There is the Carmarthen cave, and there is a “Merlin’s Grave” four miles from Caerleon, both of which are shown as Merlin’s resting-place. But ancient bards told another strange tale of the fate of the “boy without a father,” whose blood had once been sought to sprinkle upon the cement for the bricks of Vortigern’s castle. They declared that the enchanter was sent out to sea in a vessel of glass, accompanied by nine bards, or prophets, and neither vessel nor crew was heard of again--which is not surprising. But Lady Charlotte Guest, in her notes to the _Mabinogion_, boldly transports the scene of Merlin’s doom to the Forest of Brécéliande, in Brittany, one of the favoured haunts of romance and the delight of the Trouvères. Vivien, to whose artifices he succumbed, is said to have been the daughter of one Vavasour, who married a niece of the Duchess of Burgundy, and received as dowry half the Forest of Briogne. It was when Merlin and Vivien were going through Brécéliande hand in hand that they found a bush of white thorn laden with flowers; there they rested, and the magician fell asleep. Then Vivien, having been taught the art of enchantment by Merlin, rose and made a ring nine times with her wimple round the bush; and when the wizard woke it seemed to him that he was enclosed in the strongest tower ever made--a tower without walls and without chains, which he alone had known the secret of making. From this enmeshment Merlin could never escape, and, plead as he would, the damsel would not release him. But it is written that she often regretted what she had done and could not undo, for she had thought the things he had taught her could not be true. This, however, seems to be an interpolation. Sir Gawain, travelling through the forest, saw a “kind of smoke,” and heard Merlin’s wailing voice addressing him out of the obscurity. The wonders of the Forest of Brécéliande were sufficiently believed in of old time that we find the chronicler Wace actually journeying to the spot to find the fairy fountain and Merlin’s tomb. Another variation of the story is that Merlin made himself a sepulchre in the Forest of Arvantes, that Vivien persuaded him to enter it, and then closed the lid in such manner that thereafter it could never be opened. Matthew Arnold, sparing and reticent in speech, as is his wont, describes Merlin’s fate with subdued force and subtle charm, putting the story in the mouth of desolate Iseult, who told her children of the “fairy-haunted land” away the other side of Brittany, beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea; and of “The deep forest glades of Broce-liand, Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps, Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps.”