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 The sagas of Norse story tell us of the Berserker's rage, when 
 the warrior, flinging aside all prudence, and forgetful of all odds 
 against him, striking right and left, rushes into the thick of the 
 enemy's ranks. 
 
 There are some points of history which, shaping themselves in 
 dream-land, have taken hold of my waking fancies, and now lead 
 me, regardless of consequences and adverse criticism, to lay them 
 before the public. 
 
 It is well known how our zealous archaeologist in the North, 
 Mr. Greenwell, has, in order to increase our knowledge of tribes 
 and races of past ages, been upturning the grave-yards alike of 
 Briton and Koman, Saxon and Dane ; and how, through these re- 
 searches, he has been enabled to parcel out to each tumulus its 
 proper skull-name, overthrowing in many instances the traditions of 
 the neighbourhood as to its pet Howe or Barrow ; so also I have 
 reason to believe that, in connexion with this North-Humberland 
 of ours, there are other tumuli which have passed for what they are 
 not, and other characters which, on examination, turn out not to 
 have been properly classified and sorted. There are some mounds 
 in history, as in grave-diggings, which, towering above the rest, 
 arrest our attention, and which we long to delve in, assured that 
 there is some mystery, some clue to generations past, if you could 
 only but unravel it. 
 
 smro 
 
6 
 
 These historic mounds of other days, which stand out clear 
 against the sky-line, are connected for the most part with either 
 priest or warrior. 
 
 Now, although I disbelieve in history as it is written by moderns, 
 I do not disbelieve in history as it was written by ancients. I 
 believe that in all these great names and events which captivate 
 and inteiesV.us, tlieyeji^ .some groundwork of truth and fact. There 
 is on£ .era .wjuck Jjas. enthralled the attention and enlisted the re- 
 searches « of ••fifce • sleVe* and'* the learned of many generations, of 
 which poets ever sing, and historians ever write, and yet out of the 
 dim obscurity of the past no light seems to come to us. In similar 
 cases, when this is so, my plan is to ask myself, is the received 
 version a correct one ? can I not reconstruct instead of helping to 
 demolish? Are we not all inclined to be influenced by first im- 
 pressions, to take up the tale as it has been told us, without 
 searching for ourselves whether it has been told us aright or no? 
 Are there any two characters, in the history of our land, of clerk 
 and hero, more deeply interesting to us than those of Arthur and 
 Merlin ? That Early English Text Society, which has done so much 
 good with such small amount of means, has lately thrown much 
 light upon the subject. 
 
 I shall have, as I go on, to make free with the characters of some 
 who are saints in story, but I fear are not above the passions of 
 humanity, and to show how the monkish chroniclers of the past, in 
 vaunting of their miracles, liave unwittingly admitted of their 
 frailty. 
 
 I am about to assert that Germanus and Merlin were identical ; 
 that Blase and Lupus were two names of the same person. I shall 
 bring before you many points where the stories told of the one 
 name are the same as those which are attributed to the other ; 
 that they refer to persons connected with the history of the 
 same era ; that there are incidental tales which bear upon their 
 
private life, which, if true, will account for much that has been 
 puzzling in that tangled web of the page of history. We must 
 first understand the state of religion and government of the 
 countries at the time of which we are about to treat. No words 
 can bring it more vividly before you than those of Kingsley's 
 "The Eoman and the Teuton: The Dying Empire" (p. 33).^ 
 Salvian, a Christian gentleman, born near Treves, married a 
 Pagan lady, and wrote his book, "De G-ubernatione Dei," 450 
 or 455 a.d., a great authority of the state of Gaul when conquered 
 by the Franks and Goths and Vandals. "In the years in which 
 he lived, 416 a.d. perhaps to 490 a.d., all things were going to 
 wrack, the country overrun by foreign invaders ; bankruptcy, devas- 
 tation, massacre, and captivity, were, for perhaps 100 years, the 
 normal state of Gaul, and most other countries besides. ... No 
 wonder, if Salvian's accounts of Gaulish profligacy be true, that 
 Gaulish recklessness reached at last a pitch all but incredible. He 
 says (p. 43) he himself saw, both at Treves and another city, old 
 men of rank> decrepit Christians, slaves to gluttony and lust, rabid 
 with clamour, furious with Bacchanalian orgies. ... In contrast 
 with all these abominations, Salvian sets forth boldly and honestly 
 the superior morality of the barbarians (p. 46). 'We, professing 
 orthodoxy, are profligate hypocrites ! They, half heathen, half 
 Arians, are honester men, purer than we ! ' " 
 
