Lives of the Necromancers Part 9

Another story is of a calender, a sort of Mahometan monk, with one eye, who had originally been a prince. He had contracted a taste for navigation and naval discoveries; and, in one of his voyages, having been driven by stress of weather into unknown seas, he suddenly finds himself attracted towards a vast mountain of loadstone, which first, by virtue of the iron and nails in the ship, draws the vessel towards itself, and then, by its own intrinsic force, extracts the nails, so that the ship tumbles to pieces, and every one on board is drowned.

The mountain, on the side towards the sea, is all covered with nails, which had been drawn from vessels that previously suffered the same calamity; and these nails at once preserve and augment the fatal power of the mountain. The prince only escapes; and he finds himself in a desolate island, with a dome of bra.s.s, supported by brazen pillars, and on the top of it a horse of bra.s.s, and a rider of the same metal.

This rider the prince is fated to throw down, by means of an enchanted arrow, and thus to dissolve the charm which had been fatal to thousands. From the desolate island he embarked on board a boat, with a single rower, a man of metal, and would have been safely conveyed to his native country, had he not inadvertently p.r.o.nounced the name of G.o.d, that he had been warned not to do, and which injunction he had observed many days. On this the boat immediately sunk; but the prince was preserved, who comes into a desolate island, where he finds but one inhabitant, a youth of fifteen. This youth is hid in a cavern, it having been predicted of him that he should be killed after fifty days, by the man that threw down the horse of bra.s.s and his rider. A great friendship is struck up between the unsuspecting youth and the prince, who nevertheless fulfils the prediction, having by a pure accident killed the youth on the fiftieth day. He next arrives at a province of the main land, where he visits a castle, inhabited by ten very agreeable young men, each blind of the right eye. He dwells with them for a month, and finds, after a day of pleasant entertainment, that each evening they do penance in squalidness and ashes. His curiosity is greatly excited to obtain an explanation of what he saw, but this they refuse, telling him at the same time, that he may, if he pleases, pa.s.s through the same adventure as they have done, and, if he does, wishing it may be attended with a more favourable issue. He determines to make the experiment; and by their direction, after certain preparations, is flown away with through the air by a roc, a stupendous bird, that is capable in the same manner of carrying off an elephant.

By this means he is brought to a castle of the most extraordinary magnificence, inhabited by forty ladies of exquisite beauty. With these ladies he lives for eleven months in a perpetual succession of delights. But in the twelfth month they tell him, that they are obliged to leave him till the commencement of the new year. In the mean time they give him for his amus.e.m.e.nt the keys of one hundred apartments, all but one of which he is permitted to open. He is delighted with the wonders of these apartments till the last day. On that day he opens the forbidden room, where the rarity that most strikes him is a black horse of admirable shape and appearance, with a saddle and bridle of gold. He leads this horse into the open air, and is tempted to mount him. The horse first stands still; but at length, being touched with a switch, spreads a pair of wings which the prince had not before perceived, and mounts to an amazing height in the air. The horse finally descends on the terrace of a castle, where he throws his rider, and leaves him, having first dashed out his right eye with a sudden swing of his tail. The prince goes down into the castle, and to his surprise finds himself in company with the ten young men, blind of one eye, who had pa.s.sed through the same adventure as he had done, and all been betrayed by means of the same infirmity.

PERSIAN TALES.

These two stories are from the Arabian Nights: the two following are from the Persian Tales.--Fadlallah, king of Mousel, contracted an intimacy with a young dervise, a species of Turkish friar, who makes a vow of perpetual poverty. The dervise, to ingratiate himself the more with the prince, informed him of a secret he possessed, by means of a certain incantation, of projecting his soul into the body of any dead animal he thought proper.

