8

Merlin the Bard

Ambrosius Aurelius was almost certainly a historical figure. But was he the real Merlin? To answer this question let’s start with a brief outline of the story of Merlin as related by authors of the Middle Ages.

One thing that might not be known to younger readers, familiar with the popular TV series Merlin, is that in the traditional Arthurian saga, Merlin and Arthur are not portrayed as being of the same generation. When Arthur ascends the throne, Merlin is an old man. In fact, he is already quite old during the reign of Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon. (One way to envisage the Merlin of the medieval romances is something like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings.) Having the gift of prophecy and knowledge of the mystic arts, Merlin is Uther’s advisor. A once good king of the Britons, Uther Pendragon eventually brings the nation to ruin through his lust for Igraine, the wife of Gorlois the Duke of Cornwall. Civil war ensues between the king and the duke, during which Gorlois is killed and Igraine becomes Uther’s queen. With the country in turmoil, the disillusioned Merlin leaves the court, stealing away with the infant Arthur, Uther and Igraine’s newborn son. After leaving the baby to be brought up in secret by the trusty Sir Ector, Merlin disappears into the wilds where he remains for many years, dwelling for a time on the Isle of Avalon where the Lady of the Lake forges Excalibur on his request. Meanwhile, Uther dies and Britain languishes without a king, beset with internecine strife and harassed by foreign invaders. When Arthur comes of age and pulls the sword from the stone, Merlin returns to reveal the youth to be Uther’s son and rightful heir to the throne. Merlin then becomes King Arthur’s mentor and helps him unite the kingdom. He takes the new king to the Lady of the Lake to receive Excalibur, then oversees the building Camelot and establishes the knightly Order of the Round Table. When Arthur falls sick and pestilence plagues the realm, the wise old wizard inaugurates the quest for the Holy Grail to cure the king and heal the land. Ultimately, Britain is again drawn into civil conflict, after a rebellion led by Arthur’s treacherous nephew Modred. Before the rivals fight to the death at the Battle of Camlann, Merlin departs in dismay, ultimately ending his life as a forest-dwelling hermit, driven mad by the tragic plight of the Britons.

This, in essence, is the account of Merlin’s life as it appears in the medieval Arthurian romances. There are various renditions that include additional anecdotes, such as Merlin’s love affair with the Lady of the Lake and his feud with Morgan le Fey, and some include the episode where the young Merlin encounters Vortigern at Dinas Emrys, but the central theme adhered to by all the authors is that Merlin is not only a learned councilor but also a prophet, poet, and magician. The first author known to have portrayed Merlin in the role as Arthur’s royal mentor is Geoffrey of Monmouth in the mid-twelfth century, but he appears in older Dark Age literature under the original Welsh rendering of the name Myrddin (pronounced “Merthin”). However, in these narratives he is not associated with Arthur but acts as advisor to various other British chieftains. If the later romancers took their storylines of Merlin as the real power behind King Arthur’s throne from earlier Welsh sources, then these have not endured for us to examine today: the surviving Welsh tales appear to concern only Merlin’s later life, after Arthur’s death. Like Merlin in the medieval romances, Myrddin of Welsh literature is depicted as a mystic, although in this case he is said to be a bard.