 In language still stronger Gildas speaks of the vices of those 
 who bear rule in Britain. He recapitulates their kings by name, 
 and tells horrible tales of their adulteries and vices, of the shame- 
 lessness of their daughters, of the drunkenness and immorality of 
 the whole race. He expressly states, that not only are the laity 
 given up to such evil practices, but that priest and people are alike. 
 "0 ye enemies of God, not priests ! O ye traders in wickedness, 
 and not bishops!" (sec. 108). "Wallowing after the fashion of 
 swine, in their old and unhappy puddle of intolerable wickedness, 
 
8 
 
 after they have attained unto the seat of the priesthood or episcopal 
 dignity" (sec. 67). 
 
 Gildas also speaks of these bishops " as crossing the seas," and 
 then, " with magnificent ostentation, returning to their own native 
 soil," and "intruding themselves into their own country again as 
 creatures of a new mould, or rather as instruments of the Devil " 
 (sec. 68). 
 
 Having thus far cleared the ground to enable me to gain a fair 
 hearing, I proceed further to affirm that there is an a priori pre- 
 sumption in my favour, if I state that a bishop of Gaul or Britain 
 of that age is of blameful life, and that it is no way improbable 
 that a king's daughter might be classed amongst dishonourable 
 women. Gildas clearly had some reason for sneering at over-sea 
 bishops. A bishop to have a character as a respectable and moral 
 man must evidently rise above the level of his day. If, then, we 
 find that there is a something in his election and consecration 
 abhorrent to our feelings, and if in the after-conduct of the man 
 there is a manifest want of straightforwardness in the events of his 
 life, after " crossing the seas," we may safely and not uncharitably 
 set him down as one of those who were present to the mind's eye 
 of Salvian and Gildas, when they wrote the account of their con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 Germanus was given to hunting, and used to hang up his trophies 
 on a sacred tree. He was in office at Auxerre, under the Koman 
 Emperor ; he was of noble parents. St. Amator cuts down his 
 pet tree, and Germanus vows revenge. " St. Amator forestalls 
 him, and, obtaining leave from the Prefect of Gaul, causes his 
 ecclesiastics to lay hold of Germanus, and obliged him to quit his 
 secular habit and to receive the clerical tonsure, assuring him that 
 such was the will of God ; to which Germanus, struck with astonish- 
 ment, durst not make any opposition" (Brit. Sancta, part ii. p. 49). 
 He was pitched upon by the Gallican synod (so we are told), with 
 
9 
 
 Lupus, to go into Britain to oppose the Pelagian heresy. The 
 evil spirits had announced to the Britons his coming, and they were 
 there to meet him. He has a public disputation, and beats his 
 opponents by a miracle. They are too honest to pretend to cure 
 the blind ; Germanus has no such scruples, and restores the girl to 
 her sight. The devil lays a snare for him, and catches him by the 
 foot. We cannot but think that before a man takes part in the 
 play, or getting up of a sham miracle, he must either have lost or 
 else never possessed any reverence for the great God of heaven and 
 earth. The Saxons and Picts come to attack them ; Germanus puts 
 himself at their head ; their enemies are worsted, and the bishops, 
 having delivered them "from their visible and invisible enemies," 
 return home. Germanus returns a second time, gets his opponents 
 all banished. . . . Goes to Eavenna to intercede for the Armoricans 
 with the Emperor Yalentinian. Bede mentions his name in the 
 chapter next after the account of Ambrosius Aurelius. He adds 
 that Germanus said "he would be their leader," that he " picked out 
 the most active, viewed the country round about, and fixed upon 
 a valley encompassed with hills where to make his stand," and 
 then gives an account of the battle won by the Hallelujah Chorus ! 
 (Bede, i. 20). Geoffrey of Monmouth (b. vi. c. 13) places their 
 arrival in the time of Vortigern and Vortimer. Nennius (History 
 of the Britons, p. 32) fixes the adventures of Germanus during 
 the reign of Vortigern, and the time of the coming of the Saxons ; 
 gives us an extraordinary account of Vortigern's daughter, an 
 " immodest woman," declaring publicly that Germanus was father 
 of her child ; Germanus by a " tu quoqae " turns the tables 
 upon Vortigern, a who, without deigning a reply, arose and left the 
 synod in great anger." Germanus, with remarkable kindness of 
 disposition, says, "I will be a father to you, my son" (sec. 39), 
 and brings him up as his own son ! Vortigern flees, but Germanus 
 follows him, and upon a rock prays for him forty days and forty 
 