To convince the king that this power was no empty boast, he offered to quit his own body, and animate that of a doe, which Fadlallah had just killed in hunting. He accordingly executed what he proposed, took possession of the body of the doe, displayed the most surprising agility, approached the king, fawning on him with every expression of endearment, and then, after various bounds, deserting the limbs of the animal, and repossessing his own frame, which during the experiment had lain breathless on the ground. Fadlallah became earnest to possess the secret of the dervise; and, after some demurs, it was communicated to him. The king took possession of the body of the doe; but his treacherous confident no sooner saw the limbs of Fadlallah stretched senseless on the ground, than he conveyed his own spirit into them, and, bending his bow, sought to destroy the life of his defenceless victim. The king by his agility escaped; and the dervise, resorting to the palace, took possession of the throne, and of the bed of the queen, Zemroude, with whom Fadlallah was desperately enamoured. The first precaution of the usurper was to issue a decree that all the deer within his dominions should be killed, hoping by this means to destroy the rightful sovereign. But the king, aware of his danger, had deserted the body of the doe, and entered that of a dead nightingale that lay in his path. In this disguise he hastened to the palace, and placed himself in a wide-spreading tree, which grew immediately before the apartment of Zemroude. Here he poured out his complaints and the grief that penetrated his soul in such melodious notes, as did not fail to attract the attention of the queen. She sent out her bird-catchers to make captive the little warbler; and Fadlallah, who desired no better, easily suffered himself to be made their prisoner. In this new position he demonstrated by every gesture of fondness his partiality to the queen; but if any of her women approached him, he pecked at them in anger, and, when the impostor made his appearance, could not contain the vehemence of his rage. It happened one night that the queen's lap-dog died; and the thought struck Fadlallah that he would animate the corpse of this animal. The next morning Zemroude found her favourite bird dead in his cage, and immediately became inconsolable.

Never, she said, was so amiable a bird; he distinguished her from all others; he seemed even to entertain a pa.s.sion for her; and she felt as if she could not survive his loss. The dervise in vain tried every expedient to console her. At length he said, that, if she pleased, he would cause her nightingale to revive every morning, and entertain her with his tunes as long as she thought proper. The dervise accordingly laid himself on a sopha, and by means of certain cabalistic words, transported his soul into the body of the nightingale, and began to sing. Fadlallah watched his time; he lay in a corner of the room un.o.bserved; but no sooner had the dervise deserted his body, than the king proceeded to take possession of it. The first thing he did was to hasten to the cage, to open the door with uncontrolable impatience, and, seizing the bird, to twist off its head. Zemroude, amazed, asked him what he meant by so inhuman an action. Fadlallah in reply related to her all the circ.u.mstances that had befallen him; and the queen became so struck with agony and remorse that she had suffered her person, however innocently, to be polluted by so vile an impostor, that she could not get over the recollection, but pined away and died from a sense of the degradation she had endured.

But a much more perplexing and astounding instance of transformation occurs in the history of the Young King of Thibet and the Princess of the Naimans. The sorcerers in this case are represented as, without any intermediate circ.u.mstance to facilitate their witchcraft, having the ability to a.s.sume the form of any one they please, and in consequence to take the shape of one actually present, producing a duplication the most confounding that can be imagined.--Mocbel, the son of an artificer of Damascus, but whose father had bequeathed him considerable wealth, contrived to waste his patrimony and his youth together in profligate living with Dilnouaze, a woman of dissolute manners. Finding themselves at once poor and despised, they had recourse to the sage Bedra, the most accomplished magician of the desert, and found means to obtain her favour. In consequence she presented them with two rings, which had the power of enabling them to a.s.sume the likeness of any man or woman they please. Thus equipped, Mocbel heard of the death of Mouaffack, prince of the Naimans, who was supposed to have been slain in a battle, and whose body had never been found. The niece of Mouaffack now filled the throne; and under these circ.u.mstances Mocbel conceived the design of personating the absent Mouaffack, exciting a rebellion among his countrymen, and taking possession of the throne. In this project he succeeded; and the princess driven into exile, took refuge in the capital of Thibet. Here the king saw her, fell in love with her, and espoused her. Being made acquainted with her history, he resolved to re-conquer her dominions, and sent a defiance to the usurper. Mocbel, terrified at the thought of so formidable an invader, first pretended to die, and then, with Dilnouaze, who during his brief reign had under the form of a beautiful woman personated his queen, proceeded in his original form to the capital of Thibet. Here his purpose was to interrupt the happiness of those who had disturbed him in his deceitful career. Accordingly one night, when the queen, previously to proceeding to her repose, had shut herself up in her closet to read certain pa.s.sages of the Alcoran, Dilnouaze, a.s.suming her form with the minutest exactness, hastened to place herself in the royal bed by the side of the king. After a time, the queen shut her book, and went along the gallery to the king's bedchamber, Mocbel watched his time, and placed himself, under the form of a frightful apparition, directly in the queen's path. She started at the sight, and uttered a piercing shriek. The king recognised her voice, and hastened to see what had happened to her.

