Morgan le Fay
Morgan le Fay, alternatively known as Morgan'a, Morgain, Morgant, Morg'ne, Morgayn, Morgein, and Morgue among other names and spellings, is a powerful and ambiguous enchantress from the legend of King Arthur, in which most often she and he are siblings. According to the different authors, she is a fairy or a human; beneficial or harmful; either a sister, half-sister, or unrelated to Arthur. A significant aspect in many of Morgan's medieval and later iterations is the unpredictable duality of her nature, with potential for both good and evil.
Her character may have originated from Welsh mythology as well as from other ancient and medieval myths and historical figures. Early appearances of Morgan in Arthurian literature do not elaborate her character beyond her role as a goddess, a fay, a witch, or a sorceress, generally benevolent and connected to Arthur as his magical saviour and protector. The earliest documented account, by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Vita Merlini refers to Morgan in association with the Isle of Apples, to which Arthur was carried after having been fatally wounded at the Battle of Camlann, as the leader of the nine magical sisters unrelated to Arthur. Therein, and in the early chivalric romances by Chrétien de Troyes and others, Morgan's chief role is that of a great healer. Romance authors of the late 12th century established Morgan as Arthur's supernatural elder sister.
Her prominence increased as the legend of Arthur developed over time, as did her moral ambivalence, eventually resulting in a mostly villainous portrayal in the cyclical prose such as the Lancelot-Grail and the Post-Vulgate Cycle. In the 13th-century prose cycles – and the later works based on them, including the influential Le Morte d'Arthur – she is usually described as the youngest daughter of Arthur's mother Igraine and her first husband. Arthur, son of Igraine and Uther Pendragon, is thus Morgan's half-brother, and her full sisters include Mordred's mother, the Queen of Orkney. The young Morgan unhappily marries Urien, with whom she has a son, Yvain. She becomes an apprentice of Merlin, and a capricious and vindictive adversary of some knights of the Round Table, all the while harbouring a special hatred for Arthur's wife Guinevere. In this tradition, she is also sexually active and even predatory, taking numerous lovers that may include Merlin and Accolon, with an unrequited love for Lancelot. In some variants, including in the popular retelling by Malory, Morgan is the greatest enemy of Arthur, scheming to usurp his throne and indirectly becoming an instrument of his death. However, she eventually reconciles with Arthur, retaining her original role of taking him on his final journey to Avalon.
Several of numerous and often unnamed fairy-mistress and maiden-temptress type characters found through the Arthurian romance genre may also be considered as appearances of Morgan in her different aspects. Medieval and Renaissance tales feature continuations from the aftermath of Camlann where Morgan appears as the immortal queen of Avalon in both Arthurian and non-Arthurian stories, sometimes alongside Arthur. After a period of being largely absent from contemporary culture, Morgan's character again rose to prominence in the 20th and 21st centuries, appearing in a wide variety of roles and portrayals. Notably, her modern character is frequently being conflated with that of her sister, the Queen of Orkney, thus making Morgan the mother of Arthur's son and nemesis Mordred.
