Appendix.

NOTE I. p. 9.

"When great King Arthur ruled the land,

He ruled it like a King."

So far the world agrees, but when this period was, is less authentic. Ritson fixes his birth at the latter part of the fifth century, and makes him begin to reign about the year 517. Be this as it may, his reign was assuredly the golden age of fairies, as we hear on the authority of Chaucer, in the Wife of Bath's Tale.

"In old days of King Arthur,

Of which that Breton's speken great honour,

All this land fulfilled of faërie,

The Elf Quene with her joly compagnie,

Danced full oft in many a grene mede."

NOTE II. p. 11.

So speaks the nursery tale, as likewise the legend of Thumbling in Grimm's Kinder und Häuser Mährchen.

"Ah!” said the wife, "if we had but only one, and were he no bigger than my thumb, I should still be content, and love him with all my heart!"

And the old Ballad in Evans' collection:

"His father was a ploughman plain,

His mother milked the cow."

And this couple were without children,

"Until such time the good old man
To learned Merlin goes,

In the first place,

Who was Merlin? is the first question that suggests itself. taking it as a matter of history, there seem to have been two bards of the name of Merddyn: Merddyn Wyldt, or Merddyn the wild, and Merddyn Emrys, the Bard of Emrys Wledig, or Aurelius Ambrosius, the gallant British chief, who was the chief opponent of Cerdic. Merddyn Emrys, Merddyn Wyldt, and Taliessin, were the three principal Bards of Britain. Merddyn Emrys would seem to have been one of those Bards who would fain have returned to the ancient Druidical heathenism, as if Christianity had been imposed by the Roman Conqueror, and was to be shaken off at their departure, thus coupling pagan superstition with patriotism. Thus he strove to resume the ancient divinations, and tradition has handed him down as the great enchanter, who performs everything impossible in the whole cycle of the romance of the Round Table, and is famed far beyond his own two Keltic provinces of Wales and Bretagne, as the French and English Merlin, and the Italian and Spanish Merlino.

NOTE IV.
P. 11.

On this feat, which was Merlin's first introduction to the British Court, all romantic authorities are unanimous. Vortegirn, after his expulsion from the Eastern parts of England, endeavoured to build a castle on what Geoffrey of Monmouth calls Mount Erir, and Nennius-Herenus, and what modern authorities believe to have been Snowdon. He was, however, always baffled, though he employed 15,000 workmen, the stones falling down or sinking into the earth at

night as fast as they were built up by day. His wise men informed him, that, in order to overcome this difficulty, he must find a certain child, kill him, and sprinkle the stones and mortar with his blood. Merlin, then seven years old, was brought to the court for the purpose, but having no desire to be sacrificed to form this new cement, he asked the Magicians whether they knew what was under ground, and on their standing confounded, he gave the King information which led him to set his 15,000 men to dig beneath the foundation, when two deep pools of water appeared, below which were two stones, and these being raised, two dragons appeared.

"That one dragon was red as fire,

With eyen bright as bason clear,
His tail was great, and nothing small,
His body was a rood withal.
The white dragon lay him by,
Stern of look and griesly,

His mouth and throat yawned wide,

The fire burst out on ilka side.

His tail was ragged as a fiend,

And upon his tail's end,

There was yshaped a griesly head,

To fight with the dragon red."

These two monsters slept by day, but at night their combats caused the earthquakes that prevented Vortegirn's tower from prospering. On being awakened, they began to hold "full hard batail," which lasted till "even-song gan ring," when the white dragon, who had at first been worsted, recovered himself, and finally blew out such a blast of flame, as

Merlin further declared, that the two dragons prefigured the fate of Britain, where, though the red dragon of the Saxons should for a time prevail, he should be ultimately consumed by the white dragon of Wales, a prediction in which Merlin does not seem to have shewn his usual sagacity, unless the Tudor reigns be taken as the victory of the griesly white.-Geoffrey of Monmouth; Nennius; Ellis's Specimens Dunlop's History of Fiction.