She explained; but the king spoke of something much more extraordinary, and asked her how it could possibly happen that she should be in the gallery, at the same moment that he had left her, undressed and in bed.

They proceeded to the chamber to unravel the mystery. Here a contention occurred between the real and the seeming queen, each charging the other with imposture. The king turned from one to the other, and was unable to decide between their pretensions. The courtiers and the ladies of the bedchamber were called, and all were perplexed with uncertainty and doubt. At length they determine in favour of the false queen, It was then proposed that the other should be burned for a sorceress. The king however forbade this. He was not yet altogether decided; and could not resolve to consign his true queen, as it might possibly be, to a cruel death. He was therefore content to strip her of her royal robes, to clothe her in rags, and thrust her ignominiously from his palace.

Treachery however was not destined to be ultimately triumphant. The king one day rode out a hunting; and Mocbel, that he might the better deceive the guards of the palace, seizing the opportunity, a.s.sumed his figure, and went to bed to Dilnouaze. The king meanwhile recollected something of importance, that he had forgotten before he went out to hunt, and returning upon his steps, proceeded to the royal chamber.

Here to his utter confusion he found a man in bed with his queen, and that man to his greater astonishment the exact counterpart of himself.

Furious at the sight, he immediately drew his scymetar. The man contrived to escape down the backstairs. The woman however remained in bed; and, stretching out her hands to intreat for mercy, the king struck off the hand which had the ring on it, and she immediately appeared, as she really was, a frightful hag. She begged for life; and, that she might mollify his rage, explained the mystery, told him that it was by means of a ring that she effected the delusion, and that by a similar enchantment her paramour had a.s.sumed the likeness of the king. The king meanwhile was inexorable, and struck off her head. He next turned in pursuit of the adulterer. Mocbel however had had time to mount on horseback. But the king mounted also; and, being the better horseman, in a short time overtook his foe. The impostor did not dare to cope with him, but asked his life; and the king, considering him as the least offender of the two, pardoned him upon condition of his surrendering the ring, in consequence of which he pa.s.sed the remainder of his life in poverty and decrepitude.

STORY OF A GOULE.

A story in the Arabian Nights, which merits notice for its singularity, and as exhibiting a particular example of the credulity of the people of the East, is that of a man who married a sorceress, without being in any way conscious of her character in that respect. She was sufficiently agreeable in her person, and he found for the most part no reason to be dissatisfied with her. But he became uneasy at the strangeness of her behaviour, whenever they sat together at meals. The husband provided a sufficient variety of dishes, and was anxious that his wife should eat and be refreshed. But she took scarcely any nourishment. He set before her a plate of rice. From this plate she took somewhat, grain by grain; but she would taste of no other dish.

The husband remonstrated with her upon her way of eating, but to no purpose; she still went on the same. He knew it was impossible for any one to subsist upon so little as she ate; and his curiosity was roused.

