SOURCE: Rider, Jeff. “The Fictional Margin: The Merlin of the Brut.” Modern Philology, 87, no. 1 (August 1989): 1-12.

[In the following essay, Rider contrasts the treatment of Merlin in Wace's and Layamon's versions of Le Roman de Brut.]

Wace's Roman de Brut and Layamon's adaptation of it have been closely compared a number of times, and “canonical” characterizations of the two texts and the two poets were established as early as 1906. Wace was quintessentially Norman, a professional writer who enjoyed royal patronage. Layamon was “a thorough mediæval Saxon,” a rustic priest who wrote to please himself, perhaps out of a sense of patriotism.¹

Layamon's thorough, even militant, “Englishness” has long been observed in his textual practice—his language, poetic form, and figures—and in his imaginative reworking of certain characters and episodes.² Dorothy Everett and E. G. Stanley have also explained how a militant Anglo-Saxon could have moral and political reasons for choosing to translate a Norman, anti-Anglo-Saxon poem.³ What has not been done, and what I would like to do here, is to show that the moral and political motives which led Layamon to choose to rewrite Wace's poem in an archaic English idiom also oriented him toward the poetic material in a way fundamentally different from Wace. Layamon's new orientation toward this material is reflected in a distinct preference for fictional discourse over historical discourse and is most evident in his reimagining of Wace's Merlin and of the relationship between Merlin and the kings he serves. A study of Layamon's transformation of Merlin can thus show us how more effective romancing—a shift away from historical discourse toward fictional discourse—may have moral and political import.

A study of Layamon's transformation of Wace's Merlin can inform us in other ways. It can show the complexity of Layamon's response to the Roman and the thoroughness with which he reinvested it with new values and meanings. It can tell us more about Layamon's attitude toward his historical circumstances and help us give life to those circumstances. It can, finally, help us to a better understanding of the poem's social function, the role it could play for Layamon and for English men and women like him, and to a fuller explanation of the reasons why the English priest undertook to rewrite the French cleric's poem.⁴

The fundamental lineaments of the Merlin of Wace's Roman and Layamon's Brut go back to Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniœ. In this work Merlin functions as prophet, sage, and wizard to three kings; his most important actions are his prophecy of Arthur's birth and career and his use of magic to bring about Arthur's conception. Merlin's dual role of prophet and wizard puts him in a peculiar position which Robert Hanning has summed up like this: “His use of his special power to perform magic deeds … puts him temporarily in control of national progress, as with Arthur's conception. At such moments, Merlin exemplifies human greatness creating history and its own destiny. Since, however, he has predicted Arthur's coming in his vatic seizure, he acts here too as an agent of inexorable history, bringing to fruition that which he knows must happen. It might be said that Merlin is Geoffrey's symbol for the artist-historian, whose insight into predetermined history gives him some control over the historical process.”⁵ Layamon clearly appreciated Merlin's unique position. In a scene not found in Geoffrey's Historia or Wace's Roman, Layamon has Merlin share his foreknowledge with a messenger Uther has sent to him to ask if he will come to the king: “Uther [says Merlin] desires the beautiful Ygærne, Gorlois' wife; he desires her greatly. But he will never obtain her, never at any time, except through my stratagem, for there is no more faithful woman in this world. Nevertheless, he shall possess the beautiful Ygærne and he shall engender in her one who will rule widely.”⁶ Merlin is the linchpin of history. He reveals history, he shapes it, and yet he is its creature, merely tracing its preexisting shape.

Merlin's ambiguous relation to history is mirrored in his ambiguous heritage. He is the offspring of a Welsh princess, who will later become a nun, and an incubus demon, one of those spirits who, as Geoffrey relates, live “between the moon and the earth” and “have partly the nature of men and partly that of angels, and when they wish assume mortal shapes and have intercourse with women.”⁷ Layamon expands on this somewhat, adding that these demons “make fun of the folk. Many a man they often trouble in dreams and many a beautiful woman soon gives birth through their power and many a good man's child they beguile through magic.”⁸ These demons—who are not to be confused with devils, for, Layamon insists, “they do not much harm” (Ne doð heo noht muchel scaðe [BL 7877; M 15784])—are good examples of what C. S. Lewis termed the longævi: “They are marginal, fugitive creatures. They are perhaps the only creatures to whom the Model does not assign, as it were, an official status. Herein lies their imaginative value. They soften the classic severity of the huge design. They intrude a welcome hint of wildness and uncertainty into a universe that is in danger of being a little too self-explanatory, too luminous.” (The Model is Lewis's conception of “the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organisation of their theology, science, and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental Model of the Universe.”)⁹ It is surprising, paradoxical almost, to find the offspring of an incubus demon at the center of history.

