A powerful enchantress
Early appearances of Morgan do not elaborate her character beyond her role as a goddess, a fay, a witch, or a sorceress, generally benevolent and related to King Arthur as his magical saviour and protector.
A significant aspect in many of Morgan's medieval and later iterations is the unpredictable duality of her nature, with potential for both good and evil.
After a period of being largely absent from contemporary culture, Morgan's character again rose to prominence in the 20th and 21st centuries, appearing in a wide variety of roles and portrayals.
(Common Brittonic) - "Mori-genā"
→ (Old Welsh or Old Breton) - "Morgen" (meaning "Sea-born")
→ "Geoffrey of Monmouth" Vita Merlini - "Morgen"
→ "Morgan"
"le Fay" (invented in the 15th century by Thomas Malory from the earlier French la fée, "the fairy"; Malory would also use the form "le Fey" alternatively with "le Fay")
1. Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini (c. 1150) closely resembles the story of the nine Gaulish priestesses of the isle of Sena (now Île de Sein) called "Gallisenae" (or Gallizenae), as described by the geographer Pomponius Mela during the first century, strongly suggesting that Pomponius' Description of the World De situ orbis was one of Geoffrey's prime sources.
2. Further inspiration for her character likely came from Welsh folklore and medieval Irish literature and hagiography (vita). Speculatively, beginning with Lucy Allen Paton in 1904, Morgan has been connected with the Irish shapeshifting and multifaced goddess of strife known as the "Morrígan" ("Great Queen"). Proponents of this have included Roger Sherman Loomis, who doubted the "Muirgen" connection.
3. Possible influence by elements of classical Greek mythology such as "Circe" and especially "Medea" (who, similar to Morgan, are often alternately benevolent and malicious).
4. Other magical women from the Irish mythology such as the mother of hero "Fráech"(half-divine as the son of goddess "Bébinn"), as well as historical figure of Empress "Matilda"(c. 7 February 1102 – 10 September 1167), have been also suggested. One of the proposed candidates for the historical Arthur, "Artuir mac Áedán"(prince of "Dál Riata", between the 6th and 7th centuries), was recorded as having a sister named "Maithgen", whose name also appears as that of a prophetic druid in the Irish legend of Saint "Brigid of Kildare".
5. Morgan has also been often linked with the supernatural mother "Modron", derived from the continental mother goddess figure of "Dea Matrona" and featured in medieval Welsh literature. Additionally, Modron is called "daughter of Afallach", a Welsh ancestor figure also known as Avallach or Avalloc, whose name can also be interpreted as a noun meaning "a place of apples". In the manuscript Peniarth 147, Modron is called the "daughter of the King of Annwn", a Celtic Otherworld. This evokes Avalon, the marvelous "Isle of Apples" with which Morgan has been associated since her earliest appearances.
* The Peniarth Manuscripts Collection was originally assembled by Robert Vaughan(c. 1592–1667) of Hengwrt, Merionethshire, and in the 19th century was housed at Peniarth Mansion, Llanegryn, Merioneth.
6. According to "Gerald of Wales" in De instructione principis, a noblewoman and close relative of King Arthur named "Morganis" carried the dead Arthur to her island of Avalon.
* Gerald also claimed that "as a result, the fanciful Britons and their bards invented the legend that some kind of a fantastic goddess (dea quaedam phantastica) had removed Arthur's body to the Isle of Avalon, so that she might cure his wounds there," for the purpose of enabling the possibility of King Arthur's messianic return.
* "After the Battle of Camlann. . .killed his uncle. . .Arthur: the sequel was that the body of Arthur, who had been mortally wounded, was carried off by a certain noble matron, called Morgan, who was his cousin, to the Isle of Avalon, which is now known as Glastonbury. Under Morgan's supervision the corpse was buried in the churchyard there. As a result, the credulous Britons and their bards invented the legend that a fantastic sorceress called Morgan had removed Arthur's body to the Isle of Avalon, so that she might cure his wounds there. According to them, once he has recovered from his wounds this strong and all-powerful King will return to rule over the Britons in the normal way. The result of all this is that they really expect him to come back, just as the Jews, led astray by even greater stupidity, misfortune and misplaced faith, really expect their Messiah to return." --- Extract from Giraldus Cambrensis's Speculum Ecclesiae (1216)
7. In "Gervase of Tilbury" Otia Imperialia (early 13th-century) that mythical enchantress called "Morganda Fatata" (Morganda the Fairy).
Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136)
Vita Merlini (around c. 1150)
In Historia, Geoffrey relates how King Arthur, gravely wounded by Mordred at the Battle of Camlann, is taken off to the blessed Isle of Apple Trees (Latin: "Insula Pomorum"), Avalon, to be healed; Avalon ("Ynys Afallach" in the Welsh versions of Historia) is also mentioned as the place where Arthur's sword Excalibur was forged. (Geoffrey's Arthur does have a sister, whose name is "Anna", but the possibility of her being a predecessor to Morgan is unknown.)
In Vita Merlini Geoffrey describes this island in more detail and names Morgen as the chief of the nine magical queen sisters who dwell there, ruling in their own right. Morgen agrees to take Arthur, delivered to her by "Taliesin" to have him revived. She and her sisters are capable of shapeshifting and flying.
*. In the making of this arguably Virgin Mary-type character and her sisters, Geoffrey might have been influenced by the first-century Roman cartographer Pomponius Mela, who has described an oracle at the "Île de Sein" off the coast of Brittany and its nine virgin priestesses believed by the continental Celtic Gauls to have the power to cure disease and perform various other awesome magic, such as controlling the sea through incantations, foretelling the future, and changing themselves into any animal.
*. According to a theory postulated by R. S. Loomis, Geoffrey was not the original inventor of Morgan's character, which had already existed in hypothetical unrecorded stories of her as Arthur's fairy saviour, or even also his fairy godmother (her earliest shared supernatural ability being able to traverse on or under water). Such stories being told by wandering storytellers (as credited by Gerald of Wales) would then influence various authors writing independently from each other, especially since Vita Merlini was a relatively little-known text.
(Evidence #1) Geoffrey's description of Morgan is notably very similar to that in Benoît de Sainte-Maure's epic poem Roman de Troie (c. 1155–1160), a story of the ancient Trojan War in which Morgan herself makes an unexplained appearance in this second known text featuring her. The abrupt way in which she is used suggests Benoît did expect his aristocratic audience to have been already familiar with her character.
(Evidence #2) In Perceforest (1330s) within the fourth book which is set in Britain during Julius Caesar's invasions, where the fairy Morgane lives in the "isle of Zeeland" and has learned her magic from "Zephir"(Zephyrus ?). Here, she has a daughter named "Morganette" and an adoptive son named "Passelion", who in turn have a son named "Morgan", described as an ancestor of the "Lady of the Lake".
An early Occitan language Arthurian romance
Morgan seems to appear, without being named other than introducing herself as the "Fairy of Gibel" (fada de Gibel, the mount Gibel(Etna) being a version of the Avalon motif as in later works), as the ruler of an underground kingdom who takes the protagonist knight "Jaufre" (Griflet) through a fountain to gift him her magic ring of protection.
The "infant" Lancelot is spirited away by a water fairy and raised in her paradise island country of Meidelant ("Land of Maidens"). Ulrich's unnamed fairy queen character might be also related to Geoffrey's Morgen, as well as to the early Breton oral tradition of Morgan's figure. (especially as her son there is named Mabuz, similar to the name of Modron's son "Mabon ap Modron".)
Arthur was taken to Avalon by two women to be healed there by its most beautiful elfen (aluen) queen named "Argante" or "Argane"; it is possible her name had been originally Margan(te) before it was changed in manuscript transmission.
Morgan refered as a great healer, in an episode in which the "Lady of Norison" restores the maddened hero "Yvain" to his senses with a magical potion provided by "Morgan the Wise" (Morgue la sage). Morgan the Wise is female in Chrétien's original, as well as in the Norse version "Ivens saga"(Chivalric sagas), but male in the English Ywain and Gawain. While the fairy Modron is mother of "Owain mab Urien" in the Welsh myth, and Morgan would be assigned this role in the later literature, this first continental association between "Yvain" (the romances' version of "Owain") and Morgan does not imply they are son and mother. The earliest mention of Morgan as Yvain's mother is found in Tyolet, an early 13th-century Breton lai.