One night, as he lay quietly awake, he perceived his wife rise very softly, and put on her clothes. He watched, but made as if he saw nothing. Presently she opened the door, and went out. He followed her unperceived, by moonlight, and tracked her into a place of graves.

Here to his astonishment he saw her joined by a Goule, a sort of wandering demon, which is known to infest ruinous buildings, and from time to time suddenly rushes out, seizes children and other defenceless people, strangles, and devours them. Occasionally, for want of other food, this detested race will resort to churchyards, and, digging up the bodies of the newly-buried, gorge their appet.i.tes upon the flesh of these. The husband followed his wife and her supernatural companion, and watched their proceedings. He saw them digging in a new-made grave.

They extracted the body of the deceased; and, the Goule cutting it up joint by joint, they feasted voraciously, and, having satisfied their appet.i.tes, cast the remainder into the grave again, and covered it up as before. The husband now withdrew un.o.bserved to his bed, and the wife followed presently after. He however conceived a horrible loathing of such a wife; and she discovers that he is acquainted with her dreadful secret. They can no longer live together; and a metamorphosis followed. She turned him into a dog, which by ill usage she drove from her door; and he, aided by a benevolent sorceress, first recovers his natural shape, and then, having changed her into a mare, by perpetual hard usage and ill treatment vents his detestation of the character he had discovered in her.

ARABIAN NIGHTS.

A compilation of more vigorous imagination and more exhaustless variety than the Arabian Nights, perhaps never existed. Almost every thing that can be conceived of marvellous and terrific is there to be found. When we should apprehend the author or authors to have come to an end of the rich vein in which they expatiate, still new wonders are presented to us in endless succession. Their power of comic exhibition is not less extraordinary than their power of surprising and terrifying. The splendour of their painting is endless; and the mind of the reader is roused and refreshed by shapes and colours for ever new.

RESEMBLANCE OF THE TALES OF THE EAST AND OF EUROPE.

It is characteristic of this work to exhibit a faithful and particular picture of Eastern manners, customs, and modes of thinking and acting.

And yet, now and then, it is curious to observe the coincidence of Oriental imagination with that of antiquity and of the North of Europe, so that it is difficult to conceive the one not to be copied from the other. Perhaps it was so; and perhaps not. Man is every where man, possessed of the same faculties, stimulated by the same pa.s.sions, deriving pain and pleasure from the same sources, with similar hopes and fears, aspirations and alarms.

In the Third Voyage of Sinbad he arrives at an island were he finds one man, a negro, as tall as a palm-tree, and with a single eye in the middle of his forehead. He takes up the crew, one by one, and selects the fattest as first to be devoured. This is done a second time. At length nine of the boldest seize on a spit, while he lay on his back asleep, and, having heated it red-hot, thrust it into his eye.--This is precisely the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops.

The story of the Little Hunchback, who is choaked with a fish-bone, and, after having brought successive individuals into trouble on the suspicion of murdering him, is restored to life again, is nearly the best known of the Arabian Tales. The merry jest of Dan Hew, Monk of Leicester, who "once was hanged, and four times slain," bears a very striking resemblance to this. [149]

A similar resemblance is to be found, only changing the s.e.x of the aggressor, between the well known tale of Patient Grizzel, and that of Cheheristany in the Persian Tales. This lady was a queen of the Gins, who fell in love with the emperor of China, and agrees to marry him upon condition that she shall do what she pleases, and he shall never doubt that what she does is right. She bears him a son, beautiful as the day, and throws him into the fire. She bears him a daughter, and gives her to a white b.i.t.c.h, who runs away with her, and disappears.

The emperor goes to war with the Moguls; and the queen utterly destroys the provisions of his army. But the fire was a salamander, and the b.i.t.c.h a fairy, who rear the children in the most admirable manner; and the provisions of the army were poisoned by a traitor, and are in a miraculous manner replaced by such as were wholesome and of the most invigorating qualities.