10 
 
 nights. Then " the blessed man is chosen commander against the 
 Saxons" (sec. 47). Again, Vortigern flees from St. Germanus to 
 the kingdom of the Dimetse, and built a castle there ; "the saint, as 
 usual, followed him," and prayed to the Lord three days and three 
 nights, and Vortigern and Hengist's daughter, his other wives, and 
 all the inhabitants, both men and women, miserably perished. 
 "St. Germanus after his death returned into his own country" 
 (sec. 50). Now it is singular that Bede and Nennius, in their 
 accounts of the history of these wars, make no mention of the name 
 J" of Merlin, yet in other authors he fills such a distinguished place. 
 The chroniclers who speak most of Germanus speak little or 
 nothing of Merlin ; whilst, on the other hand, they who have much 
 to tell of Merlin make short mention or none of Germanus. In 
 Geoffrey, for instance, the allusion (b. vi. c. 13) seems more as if 
 it was dragged in or interpolated out of place by an after-editor, 
 who thought it would never do to have his author write a history 
 of those times without mention of Germanus and Lupus. The 
 chapter appears more naturally to begin at " The king being now," 
 etc., etc., taking the story up from the end of the twelfth chapter. 
 
 In Layamon, Vortimer's counsellor is not Germanus, but Merlin. 
 Merlin, like Germanus, is clerk and warrior. In all these transac- 
 tions he is mixed up with Vortigern and Aurelius and Uther. 
 Merlin had knowledge of and friends in Armorica (Lay. ii. 249, 291). 
 When Uther was made king, " Merlin went away, and the people 
 knew not whither he went" (311). In "Merlin" (E. E. Text Soc, 
 p. 43), they ask Merlin "to abide with them, and govern them." 
 There is great joy amongst the people, who recognize Merlin, " the 
 wisest man in all the worlde. ... He will teach you how to get 
 the castell." Merlin says "he must leave for a long time " (p. 57). 
 " Guynebaude opposed hym of dyuerse thynges, for he was a pro- 
 founde clerke. Merlyn hym ansuerde to alle the questiouns. 
 Merlin seide he neuer founde no clerke that euer hadde spoke to 
 
11 
 
 hym of so high clergie ne not Blase, that was so holy a man" 
 (p. 139). 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, I noticed above, whilst he treats of these 
 same times, says little of Germanus and Lupus, and much of Merlin 
 (book vi. c. 13). Just mentions their arrival, " the preaching of 
 these holy men, and the many miracles they wrought." It is 
 Merlin, and not Germanus, who is near at hand when Yortigern 
 is burnt in his castle. It is Merlin who, in like manner with 
 Germanus, goes out to war (book viii. 15), and " attended this 
 expedition to give his advice in the management of the war." 
 
 Now I come to the critical point of my story, where it requires 
 great care and close attention to unravel the twisted skein. 
 
