The research team also explored the relationship between the Welsh Merlin poems and the broader Arthurian tradition, popularised throughout Europe by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who brought the figures of Arthur and Merlin together.
Another, Yr Oianau (Lamentations), from the same era, features Merlin sympathising with a piglet: “Och, little piglet, oh little white sow, do not sleep a morning sleep, do not dig in the woods in case Rhydderch Hael [a king and Merlin’s foe] comes with his trained hounds.”.
Callander said these early poems about Merlin had not been fully explored by modern scholars partly because of Geoffrey of Monmouth – and also because there are so few people trained to read these medieval Welsh texts.
Over the past three years academics from three Welsh universities have edited and translated more than 100 poems, all in Cymraeg (Welsh), about Merlin dating back as far as the 10th century.
But a detailed re-examination of Myrddin – Merlin – by Welsh scholars suggests he can also be considered an early British environmentalist deeply worried about human interaction with the natural world.
