Wish Fulfillment: Five Years of the Wish List (Theology, History, and Folklore)

It's not that I equate religion with folklore, or either exactly with history. It's just these are broad subjects that are convenient for space to lump together.

The Figure of Merlin

There’s no telling how long I’ve been fascinated by the figure of Merlin. Probably the first time I ever saw him was in his T. H. White/Walt Disney incarnation, in the clip of the ‘Wizard’s Duel’ from The Sword in the Stone, that was shown on The Wonderful World of Disney each year at Christmas. But he was everywhere in children’s programming when I was small.

In King Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table (1966; 1969, American release) Merlin is a force for good, King Arthur’s wise man; in  the 1970 CBS: Famous Classic Tales version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Mark Twain’s Merlin is a villain, the epitome of the superstition, chicanery, and ignorance of Twain’s perceived version of the Middle Ages; in The Saturday Superstar Movie of The Adventures of Robin Hoodnik (1972) he appeared as Whirlin’ Merlin, a magician for hire engaged by the bad guys; in the 1972 The Brady Kids animated show, Larry Storch voiced Marlon, a magical bird expy of the famed magician, and his old pal Merlin, a beardless, W. C. Fields sound-alike even appears in one episode. Merlin appeared as a figure representing the artist in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, a movie that was often on TV.

In Fourth Grade Jerry Williams brought a comic book to class, DC’s The Demon #1, that featured Merlin as a catalyst to Jason Blood’s back story. In Fifth Grade I read Blanch Winder’s Stories of King Arthur and was enchanted: the first few stories were about Merlin and his origins, perhaps the first place I ever saw Merlin young before being a bearded sage. Then came Middle School and Merlin was let loose.

I graduated into the next level of Merlin. Howard Pyle’s King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, actually reading T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave (another young Merlin tale), all were in the Briesemeister library. Even in The Dark is Rising Merriman Lyon, the Oldest of the Old Ones, was Merlin, a fact I might have known right away if Under Sea, Under Stone (the first book in the series) had been available.

High school took me to the research phase on Merlin. Geoffrey Ashe was the main Arthurian scholar then, in search of the historical origins of King Arthur and his court, including how the figure of Merlin developed. Those were the years that The Book of Merlyn (T. H. White’s unpublished conclusion to his Matter of Britain books) came out, as did John Steinbeck’s unfinished The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. I read C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, where the awakened Merlin plays a pivotal part. Towards the end of high school, I read Merlin by Robert Nye, which drew on a lot of the original sources as well as on scurrilous humor.

While in college, a lot of those original sources became available to me, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas Malory and Spencer and so on, including drips and dabs from medieval tales. That was when I read Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex, where of course Merlin appears in the early chapters. The movie Excalibur (1981) featured Nicol Williamson as the mercurial magician.

And so it goes. Merlin is a character of greater or lesser importance in dozens of books (many of dubious quality, but I had to look into them), TV series (I might mention the 2008 BBC series – which I never watched, or the 1998 Sam Neill miniseries), and films since then, so many in fact I cannot keep up with them, nor I doubt could anybody. Merlin is even an ‘historical figure’ in the Harry Potter mythos. Villain, hero, youth, sage, bard, devil, wizard – Merlin continues to fill all those niches, and may well continue to do so through all time.

Roscoe Lee Browne as Merlin in the 1978 Once Upon a Classic episode, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"

Anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto

 

The Battle of Lepanto was a naval engagement that took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Catholic states arranged by Pope Pius V, inflicted a major defeat on the fleet of the Ottoman Empire in the Gulf of Patras. The Ottoman forces were sailing westward from their naval station in Lepanto (the Venetian name of ancient Naupactus – Greek Ναύπακτος, Turkish İnebahtı) when they met the fleet of the Holy League which was sailing east from Messina, Sicily.

The fleet of the Holy League consisted of 206 galleys and six galleasses. John of Austria, half-brother of Philip II of Spain, was named by Pope Pius V as overall commander of the fleet and led the centre division. The Ottoman fleet consisted of 222 galleys and 56 galliots and was led by Müezzinzade Ali Pasha, Mahomet Sirocco and Occhiali.

