implored Christ to help them and to save them from this fate. They came together one day and called the king an incompetent, the child of a brothel, and said that if Vortigern had been their king: ‘We wouldn’t be in this mess.’ They told each other that they would rather have Vortigern as their king than anything else, suspecting already that he had ambitions in this regard, so they sent twelve men, the most persuasive they could find, to sound him out and ask why he wouldn’t help to defend England as he had done in the past. The twelve went to Vortigern as agreed, and greeted him with honour. Vortigern invited them to sit beside him and to tell him what they wanted. They said that the news was very bad, that they had suffered defeat at the hands of King Angys and that their lands had been taken away from them, many knights and barons had been killed and many were mourning fathers and sons. Therefore the advice of all the land was that he should take up the reins of command and try to mitigate this disaster, so that there should be no more harm inflicted. ‘I am neither your duke nor your king,’ replied this wicked man. ‘So why have you come to ask me this? I pledged my oath to King Constance long before you were on the scene, I warred against you, far and wide, but I am no longer under any obligation, neither to you nor to anyone. Therefore, go to your king and ask him to protect you.’ ‘Sir,’ replied a baron, ‘our king is a clown.