From: tara@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Lady Johanna Constantine)
Subject: Re: Merlin and/or Taliesin
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 00:26:59 GMT

oispeggy@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Peggy Brown) writes:

>Sometimes Merlin and Taliesin are treated as separate characters, 
>sometimes as the same one, depending on the source.

>Why?  

>- Peggy -


Okay, you've asked for it love.  You've no one to blame but yourself.

Taleisin's story can be found in some copies of the Mabinogion.  It goes
something like this:  The goddess Ceridwen had two children, a daughter named
Creirwy, the mots beautiful girl in the world, and a son, Marfran, who was
as ugly as his sister was lovely, and was nicknamed Agfaddu, "Utter Darkness"
Ceridwen planned to gift Morfran the gifts of a poet/seer, so that all would
see his wisdom, and forget his appearence.  The spell was set to simmer
in her cauldron for a year and a day, and she contracted a blind man to stir
the mixture for her.  A bot named Gwion Bach served as the old man's eyes.
When the year and a day passes, ad the cauldron came to boil, Ceridwen was
 sleeping in a chair.  Gwion Bach, seeing a chance, pushed Morfran away and
 recieved the gift of Wisdom himself instead.  Ceridwen instantly woke, and
 infury chased Gwion Bach, who fled in the form of a hare.
 She follwed as a greyhound.  He became a swallow, she followed as a hawk.
 He reached a river and dove in as a salmon, she chased as an otter.  He
 crawled onto the bank and ran into a millers house where he became a grain
 of wheat and hid.  SHe became a hen and ate him.  Nine months later, she was 
 delivered of a beautiful boy.  Unabel to kill him outright as he was so
 beautiful, she set him afloat in a coracle.  he drifted down the river until ]
 he reached a weir, where the Prince Elphin was ttrying to catch salmon (it
 was Samhaine) He caught the Salmon of Wisdom instead, ad when he opend up
 the basket, saw the babe and exclaimed "Behold the Radient Brow", and thus
 was the boy named.  Taleisin,, which in welsh means radient brow.


 Myrddin, on the otehr hand, was a contempory of Taleisin.  He was born of
  a human woman and one of the lords of hell.  Teh village of hsi birth is now 
  called carmarthen, Caer Myrddin or Myrddin's castle.  When he was a child, 
  king Vortigern summoned him to court because he had been trying to rais
  a tower whhich had fallen three times he tried to raise it.  His druids
  said that if he bathed the cornerstoen in the blood of a fatherless boy,
  teh Tower woudl stand tall.  Myrddin, however, knew the real reason the tower
   was falling,a dn ordered they dig a hoel on the site.  Beneath the ground
   there fough a red and white dragon.  All saw this, and myrddin announced
   that the dragons would come and bring down Vortigern because he had 
   welcomed Saxon invaders by hiring them as mercenaries.  By dragons he
   meant the true heirs, Aurelius and Uther, who reined in turn after Vortigern
   was burnt alive in his own castle.  having delivered this message, Myrddin
   vanished, only to appear again to Aurelius to offer his services as a 
   councellor.  Myrddin was manipulative, and cruel when it came to protecting
   his precious Britian.  He overstepped his bounds,a d his sidhe lover
   had no choice but to bind him to an oak in the Borderlands between 
   the Otehrworld and our plane after the battle fo Camlann where Arthur was
   slaine by hsi son Mordred.

   I'm a celtic nut.  Look me up for more info if you want.

				Your Servant,

				Lady Johanna Constantine
				tara@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu