Lady of the Lake
Lady of the Lake,in the Arthurian legends, a rather shifting supernatural character. In Malory she gives Arthur the sword Excalibur, but when she asks for the head of Balyn as payment Balyn strikes off her head, for which deed he is banished from the court. Also called the Lady of the Lake (in Malory ‘chief’ lady, suggesting more than one) is Nimiane (Nymue and, probably by scribal misreading, Vivien), the wife of Pelleas, who loves Merlin, whom she tricks into revealing his magic arts and then imprisons in a tower of air in the forest of Broceliande from which he never escapes. In Malory she is said to have accompanied the three queens who bore Arthur away by ship after his death. In Celtic origin she may derive from Morgan, the archetypal lake lady.
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