The medieval story of the boy Merlin meeting Vortigern was undoubtedly based on the legend of the young Ambrosius: we have seen how Geoffrey of Monmouth refers to the episode, as did Nennius in the early ninth century, and that here the youth in the incident is identified as Ambrosius. But it is not only with Nennius that we find Merlin and Ambrosius linked as the same person. In chapter 6 I mentioned how the shortened form of the Latin Ambrosius is Ambrose (just as Marcus is Mark, and Antonius is Antony), and that the Welsh rendering of Ambrose is Emrys. (Nennius himself explains that Ambrosius was known as Embres in the language of the Britons, so we can see how the name evolved from Ambrose in Latin, to Embres in Brythonic, to Emrys in Welsh.1) It is under this name that Ambrosius is included in early Welsh literature—for example, in two of the Welsh triads (see chapter 6), the Three Skillful Bards and the Three Disappearances—where he is referred to as Myrddin Emrys: in other words, Merlin Ambrosius.2 So we have confirmation that early Welsh authors considered Ambrosius and Merlin to be one and the same. Furthermore, they all suggest that at some point he became a bard; the Three Skillful Bards, for example, relates that Myrddin Emrys was one of the three most distinguished bards in Britain. As we saw in chapter 5, Dark Age bards were not only poets but were attributed with prophetic, healing, even magical powers. Moreover, some acted as advisors to the British kings. Accordingly, they were regarded pretty much as Merlin is in the romances of the Middle Ages. To place him in a historical context of post-Roman Britain: for “Merlin the Magician” we should perhaps read “Merlin the Bard.” Regardless of any associations with King Arthur, literary scholars are divided on the subject of the Myrddin of Welsh tradition as a historical figure. Was he, they ponder, a real or fictitious Dark Age bard?

One particular manuscript suggests that he had indeed been a real-life individual. Lly du Caerfyrddin (The Black Book of Carmarthen) is a collection of early Welsh works compiled into one volume during the early thirteenth century, but many of the poems in the manuscript have been dated to very much earlier. Now preserved in the National Library of Wales (where it is cataloged as Peniarth MS 1), The Black Book of Carmarthen contains two poems that appear to have been composed in the sixth century: “The Greetings” and “The Apple Trees,” which are said to have been composed by Myrddin himself.3 They both involve a battle at a place called Arfderydd in northern England, after which the author claims to be living as a hermit in a nearby forest. Another, seemingly contemporary poem in the manuscript, titled “The Conversation of Myrddin and Taliesin,” concerns Myrddin and another bard discussing this same battle. First, these works all imply that the romance Merlin was based in part on the Myrddin of the poems: he is living a reclusive forest existence, having lost his mind, exactly like the Arthurian Merlin. Second, they suggest that Myrddin was a historical figure: the Battle of Arfderydd appears to have been a genuine event, as it is recorded in the Welsh Annals. In fact, the Welsh Annals actually records Myrddin in reference to this battle: “The Battle of Arfderydd [in the kingdom of Rheged in northwest England] . . . in which Gwenddolau fell and Myrddin went mad.” (Gwenddolau was king of Rheged.) However, there’s a big problem. The date given for the event is 573. If this Myrddin was alive in the period Arthur is said to have lived, he would have to have been well over a hundred years of age. Okay for a fabled Arthurian wizard, I suppose, but not very likely in reality.

The Arthurian theme of Merlin ending his life insane as a hermit in a forest does indeed fit with the Myrddin recorded in The Black Book of Carmarthen. And he is someone who, going by the Welsh Annals, was a historical figure. However, this forest-dwelling Myrddin could not have been associated with a real King Arthur. Ambrosius, on the other hand, lived in the right era to have been an elderly man during Arthur’s time. (Ambrosius seems to have been a boy of about ten when he meets Vortigern around 450, which would make him say thirty around 470 when he became leader of the Britons. Accordingly, if still alive, he would be about fifty when Arthur first appears on the scene sometime around 490: a reasonably old man for a Dark Age Briton.) It would seem, therefore, that the medieval Merlin was a composite character based on two separate figures with the same name that lived a hundred years apart. Welsh literature usually refers to the later of them as Myrddin Wyllt (the Wild) to avoid confusion. The question that aroused my interest was why Ambrosius, evidently of Roman Italian lineage, had been called Myrddin. Myrddin is obviously a Brythonic rather than a Latin name, although nothing survives to directly reveal its derivation. It’s possible that Ambrosius assumed a British name to appeal to the native Britons. However, there seemed to be more to it. The only people recorded with the name Myrddin during the early Dark Ages were all bards. Besides Myrddin Emrys and Myrddin Wyllt, old Welsh literature, such as the Three Skillful Bards, records another bard bearing the name during the sixth century: Myrddin, son of Madoc Morvryn. He is the subject of two works in The Red Book of Hergest (see chapter 6): The Conversation of Myrddin and Gwenddydd, a poem about the bard and his sister, and The Lament of Myrddin in his Grave, which purports to be the bard’s dying words.4 So in the period of one century, three illustrious bards all shared the same name. Could it have been a title of some kind? Like Ambrosius, Myrddin Wyllt also seems to have adopted or been given the name Myrddin as an epithet, as it does not appear to have been his birth name. He is recorded in a work written in the mid-1100s by a monk called Joceline from Furness Abbey in Scotland. Preserved in a manuscript cataloged as the Cotton Titus A. XIX in the British Library, Joceline’s The Life of Kentigern refers to a mad, reclusive bard who lived in a forest on the English-Scottish border in the late sixth century.5 As he is said to have been driven insane after witnessing the slaughter at the Battle of Arfderydd, this is clearly a reference to Myrddin Wyllt. However, Joceline does not call him Myrddin but Laleocen (pronounced “Lailoken”). I ultimately concluded, therefore, that Myrddin was probably an appellation given to a chief, or perhaps the leading bard of the time.