Etymology and origins
The earliest spelling of the name is Morgen, which is likely derived from Old Welsh or Old Breton Morgen, meaning 'sea-born'. The name is not to be confused with the unrelated Modern Welsh masculine name Morgan. As her epithet "le Fay" and some traits indicate, the figure of Morgan appears to have been a remnant of supernatural females from Celtic mythology, and her main name could be connected to the myths of Morgens, the Welsh and Breton fairy water spirits related to the legend of Princess Dahut. Speculatively, beginning with Lucy Allen Paton in 1904, Morgan has been connected with the shapeshifting and multifaced Irish goddess of strife known as the Morrígan. Proponents of this theory have included Roger Sherman Loomis, who doubted the Muirgen connection.Further early inspiration for her figure likely came from other Welsh folklore, as well as possibly other works of medieval Irish literature and hagiography, and perhaps historical figures such as Empress Matilda. One of the proposed candidates for the historical Arthur, Artuir mac Áedán, was recorded as having a sister named Maithgen, whose name also appears as that of a prophetic druid in the Irish legend of Saint Brigid of Kildare. Geoffrey's description of Morgen and her sisters in the Vita Merlini closely resembles the story of the nine Gaulish priestesses of the isle of Sena called Gallisenae, as described by the 1st-century Roman geographer Pomponius Mela, strongly suggesting that Pomponius' Description of the World was one of Geoffrey's prime sources for at least his own, unique version. Also suggested have been possible influence by other magical women from the Irish mythology such as the mother of hero Fráech, and elements of the classical Greek mythology sorceresses or goddesses such as Circe and especially Medea — who, similar to Morgan, are often alternately benevolent and malicious. Other possibly related Greco-Roman goddesses include the water deities Sequana, Sirona, and Sulis, the last one in particular having been worshipped as healer but also negatively associated with poisonings in a Morgan-like dual nature.
Morgan has also been often linked with the supernatural mother Modron, derived from the continental mother goddess figure of Dea Matrona and featured in medieval Welsh literature. Modron appears in Welsh Triad 70 – in which her children by Urien are named Owain mab Urien and Morfydd – and a later folktale have recorded more fully in the manuscript Peniarth 147. A fictionalised version of the historical king Urien is usually Morgan le Fay's husband in the variations of Arthurian legend informed by continental romances, wherein their son is named Yvain. Furthermore, the historical Urien had a treacherous ally named Morcant Bulc who plotted to assassinate him, much as Morgan attempts to kill Urien. Additionally, Modron is called "daughter of Afallach", a Welsh ancestor figure also known as Avallach or Avalloc, whose name can also be interpreted as a noun meaning 'a place of apples'; in the tale of Owain and Morfydd's conception in Peniarth 147, Modron is called the "daughter of the King of Annwn", a Celtic Otherworld. This evokes Avalon, the marvelous "Isle of Apples" with which Morgan has been associated since her earliest appearances, and the Irish legend of the otherworldly woman Niamh including the motif of apple in connection to Avalon-like Otherworld isle of Tír na nÓg. As summarised by Will Hasty, "while this is difficult to establish with certainty the relationship between female figures such as these in the Arthurian tradition and the otherworldly goddesses, sprites, and nymphs of Irish and Welsh myths, both groups demonstrate similar ambivalent characteristics: they are by turns dangerous and desirable, implicated alternately in fighting, death, sexuality, and fertility."
While many works make Morgan specifically human, she almost always keeps her magical powers and often also her otherworldly if not divine attributes and qualities. Some medieval authors refer to her as a fairy queen or even outright a goddess. According to Gerald of Wales in his 12th-century De instructione principis, a noblewoman and close relative of King Arthur named Morganis carried the dead Arthur to her island of Avalon, where he was buried. Writing in the early 13th century in Speculum ecclesiae, Gerald also wrote that "as a result, the fanciful Britons and their bards invented the legend that some kind of a fantastic goddess had removed Arthur's body to the Isle of Avalon, so that she might cure his wounds there," for the purpose of enabling the possibility of King Arthur's messianic return. In his encyclopaedic work, Otia Imperialia, written around the same time and with similar derision for this belief, Gervase of Tilbury calls her Morganda Fatata. Morgan retains her early role as Arthur's legendary healer throughout later Arthurian tradition.