Links "Guigemar" to the beautiful magical entity known only as the "fairy mistress", who was later identified by "Thomas Chestre"'s Sir Launfal(late 14th century) as "Dame Tryamour", the daughter of the King of the Celtic Otherworld who shares many characteristics with Chrétien's Morgan.
It was noted that even Chrétien' earliest mention of Morgan already shows an enmity between her and Queen "Guinevere", and although Morgan is represented only in a benign role by Chrétien, she resides in a mysterious place known as the "Vale Perilous"(Val sans retour) (which some later authors would say she has created as a place of punishment for unfaithful knights). She is later mentioned in the same poem when Arthur provides the wounded hero "Erec" with a healing balm made by his sister Morgan. This episode affirms her early role as a healer, in addition to being one of the first instances of Morgan presented as Arthur's sister; healing is Morgan's chief ability, but Chrétien also hints at her potential to harm.
Morgan refered as a great healer, in an episode in which the "Lady of Norison" restores the maddened hero "Yvain" to his senses with a magical potion provided by "Morgan the Wise" (Morgue la sage). Morgan the Wise is female in Chrétien's original, as well as in the Norse version "Ivens saga"(Chivalric sagas), but male in the English Ywain and Gawain. While the fairy Modron is mother of "Owain mab Urien" in the Welsh myth, and Morgan would be assigned this role in the later literature, this first continental association between "Yvain" (the romances' version of "Owain") and Morgan does not imply they are son and mother. The earliest mention of Morgan as Yvain's mother is found in Tyolet, an early 13th-century Breton lai.
Middle Welsh Arthurian tale
Either based on Chrétien's Erec and Enide or derived from a common source, mentions King Arthur's chief physician named "Morgan Tud". It is believed that this character, though considered a male in Gereint, may be derived from Morgan le Fay.(though this has been a matter of debate among Arthurian scholars since the 19th century, the epithet "Tud" may be a Welsh or Breton cognate or borrowing of Old Irish "tuath", "north, left", "sinister, wicked", also "fairy (fay), elf")
There, Morgan is called to treat "Edern ap Nudd", Knight of the Sparrowhawk, following the latter's defeat at the hands of his adversary Geraint, and is later called on by Arthur to treat Geraint himself.
German version of Erec and Enide.
Erec healed by Guinevere with a special plaster that was given to Arthur by the king's sister, the goddess (gotinne) "Feimurgân" (Fâmurgân, Fairy Murgan). In writing that, Hartmann might have not been influenced by Chrétien, but rather by an earlier oral tradition from the stories of Breton bards.
Hartmann also separated Arthur's sister (that is Feimurgân) from the fairy mistress of the lord of Avalon (Chrétien's Guigomar), who in his version is named "Marguel".
In the anonymous First Continuation of Chrétien's Perceval, the Story of the Grail(late 12th century), the fairy lover of its variant of Guigomar (here as "Guingamuer") is named "Brangepart", and the two have a son "Brangemuer" who became the king of an otherworldly isle "where no mortal lived".
Inverted Hartmann's "Fâmurgân"'s name to create that of Arthur's fairy ancestor named "Terdelaschoye de Feimurgân", the wife of "Mazadân", where the part "Terdelaschoye" comes from "Terre de la Joie", or "Land of Joy"; the text also mentions the mountain of Fâmorgân.
Speculatively, "Loomis" and "John Matthews" further identified other perceived avatars of Morgan as the "Besieged Lady" archetype in various early works associated with the "Castle of Maidens" motif, often appearing as (usually unnamed) wife of King "Lot" and mother of "Gawain". These characters include the: 1. "Queen of Meidenlant" in Heinrich von dem Türlin's Diu Crône (1220s); 2. the "lady of Castellum Puellarum" in De Ortu Waluuanii (12th or 13th century); 3. the nameless heroine of the Breton lai Doon (around the beginning of the 13th century); 4. "Lady Lufamore of Maydenlande" in Sir Perceval of Galles; 5. Loomis also linked her to the eponymous seductress evil queen from the folk song The Queen of Scotland, a 19th-century ballad "containing Arthurian material dating back to the year 1200."