CAUSES OF HUMAN CREDULITY.

Meanwhile, though the stories above related are extracted from books purely and properly of fiction, they exhibit so just a delineation of Eastern manners and habits of mind, that, in the defect of materials strictly historical, they may to a certain degree supply the place.

The princ.i.p.al feature they set before us is credulity and a love of the marvellous. This is ever found characteristic of certain ages of the world; but in Asia it prevails in uninterrupted continuity.

Wherever learning and the exercise of the intellectual faculties first shew themselves, there mystery and a knowledge not to be communicated but to the select few must be expected to appear. Wisdom in its natural and genuine form seeks to diffuse itself; but in the East on the contrary it is only valued in proportion to its rarity. Those who devoted themselves to intellectual improvement, looked for it rather in solitary abstraction, than in free communication with the minds of others; and, when they condescended to the use of the organ of speech, they spoke in enigmas and ambiguities, and in phrases better adapted to produce wonder and perplexity, than to enlighten and instruct. When the more consummate instructed the novice, it was by slow degrees only, and through the medium of a long probation. In consequence of this state of things the privileged few conceived of their own attainments with an over-weening pride, and were puffed up with a sense of superiority; while the ma.s.s of their fellow-creatures looked to them with astonishment; and, agreeably to the Oriental creed of two independent and contending principles of good and of evil, regarded these select and supernaturally endowed beings anon as a source of the most enviable blessings, and anon as objects of unmingled apprehension and terror, before whom their understandings became prostrate, and every thing that was most appalling and dreadful was most easily believed. In this state superst.i.tion unavoidably grew infectious; and the more the seniors inculcated and believed, the more the imagination of the juniors became a pliant and unresisting slave.

The Mantra, or charm, consisting of a few unintelligible words repeated again and again, always accompanied, or rather preceded, the supposed miraculous phenomenon that was imposed on the ignorant. Water was flung over, or in the face of, the thing or person upon whom the miraculous effect was to be produced. Incense was burned; and such chemical substances were set on fire, the dazzling appearance of which might confound the senses of the spectators. The whole consisted in the art of the juggler. The first business was to act on the pa.s.sions, to excite awe and fear and curiosity in the parties; and next by a sort of slight of hand, and by changes too rapid to be followed by an unpractised eye, to produce phenomena, wholly unantic.i.p.ated, and that could not be accounted for. Superst.i.tion was further an essential ingredient; and this is never perfect, but where the superior and more active party regards himself as something more than human, and the party acted upon beholds in the other an object of religious reverence, or tingles with apprehension of he knows not what of fearful and calamitous. The state of the party acted on, and indeed of either, is never complete, till the senses are confounded, what is imagined is so powerful as in a manner to exclude what is real, in a word, till, as the poet expresses it, "function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is, but what is not."

It is in such a state of the faculties that it is entirely natural and simple, that one should mistake a mere dumb animal for one's relative or near connection in disguise. And, the delusion having once begun, the deluded individual gives to every gesture and motion of limb and eye an explanation that forwards the deception. It is in the same way that in ignorant ages the notion of changeling has been produced. The weak and fascinated mother sees every feature with a turn of expression unknown before, all the habits of the child appear different and strange, till the parent herself denies her offspring, and sees in the object so lately cherished and doated on, a monster uncouth and horrible of aspect.

DARK AGES OF EUROPE

In Europe we are slenderly supplied with historians, and with narratives exhibiting the manners and peculiarities of successive races of men, from the time of Theodosius in the close of the fourth century of the Christian era to the end of the tenth. Mankind during that period were in an uncommon degree wrapped up in ignorance and barbarism. We may be morally sure that this was an interval beyond all others, in which superst.i.tion and an implicit faith in supernatural phenomena predominated over this portion of the globe. The laws of nature, and the everlasting chain of antecedents and consequents, were little recognised. In proportion as illumination and science have risen on the world, men have become aware that the succession of events is universally operating, and that the frame of men and animals is every where the same, modified only by causes not less unchangeable in their influence than the internal const.i.tution of the frame itself.