It is, moreover, important to recognize the tension inherent in this state of affairs. Merlin is by nature a marginal, unofficial, fugitive, ambiguous figure. The space devoted to him in the narrative is small. Yet his existence and powers are absolutely fundamental for the course of history, which, in a quasi-historical work of this kind, is identical with the narrative. The kings whose succession is the subject of the history are his masters, yet they depend on his vision and help. Merlin is implicitly in competition with the kings and is to some degree a threat to them. History, their story, could easily become Merlin's story: the narrative could easily be displaced from the historical center toward the fictional margin. Bound by history yet shaping it, Merlin represents the free play of language and historical imagination within historical writing, a force potentially independent of the line of kings. In the portion of Geoffrey's History which immediately precedes Arthur's advent, history and the narrative thus have, potentially, two poles: Merlin, who reveals and shapes events, and the succession of kings who act them out.

Layamon and Wace differ strikingly in their reactions to this tension. Wace, by and large, makes Merlin subject to the kings and downplays his importance. Layamon, on the other hand, increases Merlin's status and importance at the same time that he makes him more elusive and independent: the tension between the two poles is thus enhanced and the focus of power in this relationship shifts decidedly toward Merlin. Aspects of this difference are evident in the very first scene in which we encounter the prophet. When Merlin's mother is called upon to explain his birth, Wace has her say: “When I was somewhat grown, something, I do not know if it was some ghostly illusion, often came and kissed me closely. Like a man I heard it speak, and it felt like a man to me, and several times it spoke with me, but it didn't show itself at all. It came near to me this way often and often came to kiss me, and it lay down with me and so I conceived; I have never known another man, I bore this boy.”¹⁰ Layamon has Merlin's mother say that when she was fifteen and still at home,

when I was in bed asleep, sleeping softly, then the most beautiful thing that was ever born used to come before me; it looked like a tall knight, dressed all in gold. I saw this each night in a dream while I was sleeping. This thing glided before me and glistened with gold; it often kissed me and often embraced me; it approached me often and came very close to me. When this was at an end and I looked at myself, I thought these things strange: I found my food distasteful, my limbs awkward. I thought it strange and wondered what might be the cause. Then at last I understood that I was with child. When my time came I had this boy.¹¹

Layamon increases the incubus's furtiveness by making it a creature of sleep and dream, but he has also imagined the scene more completely and concretely. He takes care to locate these events in time and space (the mother was fifteen, at home, in her room—Wace has none of these details), and he makes the incubus more brilliant and striking. Layamon's episode is at once more mysterious and better drawn; it moves away from historical discourse toward fictional discourse.

The various other aspects of Layamon's transformation of Wace's Merlin can be summarized under three general categories which will be discussed in turn below. These categories are: (1) locating Merlin; (2) his status and role; and (3) the representation of his prophetic powers.

Finding Merlin and obtaining his aid are relatively easy in the Roman. When Wace's Aurelie wanted to see Merlin, “the king had him sent for at Labanes, a spring, which was in Wales, very far away—I don't know where it is, because I have never been there. He came to the king who had commanded him to come.”¹² Similarly, when Wace's Uther is besieging Gorlois and wants Merlin's help, the wizard is directly at hand in Uther's camp and the king “sent for Merlin and had him come” (Fist mander e venir Merlin [line 8682]). Wace's kings know where Merlin is; they send for him, and he comes obediently at their command.

Layamon's kings have a much rougher time of it. First, they must go to great efforts and expense to find Merlin. Layamon's Aurelie

sent his messengers through his whole kingdom, and ordered every man to ask about Merlin; and if he should find him, to bring him to the king; he would give him land, both silver and gold, and carry out in the world whatever he wanted. The messengers began to ride wide and far. Some went straight north, and some went out south, some went straight east, and some went straight west; some went on until they came to Alaban, which is a spring in Wales. [Merlin] loved the spring and often bathed in it. The knights found him there where he was sitting by the shore.¹³

In Layamon's version of the second episode, Merlin is not in Uther's camp but must be located “with cunning” (mid liste [BL 9368; M 18771]) through a hermit who is bribed to bring Merlin to the king. In another episode, one not found in the Roman, Uther is simply unable to locate the wiseman: “The king had men ride wide and far. He offered gold and treasure to each traveling man, to whoever might find Merlin throughout the land. He attached great importance to this, but he heard nothing of him.”¹⁴

Layamon's kings do not know where Merlin is, and they have trouble finding him. Since he tells both Aurelie's messenger and the hermit that he knew in advance of their coming and since he cannot be located on one occasion, it would seem that Merlin is found only when he wants to be. Once he is found, moreover, it is not at all certain he will agree to do what the king wants. He is, the kings clearly feel, someone they must flatter and seduce. Thus when Aurelie's messengers discovered Merlin by the spring, they “greeted him courteously” (faeire … hine igraetten [BL 8500; M 17032]), called him “wisest of men” (monnene wisest [BL 8502; M 17036]), and delivered this message: “Through us a good king greets you. He is named Aurelie, the noblest of all kings. He earnestly asks you to please come to him, and he will give you land, both silver and gold.”¹⁵ These messengers were also “afraid that he would flee” (afæred, þat he f< l>eon wolde [BL 8513; M 17057-58]). When Merlin agrees to see Uther out of love for the hermit, the latter weeps and kisses him; and his tears and gratitude suggest that he, too, was afraid Merlin might not go to the king. The point of all this, I take it, is that Merlin is completely independent of Layamon's kings, who cannot, like Wace's kings, simply order him to come.

