Merlin's last cry: ritual burial and rebirth of the poet in Celtic and Norse tradition

Abstract

In early Celtic literature, a clear pattern may be identified in which the Celtic archetypal poet-prophet becomes inspired through interment in a tomb or some other dark, enclosed space. In this scenario, the novice poet-prophet undergoes an initiation into the secrets of his craft by means of a ritual death and rebirth that he experiences within a chthonic setting. The picture that emerges of the archetypal poet-prophet of Celtic, as well as other Indo-European literatures, is one of a mantically inspired figure who gains his phenomenal abilities directly from potent otherworldly forces, which are often, but not always, associated with spirits of the dead. Recent scholarship has established the validity of this pattern in the cases of the archetypal Welsh poets Taliesin and Aneirin, but it may also be demonstrated in the medieval Welsh and somewhat later Arthurian material concerned with Merlin (called