As far as I was aware, no Arthurian researchers had previously worked out what the name Myrddin actually meant. However, in The Red Book of Hergest, I found a poem called “The Prophesy of the Eagle,” in which, although Myrddin is not mentioned by name, the speaker (the one doing the prophesying) appears to be the same forest-dwelling recluse in the other works concerning Myrddin Wyllt.6 Accordingly, Myrddin Wyllt is the eagle referenced in the title. It is, then, possible that Myrddin means “eagle”? Eagle is eryr in modern Welsh, but this derived from the Middle English egle, so would not have been the older Brythonic word for the bird, which is actually unknown. The Celts were fond of giving important individuals the epithet of an animal, usually representing their disposition, stature, or prowess. For example, the Irish saint Columba was called Colm Cille (Church Dove), for his gentleness; Maelgwn, an important Welsh chieftain, was known as Maglocunus, the Great Hound, for his size; and the warrior queen Boudicca was known as Llewes, the Lioness, for her ruthlessness in battle. By the same token the title “the Eagle” may have been bestowed on a leading bard, as the bird was associated with foresight and prophecy. In fact, such animal titles were often inherited. For example, the Celts also used mythical beasts as honorary titles, and the best known of them has to be the Welsh Dragon, still depicted on the national flag of Wales. It was originally the emblem of the kingdom of Gwynedd in North Wales (whose influence eventually extended throughout much of the country) and was derived from its kings who held the title “the dragon,” which was passed on to successive rulers.7 Likewise, Myrddin could have been a title for the head bard handed down through the sixth century: from Ambrosius, to the son of Madoc Morvryn, to Laleocen. One way or the other, it is the first of them that concerns us here. He is the only one who might have been a contemporary of a historical King Arthur.

As discussed, in post-Roman Britain bards were not only poets but were thought to possess prophetic insight, were renowned as healers, and were regarded as having magical powers. So how come a king, or at least the supreme commander of the British forces, ended up being portrayed as a bard? None of the Dark Age historical sources reveal what happened to Ambrosius the warrior. By the late 470s Ambrosius had done a fantastic job uniting the British kingdoms, neutralizing the Pict and Irish threats, and confining the Anglo-Saxons to the extreme east and southeast of England. But then he simply disappears from record. He is not referenced again by Nennius; the Welsh Annals don’t mention him at all, while Gildas and Bede provided no details of the next couple of decades, other than a single line each. According to Gildas, “at times our countrymen and at others the enemy triumphed in the field.”8 And according to Bede, “sometimes the natives and sometimes their enemies prevailed.”9 This might seem strangely vague, but we have to appreciate that these two authors were both monks, writing primarily about ecclesiastical matters, and military events took something of a secondary role in their narratives. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is different, as it was compiled to an extent to celebrate the invaders’ triumphs in battle.

