Mid-morning. Everyone had breakfast to each
their own. The boys are squirting each other with water canisters on the balcony
and you completed thirty minutes of exercises. No talk of going to Tarpon
Springs yet so perhaps not today. Linda is coming over around three for a
visit. Everyone else is getting dressed. You had a shower before the rush for
preparing to meet the public day.
0900
hours. We are settling into a routine. Tomorrow it will be back in the
eighties. Kim, Paul and the boys are looking forward to use of the pool. It is
heated but not so much for as cool as it has been. Young life brings so much
commotion with it. They are fun with lots of energy, commotion or not.
You took the recommended route to Tarpon Springs (Rt. 19), walked about after a run-by of the Greek sponge area docks and small shops and restaurants. Kim chose Dimitri’s on the Water on Dodecanese Boulevard owned by The Salivaras Family. After an excellent Greek lunch experience another walk-about by Kim, Paul and the boys. You took Rt. 19-A to Clearwater Beach and Gulf Boulevard on home to Madeira Beach – a thirty-mile adventure at fifty-three point four miles per gallon; the highest you ever recorded for that many miles distant. Even Carol was excited to see such a high mark driving the recommended speed limit almost the whole way. – Amorella. Paul and the boys are asleep, Kim is reading Lisa Scottoline’s Don’t Go and Carol is buying a newspaper while awaiting a call from Linda. The Gulf is very placid today. Four old men are sitting in chairs fishing, a few women, young and old are in bathing suits, that’s about it outside the Meibers’ condo you having been renting at least once a year for some ten or eleven years. - Amorella
You took the recommended way to Tarpon
Springs (Rt. 19), walked about after a run-by of the Greek sponge area docks
and small shops and restaurants. Kim chose Dimitri’s on the Water on Dodecanese
Boulevard owned by The Salivaras Family. After an excellent Greek lunch
experience another walk-about by Kim, Paul and the boys. You took Rt. 19-A to
Clearwater Beach and Gulf Boulevard on home to Madeira Beach – a thirty-mile
adventure at fifty-three point four miles per gallon; the highest you ever
recorded for that many miles distant. Even Carol was excited to see such a high
mark driving the recommended speed limit almost the whole way. – Amorella. Paul
and the boys are asleep, Kim is reading Lisa Scottoline’s Don’t Go and
Carol is buying a newspaper while awaiting a call from Linda. The Gulf is very
placid today. Four old men are sitting in chairs fishing, a few women, young
and old are in bathing suits, that’s about it outside the Meibers’ condo you
having been renting at least once a year for some ten or eleven years. –
Amorella
** **
Merlin
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Merlin is a legendary figure best known as the wizard featured in
Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum
Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous
historical and legendary figures. Geoffrey combined existing stories of Myrddin
Wylit (Merlinus Caledonensis), a North Brythonic prophet and madman with no
connection to King Arthur, with tales of the Romano-British war leader
Ambrosius Aurelianus to form the composite figure he called Merlin Ambrosius
(Welsh: Myrddin Emrys). He is allegedly buried in the Broceliande forest,
near Paimpont in Brittany.
Geoffrey's rendering of the
character was immediately popular, especially in Wales. Later writers expanded
the account to produce a fuller image of the wizard. Merlin's traditional
biography casts him as a cambion: born of a mortal woman, sired by an incubus,
the non-human from whom he inherits his supernatural powers and abilities. The
name of Merlin's mother is not usually stated but is given as Adhan in the
oldest version of the Prose Brut. Merlin matures to an ascendant sage-hood and
engineers the birth of Arthur through magic and intrigue. Later authors have
Merlin serve as the king's advisor until he is bewitched and imprisoned by the
Lady of the Lake.
Name and
etymology
The
name "Merlin" derives from the Welsh Myrddin, the name of the bard Myrddin Wylit, one of the chief
sources for the later legendary figure. Geoffrey of Monmouth Latinised the name
to Merlinus in his works. The medievalist Gaston Paris suggests that
Geoffrey chose the form Merlinus rather than the regular Merdinus
to avoid a resemblance to the Anglo-Norman word merde (from Latin merda),
for faeces.
Clas
Myrddin, or Merlin's Enclosure, is an early name for Great Britain
stated in the Third Series of Welsh Triads.
