http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_le_Fay
excerpts from wiki site:
Morgan le Fay
Morgan le Fay /ˈmɔrɡən lə ˈfeɪ/, alternatively known as
Morgan le Faye,
Morgane,
Morgaine,
Morgana and other names, is a powerful
sorceress in the
Arthurian legend. Early works featuring Morgan do not elaborate her character beyond her role as a
fay or magician. She became much more prominent in the later cyclical prose works such as the
Lancelot-Grail and the
Post-Vulgate Cycle, in which she becomes an antagonist to
King Arthur and
Queen Guinevere.
Morgan is said to be the daughter of Arthur's mother, the Lady
Igraine, and her first husband,
Gorlois,
Duke of Cornwall, so that Arthur (son of Igraine and
Uther Pendragon) is her half-brother. She has at least two elder sisters,
Elaine and
Morgause, the latter of whom is the mother of
Gawain,
Gaheris,
Gareth,
Agravain, by
King Lot and usually the traitor
Mordred, by Arthur. In Sir
Thomas Malory's
Le Morte d'Arthur and elsewhere, she is married, unhappily, to
King Urien of Gore and
Ywain is her son.
The early accounts of
Geoffrey of Monmouth and
Gerald of Wales refer to Morgan in conjunction with the Isle of Apples (later
Avalon)
to which the fatally wounded Arthur was carried. To the former, she was
an enchantress, one of nine sisters; to the latter, she was the ruler
and patroness of an area near
Glastonbury and a close blood-relation of King Arthur. In the early
romances of
Chrétien de Troyes, she also figures as a healer. In later stories, Morgan becomes an adversary of the
Round Table
when Guinevere discovers her adultery with one of her husband's
knights, though she eventually reconciles with her brother and even
retains her original role, serving as one of the four enchantresses who
carry him to
Avalon after his final
Battle of Camlann.
Origins
As her epithet "le Fay" (from the
French la fée, meaning
fairy)
indicates, the figure of Morgan appears to have been originally a
supernatural being. Her main name could be connected to the myths of
Morgens, or Morgans or Mari-Morgans, which are
Welsh and
Breton water spirits. While later works make her specifically human, she retains her magical powers.
[1] Inspiration for her character likely came from earlier
Welsh mythology and
literature; she has been compared with the goddess
Modron, a figure derived from the continental
Dea Matrona and featured with some frequency in medieval
Welsh literature. Modron appears in
Welsh Triad 70, in which her children by
Urien,
Owain and
Morfydd, are called the "Three Blessed Womb-Burdens of the Island of Britain,"
[2] and a later folktale preserved in the manuscript known as Peniarth 147 records the story behind these conceptions more fully.
[3] Urien is Morgan le Fay's husband in the continental
romances, while
Owain mab Urien is the historical figure behind their son
Ywain. Additionally, Modron is called "daughter of
Avallach," a Welsh ancestor deity whose name can also be interpreted as a noun meaning "a place of apples".
[4] In fact, in the story of Owain and Morfydd's conception in Peniarth 147, Modron is called the "daughter of
the king of Avallach." This is similar to
Avalon,
the "Isle of Apples" with which Morgan le Fay has been associated since
her earliest appearances. Additional speculation sometimes connects
Morgan with the
Irish goddess
Morrígan, though there are few similarities between the two beyond the spelling of their names.
Because her name and sometimes her traits resemble those of many
supernatural women in Welsh and Irish tradition, many assume that Morgan
is a remnant of a pagan Celtic goddess or spirit. Morgan’s Celtic genealogy may include war goddesses (Irish Morrigan and Macha) as well as waterfolk (Irish Muirgen, Welsh Modron, and Breton Morganes)—though none of these figures can be positively identified as her ancestor. About 1216 Gerald of Wales wrote that in the “fabulosi Britones” [tales of the Britons] an imaginary goddess named Morganis transported Arthur to Avalon to heal him. This is one of our few documented links between the Celtic oral tradition and the figure that would emerge in romance as Morgan le Fay.[5]
— Carl Lindahl, Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs
In medieval literature
Voyage of King Arthur and Morgan le Fay to the Isle of Avalon by Frank William Warwick Topham (1888)
Morgan first appears by name in
Geoffrey of Monmouth's
Vita Merlini, written about 1150. Purportedly an account of the wizard
Merlin's later adventures, it elaborates some episodes from Geoffrey's more famous earlier work,
Historia Regum Britanniae. In
Historia, Geoffrey explains that, after Arthur is seriously wounded at the
Battle of Camlann, he is taken off to Avalon, the Isle of Apples, to be healed. In
Vita Merlini,
he describes this island in more detail and names "Morgen" as the chief
of nine magical sisters who dwell there. Morgan retains this role as
Arthur's other-worldly healer in much later literature.
Before the cyclical
Old French romances, appearances of Morgan are few.
Chrétien de Troyes mentions her in his first romance
Erec and Enide,
completed around 1170; he says one guest at the titular characters'
wedding, a certain Guigomar, Lord of the Isle of Avalon, is a friend of
Morgan. She is later mentioned in the same poem when Arthur provides a
wounded
Erec
with a healing balm made by his sister Morgan; this episode both
affirms her early role as a healer and provides the first mention of
Morgan as Arthur's sister. Chrétien again refers to Morgan as a great
healer in his later romance
Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, in an episode in which two ladies restore the maddened hero to his senses with a
concoction
provided by Morgan. However, while Modron is the mother of Owain in
Welsh literature, and Morgan would be assigned this role in later French
literature, this first continental association between Ywain and Morgan
does not imply they are son and mother.
The Arthurian tale
Geraint son of Erbin, based on de Troyes's
Erec and Enide, mentions King Arthur's "chief physician",
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. The epithet Tud
may be a
Welsh or
Breton cognate or borrowing of
Old Irish tuath, "north, left, sinister, wicked", also "fairy,
elf").
Morgan's role is greatly expanded in the 13th-century
Lancelot-Grail (Vulgate Cycle) and the subsequent works inspired by it. The youngest of
Gorlois and
Igraine's daughters, she is sent to a
convent when
Uther Pendragon
kills her father and marries her mother. There she begins her study of
magic, but is interrupted when Uther betroths her to his ally Urien.
Unhappy with her husband, she takes a string of lovers until she is
caught by a young
Guinevere,
who expels her from court in disgust. Morgan continues her magical
studies under Merlin, all the while plotting against Guinevere. In
subsequent chapters she uses her skills to foil Arthur's knights,
especially
Lancelot,
whom she alternately tries to seduce (including imprisoning him along
with her fellow enchantress friends Queen Sedile and the Queen of
Sorestan, each of whom wants to make him their lover
[8]) and to expose as Guinevere's adulterous lover. In the
prose Tristan,
she delivers to Arthur's court a magic drinking horn from which no
unfaithful lady can drink without spilling, hoping to reveal the
infidelity.
Thomas Malory mostly follows the portrayal of Morgan in the Vulgate and
Post-Vulgate Cycles in his book
Le Morte d'Arthur,
though he expands her role in some cases. Through magic and mortal
means, she tries to arrange Arthur's downfall, most famously when she
arranges for her lover
Accolon to obtain the sword
Excalibur and use it against Arthur in single combat. Failing in this, Morgan throws Excalibur's protective scabbard into a lake.
She turns up throughout the
High and
Late Middle Ages, generally in works related to the cycles of Arthur or
Charlemagne. At the end of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
it is revealed that the entire supernatural episode has been instigated
by Morgan as a test for Arthur and his knights, and to frighten
Guinevere. Morgan's importance to this particular narrative has been
disputed and called a
deus ex machina[9] and simply an artistic device to further connect Gawain's episode to the Arthurian story.
In the
legends of Charlemagne, she is most famous for her association with
Ogier the Dane, whom she takes to her mystical island palace to be her lover. In the
chanson de geste of
Huon de Bordeaux, Morgan is the mother of the fairy king
Oberon by none other than
Julius Caesar.