Although the Chronicle fails to refer to Ambrosius by name, we can gather that regardless of his achievements in uniting the various British factions against the invaders in the mid-470s, he seems to have been waging a losing struggle. Despite their initial successes the British forces were slowly being whittled down, whereas the Saxons could count on reinforcements from Germany. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in the year 477 a new wave of Saxons arrived in southern England, led by a man named Ella. They landed at a place called Cymenshore, believed by historians to be Selsey in the modern county of West Sussex, driving the Britons inland. Ella’s forces continued to advance over the next few years, defeating the Britons at the Battle of Mercredesburne in 485, thought to be a pre-Saxon fortification known as Town Creep near the village of Ashburnham in modern East Sussex, and taking the Roman town of Anderida (modern Pevensey) in 490, which appears to have been the British capital of the region. By this time the Saxons had secured control over a large area and founded the kingdom of Sussex (South Saxons), from which today’s counties of East and West Sussex get their names, with Ella as its first king. According to the Chronicle, in 495 a new influx of Saxons arrived farther west, landing near modern Southampton almost halfway along the southern coast of England. Although their leader Cerdic died in battle with the Britons, the Saxons won, and his son Cynric established a new kingdom in the area, later to be called Wessex (West Saxons). So although the Britons seemed to have retained control of the north and west of Britain, by the 490s the Anglo-Saxons had not only consolidated their hold on the southeast, they were also advancing inexorably westward.10

As Ambrosius is not so much as mentioned during this period, we can only assume that he was either dead, or had for some reason abdicated, retired, or been removed from office. If he was still alive to become the inspiration for the Arthurian Merlin, then obviously it was not the first of these possibilities. The historical sources do not reveal directly who led the Britons at the time. Historians generally assume that with Ambrosius no longer in command, British unity fell apart, and the regional kingdoms reverted to autonomy and territorial squabbling, which would certainly explain the renewed Anglo-Saxon success. However, according to the medieval Arthurian romances, the Britons did eventually elect an overall leader: Uther Pendragon. None of the pre-romance sources refer to Uther Pendragon, but there was, I discovered, a historical figure upon whom he may have been based. Like Myrddin, the name Uther Pendragon seems to be a title. Remember how the kings of Gwynedd in north Wales bore the title the dragon. Well, in Welsh the word uthr (pronounced “oo-ther”) means “terrible,” as in mighty, and the word pen, means “head,” as in leader. So Uthr Pen Dragon means “Terrible Head Dragon.” Surely this could not be coincidence. The romance Uther Pendragon might, it seemed reasonable to suppose, have been based on someone who had been chieftain of the kingdom of Gwynedd in North Wales.

The oldest known king of Gwynedd was one Enniaun Girt (meaning “the Impetuous”). Enniaun (pronounced “Ennion”) is recorded in the genealogies attached to the Welsh Annals—known as the Harleian genealogies—as the son of a mercenary named Cunedda who came from northern Britain to help repel the Irish.11 This was probably by invitation of Vortigern in the mid-fifth century, at the same time as he had recruited aid from the Anglo-Saxons. Gildas, writing around 545, refers to his contemporary king of Gwynedd as a powerful ruler named Maelgwn, while the Harleian genealogies also list Maelgwn as ruler of Gwynedd, recording him as the grandson of Enniaun. Accordingly, Enniaun, two generations earlier, would appear to have reigned during the late 400s, either at the time Ambrosius was supreme commander or immediately after. The Gwynedd kings certainly bore the title the dragon by the early sixth century, as Gildas refers to Maelgwn by that very appellation,12 and we also know that the title was inherited. We saw above how throughout the Dark Ages the kingdom of Gwynedd extended its influence widely in Wales, its leaders continuing to use the dragon epitaph, which eventually became the dynasty’s emblem and which still survives as the red dragon depicted on the Welsh national flag. So it seemed to me a reasonable assumption that Enniaun would previously have held the title. If he was indeed the first king of Gwynedd, he was presumably the first to bear the name. (Incidentally, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Uther gained his epithet Pendragon, after the appearance of a huge comet in the shape of a dragon, which inspired him to use the dragon as his emblem on flags, banners, and shields.) My conclusion: if any historical figure had been called Uthr Pen Dragon—the Terrible Head Dragon—immediately before Arthur’s time, then it would be Enniaun Girt.