The
Celticist A. O. H. Jarman suggests the Welsh name Myrddin was derived
from the toponym Caerfyrddin, the Welsh name for the town known in
English as Carmarthen. This contrasts with the popular but false folk etymology
that the town was named for the bard. The name Carmarthen derives from the
town's previous Roman name, Moridunum, itself derived from Celtic Brittonic *moridunon,
"sea fortress.”
Geoffrey's
sources
Geoffrey's
composite Merlin is based primarily on Myrddin Wylit, also called Merlinus
Caledonensis, and Aurelius Ambrosius, a mostly fictionalised version of the
historical war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus. The former had nothing to do with
Arthur: in British poetry he was a bard driven mad after witnessing the horrors
of war, who fled civilization to become a wild man of the wood in the 6th
century.[10] Geoffrey had this individual in mind when he wrote his earliest
surviving work, the Prophetiae Merlini
(Prophecies of Merlin), which he claimed were the actual words of the
legendary madman.
Geoffrey's
Prophetiae do not reveal much about Merlin's background. When he included
the prophet in his next work, Historia Regum Britanniae, he supplemented
the characterisation by attributing to him stories about Aurelius Ambrosius,
taken from Nennius’ Historia Brittonum Nennius.
According to Nennius, Ambrosius was discovered when the British king Vortigern was
trying to erect a tower. The tower always collapsed before completion, and his
wise men told him the only solution was to sprinkle the foundation with the
blood of a child born without a father. Ambrosius was rumoured to be such a
child, but when brought before the king, he revealed the real reason for the
tower's collapse: below the foundation was a lake containing two dragons who
fought a battle representing the struggle between the Saxons and the Britons,
which struggle suggested that the tower would never stand under the leadership
of Vortigern, but only under that of Ambrosius. (This is why Ambrosius is
'given' the kingdom, or the 'tower' -- he tells Vortigern to go elsewhere and
says 'I will stay here'. The tower is metaphorically the kingdom, which is the
notional ability to beat the Saxons.) Geoffrey retells this story in Historia
Regum Britanniæ with some embellishments, and gives the fatherless child
the name of the prophetic bard, Merlin. He keeps this new figure separate from
Aurelius Ambrosius and, with regard to his changing of the original Nennian
character, he states that Ambrosius was also called 'Merlin', that is,
'Ambrosius Merlinus'. He goes on to add new episodes that tie Merlin into the
story of King Arthur and his predecessors, such as the bringing of the stones
for Stonehenge from Preseli Hills in south-west Wales and Ireland.
Geoffrey dealt with Merlin again in his third work,Vita Merlini. He based the Vita
on stories of the original 6th-century Myrddin.
Though
set long after his time frame for the life of "Merlin Ambrosius", he
tries to assert the characters are the same with references to King Arthur and
his death as told in the Historia Regum Britanniae.
Merlin
Ambrosius, or Myrddin Emrys
Geoffrey's
account of Merlin Ambrosius' early life in the Historia Regum Britanniae
is based on the story of Ambrosius in the Historia Brittonum. He adds
his own embellishments to the tale, which he sets in Carmarthen, Wales (Welsh:
Caerfyrddin). While Nennius' Ambrosius eventually reveals himself to be the son
of a Roman consul, Geoffrey's Merlin is begotten on a king's daughter by an incubus.
The story of Vortigern's tower is essentially the same; the underground
dragons, one white and one red, represent the Saxons and the British, and their
final battle is a portent of things to come.
At this point Geoffrey inserts a
long section of Merlin's prophecies, taken from his earlier Prophetiae
Merlini. He tells only two further tales of the character. In the first,
Merlin creates Stonehenge as a burial place for Aurelius Ambrosius. In the
second, Merlin's magic enables Uther Pendragon to enter into Tinagel in
disguise and father his son Arthur with his enemy's wife, Igraine. These
episodes appear in many later adaptations of Geoffrey's account. As Lewis
Thorpe notes, Merlin disappears from the narrative after this; he does not
tutor and advise Arthur as in later versions.
Selected and edited from
Wikipedia – Merlin
** **
2045
hours. Looking back to 29 October Amorella wrote:
** **
You
have been doing some research in the last hour and found, according to
Gardner’s The Illustrated Bloodline of the
Holy Grail Arthur was sixteen in A.D. 575 that would make his birth in 559
and he lived until 603. Pendragon and Merlyn were both titles.
** **
2109
hours. I am going to go with Merlyn’s birth in the 6th century and
die sometime in the early 7th century.
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