The victory of the Holy League is of great importance in the history of Europe and of the Ottoman Empire, with the Ottoman fleet almost completely destroyed and marking the turning-point of Ottoman military expansion into the Mediterranean, although the Ottoman wars in Europe would continue for another century. It has long been compared to the Battle of Salamis, both for tactical parallels and for its crucial importance in the defense of Europe against imperial expansion. It was also of great symbolic importance in a period when Europe was torn by its own wars of religion following the Protestant Reformation. In memorial, Pope Pius V instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory.

Historian Paul K. Davis writes: "More than a military victory, Lepanto was a moral one. For decades, the Ottoman Turks had terrified Europe, and the victories of Suleiman the Magnificent caused Christian Europe serious concern. The defeat at Lepanto further exemplified the rapid deterioration of Ottoman might under Selim II, and Christians rejoiced at this setback for the Ottomans. The mystique of Ottoman power was tarnished significantly by this battle, and Christian Europe was heartened."

Duration: 1 hour, 16 minutes and 40 seconds.1:16:40.

As a result, 15,000 Christian slaves were freed. At the end of the battle, the Christians had taken 117 galleys and 20 galliots, and sunk or destroyed some 50 other ships. Around ten thousand Turks were taken prisoner. The Christian side suffered around 7,500 deaths, the Turkish side about 30,000. Modern historians attribute the victory to the West’s superior firepower. The Holy League credited the victory to the Virgin Mary, whose intercession with God they had implored for victory through the use of the Rosary. Pope Pius V instituted a new Catholic feast day of Our Lady of Victory to commemorate the battle, which is now celebrated by the Catholic Church as the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Although it stopped further Ottoman incursion, it did not restore any prior taken territories. Historian Paul K. Davis sums up the importance of Lepanto this way: "This Turkish defeat stopped Ottomans' expansion into the Mediterranean, thus maintaining Western dominance, and confidence grew in the West that Turks, previously unstoppable, could be beaten."

Centuries later G. K. Chesterton revisited the conflict in his lively narrative poem Lepanto, first published in 1911 and republished many times since. It provided a series of poetic visions of the major characters in the battle, particularly the leader of the Christian forces, Don Juan of Austria, then closed with verses linking Miguel de Cervantes, who also fought in the battle, with the "lean and foolish knight" he would later immortalise in Don Quixote.

--edited down from Wikipedia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TbnGV0BJmk

by Clamavi de Profundis, adapted from Chesterton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pFY8B6vgPI

the more complete Lepanto by Chesteron, Read by Tom O’Bedlam

 

History, Science, Biography: The Shadow Library Re-Organized

The Dragons of Eden … Carl Sagan

The Story of the Irish Race … Seumas MacManus

Pictorial History of Philosophy … Dagobert D. Runes

The Steel Bonnets … George Macdonald Fraser

How the Irish Saved Civilization … Thomas Cahill

Tower of London; The Parthenon; The Pyramids and Sphinx; Notre-Dame de Paris; Venice … Newsweek

The World We Live In … Time Life Books

Vidal in Venice … Gore Vidal

Don’t Know Much About American History … Kenneth C. Davis

Alec Guinness … Piers Paul Read

Apocalypse Culture … Adam Parfrey (ed.)

The Nature of Alexander the Great … Mary Renault

Boris Karloff: The Frankenscience Monster … Forrest J. Ackerman

Mammals … Herbert Zim

Reptiles and Amphibians ... Herbert Zim

Longitude … Dava Sobel

Genius … Harold Bloom

The Western Canon … Harold Bloom                      

Yeats … Harold Bloom

Seven Pillars of Wisdom … T. E. Lawrence

My goodness. I wish that when I had started 'The Shadow Library' I had popped the titles and authors in there, so it would spare me this task of making them all searchable. Trying to save labor, I have made myself at least three times the work.