Once Merlin has—obediently—responded to their summons, Wace's kings do treat him quite well. Aurelie “received him with great honor, made much joy at his coming, greatly treasured him” (l'ad mult enuré; / A grant enur le recuilli, / Mult le joï, mult le cheri [lines 8018-20]) and “requested” and “prayed” the prophet to tell him something of the future, rather than commanding him to do so. Wace's Uther likewise “prayed” Merlin to help him, “implored his mercy,” and offered to recompense him for his aid.¹⁶

Layamon's wizard, however, has a still higher status. Aurelie addresses him “with fair words” (mid fæire … worden [BL 8543; M 17117]); Uther speaks to him “with very gentle words” (mid swiðe softe worden [BL 8930; M 17897]) and calls him “dear friend” (leoue freond [BL 8931; M 17118]). When Aurelie heard of Merlin's imminent arrival, writes Layamon, “never before in his life had the king ever been so happy at the arrival of any man who came to him. The king got on his steed and went riding out, and all his knights with him, to welcome Merlin. The king met him and greeted him courteously, he embraced him, he kissed him, and he made him his friend. There was great joy and laughter among the people on account of Merlin's arrival, who was the son of no man.”¹⁷ The joy which is described here is public rather than individual or private, and Merlin is clearly perceived to be more here than the curious prophet from whom Wace's Aurelie wants to hear wonders. The king's and people's joy at Merlin's coming is the joy which greets the arrival of a powerful ally, a rescuer, a savior; and such joy is based, in part anyway, on a fear that he might not come.

Merlin has a political importance in this last scene which is also seen at other points in the Brut and is utterly lacking from the Roman. While Uther is commanding an army sent to repel an invasion, a strange comet appears. When the king saw the comet, “his heart was filled with sorrow and he was strangely frightened, as were all the great many men who were in the army. Uther called Merlin, and asked him to come to him, and thus said to him with very gentle words: ‘Merlin, Merlin, dear friend, prove yourself and tell us about the token that we have seen; for I do not know what in the world shall come of it. Unless you can advise us we must ride back.’”¹⁸ Merlin is again presented here in a public context and as a last resort, a savior; if he cannot give counsel, no one can, and the army must turn back. Wace, in contrast, mentions only that Uther “marveled greatly” (forment s'en merveilla [line 8305]) at the comet, was alarmed by it, and begged Merlin to say what it signified. There is no mention of the army or of turning around; Merlin is Uther's private wiseman, without a public function.

After he has interpreted the appearance of the comet, Merlin disappears without a word from the Roman. Layamon turns this silence into an overt absence: “While he [Uther] was king, and chose his ministers, Merlin went away; he never knew where, never in the world, nor what became of him. The king and all his people were grieved, and all his courtiers mourned because of this.”¹⁹ The universal sorrow at Merlin's disappearance is a further witness to his public, savior-like role. His disappearance, moreover, is remarked and mourned at a time when Uther is establishing his rule and choosing his ministers, implying that Merlin would have been one of them. Merlin's political importance is also clear from the effect of his absence: when news of his disappearance reaches the Saxon leaders, it encourages them to invade Britain yet one more time (this is their motivation only in the Brut). When Merlin reappears, thanks to the hermit's efforts, Uther goes out to him before he reaches the camp and says, “Merlin, you are welcome! Here I set in your hand all the counsel of my land, and you must advise me in my great need. … And unless I have your advice you will soon see me dead.”²⁰ Uther offers to make Merlin prime minister, as it were, and appeals to him once more as a savior and last resort. Throughout his appearances in the Brut, then, Merlin is seen as possessing a power and a status which make him in some sense the kings' equal or even their superior. The kings are forever seeking to ally Merlin to them but can do so only on his terms. His power is, finally, supreme.

Merlin's greater independence and special status in Layamon's text are also mirrored in his increased otherworldliness. He seems only partly to inhabit this world and is therefore all the less subject to its authorities and laws. Wace has very little to say about this aspect of Merlin. Only once do we get a rather perfunctory description of anything like a trance. Asked to explain the meaning of the comet, “Merlin was greatly troubled, sad at heart, and spoke no word. When his spirit came back to him, he greatly lamented and greatly sighed: ‘Ah, God,’ he said, ‘what great sadness.’”²¹ Layamon describes the scene this way: “Merlin sat still for a long time as though he were struggling greatly with a dream. Those who saw it with their own eyes said that he often twisted as if he were a worm. At last he began to awaken, then he began to tremble, and Merlin the wise man spoke these words: ‘Wellaway, wellaway! Great is the sorrow in this world, that has come to this land. Where are you, Uther? Sit down here before me, and I will tell you of sorrows enough.’”²² After he had explained the comet's meaning, writes Layamon, “Merlin began to doze, as if he wanted to sleep” (Merlin gon to slume, swulc he wolde slæpen [BL 8979; M 17995-96]). Wace has no such detail: we simply hear no more of Merlin after he is done explaining.