Medieval and Renaissance literature
Overview
Geoffrey, Chrétien and other early authors
Morgan first appears by name in Vita Merlini, written by Norman-Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth. Purportedly an account of the life of Merlin, it elaborates some episodes from Geoffrey's more famous earlier work, Historia Regum Britanniae. In Historia, Geoffrey relates how King Arthur, gravely wounded by Mordred at the Battle of Camlann, is taken off to the blessed Isle of Apple Trees, Avalon, to be healed; Avalon is also mentioned as the place where Arthur's sword Excalibur was forged. In Vita Merlini, Geoffrey describes this island in more detail and names Morgen as the chief of the nine magical queen sisters who dwell there, ruling in their own right. Morgen agrees to take Arthur, delivered to her by Taliesin to have him revived. She and her sisters are capable of shapeshifting and flying, and use their powers only for good. Morgen is also said to be a learned mathematician and to have taught it and astronomy to her fellow nymph sisters, whose names are listed as Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe, Thiten, and Thiton.In the making of this arguably Virgin Mary-type character and her sisters, Geoffrey might have been influenced by the first-century Roman cartographer Pomponius Mela, who has described an oracle at the Île de Sein off the coast of Brittany and its nine virgin priestesses believed by the continental Celtic Gauls to have the power to cure disease and perform various other awesome magic, such as controlling the sea through incantations, foretelling the future, and changing themselves into any animal. In addition, according to a theory postulated by R. S. Loomis, it is possible that Geoffrey has not been the original inventor of Morgan, as the character may have had already existed in Breton folklore in the hypothetical unrecorded oral stories that featured her as Arthur's fairy saviour, or even also his fairy godmother. Such stories being told by wandering storytellers would then influence multiple authors writing independently from each other, especially since Vita Merlini was a relatively little-known text.
Geoffrey's description of Morgan is notably very similar to that in Benoît de Sainte-Maure's epic poem Roman de Troie, a story of the ancient Trojan War in which Morgan herself makes an unexplained appearance in this second known text featuring her. As Orvan the Fairy, there she first lustfully loves the Trojan hero Hector and gifts him a wonderful horse, but then pursues him with hate after he rejects her. The abrupt way in which she is used suggests Benoît did expect his aristocratic audience to have been already familiar with her character. Another such ancient-times appearance of a Morgan character can be found in the much later Perceforest, within the fourth book which is set in Britain during Julius Caesar's invasions, where the fairy Morgane lives in the isle of Zeeland and has learned her magic from Zephir. Here, she has a daughter named Morganette and an adoptive son named Passelion, who in turn have a son named Morgan, described as an ancestor of the Lady of the Lake.
In Jaufre, an early Occitan language Arthurian romance dated c. 1180, Morgan seems to appear, without being named other than introducing herself as the "Fairy of Gibel". Here, she is the ruler of an underground kingdom who takes the protagonist knight Jaufre through a fountain to gift him her magic ring of protection. In the romance poem Lanzelet, translated by the end of the 12th century by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven from a now-lost French text, the infant Lancelot is spirited away by a water fairy and raised in her paradise island country of Meidelant. Ulrich's unnamed fairy queen character might be also related to Geoffrey's Morgen, as well as to the early Breton oral tradition of Morgan's figure, especially as her son there is named Mabuz, similar to the name of Modron's son Mabon ap Modron. In Layamon's Middle English poem The Chronicle of Britain, Arthur was taken to Avalon by two women to be healed there by its most beautiful elfen queen named Argante or Argane; it is possible her name had been originally Margan before it was changed in manuscript transmission.
The 12th-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes already mentions her in his first romance, Erec and Enide, completed around 1170. In it, a love of Morgan is Guigomar, the Lord of the Isle of Avalon and a nephew of King Arthur, a character derivative of Guigemar from the Breton lai Guigemar by Marie de France. Guingamor's own lai links him to the beautiful magical entity known only as the "fairy mistress", who was later identified by Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal as Dame Tryamour, the daughter of the King of the Celtic Otherworld who shares many characteristics with Chrétien's Morgan. It was noted that even Chrétien' earliest mention of Morgan already shows an enmity between her and Queen Guinevere, and although Morgan is represented only in a benign role by Chrétien, she resides in a mysterious place known as the Vale Perilous. She is later mentioned in the same poem when Arthur provides the wounded hero Erec with a healing balm made by his sister Morgan. This episode affirms her early role as a healer, in addition to being one of the first instances of Morgan presented as Arthur's sister. Healing remains Morgan's chief ability, but Chrétien also hints at her potential to harm.