[10]
In folklore
The Fata Morgana, As Observed in the Harbour of Messina (1884)
Morgan le Fay, or
Fata Morgana in
Italian, has been associated with
Sicily since the
Norman conquest of southern Italy.
[13] As such she gave her name to the form of
mirage common off the shores of Sicily, the
Fata Morgana.
[13] The medieval romance
Floriant et Florete places Morgan's mountain home of Montegibel on Sicily, and later Italian folklore describes Morgan as living in
Mount Etna.
[1
wonderful/best characterization of Morgan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mists_of_Avalon
excerpts from wikipedia:
The Mists of Avalon is a 1983 novel by
Marion Zimmer Bradley, in which she relates the
Arthurian legends from the perspective of the female characters. The book follows the trajectory of Morgaine (often called
Morgan le Fay in other works), a
priestess fighting to save her
matriarchal Celtic culture in a country where
patriarchal Christianity threatens to destroy the
pagan way of life.
[1] The epic is focused on the lives of
Gwenhwyfar,
Viviane,
Morgause,
Igraine and other women who are often marginalized in Arthurian retellings.
King Arthur and the
Knights of the Round Table are supporting rather than main characters.
The Mists of Avalon is in stark contrast to most other
retellings
of the Arthurian tales, which consistently cast Morgan le Fay as a
distant, one-dimensional evil sorceress, with little or no explanation
given for her
antagonism
to the Round Table. In this case Morgaine is presented as a woman with
unique gifts and responsibilities at a time of enormous political and
spiritual upheaval who is called upon to defend her indigenous
matriarchal heritage against impossible odds.
The Mists of Avalon stands as a watershed for
feminist interpretation of
male-centered myth by articulating women's experiences at times of great change and shifts in
gender-
power. The typical battles, quests, and feuds of King Arthur's reign act as secondary elements to the women's lives.
The story is told in four large parts:
Book One: Mistress of Magic,
Book Two: The High Queen,
Book Three: The King Stag, and
Book Four: The Prisoner in the Oak. The novel was a best-seller upon its publication and remains popular to this day. Bradley and
Diana L. Paxson later expanded the book into the
Avalon series.
Reception
The Mists of Avalon is lauded as one of the most original and emotional
retellings
of the familiar Arthurian legend. Bradley received much praise for her
convincing portrayal of the main protagonists, respectful handling of
the
Pagan ways of
Avalon and for telling a story in which there is neither black and white or good and evil, but several truths.
Isaac Asimov called it "the best retelling of the Arthurian Saga I have ever read", and
Jean Auel noted "I loved this book so much I went out and bought it for a friend, and have told many people about it."
[5] The
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
calls the book "a convincing revision of the Arthurian cycle," and said
that the victory of Christianity over the "sane but dying paganism" of
Avalon "ensures eons of repression for women and the vital principles
they espouse." It won the 1984
Locus Award for
Best Fantasy Novel and spent four months on the
New York Times best seller list in hardcover. The trade paperback edition of
Mists of Avalon has ranked among the top five trade paperbacks on the monthly Locus bestseller lists for almost four years
PROSE PIECE from Not Quite Tomas, revised poems by Pd Lyons
Dharma le Fay
What
if I told you; instead of healing - I killed? In order to heal the
land I killed the man? He sleeps no sleep of dreams that's for sure.
But think, what came after? The land replenished, nourished well all those who lived upon it. Their power grew and spread. Places I
never knew existed, owed allegiance to that tiny land.
But
now these days, here we go again. But this time no worthy sacrifice.
Besides I'm tired of it all. Maybe they should learn the lessons of
their own history. Either way they'll not get me involved this time.
I'm much too tired to go through all that again. And for what? I did
the best that could be done and all I ever got was a bad rap for
being the woman.
Maybe
I'll go find that Merlin.. I'm sure he'll still go for me and after
that? Couldn't we lay together for a while, wrapped in each others
arms, perchance to dream and dream and dream again? Ah well. Now,
where was it I left him? A tree? A cave? Or was it under some stone
stuck like a sword, waiting once more for my strong and guiding
hands…
.