 In these narratives there is mention made of a king's daughter, who 
 is with child when she has no husband, and which said child, for 
 some reason or other, is commonly mixed up in some extraordinary 
 way with Germanus. Merlin also we find in suspieious circum- 
 stances, and in.league with Blase at one time, and Ulf or Ulfin at 
 another, to procure a certain secresy for the birth of a particular 
 child of royal stock, and to have it carried away, christened and 
 brought up. Let us compare the different accounts. It is evident 
 that at a synod, or husting or Thing, as they would have been after 
 called, there took place much the same as we find in the Norse 
 Sagas, when Christianity and Paganism came in contact. It was 
 a struggle for pre-eminence. It is clear (Nennius, 39, 40) that the 
 Christian party were the stronger ; the Pagan, with Yortigern, the 
 weaker. It is clear the king's daughter had a child by some one, 
 and that she said it was by Germanus (Nennius, 39). The 
 Christian party, however, get the victory, and the child is left in 
 the custody of Germanus. The mother, the daughter of the King 
 of the Dimetians, is styled "an immodest woman," and we also 
 find at that era a daughter of a king of Dimetia called a " shameless 
 daughter" (Gildas, sec. 31). If we put together Gildas's account 
 
12 
 
 of his own time, from which it appears that morals and society- 
 were worse, if possible, in Britain than elsewhere, as well as the 
 accounts which Gildas gives of these over-sea bishops, and Salvian 
 of Gaul, we shall not be very uncharitable if we come to the con- 
 clusion that Germanus was probably, as stated, the father of the 
 child. In Nennius (sec. 40) the Pagan party, i.e. the Druids, 
 plot a plan to make away with this child. In sec. 42 he is 
 said to be the son of a Roman consul. Germanus was appointed 
 to high office by the Roman Emperor Honorius, was a personal 
 friend of Yalentinian, and married a noble lady at Eome. Is it 
 not most probable that he was sent over by Honorius from Gaul, 
 where he had high military renown, when, in answer to the em- 
 bassy from Britain, he sent them " a legion which destroyed a vast 
 multitude of the Barbarians, and drove the rest out of the bounds 
 of Britain" (Paul Diac. lib. 4) ? and may he not have returned the 
 second time, when once again Valentinian sent them help ; that it 
 was not a "spiritual but carnal war" (Bede, i. 17) he came to 
 wage, and that Morgan or Pelagius may be another name for 
 Armoricus ? It would be easy, in after-ages, for monkish writers to 
 turn the war into a spiritual war, and the Armorican invasion into 
 an heretical raid, the authors of which were at any rate " conveyed 
 up into the continent that the country might be rid of them" 
 (Bede, i. 21). 
 
 Now, in Percy's Merlin (Ed. Furnivall), 832, the same story 
 crops up as regards Merlin's mother. Blasye the Hermit takes 
 great interest in her, when she comes to tell him of her case, 
 promises he will " help her with all his might," fights her battle 
 with " the justice ; " she is shut up in a tower until she is con- 
 fined; the child is, however, let down by a cord, and he takes 
 him home and christens him; and this child "is of God, sende 
 for to helpe Englande " (1084). 
 
 Then we draw on to the account of the story of Igerne and Uther, 
 
13 
 
 (see Morte d' Arthur, b. i. ; c. iii. ; c. vi. ; c. xviii. ; c. xix.) as 
 related in all authors (Chroniclis of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 204) : — 
 
 " And of his getting Uther sum men sais 
 Be meane of Merling in tha samin dais ; 
 The quilk Uter transformit mervelus 
 Into the figour of this Gothlous 
 Syne in his likenes with his wyfe he la. 
 Gif this be suith I can nocht to yow sa, 
 Becaus sic thing is nocht kyndlie to be, 
 Thairfor myself will hald it for ane lie." 
 