Chrétien again refers to Morgan as a great healer in his later romance Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, in an episode in which the Lady of Norison restores the maddened hero Yvain to his senses with a magical potion provided by Morgan the Wise. Morgan the Wise is female in Chrétien's original, as well as in the Norse version Ivens saga, but male in the English Ywain and Gawain. While the fairy Modron is mother of Owain mab Urien in the Welsh myth, and Morgan would be assigned this role in the later literature, this first continental association between Yvain and Morgan does not imply they are son and mother. The earliest mention of Morgan as Yvain's mother is found in Tyolet, an early 13th-century Breton lai.
The Middle Welsh Arthurian tale Geraint son of Erbin, either based on Chrétien's Erec and Enide or derived from a common source, mentions King Arthur's chief physician named Morgan Tud. It is believed that this character, though considered a male in Gereint, may be derived from Morgan le Fay, though this has been a matter of debate among Arthurian scholars since the 19th century. There, Morgan is called to treat Edern ap Nudd, Knight of the Sparrowhawk, following the latter's defeat at the hands of his adversary Geraint, and is later called on by Arthur to treat Geraint himself. In the German version of Erec, the 12th-century knight and poet Hartmann von Aue has Erec healed by Guinevere with a special plaster that was given to Arthur by the king's sister, the goddess Feimurgân :
In writing that, Hartmann might have not been influenced by Chrétien, but rather by an earlier oral tradition from the stories of Breton bards. Hartmann also separated Arthur's sister from the fairy mistress of the lord of Avalon, who in his version is named Marguel. In the anonymous First Continuation of Chrétien's Perceval, the Story of the Grail, the fairy lover of its variant of Guigomar is named Brangepart, and the two have a son Brangemuer who became the king of an otherworldly isle "where no mortal lived". In the 13th-century romance Parzival, another German knight-poet Wolfram von Eschenbach inverted Hartmann's Fâmurgân's name to create that of Arthur's fairy ancestor named Terdelaschoye de Feimurgân, the wife of Mazadân, where the part "Terdelaschoye" comes from Terre de la Joie, or Land of Joy; the text also mentions the mountain of Fâmorgân. Jean Markale further identified a Morganian figure in Wolfram's ambiguous character of Cundrie the Sorceress through her plot function as mistress of illusions in an enchanted fairy garden.
Speculatively, Loomis and John Matthews further identified other perceived avatars of Morgan as the "Besieged Lady" archetype in various early works associated with the Castle of Maidens motif, often appearing as wife of King Lot and mother of Gawain. These characters include the Queen of Meidenlant in Diu Crône, the lady of Castellum Puellarum in De Ortu Waluuanii, and the nameless heroine of the Breton lai Doon, among others, including some in later works. Loomis also linked her to the eponymous seductress evil queen from The Queen of Scotland, a 19th-century ballad "containing Arthurian material dating back to the year 1200."
A recently discovered moralistic manuscript written in Anglo-Norman French is the only known instance of medieval Arthurian literature presented as being composed by Morgan herself. This late 12th-century text is purportedly addressed to her court official and tells of the story of a knight called Piers the Fierce; it is likely that the author's motive was to draw a satirical moral from the downfall of the English knight Piers Gaveston, 1st Earl of Cornwall. Morgayne is titled in it as "empress of the wilderness, queen of the damsels, lady of the isles, and governor of the waves of the great sea." Morgan is also mentioned in the Draco Normannicus, a 12th-century Latin chronicle by Étienne de Rouen, which contains a fictitious letter addressed by King Arthur to Henry II of England, written for political propaganda purpose of having 'Arthur' criticise King Henry for invading the Duchy of Brittany. Notably, it is one of the first known texts that made her a sister to Arthur, as she is in the works of Chrétien and many others after him. As described by Étienne,