Layamon adds two other such moments to his poem. When Aurelie's messengers found Merlin by the spring, he made no answer to their courteous greeting and was silent so long that they were afraid he would run away. When he finally spoke, Layamon says that “it all broke forth” (hit alles up brac [BL 8514; M 17059]) and Merlin prophesied to the messengers. Likewise, after Merlin had finished prophesying to Aurelie, he “sat still, as though he would take leave of the world. The king had him brought into a beautiful room” (sæt stille. / al-se þeh he wolde, of worlden iwiten. / þe king hine lette bringen, into ane fære bure [BL 8601-3; M 17233-37]).

These scenes of prophecy, which Layamon has imagined much more clearly and fully than Wace, help make the Merlin of the Brut far more mysterious and unworldly than his counterpart in the Roman. Merlin's question, “Where are you, Uther?” which, as Frances Gillespy pointed out, indicates that “he apparently gropes for the king who is near him,” and Aurelie's having Merlin led to a room (because he is incapable of guiding himself?) are particularly nice touches.²³ Wace has nothing more to say about Merlin once he has finished prophesying, but Layamon always takes care to complete the scene and frame the prophecy with descriptions of the prophet. This desire for imaginative completeness is further evidence of Layamon's movement toward fictional discourse.

Merlin's abstraction or unworldliness is also evinced by his lack of concern with material things. To Aurelie's messengers, Merlin replies: “I don't care about his land, his silver, nor his gold, nor his clothes, nor his horses; I have enough myself” (Ne recche ich noht his londes, his seoluer no his goldes. / no his claðes no his hors, miseolf ich habbe inowe [BL 8510-11; M 17051-54]). To Uther he says: “I will not possess any land, neither silver nor gold; for I am in counsel the richest of all men, and if I wished for possessions, then I should become the worse in power.”²⁴ These are again Layamon's additions—additions which show his greater engagement with his material, his fictionalization of it, and his insistence on Merlin's distance from the world.

Layamon's Merlin is distinctly better imagined, more prominent, and better integrated into the work than Wace's figure. His prophetic gift and trance are more fully circumstantiated, his comings and goings are better noted, and his political role in the British regnum is markedly greater. Layamon's Merlin differs from Wace's most, though, in his elusiveness. He is hard to find; he is beyond coercion, beyond royal command, not to be bought. His spirit seems to hold commerce with another realm. We know more about Layamon's prophet than we do about Wace's, but the more we know, the less he seems knowable. He is fugitive, always on the verge of drifting away—physically or in spirit. When he is present, therefore, he is the center of attention; no longer secondary or subservient, he is welcomed as a savior and receives offers of gifts and service from others. He is a power in this world and a link to another, living ambiguously between the two.

In Merlin's increased independence from royal power; in this increased tension between the historical, political center and the visionary, fictional margin; in Layamon's movement away from historical discourse toward fictional discourse, we see not only more effective romancing but also a reflection of the difference between Wace's and Layamon's circumstances. On the one hand we have the Norman court poet at the heart of a Norman empire; on the other there is the Saxon parish priest at the empire's edge. Just as Layamon's linguistic archaizing was not an innocent yearning for the good old days but a political gesture whose modern equivalent would be something like an exhibition of traditional Palestinian crafts on the occupied West Bank, so in Merlin's elusiveness and independence we find the representation of feelings of resistance, of defiance of what was Norman, royal, central, predetermined.

Layamon's transformation of Merlin demonstrates and epitomizes the English poet's movement away from historical discourse toward fiction, a movement which represents Layamon's feelings of defiance and resistance toward the central, Norman authority in exactly the same way that Merlin shows increased independence from royal power, but on a larger level. In Layamon's time historical discourse was traditionally viewed as “a narrative of things which were done,” and as an account of “true things which were done.” It was contrasted with fiction, with “fable,” which “contains things neither true nor verisimilar,” and which was considered an account of “things not done, but made up,” of “things which were neither done nor can be done, for they are against nature.”²⁵ History, that is, was the discourse of the real, the natural, the probable, while fiction was the discourse of the imaginary, the un- or supernatural, the unlikely. To write history—to write about the real, the natural, the probable—was in some sense for Layamon to write about the Normans: the “things that had been done,” after all, had led to the Norman conquest. The greater independence and importance Layamon accords to the prophet-wizard Merlin are a sure sign of the poet's shift toward fiction, toward the imaginary, the unlikely, the supernatural.

