Merlin and the 'Past and Future King': The Stewart Recension

Abstract

Mary Stewart's 'The Crystal Cave' (1971) is one of the more mystical of the modern English recensions of the Matter of Britain. It is also one which has its essential focus on Merlin, since its tale is told by him at a time when he is old, he who had been already past his prime "when Arthur was crowned King" (p. 13). At the tale's end it is still only the morning after the night when the Arthur to be was conceived by the Duchess of Cornwall. The beginning of the book is a dream sequence but it is also the account, out of time, of the encounter between those who prove to be Merlin's parents, a fugitive king's son, just eighteen, and a young girl, the local Welsh king's daughter, and possessed of the Sight. In many ways it is a miraculous conception, the implications of which are merely adumbrated, yet which will prove of cosmic significance for the peoples, present and future, of the British Iles.