“They sate them down together, and a sleep
Fell upon Merlin, more like death, so deep. 
Her finger on her lips, then Vivian rose,
And from her brown-lock’d head the wimple throws,
And takes it in her hand, and waves it over
The blossom’d thorn tree and her sleeping lover. 
Nine times she waved the fluttering wimple round,
And made a little plot of magic ground. 
And in that daised circle, as men say,
Is Merlin prisoner till the judgment day;
But she herself whither she will can rove—­
For she was passing weary of his love.” 

          
                                            MATTHEW ARNOLD, Tristram and Iseult.

[Illustration:  THE BEGUILING OF MERLIN.—­Burne-Jones.]

According to another version of the tale, Merlin, having grown very old indeed, once sat down on the “Siege Perilous,” forgetting that none but a sinless man could occupy it with impunity.  He was immediately swallowed up by the earth, which yawned wide beneath his feet, and he never visited the earth again.

A third version says that Vivian through love imprisoned Merlin in an underground palace, where she alone could visit him.  There he dwells, unchanged by the flight of time, and daily increasing the store of knowledge for which he was noted.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ROUND TABLE.

Fortunately “the question of the actual existence and acts of Arthur has very little to do with the question of the origin of the Arthurian cycle.”  But although some authorities entirely deny his existence, it is probable that he was a Briton, for many places in Wales, Scotland, and England are connected with his name.

On the very slightest basis, many of the mediaeval writers constructed long and fabulous tales about this hero.  Such was the popularity of the Arthurian legends all over Europe that prose romances concerning him were among the first works printed, and were thus brought into general circulation.  An outline of the principal adventures of Arthur and of his knights is given here.  It has been taken from many works, whose authors will often be mentioned as we proceed.

King Uther Pendragon, as we have already seen, intrusted his new-born son, Arthur, to the care of the enchanter Merlin, who carried him to the castle of Sir Hector (Anton), where the young prince was brought up as a child of the house.

    “Wherefore Merlin took the child,

And gave him to Sir Anton, an old knight
And ancient friend of Uther; and his wife
Nursed the young prince, and rear’d him with her own;
And no man knew.” 

                                  TENNYSON, The Coming of Arthur.