We have learned to explain much; we are able to predict and investigate the course of things; and the contemplative and the wise are not less intimately and profoundly persuaded that the process of natural events is sure and simple and void of all just occasion for surprise and the lifting up of hands in astonishment, where we are not yet familiarly acquainted with the developement of the elements of things, as where we are. What we have not yet mastered, we feel confidently persuaded that the investigators that come after us will reduce to rules not less obvious, familiar and comprehensible, than is to us the rising of the sun, or the progress of animal and vegetable life from the first bud and seed of existence to the last stage of decrepitude and decay.

But in these ages of ignorance, when but few, and those only the most obvious, laws of nature were acknowledged, every event that was not of almost daily occurrence, was contemplated with more or less of awe and alarm. These men "saw G.o.d in clouds, and heard him in the wind."

Instead of having regard only to that universal Providence, which acts not by partial impulses, but by general laws, they beheld, as they conceived, the immediate hand of the Creator, or rather, upon most occasions, of some invisible intelligence, sometimes beneficent, but perhaps oftener malignant and capricious, interfering, to baffle the foresight of the sage, to humble the pride of the intelligent, and to place the discernment of the most gifted upon a level with the drivellings of the idiot, and the ravings of the insane.

And, as in events men saw perpetually the supernatural and miraculous, so in their fellow-creatures they continually sought, and therefore frequently imagined that they found, a gifted race, that had command over the elements, held commerce with the invisible world, and could produce the most stupendous and terrific effects. In man, as we now behold him, we can ascertain his nature, the strength and pliability of his limbs, the accuracy of his eye, the extent of his intellectual acquisitions, and the subtlety of his powers of thought, and can therefore in a great measure antic.i.p.ate what we have to hope or to fear from him. Every thing is regulated by what we call natural means.

But, in the times I speak of, all was mysterious: the powers of men were subject to no recognised laws: and therefore nothing that imagination could suggest, exceeded the bounds of credibility. Some men were supposed to be so rarely endowed that "a thousand liveried angels" waited on them invisibly, to execute their behests for the benefit of those they favoured; while, much oftener, the perverse and crookedly disposed, who delighted in mischief, would bring on those to whom, for whatever capricious reason, they were hostile, calamities, which no sagacity could predict, and no merely human power could baffle and resist.

After the tenth century enough of credulity remained, to display in glaring colours the aberrations of the human mind, and to furnish forth tales which will supply abundant matter for the remainder of this volume. But previously to this period, we may be morally sure, reigned most eminently the sabbath of magic and sorcery, when nothing was too wild, and remote from the reality of things, not to meet with an eager welcome, when terror and astonishment united themselves with a nameless delight, and the auditor was alarmed even to a sort of madness, at the same time that he greedily demanded an ever-fresh supply of congenial aliment. The more the known laws of the universe and the natural possibility of things were violated, with the stronger marks of approbation was the tale received: while the dextrous impostor, aware of the temper of his age, and knowing how most completely to blindfold and lead astray his prepared dupes, made a rich harvest of the folly of his contemporaries. But I am wrong to call him an impostor. He imposed upon himself, no less than on the gaping crowd. His discourses, even in the act of being p.r.o.nounced, won upon his own ear; and the dexterity with which he baffled the observation of others, bewildered his ready sense, and filled him with astonishment at the magnitude of his achievements. The accomplished adventurer was always ready to regard himself rather as a sublime being endowed with great and stupendous attributes, than as a pitiful trickster. He became the G.o.d of his own idolatry, and stood astonished, as the witch of Endor in the English Bible is represented to have done, at the success of his incantations.