The tension between Merlin and the kings—between the fictional margin and the historical center—and the shift toward fiction are conspicuous in the episode of Arthur's conception. Gorlois has shut himself in one of his Cornish castles and locked Ygærne in Tintagel. After a week of assaults, Uther has still failed to take Gorlois's castle and, he swears, “I desire the beautiful Ygærne so much that I cannot go on living” (swa swiðe me longeð, þat ne mai i noht libben. / after þere faire Ygærne [BL 9342-43; M 18720-22]). Yet there is little he can do, for Tintagel is “closed tightly all around with sea cliffs, so that it cannot be taken by any man” (mid sæ-cliuen, faste biclused. / þat ne bið he biwunne, þurh nanes cunes monnen [BL 9301-2; M 18638-41]), and Ygærne herself “is good, a most faithful woman” (is wel idon, a swiðe treowe wimmon [BL 9359; M 18754-55]).

Stymied and dying of desire, Uther turns to Merlin. After reminding the king that “there is no knight, however noble, of any land, who can unfasten the gates of Tintagel with force” (Nis nan cniht swa wel iboren, of nane londe icoren. / þe mi[d] strengðe of Tintaieol, þe ȝeten mihten un-tunen [BL 9454-55; M 18946-49]), Merlin unfolds his stratagem: through his “leech-craft” and “magic” (leche-craft, wiȝel [BL 9448, 9606; M 18934, 19250]), Merlin will make Uther's appearance, speech, and the rest exactly like Gorlois's. The transformed Uther is freely admitted to Tintagel and to the unsuspecting Ygærne's bed. That night Arthur is conceived. The next day Gorlois is defeated and killed; Tintagel surrenders shortly afterward, and Uther and Ygærne marry.

A little reflection shows us that the circumstances of this episode were created precisely to permit a final demonstration of Merlin's powers and give him a role in Arthur's conception. The difficulty of Merlin's task in this episode is stressed, and the efficacy of his “magic” and “power” is contrasted with the futility of royal and knightly “strength.” This mention of “power” (craft) takes us back to the incubi, their moral ambiguity, and their powers of deceit and illusion (“many a beautiful woman soon gives birth through their power” [craft]). Such power, deceit, illusion, and moral ambiguity—precisely the qualities of which secular fiction was accused—thus lie at the heart of history and are the sine qua non of its progress. Finally, then, the succession of kings and the progress of history depend utterly on Merlin's supernatural, fictional powers: the “things which were done” depended utterly on “things which were neither done nor can be done, for they are against nature.”

Merlin's principal narrative role in the Brut is to announce and assure the advent of Arthur; and Merlin, the work's second pole, disappears from the poem after Arthur is conceived. Arthur himself seems to inherit Merlin's prophetic role, foreseeing his own fate in two dreams, the second of which is found only in the Brut. The two poles of the work, represented by Merlin and the succession of kings he serves, are united in Arthur, who is, in a sense, the son of both Uther and Merlin, of both history and fiction.²⁶

With the advent of Arthur and the disappearance of Merlin, Layamon's relation to what is royal, central, and predetermined shifts radically. The center is no longer occupied by the conquering Normans; in Arthur, the son of both Uther and Merlin, Layamon finds an image of the doomed English under their last kings.²⁷ Thus it is that Layamon can write, at Arthur's mysterious disappearance, that “formerly there was a wise man named Merlin. He said with words—his sayings were true—that an Arthur should yet come to help the English,” seeing in him the promise of an English savior.²⁸ Layamon, that is, found in Wace's poem a rehearsal and denunciation of his ancestors' sins and, in his ancestors' British opponents, an image of his own people's past greatness and the promise of its restoration. An Arthur would yet come who, like the Arthur of the Brut, would encompass and unite fiction and history, Merlin and the kings, the two poles of society, the displaced Saxon margin and the empowered Norman center. Layamon's transformation of Merlin increases the tension between the work's two poles; his Arthur provides an imaginative representation of the resolution of this tension.

In Layamon's reworking of Wace's poem, in this move toward fiction and away from history, an imaginative space opens up, a space where Layamon could represent and try to resolve some English tensions. The Brut was first intended as a celebration of England's past and the English past. It permitted Layamon to recall the English conquest of Britain, to find in the Britons an image of the valiant but doomed English, to see the Norman conquest as a divine punishment of the English for their past misdeeds, and to attribute the Norman victory to God's aid rather than to the unaided strength of the Normans. In the relationship between Merlin and the kings, Layamon could express some of the feelings of defiance and resistance to Norman hegemony that he and other English men and women must have experienced, and he could shift the balance of power in that relationship—in fiction at least—away from the royal, Norman center. In the Brut, in imagination at least, Layamon could resolve some of these feelings, foreseeing the day when he and others like him would no longer feel alienated from the central authority.

In reworking Wace's poem, Layamon represented some of the tensions inherent in his historical circumstances together with their resolution. It was precisely because the French poem offered him the opportunity to represent and imaginatively resolve these tensions that he chose to rewrite it, and in the process of representing and imaginatively resolving these real, historical tensions—tensions which could not be so represented and resolved in action—he necessarily produced a more effective fiction. What could not be worked out in action he worked out in literature: a representation of the world, transformed by the power of fiction, where a king depends on Merlin to engender his story.