According to the dubious testimony of our old historians, it was Vortegirn who first invited Henghist and the Saxons to Britain, and was won by the blandishments of Rowena to betray the cause of his countrymen. Afterwards finding

resistance made to their encroachments by the British chiefs, Henghist invited all the most noted to a conference at Caer Caradoc, and there the Saxons, unsheathing their concealed weapons at the signal, "Nehmed eure seaxes," take your daggers, slew each one his man, till the whole party were cut off except Vortegirn, who was spared on account of his marriage with Rowena.

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The Britons, however, considered that he was in league with their enemies, and raising to the throne Aurelius Ambrosius, his nephew, besieged him in a tower, and burnt him to death. Aurelius afterwards was successful in battles with the Saxons, made Henghist prisoner, and beheaded him. He was buried at the scene of his slaughter of the Saxons, and Aurelius proposed to honor the spot with some remarkable monument. "If you are desirous," said Merlin, to honor the burying-place of these men with an everlasting monument, send for the Giant's Dance which is in Killaraus, a mountain in Ireland." Aurelius laughed. Merlin continued: "I entreat your Majesty to forbear vain laughter; for what I say is without vanity. They are mystical stones, and of a medicinal virtue." The giants of old brought them from the farthest coasts of Africa, in order to make baths in them when they should be taken with any illness. For their method was to wash the stones, and put their sick into the water, which infallibly cured them. There is not a stone there which hath not some healing virtue ! When the Britons heard this, they resolved to send for the stones, and to make war upon the people of Ireland if they should offer to detain them. They made choice of Uther Pendragon as general, and put him in command of 15,000 Uther gained a victory over the Irish, and then marched to the mountain, but neither strength nor art could prevail to move the stones, till Merlin came, who, after laughing at their vain efforts, placed his engines, and with great ease took down the stones, and sent off the whole Giant's Dance to the ships.

men.

Without giving full credit to good Geoffrey of Monmouth's history of the transport, it is remarkable that modern researches combine to fix the date of the erection of Stonehenge at a period subsequent to the departure of the Romans, probably raised in the attempt to restore Druidism. Their material is certainly

such as to prove that no Wiltshire hill furnished them, and tradition has explained their name as the Stones of Henghist, rather than the more modern derivation, the Hanging Stones. It is said that a geologist, on being shewn a fragment of one of these mysterious masses, guessed, that if British at all, it was brought from the Isle of Anglesea, but thought that more probably it had been found in Africa; a curious confirmation of the Welsh tradition.

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NOTE VI. p. 13.

MERLIN THE PROPHET.

Merlin, Merlin, where art thou so early sped

In the morning dawn, with thy jet black hound?
On the shore, I must seek for the egg so red,

The sea-snake's eggs that in rocks are found.

'In the mead, for green cresses and golden rod,
In the forest, I seek the mistletoe bough
That grows near the stream, on the oak branch broad."
"Merlin, Merlin, return on thy steps even now,

Leave the mistletoe bough by the stream on the oak,
In the mead, leave the cresses and golden rod,
And the sea serpent's egg in the hole of the rock.
Merlin, Merlin, return, the sole prophet is God."

Such is a rough rendering of the French translation, given in Villemarque's Barzaz-Breiz, ou Chants populaires de la Bretagne, of a curious fragment of a ballad in the dialect of Cornouailles, which seems as if it might have been addressed to the would-be conjuror by some Christian priest, perhaps endeavouring to prevent him from resorting to Druidical divinations.

The sea-snake's egg, or adder's stone, otherwise called Glain Neidr, was said to have been formed, about midsummer, by a collection of snakes. A bubble formed on the head of one of them, was blown by the others down the whole length of its back, and then hardening, became a crystal ring. It was used as one of the insignia of the Archdruid, and was supposed to assist in augury.

The "

golden rod" is a name given at a venture to what Villemarque calls P'herbe d'or, the Latin Selago, or hedge hyssop, which, in old Druidical times,