** Michael Twomey's 'Morgan le Fay, Empress of the Wilderness': A Newly Recovered Arthurian Text in London, BL Royal 12.C.ix. From Arthurian Literature XXV
A recently discovered moralistic manuscript written in Anglo-Norman French is the only known instance of medieval Arthurian literature presented as being composed by Morgan herself. This late 12th-century(???) text is purportedly addressed to her court official and tells of the story of a knight called "Piers the Fierce"; it is likely that the author's motive was to draw a satirical moral from the downfall of the English knight "Piers Gaveston", 1st Earl of Cornwall. "Morgayne" is titled in it as "empress of the wilderness, queen of the damsels, lady of the isles, and governor of the waves of the great sea."
(If it indeed refers to Piers Gaveston, the Morgan letter would have been composed at some point after Gaveston’s death and copied onto folios 165v–166r of Royal 12.C.ix in the middle of the fourteenth century, going by the approximate date of the hand. Indeed, most commentary about Gaveston was written after his demise.)
Latin chronicle
A fictitious letter addressed by King Arthur to Henry II of England. Morgan (Morganis) is also mentioned. Notably, it is one of the first known texts that made her a sister to Arthur.
Arthur, gravely wounded, sought the help of his sister, who held the holy Isle of Avalon. Morgan, the everlasting nymph (Morganis nympha perennis), received her brother here, cured him, nourished him, revived him, and made him immortal. He was presented the Antipodes as his kingdom. The faerie folk being unarmed, the great war leader comes to their aid: he fears no battle.
Early-13th-century Old French romances
The most popular French text of medieval Arthurian literature, from surviving manuscript evidence, is the prose Lancelot-Grail, which was widely copied and circulated in French-speaking Europe from the time that the texts were first composed between c. 1220 and c. 1240 until printed editions became more accessible at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
** Prose Tristan influenced "Post-Vulgate Cycle". (c. 1230, c. 1235, c. 1240)
These works are believed to be at least influenced by the Cistercian religious order, which might explain the texts' demonisation of pagan motifs and increasingly anti-sex attitude. Integrating her fully into the Arthurian world, they also make Morgan's ways and deeds much more sinister and aggressive than she was presented by Geoffrey or Chrétien, as she undergoes a series of transformations and becomes a chaotic counter-heroine.
Beginning as an erratic ally of Arthur and a notorious temptress opposed to his wife and some of his knights (especially Lancelot) in the original stories of the Vulgate Cycle, Morgan's figure eventually often turns into an ambitious and depraved nemesis of King Arthur himself in the Post-Vulgate. Her common image is now a malicious and cruel sorceress, the source of many intrigues at the royal court of Arthur and elsewhere. In some of the later works, she is also subversively working to take over Arthur's throne through her mostly harmful magic and scheming, including manipulating men. Most of the time, Morgan's magic arts correspond with these of Merlin's and the Lady of the Lake's, featuring shapeshifting, illusion, and sleeping spells (Richard Kieckhefer connected it with Norse magic.)
Although she is usually depicted in medieval romances as beautiful and seductive, the medieval archetype of the loathly lady is used frequently, as Morgan can be in a contradictory fashion described as both beautiful and ugly even within the same narration.
Old French poem, later served as the original source for the Vulgate Cycle and consequently also the Post-Vulgate Cycle.
In this Morgan described as an illegitimate daughter of Lady Igraine with an initially unnamed Duke of Tintagel, after whose death she is adopted by King Neutres of Garlot.
Merlin is the first known work linking Morgan to Igraine and mentioning her learning sorcery after having been sent away for an education.
Nevertheless, in the Vulgate Cycle’s Prose Merlin, Morgan is not only literate, hence capable of drafting a letter, but she is schooled in astronomy. This is disclosed at the wedding of Uther and Ygraine, which is accompanied by the marriage of Ygraine’s unnamed elder daughter (from her previous husband, the Duke of Tintagel) to King Lot. Morgan is married to King Neutres de Garlot, whereupon.
On the advice of all his friends together, the king Neutres's put her to study letters at a religious house, where she learned so much and so well that she learned the seven liberal's arts, and she became wonderfully adept at an art called astronomy. And she worked hard all the time and knew a great deal about the healing arts, and because of her mastery of learning she was called Morgan the Fay.