Notes

1. For early canonical statements, see Robert Huntington Fletcher, The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, vol. 10 (Boston, 1906), pp. 127-43 and 147-66; and William H. Schofield, English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer (1931; reprint, New York, 1969), pp. 350-58. Throughout this article I will refer to Wace's poem as the Roman and Layamon's adaptation of it as the Brut.

2. Perhaps the most interesting evidence of Layamon's conscious and deliberate “Englishing” of his material has been suggested by E. G. Stanley. The Brut is preserved in two roughly contemporary manuscripts: MS. Cotton Caligula A.ix and MS. Cotton Otho C.xiii. The orthographic and linguistic archaizing which one finds in the Caligula version of the Brut, however, is absent from the Otho version. Stanley believes that the archaizing of the Caligula version probably “goes back to Layamon himself” and “may have been the result of a deliberate wish to connect the new piece of English writing with the glory felt to belong to the traditions of England, to make it seem the latest link in a chain connecting the newest age with the achievements of English greatness before the Conquest.” This has led him to suggest that while the Caligula scribes preserved the poem's archaic aspects, the Otho scribe purged them from his version “because he was out of sympathy with the antiquarian modulation of the poet” (“Layamon's Antiquarian Sentiments,” Medium Aevum 38 [1969]: 28, 27, 29). See also Stanley's review of the facsimile edition of The Owl and the Nightingale, with an introduction by N. R. Ker, EETS no. 251 (Oxford, 1963), in Notes and Queries 209, N.S. 11 (1964): 191-93, and “The Date of Layamon's Brut,” Notes and Queries 213, N.S. 15 (1968): 85-88. For other discussions of Layamon's “Englishness,” see Henry Cecil Wyld, “Layamon as an English Poet,” Review of English Studies 6 (1930): 1-30; Dorothy Everett, “Layamon and the Earliest Middle English Alliterative Verse,” in her Essays on Middle English Literature, ed. Patricia Kean (Oxford, 1955), pp. 23-45; C. S. Lewis, “Introduction,” in Selections from Layamon's “Brut,” ed. G. L. Brook (London, 1963), pp. vii-xv; A. J. Bliss, review of Studies in the Narrative Technique of “Beowulf” and Lawman's “Brut” by Håken Ringbom (Åbo, 1968), Review of English Studies N.S. 21 (1970): 70-71; D. S. Brewer, review of Ringbom, Notes and Queries 215, N.S. 17 (1970): 225-26; P. J. Frankis, “Layamon's English Sources,” in J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, ed. Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979), pp. 64-75; and W. R. J. Barron, “Arthurian Romance: Traces of an English Tradition,” English Studies 61 (1980): 6-10.

3. Everett explained Layamon's choice by suggesting that the Roman appealed to him (1) because it glorified his country's past and (2) because its tale of “the Saxon conquest of Britain interested him as a parallel to the Norman conquest” (p. 34). Stanley, endorsing her suggestion, further surmises that Layamon discovered “the moral cause of the Norman conquest” in the treachery which characterizes the Saxons' dealings with the Britons in the Roman (“Layamon's Antiquarian Sentiments,” p. 34). By adapting the French poem into English, Layamon was celebrating England's past, the English past, and the English cultural tradition at the same time as he was chastising the English for their past misdeeds which had provoked the wrath of God in the form of the Normans.

4. In what follows I shall directly contrast Layamon's poem with Wace's, and this procedure perhaps deserves some comment. It may be true that Layamon had sources other than Wace's Roman, sources that are now lost to us. It is therefore entirely possible that changes with which I am crediting Layamon were in fact due to a lost source. However, even if this proved to be the case, Layamon's decision to reproduce those changes—his endorsement of them, so to speak—make them his: Layamon may not be the originator of some or all of the differences between his poem and Wace's, but he is ultimately responsible for everything in his poem.

5. Robert W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain (New York, 1966), p. 154.

6. Vther i[s] of-longed, æfter Ygærne þere hende.
   wunder ane swiðe, after Gorloises wiue.
   Ah longe is æuere, þat ne cum❙með nauere.
   þat he heo biwinne, bute þurh mine ginne.
   for nis na wimmon treowere, in þissere worlde-riche.
   & neoðe-les he scal aȝe, þa hende Ygærne,
   on < hir> he scal streonen, þat scal wide sturien.

   [BL 9398-404; M 18832-45]

   For a long time Madden's (M) has been the standard edition (Layamons “Brut,” or Chronicle of Britain, ed. and trans. Sir Frederick Madden, 3 vols. [London, 1847]). Two of the three volumes of a new edition by G. R. Brook and R. F. Leslie (BL) have now appeared: Layamon: “Brut,” EETS nos. 250, 257 (London, 1963, 1978). I shall follow and quote the text of the Caligula manuscript as it has been established by Brook and Leslie. Because “it is not possible to give any formula that will establish the correspondence of lines between the two editions” (BL, 1:11), I will give combined references to the line numbers of both editions. Thus “BL 1; M 1 would refer to the first lines of both editions. In quotations from Layamon's text, the Middle English ampersand will be rendered by its modern equivalent, “&,” and the inverted semicolon with which the scribes punctuated the half-line will be transcribed as a comma. All brackets in citations from the Brut are the editors'. Square brackets enclose letters the editors changed or added to the manuscript reading; angular brackets enclose letters found between lines or in the margins of the manuscript. All translations, although occasionally inspired by Madden's, are mine.

