The lake was a feerie, an illusion raised by the art which the devil had taught Merlin, and Merlin the lady
- Date of account
- Nineteenth-century comparative survey
- Source
- The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries
- Reference
- The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries · selected passage 45
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English with translated traditional material
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
The lake was a feerie, an illusion raised by the art which the devil had taught Merlin, and Merlin the lady
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyThe lake was a _feerie_, an illusion raised by the art which the devil had taught Merlin, and Merlin the lady. The romance says: "The lady who reared him conversed only in the forest, and dwelt on the summit of a hill, which was much lower than that on which King Ban had died. In this place, where it seemed that the wood was large and deep, the lady had many fair houses, and very rich; and in the plain beneath there was a gentle little river well-stored with fish; and this place was so secret and so concealed, that right difficult was it for any one to find, for the semblance of the said lake covered it so that it could not be perceived."[56]
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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