Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

306 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race“I have been where the soldiers of Britain were slain,From the east to the south:I am alive, they in death.”[355]Myrddin, or MerlinA deity named Myrddin holds in Arthur's mythological cyclethe place of the Sky- and Sun-god, Nudd. One of the WelshTriads tells us that Britain, before it was inhabited, was calledClas Myrddin, Myrddin's Enclosure. One is reminded of theIrish fashion of calling any favoured spot a “cattle-fold of thesun”—the name is applied by Deirdre to her beloved Scottishhome in Glen Etive. Professor Rhys suggests that Myrddin wasthe deity specially worshipped at Stonehenge, which, accordingto British tradition as reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth, waserected by “Merlin,” the enchanter who represents the form intowhich Myrddin had dwindled under Christian influences. Weare told that the abode of Merlin was a house of glass, or a bushof whitethorn laden with bloom, or a sort of smoke or mist inthe air, or “a close neither of iron nor steel nor timber nor ofstone, but of the air without any other thing, by enchantment sostrong that it may never be undone while the world endureth.” 225Finally he descended upon Bardsey Island, “off the extremewesternmost point of Carnarvonshire ... into it he went withnine attendant bards, taking with him the 'Thirteen Treasures ofBritain,' thenceforth lost to men.” Professor Rhys points out thata Greek traveller named Demetrius, who is described as havingvisited Britain in the first century A.D., mentions an island inthe west where “Kronos” was supposed to be imprisoned withhis attendant deities, and Briareus keeping watch over him ashe slept, “for sleep was the bond forged for him.” Doubtlesswe have here a version, Hellenised as was the wont of classicalwriters on barbaric myths, of a British story of the descent of the225 Rhys, “Hibbert Lectures,” quoting from the ancient saga of Merlin publishedby the English Text Society, p. 693.