Introduction
Fifth-century tribal leader Vortigern has taken refuge from Saxon invaders in Snowdonia, but his new fortress keeps collapsing. His druid priests say it must be sprinkled with the blood of a virgin’s child — and rumour has it that young Merlin had no father.
MERLIN then approached the king, and said to him, “For what reason am I and my mother introduced into your presence?”
“My magicians,” answered Vortigern, “advised me to seek out a man that had no father, with whose blood my building is to be sprinkled, in order to make it stand.”*
“Order your magicians,” said Merlin, “to come before me, and I will convict them of a lie.”
The king was surprised at his words, and presently ordered the magicians to come, and sit down before Merlin, who spoke to them after this manner: “Because you are ignorant what it is that hinders the foundation of the tower, you have recommended the shedding of my blood for cement to it, as if that would presently make it stand. But tell me now, what is there under the foundation? For something there is that will not suffer it to stand.” The magicians at this began to be afraid, and made him no answer.
The story of Vortigern’s tower comes from the early ninth-century ‘History of the Britons’ by Nennius, and manifestly belongs to legend and not to history. The background to it, however, is at least plausible. According to sixth-century chronicler Gildas, a Romano-British chieftain named Gurthrigern felt exposed when the Romans suddenly departed in 410, and called over Saxon mercenaries Hengist and Horsa to help him drive off the Picts and Scots. However, the Saxons gradually took over his kingdom, and ultimately all England, herding him and most of the Britons into the far west. Eighth-century historian Bede tells the same tale, though he names the king Vortigern. For Charles Dickens’s retelling of the story, see The Arts of Fair Rowena.