The True History of Merlin the Magician
Anne Lawrence-Mathers
Yale University Press £25
(978-0-300-14489-5)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50 (Use code
CT517 )
UNRAVELLING the relationship between history and story is a hard
task at the best of times; when it comes to a character such as
Merlin, that task is further complicated by the difficulty, from
the 21st-century viewpoint, of closing the divide between
supernatural and natural, which was so much narrower 800 years
ago.
Anne Lawrence-Mathers acknowledges that medieval readers were
able to distinguish between the two sides of the divide: they did
not believe in the existence of Merlin because they were stupid or
credulous, but because theirs was a world with a history that had a
place for him, even as late as William Lilly's Merlinus
Anglicus of 1680. How, then, did this world operate, and what
was the space in it that had room for Merlin? Lawrence-Mathers
answers these questions, and, incidentally, teaches the reader much
about medieval history and medieval theories of astrology and
magic.
The chapters are thematic, including, for example, Merlin as
astrologer, magician, and - a late development - lover.
Lawrence-Mathers is particularly effective when describing the
powerful combination of reality and danger which accompanied him,
even at a time when he was believed to be a genuine historical
figure.
In passing (it is perhaps something that could have been
enlarged on), she associates him with the classic
scholar-astrologer-magician group of which Pope Sylvester and
Michael Scot were also members, they themselves eventually
occupying a space in folklore as well as in reality. Merlin moved
in the other direction, from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia
Regum Britanniae to the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de
Troyes.
The book is written in an astringent, witty style, and is a
stimulating and informative read without being too abstruse. So
large is the collation of facts about Merlin and his history that
some points, inevitably, are made more than once, but this does not
detract from the book overall.
Perhaps the illustrations could be crisper: medieval
illuminations are remarkably uninteresting in monochrome. The
reproduction of a Julia Margaret Cameron photograph, however,
comes out very well.
Jane Stemp is librarian of the historic collections of the
Institute of Naval Medicine, and a children's author.