7. “Inter lunam & terram habitant spiritus. quos incubos demones appellamus. Hii partim habent naturam hominum. partim uero angelorum. & cum uolunt asumunt sibi humans figuras. & cum mulierbus coeunt” (Historia regum Britanniæ, ed. Acton Griscom [London, 1929], 6.18, pp. 381-82. The translation is from Lewis Thorpe, The History of the Kings of Britain [Harmondsworth, 1966], p. 168).

8. … hokerieð þan folke.
   monine mon o[n] sweuene, oft heo swencheð
   & monienne hende wimmon, þurh heore cræfte kenneð anan.
   & monies godes monnes child, heo bicharreð, þurh wigeling.

   [BL 7877-80; M 15785-91]

9. C. S. Lewis, The Sacred Image (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 122, 11.

10. Quant jo fui alques grant nurrie,
    Ne sai se fu fantosmerie,
    Une chose veneit suvent
    Ki me baisout estreitement.
    Cumë hume parler l'oeie,
    E cumë hume le senteie,
    E plusurs feiz od mei parlout
    Que neient ne se demustrout.
    Tant m'ala issi aprismant
    E tant m'ala suvent baisant,
    Od mei se culcha si contui,
    Unches hume plus ne conui.
    Cest vallet oi.

    [Lines 7421-33]

    This and all further line references are to Le Roman de Brut, ed. Ivor Arnold, 2 vols. (Paris, 1938, 1940). Translations of the Roman are mine.

11. þenne ich wæs on bedde iswaued, mid soft mine slepen.
    þen com biuoren, þa fæireste þing þat wes iboren.
    swulc hit weore a muchel cniht, al of golde idiht.
    Þis ich isæh on sweuene, alche niht on slepe.
    Þis þing glad me biuoren, and glitene[de] on golde.
    ofte hit me custe, ofte hit me clupte.
    ofte hit me to-bæh, & eode me swiðe neh.
    Þa ich an ænde me bisæh, selcuð me þuhte þas.
    mi mæte me wes læ[ð], mine limes uncuðe.
    selcuð me þuhte, what hit beon mihte.
    Þa anȝæt ich on ænde, þat ich was mid childe.
    þa mi time com, þisne cnaue ich hæfuede.

    [BL 7838-44; M 15706-29]

12. A Labanes, une funtaine,
    Ki en Guales ert, bien luintaine,
    Ne sai u est, kar unc n'i fui,
    Fist li reis enveier pur lui.
    Cil vint al rei qui l'out mandé. …

    [Lines 8013-17]

13. Þe king sende his sonde, ȝeond al his kine-londe.
    and bad æuerælcne mon, axien after Mærlin.
    & ȝif me hine mihten ifinden, bringen hine to þan kinge.
    he him wolde ȝifuen lond, boðe seoluer & gold.
    & a weorl-richen, driȝen his iwille.
    Þa sonden gunnen riden, widen & siden.
    summe heo uerden riht norð, & summe heo uerden suð forð.
    summe heo uerden riht æst, & summe heo uerden riht west.
    summe heo uerden a-nan, þat heo comen to Alæban.
    þat is a wælle, inne Wælsce londe.
    Þe walle he lufode, & ofte hine þer-inne. baðede.
    þa cnihtes hine funde, þer he sat bi þan stronden.

    [BL 8488-99; M 17007-30]

14. þe king lette riden, widen & siden.
    he bad gold & gersume, ælche farinde gume.
    wha-swa mihte finde, Merlin an londe.
    þer-to he læide muchel lof, ah ne herde he him nawhit of.

    [BL 9074-77; M 18184-91]

15. Bi us þe gon græten, þat is a god-ful king.
    Aurilian ihaten, að[el]est alre kingen.
    .....faire he þe bisecheð þat þu him to buȝe.
    & he þe wule ȝive lond, boðe seluer & gold.

    [BL 8503-4, 8506-7; M 17037-40, 17043-46]

16. See lines 8021, 8307, 8684, 8689. Wace uses the verbs: “prier,” “requerre,” and “merci crier.”

17. næuer ær an his liue, nes þe king swa bliðe.
    for næuere nanes monnes cume, þe him to come.
    Þe king to his stede, & ut him gon ride.
    & alle his cnihtes mid him, to wulcumen Mærlin.
    Þe king hine imette, & fære hine igratte.
    he hine iclupte, he hine custe.
    he hine cuð-læhte,
    Muchel wes þe murhȝe, i þan mon-uerede,
    al for Marlines cume, þe nes nanes monnes sune.

