Excalibur

“Anàl nathrach, orth’ bháis ’s bethad, do chél dénmha”.

This charm, the Charm of Making as uttered By Nicol Williamson’s excellent Merlin and Helen Mirren’s peerless Morgana le Fey, tells us quite a bit about the film.  It is in Old Gaelic and, as a Cunning-Person, I can tell it is actually not bad as far as charms go.  That Merlin and his kind are represented with portentious corvidae (such as when the horse unseats the Duke at Uther’s camp, killing him – and when Merlin claims the issue of the night of lust that he arranged) also suggests a knowledge – or at least an acknowledgement – of ancient lore.  That Arthur is represented by the Dragon – ‘though Uther’s surname is never mentioned – and that the Dragon motif continues through the film, much akin to “the Force” in Star Wars, is interesting to those who know.  And when Merlin catches a salmon from a stream which ultimately gives him a dunking, he says “there’s always something cleverer than yourself”; a throwaway line, yet to those with knowledge, again, it is quite telling.  But oh!  That a Brythonic champion should be so given over to the Irish far undoes any kudos Boorman may have gained from any acknowledgement of Brythonic lore.

Not that I’m at all at all at all hostile to Ireland or the Irish, per se; but when people think of Kelts, their minds are immediately transported to the land of the bogs, the Little People and Guinness.  This is okay if you’re Irish, or of the Irish diaspora which stretches into lands as spread as America and Scotland, but as a Brythonic Kelt from the Albion mainland – as the Arthur of legend was – I find it a little disappointing.  Of course, the film was shot in Ireland – and there’s no harm in that – but then many of the main actors were Irish too; from Liam Neeson(Gawaine) to Gabriel Byrne (Uther).  And even if Nigel Terry is a Bristolian, why did he affect a southern Irish twang for playing the young squire-cum-King?  Would he have sounded that ridiculous had he read like a young Geoff Capes?  Was there some sort of deal going on with the pre-Celtic-Tiger Ireland whereby they would let the film be shot in the admittedly beautiful countryside of Wicklow, Meath et al. if the film massively advertised the Irish side of Celtism?  And what’s this “Morven” business?  I can understand Arthur being encouraged to uphold the good name of Malvern by Sir Ector (Clive Swift), for Malvern is of Albion.  But Morven (as per the English subtitles) is Gaelic…

Questions, questions, questions.  But the public must be told!

But that’s not the Alpha and Omega of it – oh no.  Because the film is based loosely around Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, which was published first in 1485, we have a lot of namechecks for St Michael, St George and even old JC himself.  Bearing in mind that the world of that period was quite volatile – leaving aside the Wars of the Roses, the Holy Roman Empire was ruled over by the despotic Sixtus IV, a Pope quite capable of forcing people to “do as he says, not as he does”.  That, and the infamous book Malleus Maleficarum had, just a year previously, been printed to the direction of Dominican friars Sprenger and Kramer.  Therefore, he would have been in no mood to correct the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth or various French troubadours who, for the sake of their flammable hides, would have Arthur as quite as heavyweight a God-botherer as the various Papal decrees would require.  And so we have the Grail, being the cup that Joseph of Aramathea brought with him to, supposedly, what later became Glastonbury.

Except.  Except that Boorman’s chalice is less the cup of Joseph, more the sacred cauldron of the Kelts, for when Arthur drinks of it after his kingdom has fallen to ruin, he and it are restored again.  This is what the Cauldron does in old Keltic lore, for in it go the battle slain and weary, and out comes new life; the allegory obviously wasn’t lost on Boorman and Pallenberg and, especially given that such a thing would only have been included in the books of Malory and Monmouth on pain of a literal roasting, it is a very welcome addition.  The film is, therefore, an allegory for religious battle.  Merlin represents the Olde Ways, and we can possibly see the shining figure of Lancelot (Nicolas Clay) as representing Christianity – men and their ways – and Morgana and Mordred representing the forces of darkness.  Merlin asserts the days of the Olde Ways are numbered, but even so, we see him – and, therefore, the Olde Ways – called upon to aid Arthur in the final Battle of Camlann.  As a practitioner of the Olde Ways myself, I take immense pleasure from that.

Of course, the film is billed as fantasy – and indeed it could be described thus.  But when we are dealing with important mythological figures, as Arthur would be to the Britons, care should be taken as to the handling of it. After all, it seems inconceivable that, Monty Python and other satirists and comedians aside, such a figure as Christ would be treated with aught but the utmost respect.  But if we take the film at its word, we can stretch credulity to a point. We can, for example, overlook Carl Orff’s  “O! Fortuna” being inconsistent with the film, being part of a commemoration of all the pleasures young seminaries of old gave up on devoting their lives to contemplation. We can overlook the Irish connection, and possibly that, given that we are in the Dark Ages, we see knights strutting their stuff in the armour technology of the fifteenth century.  It is conceivable, also, that we can ignore the Monty Python and the Holy Grail type scenes – an arm being chopped off here, a killer rabbit there, the Corin Redgrave (Cornwall)/Graham Chapman similarity and so forth.

Inconsistancies aside, though, I would recommend this film: not only is Nicol Williamson thoroughly entertaining as Merlin, but also the hidden gems – the lore, the dragon, the authenticity of the landscape around Cornwall’s Tintagel fortress (I’ve been there) – make it worth a look.  Just remember not to take it too seriously.

Incidentally, the Charm of Making translated into English reads: “Serpent’s breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making”.