But all these things are pa.s.sed away, and are buried in the gulf of oblivion. A thousand tales, each more wonderful than the other, marked the year as it glided away. Every valley had its fairies; and every hill its giants. No solitary dwelling, unpeopled with human inhabitants, was without its ghosts; and no church-yard in the absence of day-light could be crossed with impunity. The gifted enchanter "bedimmed

The noon-tide sun, willed forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war; to the dread, rattling thunder He gave forth fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt, the strong-based promontory He made to shake, and by the spurs plucked up The pine and cedar."

It is but a small remnant of these marvellous adventures that has been preserved. The greater part of them are swallowed up in that gulf of oblivion, to which are successively consigned after a brief interval all events as they occur, except so far as their memory is preserved through the medium of writing and records. From the eleventh century commences a stream of historical relation, which since that time never entirely eludes the search of the diligent enquirer. Before this period there occasionally appears an historian or miscellaneous writer: but he seems to start up by chance; the eddy presently closes over him, and all is again impenetrable darkness.

When this succession of writers began, they were unavoidably induced to look back upon the ages that had preceded them, and to collect here and there from tradition any thing that appeared especially worthy of notice. Of course any information they could glean was wild and uncertain, deeply stamped with the credulity and wonder of an ignorant period, and still increasing in marvellousness and absurdity from every hand it pa.s.sed through, and from every tongue which repeated it.

MERLIN.

One of the most extraordinary personages whose story is thus delivered to us, is Merlin. He appears to have been contemporary with the period of the Saxon invasion of Britain in the latter part of the fifth century; but probably the earliest mention of his name by any writer that has come down to us is not previous to the eleventh. We may the less wonder therefore at the incredible things that are reported of him. He is first mentioned in connection with the fortune of Vortigern, who is represented by Geoffrey of Monmouth as at that time king of England. The Romans having withdrawn their legions from this island, the unwarlike Britons found themselves incompetent to repel the invasions of the uncivilised Scots and Picts, and Vortigern perceived no remedy but in inviting the Saxons from the northern continent to his aid. The Saxons successfully repelled the invader; but, having done this, they refused to return home. They determined to settle here, and, having taken various towns, are represented as at length inviting Vortigern and his princ.i.p.al n.o.bility to a feast near Salisbury under pretence of a peace, where they treacherously slew three hundred of the chief men of the island, and threw Vortigern into chains. Here, by way of purchasing the restoration of his liberty, they induced him to order the surrender of London, York, Winchester, and other princ.i.p.al towns. Having lost all his strong holds, he consulted his magicians as to how he was to secure himself from this terrible foe. They advised him to build an impregnable tower, and pointed out the situation where it was to be erected. But so unfortunately did their advice succeed, that all the work that his engineers did in the building one day, the earth swallowed, so that no vestige was to be found on the next. The magicians were consulted again on this fresh calamity; and they told the king that that there was no remedying this disaster, other than by cementing the walls of his edifice with the blood of a human being, who was born of no human father.

Vortigern sent out his emissaries in every direction in search of this victim; and at length by strange good fortune they lighted on Merlin near the town of Caermarthen, who told them that his mother was the daughter of a king, but that she had been got with child of him by a being of an angelic nature, and not a man. No sooner had they received this information, than they seized him, and hurried him away to Vortigern as the victim required. But in presence of the king he baffled the magicians; he told the king that the ground they had chosen for his tower, had underneath it a lake, which being drained, they would find at the bottom two dragons of inextinguishable hostility, that under that form figured the Britons and Saxons, all of which upon the experiment proved to be true.

Vortigern died shortly after, and was succeeded first by Ambrosius, and then by Uther Pendragon. Merlin was the confident of all these kings. To Uther he exhibited a very criminal sort of compliance. Uther became desperately enamoured of Igerna, wife of the duke of Cornwal, and tried every means to seduce her in vain. Having consulted Merlin, the magician contrived by an extraordinary unguent to metamorphose Uther into the form of the duke. The duke had shut up his wife for safety in a very strong tower; but Uther in his new form gained unsuspected entrance; and the virtuous Igerna received him to her embraces, by means of which he begot Arthur, afterwards the most renowned sovereign of this island. Uther now contrived that the duke, her husband, should be slain in battle, and immediately married the fair Igerna, and made her his queen.