    [BL 8530-38; M 17091-107]

18. sær him wes an heorte, & seolliche a-uæred.
    swa wes al þat muchele folc, þat wes in þere uerde.
    Vðer cleopede Merlin, & bad hine cume to him.
    & þus seide him to, mid swiðe softe worden.
    Mæ[r]lin Merlin, leoue freond, fonde þi-seluen.
    & sæie us of þan tocne, þe we i-sæȝen habbeoð.
    for nat ich on worlde riche, to what hit scal i-wurðen.
    buten þu us raden, aȝæn we moten riden.

    [BL 8927-34; M 17890-905]

19. Imong þat he king wæs, & his wikenares chæs.
    Merlin him æt-wende, nuste he nauere whidere
    no nauere a worlde-riche, to whan he bicome.
    Wa wes þan kinge, swa wes al his duȝeðe.
    and alle his hird-men, þer-uore murnende weoren.

    [BL 9069-73; M 18174-83]

20. … Mærlin þu ært wilcume.
    Her ich sette þe an honde, al þene ræd of mine londe.
    And þat þu me ræde, to muchere neode.
    .....& buten ich habbe þinne ræd, ful raðe þu isihst me dæad.

    [BL 9434-36, 9440; M 18905-9, 18916-17]

21. … Merlin mult se contrubla,
    Duel out al quer, mot ne sona.
    Quant sis esperiz repaira,
    Mult se plainst e mult suspira.
    “Hé Deus, dist il, cum granz dolurs. …”

    [Lines 8309-13]

22. Mærlin sæt him stille, longe ane stunde.
    swulc he mid sweuene, swunke ful swiþe.
    Heo seiden þe hit iseȝen, mid heore aȝen æȝen.
    þat ofte he hine wende, swulc hit a wurem weore.
    Late he gone awakien, þa gon he to quakien.
    & þas word seide, Merlin þa witeȝe.
    “Wæilawæi wæilawæi, a þissere worlde-richen.
    muchel is þa sorȝe, þe isiȝen is to londe.
    Whær ært þu Vther, Siten me biuoren her.
    & ich þe wulle suggen, of sorȝen inoȝen.”

    [BL 8935-44; M 17906-25]

23. Frances Gillespy, “Layamon's Brut: A Comparative Study in Narrative Art,” University of California Publications in Modern Philology 3 (1916): 487.

24. for nulle ich aȝæn na lond, neouðer [seoluer na gold].
    for ich am on rade. rihchest alre monnen.
    & ȝif ich wilne æhte, þenne wursede ich on crafte.

    [BL 9444-46; M 18926-31]

25. “Fabula est quae neque veras neque veri similes continet res. … Historia est gesta res” (Ad C. Herennium libri iv de ratione dicendi [Rhetorica ad Herennium], ed. and trans. Harry Caplan, Loeb Classical Library, Cicero, 1 [Cambridge, Mass., 1954], 1.18.13, pp. 22 and 24); “Fabulas … non sunt res factae, sed tantum loquendo fictae. … Historia est narratio rei gestae. … Nam historiae sunt res verae quae factae sunt; … fabulae vero sunt quae nec factae sunt nec fieri possunt, quia contra naturam sunt” (Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri xx, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols. [Oxford, 1911], 1.40.1; 1.41.1; and 1.44.5).

26. Merlin's participation in Arthur's conception takes on new meaning in the light of what R. Howard Bloch writes about history, romance, lineage, and Merlin in his Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago, 1983). Bloch notes a rapport in the “cultural superstructure” of this period between lineage “uninterrupted primogenital succession”—and historical narrative, which reproduces and is organized by a series of “true things which were done” in the “natural order” in which they were done: i.e., the “biological continuity” of lineage and the “narrative and referential continuity” of historical or quasi-historical texts are intimately linked (see esp. chap. 3 of Bloch's book, “Literature and Lineage,” pp. 92-127). Merlin's role in Arthur's conception, then, interrupts both the continuity of lineage and the continuity of historical discourse. The result is both a bastard child and a bastard text. There could be no clearer example of Merlin's/fiction's power to displace any center (of power, authority, legitimacy, etc.).

27. Compare Lewis: “The Normans with their cræfte ([BL 3547]; M 7116) were still fairly new. The Saxons, like them, had been foreign invaders. Arthur, like Harold, had been fighting for our homes. It was perhaps some compensation to show Colgrim actually faring at Bath as William the Bastard ought to have fared at Hastings. Perhaps after all we need no lost poem to explain (if that were all) why Arthur should be fiercer and far more alive in this part of the Brut [the Saxon wars] than in his foreign wars” (“Introduction” [n. 3 above], pp. xii-xiii).

28. Bute while wes an witeȝe, Mærlin ihate.
    he bodede mid worde, his quiðes weoren soðe.
    þat an Arður sculde ȝete, cum Anglen to fulste.

    [BL 14295-97; M 28646-51; my emphasis]

I would like to thank William D. Reynolds of Hope College and E. G. Stanley of the University of Oxford for their generous and helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.