 Few, I think, will disagree with our Chronicler in his outspoken 
 and emphatic words. Put it into plain English (Layamon, Brut, 
 vol. ii. p. 385) : " Igserne was great with child by Uther king, 
 all through Merlin's craft, before she wedded." Her husband was 
 at the wars ; he never returned, and was killed. Igerne, whilst 
 what we call a " grass widow," was with child (bear in mind the 
 account Gildas gives of the morals of all the royal courts of those 
 days). Merlin and Ulf take a great interest in that child ; indeed, 
 Merlin has " written down the hour and the day when he was begotten" 
 (Merliu, E. E. Text, p. 77). Merlin says " he shall have the child, and 
 must do something to atone for his share in the sin." Ulf says the 
 queen must be told when he is born to give the child to the first man 
 in the hall ; it is so given and brought away, and christened Arthur. 
 The king is dying, " some say dead," when Merlin appears upon the 
 scene, and whispers to the king, " and no one hears his last words 
 but Merlin, but his son Arthur is to be king, and accomplish the 
 round table." "Thus lefte the kynge with-outen heyre" (95). 
 Ban and Bors and the British kings won't take in the story, and 
 require corroborative evidence, when Merlin wants them "to do 
 homage to Arthur," and it is not until Merlin has sworn before the 
 archbishop that Arthur is the son of Uther Pendragon, that they 
 give in. It is ever and alway doubted. Gralashyn (p. 177) asks 
 his mother, and she tells him " how it was true that Arthur was 
 begotten of Igerne, and how he was carried away as a child, and 
 
14 
 
 that the barons would not have him to reign over them." Gawaine 
 also questions his mother "if it is true about Arthur being Uter 
 Pendragon's son " (p. 184). Now, if this was brought into court and 
 sifted, what would Lord Penzance say of this story, and the entry 
 in the private diary of the hour and the day when the child was be- 
 gotten ? Is not the account of this boy carried off and brought up by 
 Blase, or Ulf, or Merlin, a different version of the same story of Ger- 
 manus, and the son of the king of Dimetia's daughter ? Will it not 
 account for the desire to foist Igerne's child upon Uther, who dies 
 " with-outen heyre," in order that, coming of Uther's race, he may 
 succeed to Uther's sovereignty, and become Pendragon ? Weigh the 
 doubtfulness of the whole story, no one knowing anything about 
 it until after Uther's death, the suspicious whisperings at the death- 
 bed, after, " as some said the life had left him." Note also (Laya- 
 mon, p. 385) that " he (Uther) was an old man, and illness came on 
 him ; the illness laid him down ; sick was Uther Pendragon ; so he 
 was here sick seven years." This gay Lothario was paralyzed, and 
 " old," and sick, and yet Arthur was only fifteen years of age when 
 he died ! Public opinion was strong upon the subject, and the way 
 in which the barons held back, and the complaints of wrong made 
 by Mordred on behalf of his being * done" out of the kingdom, 
 seem to point to my solution of the story being not far wrong, viz., 
 that Arthur was Merlin's illegitimate son. 
 
 Lastly, I make a point which I consider of more consequence 
 than any of the preceding. It is the undesigned coincidences of 
 evidence which ever bring the strongest conviction to our minds. 
 Germanus's friend and intimate and associate is Lupus. 1 Merlin's 
 friend and intimate and associate is either Blase, or else Ulf. Now 
 Bla, or Blaidd, or Blase, is Keltic, and Ulf or Wulf, Norse or 
 Saxon for Wolf = Lupus. The Komans ever translated into Latin, 
 
 1 See Villemarque's note, p. 147. 
 
15 
 
 as near as may be, the names of the people and the places they 
 came in contact with. 
 
 Surely, as we weave these narratives together and spin our yarn 
 keeping in view one particular thread which seems to guide us 
 through the labyrinth, we arrive at the conclusion that the views 
 now put forward may be, on further research, not found so very 
 far from the truth. 
 
 There will yet remain many differences to be reconciled, and 
 many discrepancies of dates and names, of persons and places, to be 
 brought into unison. No one but those who have to do with MSS. 
 can know what liberties transcribers of old oftentimes took with 
 their subject; how in some places they interpolated, and in others 
 altered the text, often meaning well in order to correct what they 
 thought must be error ; and again, how a monkish scribe would 
 colour or twist facts to meet his own particular purposes, or hide 
 some scandal to his cloth. 
 
 I believe and am sure topography would strengthen my case, but 
 I wish not to overcrowd my narrative, or draw off attention from 
 my main point ; suffice it upon this head to say that I agree upon 
 the whole with the theory advanced so ably by Mr. G-lennie and 
 Mr. Skene as to the scene of Arthur's exploits being North of the 
 Humber. 
 
 Scott F. Surtees. 
 
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