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Fig. 8.1. Locations discussed in the search for Merlin.

Besides Uther Pendragon the early medieval romances also include Ambrosius Aurelius, the first author to interpolate him by that name in the Arthurian saga being Geoffrey of Monmouth (although he calls him Aurelius Ambrosius). However, in Geoffrey’s twelfth-century work, he is depicted as a separate character to Merlin, as he is by the Arthurian authors who followed his lead. In my opinion, however, he was clearly wrong. Recall, Geoffrey asserts that Merlin had been the psychic boy brought before Vortigern, while Nennius—three hundred years earlier—records precisely the same episode, identifying the youth as Ambrosius. By the 1300s Ambrosius had obviously been confused as two separate figures: Ambrosius Aurelius and Merlin—understandably, as Ambrosius was a warrior king while Merlin was a wizard. But, as we have reasoned from both Nennius and early Welsh literature, Merlin and Ambrosius Aurelius were originally considered to be one and the same. We have to remember that in Geoffrey’s time the various historical sources available to us today would still have been scattered throughout various uncataloged and uncollated manuscript collections all over the British Isles. During the twelfth century there was certainly much confusion concerning post-Roman British history. Some things Geoffrey got right; others he got completely wrong. One example of a glaring inaccuracy is in reference to Ambrosius’s parentage. According to Geoffrey, Ambrosius’s immediate predecessor as king of the Britons was his brother Constans, the son of a British king called Constantine. Constans, he tells us, had been a monk, but on the death of his father, he was persuaded to leave his monastery and accept the crown. Geoffrey is right in as much as such a man really existed. The Roman emperor Constantine III had a son called Constans; ordained a monk, he reluctantly gave up the cloth to become emperor when his father died. However, neither had anything to do with Britain, and Constans died in 411, over half a century before Ambrosius’s time,13 besides which we have seen how Ambrosius was almost certainly the son of the consul Quintus Aurelius. So Geoffrey’s confusion concerning Ambrosius and Merlin as two separate characters fits with his handling of other historical figures of the late and post-Roman eras.

Returning to Uther Pendragon, in his History of the Kings of Britain of 1136, Geoffrey depicts Uther as ruling Britain immediately after Ambrosius. According to Geoffrey, Ambrosius was poisoned by the Saxons; although, as we have seen, none of the older sources reveal how or when Ambrosius died. So Geoffrey’s assertion that Ambrosius was succeeded by Uther, who was in turn succeeded by Arthur, became the version of events adopted by the subsequent medieval romances. Uther, therefore, is envisaged as having reigned somewhere around 480. And this is precisely when Enniaun Girt was king of Gwynedd. Whether he succeeded Ambrosius as high king of the Britons, if indeed they had one at all during this time, is unknown. However, it is certainly possible. By the time Gildas was writing, Enniaun’s descendants ruled much of western Britain, suggesting that he had been a particularly powerful and influential king (see chapter 9). When I was researching all this back in the early 1990s, no one had previously identified a plausible contender for a historical Uther Pendragon. Nor have they since, as far as I can tell. So, as there is no historical record of anyone with the personal name Uther, or anything like it, having lived in the late fifth century, I stand by my original conviction: if Uther was based on anyone who really existed, then Enniaun Girt is by far the most likely candidate.

The big question I had to address next was: How did Ambrosius the warrior become Merlin the bard? As noted, what ultimately happened to Ambrosius Aurelius is a historical unknown. However, if he were one and the same as Myrddin Emrys, then he must have retired as overall British commander. He might have been injured, ousted, or was simply too old to continue. It was only guesswork, but I reckoned that he was no longer in office by 477, as in this year the Anglo-Saxons renewed their advance. Enniaun may have taken over right away or at some point over the next few years, with Ambrosius, now known as Myrddin, acting as royal advisor. With his experience it would make sense for him to act as royal councilor on military and political matters, but what about him reemerging as a mystic? Again just a guess, but perhaps unable or unwilling to continue as a warrior, Ambrosius had some kind of epiphany and took up the calling as a bard. If so, he would not be alone. Throughout the world there are many historical examples of warriors, princes, and kings abandoning their former lives to seek enlightenment, or to become gurus, shamans, and monks: the knight Galgano we encountered in chapter 3, to name but one. If so, then what would being a bard have actually entailed?