The next exploit of Merlin was with the intent to erect a monument that should last for ever, to the memory of the three hundred British n.o.bles that were ma.s.sacred by the Saxons. This design produced the extraordinary edifice called Stonehenge. These mighty stones, which by no human power could be placed in the position in which we behold them, had originally been set up in Africa, and afterwards by means unknown were transported to Ireland. Merlin commanded that they should be carried over the sea, and placed where they now are, on Salisbury Plain. The workmen, having received his directions, exerted all their power and skill, but could not move one of them. Merlin, having for some time watched their exertions, at length applied his magic; and to the amazement of every one, the stones spontaneously quitted the situation in which they had been placed, rose to a great height in the air, and then pursued the course which Merlin had prescribed, finally settling themselves in Wiltshire, precisely in the position in which we now find them, and which they will for ever retain.

The last adventure recorded of Merlin proceeded from a project he conceived for surrounding his native town of Caermarthen with a brazen wall. He committed the execution of this project to a mult.i.tude of fiends, who laboured upon the plan underground in a neighbouring cavern. [150] In the mean while Merlin had become enamoured of a supernatural being, called the Lady of the Lake. The lady had long resisted his importunities, and in fact had no inclination to yield to his suit. One day however she sent for him in great haste; and Merlin was of course eager to comply with her invitation. Nevertheless, before he set out, he gave it strictly in charge to the fiends, that they should by no means suspend their labours till they saw him return.

The design of the lady was to make sport with him, and elude his addresses. Merlin on the contrary, with the hope to melt her severity, undertook to shew her the wonders of his art. Among the rest he exhibited to her observation a tomb, formed to contain two bodies; at the same time teaching her a charm, by means of which the sepulchre would close, and never again be opened. The lady pretended not to believe that the tomb was wide enough for its purpose, and inveigled the credulous Merlin to enter it, and place himself as one dead. No sooner had she so far succeeded, than she closed the lid of the sepulchre, and p.r.o.nouncing the charm, rendered it impossible that it should ever be opened again till the day of judgment. Thus, according to the story, Merlin was shut in, a corrupted and putrifying body with a living soul, to which still inhered the faculty of returning in audible sounds a prophetic answer to such as resorted to it as an oracle. Meanwhile the fiends, at work in the cavern near Caermarthen, mindful of the injunction of their taskmaster, not to suspend their labours till his return, proceed for ever in their office; and the traveller who pa.s.ses that way, if he lays his ear close to the mouth of the cavern, may hear a ghastly noise of iron chains and brazen caldrons, the loud strokes of the hammer, and the ringing sound of the anvil, intermixed with the pants and groans of the workmen, enough to unsettle the brain and confound the faculties of him that for any time shall listen to the din.

As six hundred years elapsed between the time of Merlin and the earliest known records of his achievements, it is impossible to p.r.o.nounce what he really pretended to perform, and how great were the additions which successive reporters have annexed to the wonders of his art, more than the prophet himself perhaps ever dreamed of. In later times, when the historians were the contemporaries of the persons by whom the supposed wonders were achieved, or the persons who have for these causes been celebrated have bequeathed certain literary productions to posterity, we may be able to form some conjecture as to the degree in which the heroes of the tale were deluding or deluded, and may exercise our sagacity in the question by what strange peculiarity of mind adventures which we now hold to be impossible obtained so general belief. But in a case like this of Merlin, who lived in a time so remote from that in which his history is first known to have been recorded, it is impracticable to determine at what time the fiction which was afterwards generally received began to be reported, or whether the person to whom the miracles were imputed ever heard or dreamed of the extraordinary things he is represented as having achieved.