“I wish I could thus disport myself,” answered Vivian. “I would always love you if you could show me such wonders.”
Then Merlin described a circle with his wand, and went back and sat down beside her. Within a few hours the castle was before her in the wood, Knights and ladies were singing in its courtyard, and an orchard in blossom grew about.
“Have I done what I promised?” asked Merlin.
“Fair, sweet friend,” said she, “you have done so much for me that I am always yours.”
Vivian became like a daughter to the old magician, and he taught her many of the most wonderful things that any mortal heart could think of—things past, things that were done, and part of what was to come.
You have been told in Tennyson that Vivian learned so many of Merlin’s enchantments that in his old age she took advantage of him and put him to sleep forever in the hollow of a tree. But the older legend gives us better news. He showed her how to make a tower without walls so they might dwell there together alone in peace. This tower was “so strong that it may never be undone while the world endures.” After it was finished he fell asleep with his head in her lap, and she wove a spell nine times around his head so that he might rest more peacefully.
But the old enchanter does not sleep forever. Here in the forest of Broceliande, on a magic island, Merlin dwells with his nine bards, and only Vivian can come or go through the magic walls. It was toward this tower, so the legends say, that, after the passing of King Arthur, Merlin was last seen by some Irish monks, sailing away westward, with the maiden Vivian, in a boat of crystal, beneath the sunset sky.