By the later Dark Ages, with the adoption of the strict practices of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain, bards had become relegated to mere poets. They were often paid by a high-status individual, usually a regional chieftain, to compose poems praising their patron’s virtues and achievements—the reason being that few Dark Age warlords or their courtiers, let alone the common people, could read or write. Even if they could, there was very little to write on. Parchment manufacture was virtually nonexistent in early Dark Age Britain. So to get your propaganda across, you needed someone to compose poetry that could be remembered and recited by others: hence the need for bards. However, although this was one function of the bards in the fifth and sixth centuries, before the reintroduction of Catholic Christianity in the seventh century, they were also regarded as healers, prophets, and wonder workers. As such they were employed by various British kings as advisors. For example, during the late sixth century, the bard Aneirin was advisor to King Urien of Rheged, a kingdom in northern England, and in the mid-sixth century the bard Taliesin similarly served the kings of Powys: Brochwel and his successor Cynan (pronounced “Cun-an).14 Likewise, in the late fifth century, Ambrosius may have been councilor to a historical Uther Pendragon—perhaps Enniaun of Gwynedd—and subsequently to King Arthur.

If Ambrosius, under his new bardic title Myrddin (possibly meaning “the Eagle”), was advisor to a Gwynedd king, then his training as a bard probably took place at the aptly named Bardsey Island, meaning literally “Island of Bards,” some two miles off the coast of the Llyn Peninsula in western Gwynedd. Various Dark Age poems and tales refer to it as the burial site of important holy men and women and the last resting place for hundreds of British bards. After a monastery of the Celtic Church—the quasi pagan-Christian religion followed by the post-Roman Britons (see chapter 5)—was founded there in 516, a cross was erected to celebrate the twenty thousand saints said to be buried on the island: the early Celtic Christians referred to the bards as saints. (The original cross no longer survives, but a medieval replacement still exists today.) This is clearly a gross exaggeration, but it does demonstrate how closely Bardsey Island was associated with the bardic tradition during the period Merlin is thought to have lived. We have seen how the bards, like their druid forbears, used sacred islands as the locations for sanctuaries, similar to monasteries, where they lived in seclusion to learn and observe their practices, so Bardsey Island is the most likely location in Gwynedd for a new bard to be trained.

Sadly, precisely what such training involved has gone unrecorded. Or at least nothing has survived in writing for us to examine today. We do, however, know something about the ancient druids (thought to derive from an ancient Celtic word for “seer”), whose practices were probably similar. There can be little doubt that the bards were related to the earlier druids. The ancient Greek writer Diodorus Siculus, in his work the Library of History of 36 BC, referred to a druidic caste renowned as poets whom he calls the bardous,15 as did the Greek historian Strabo in his Geography, written around AD 20,16 which some linguists suggest meant “sacred speakers,” which is almost certainly where the later name “bard” originated. As the pre-Roman Celts had no form of writing, their history, religion, even their practical skills, such as metallurgy and agriculture, had to be committed to memory. For this reason, certain members of a tribe were chosen to be trained in particular memory techniques, which included rhyming and poetry as aids to recall. These special individuals were not only the librarians of Celtic culture, but they were also the actual “libraries.” The poems and sagas they kept in their heads were the archives of the civilization’s knowledge and history. When the Romans brought writing to the Celts, these people soon became obsolete in that role. Although poetry and storytelling retained their prestige in Celtic society, it was the druids’ function as priests and scholars that assumed precedence. There are a number of groups in Britain today calling themselves druids, such as those who perform ceremonies at Stonehenge on midsummer’s day, but they can be traced back only to the eighteenth century when it became fashionable to form mystical societies and reenact ancient rites. Unfortunately, besides their poetic talents, little is known of the original druids. We are told, however, that they possessed remarkable powers of the mind. Just over two thousand years ago, Julius Caesar encountered the druids in Gaul, referencing them in his work the Gallic War, completed around 50 BC. He refers to them as a class of their own, who lived something of an exalted existence apart from the rest of society. They were not only priests, he explains, but also acted as judges, “determining awards and penalties,” and were highly revered even by the ruling elite, as “all men move out of their path” when they approach.17 Although Caesar was writing of the druids in Gaul, he tells us that they originated in Britain, where they still enjoyed a privileged status: “It is believed that their rule of life was discovered in Britain and transferred hence to Gaul; and today those who would study the subject [druidism] journey to Britain to be trained.”18 (This was a century before the Romans invaded Britain.)

Caesar goes on to provide a tantalizing insight into this training. For instance, he tells us they mastered sophisticated memory techniques,19 what we might now call mnemonics: aids to recall, such as rhyming verse, acronyms, and allegories, as well as complex visualization techniques, like those employed by modern mentalists to remember the order of multiple packs of playing cards or recite astonishing lists of numbers. The druids, it seems, were also astrologers, philosophers, and naturalists, all these disciplines being taught in isolated sanctuaries that were off limits to the general population. Caesar’s contemporary, the Roman writer Cicero in his On Divination, recorded additionally that they were skilled in the art of premonition and were renowned as healers with knowledge of herbal remedies and human physiology.20 In many ways, it seems, druidic instruction was not dissimilar to that of Tibetan Buddhism or Japanese Zen. When the Romans invaded Britain, they saw the druids as a threat to their authority and wasted no time in an attempt to eradicate them. However, if Dark Age Celtic poetry is to be believed, individual druids survived in secret as the bards. Once the Romans left, these shamanlike bards reemerged as both tribal court poets, to record and promote the exploits of kings, and to act as advisers on various affairs. Like the druids, they were also credited with the gift of prophecy and magical powers and were often referred to as dewin, the Welsh word for “wizard.”

It was another guess, but I decided that Ambrosius may have spent some years being trained as a bard, perhaps on Bardsey Island, before returning to act as councilor to the Gwynedd king Enniaun, sometime around 480. Whether or not three years’ training would be sufficient to fully qualify as a bard is unknown. We do know from Julius Caesar that the ancient druids were chosen as children and underwent many years of instruction, but times had changed. What is interesting, though, is that if there is any truth in the legend that the young Ambrosius was considered to have some kind of psychic abilities when he first met Vortigern, then he may have been considered eligible for fast tracking, particularly considering his former status as a ruler and military commander.

There was, I decided, enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that Merlin and Uther Pendragon were based, to some extent at least, on the historical Ambrosius Aurelius and Enniaun Girt. Obviously, I doubted that Merlin made magic potions, such as that which the romancers say he used to make Uther look like the Duke of Cornwall, or encountered dragons, had swords forged with supernatural powers, fought witches, or obtained chalices that could cure all ills, but during the early Dark Ages, such matters were clearly not beyond belief for people of the time. As a bard, a historical Merlin may well have been endowed with talents that would have appeared magical: knowledge of herbal medicines, military and political foresight based on long experience, and a phenomenal memory. He may even have performed what we would today call hypnosis and administered hallucinogenic substances obtained from plants; both of which he could have utilized to amaze his compatriots and terrify his rivals. Perhaps his contemporaries did imagine they saw dragons, or thought they could shape-shift, with a little help from Merlin’s bag of tricks. Merlin’s powers aside, there was one thing I was certain about: I had gathered enough evidence to home in on a specific part of the British Isles to best concentrate my search for the historical figure at the very heart of the legend—King Arthur himself. This was the part of what are now England and Wales that had once been the kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys.

All these conclusions I had extrapolated from Dark Age historical sources and Welsh literature that preceded the medieval Arthurian romances by centuries. The authors of the Middle Ages may have decided that Arthur came from the south or southeast of Britain, but the writers of these much earlier works clearly associate the Arthurian events with the kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys—an area that covers what are now north and east-central Wales and west-central England. It was here that I would now focus my search for a historical King Arthur.