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So<\/span>mewhere near the town of Longtown on the banks of the river Esk, in one of the last parcels of land to be disputed between Scotland and England before the Union of Crowns of 1603, is the supposed site of the battle of Arthuret. Nothing to do with King Arthur<\/a> (in spite of its name), the legendary battle is traditionally dated to AD 573, when local British king Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio was killed by a rival in a disastrous defeat. Gwenddoleu\u2019s bard, Myrddin, was driven mad by the sight of the slaughter and fled into a nearby forest, where he lived as a wild man among the beasts. Yet by immersing himself in nature, Myrddin received the gift of prophecy. Today, he is better known by his anglicised name: Merlin, a composite figure constructed in the 12th\u00a0century by Geoffrey of Monmouth<\/a> from Myrddin and another figure of Welsh legend named Ambrosius.<\/span><\/p>\n Read more about British myths and legends<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> At Arthuret, where Welsh-speaking forces clashed in a place later disputed between England and Scotland, the national identities that would one day make up Great Britain literally and symbolically converge. The battle gave birth to a truly British figure: Merlin was claimed equally in the Middle Ages by England, Wales, Scotland and Brittany. The prophet and enchanter would go on to become a repository for countless fantasies about magic and occult knowledge. In his incarnation as the wild man of the woods, Merlin even prefigures the Green Man, who often symbolises British folklore. <\/span><\/p>\n With its intensely local character, folklore may seem a strange place to look for \u201cBritishness\u201d \u2013 a sense of common national identity shared by all the peoples of Great Britain \u2013 but Merlin is an example of a character who is both genuinely and distinctively British.<\/span><\/p>\n Britain\u2019s origin myth<\/strong><\/p>\n In the fifth century, Britain, which had been united under the Romans (with the exception of the Scottish Highlands), broke into a series of small kingdoms. This process of dissolution was accelerated by Germanic settlers, who brought a new culture and language to what became England. In the Anglo-Saxon<\/a> period, the concept of Britain was all but forgotten beyond Welsh lands, only to return in the wake of an unlikely saviour: William the Conqueror<\/a>. The Duke of Normandy relied on the help of a number of Breton knights for his conquest, many of whom settled in Welsh-speaking areas and became captivated by the idea of a return of British glory.<\/span><\/p>\n A likely descendant of a Breton conqueror, a man named Geoffrey of Monmouth, would become the father of British folklore. In his <\/span>12th-century The History of the Kings of Britain<\/em>, he began fabricating a splendid origin myth for Britain, claiming that it had been founded by none other than a Trojan prince named Brutus, fleeing Troy like Aeneas, the founder of Rome in Virgil\u2019s Aeneid.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Geoffrey\u2019s \u201chistory\u201d was anything but, peopled with such outlandish characters as King Bladud, founder of Bath, who worked necromancy to give himself the power of flight. Geoffrey\u2019s most lasting confabulations were the figures of Arthur and Merlin, both composite constructions that he put together, Frankenstein-like, from a mixture of history, myth and fiction. Exactly how he did this has baffled scholars ever since.<\/span><\/p>\n Even in his own lifetime, Geoffrey\u2019s writings fell under the suspicion of other historians, and by the 17th century his works had long been jettisoned from the historical canon. His influence on folklore remained, however, travelling outwards like ripples in a pond. The two great wicker giants who appear in the Lord Mayor of London\u2019s Show every year are a case in point: they are Gog and Magog, giants whom Brutus found living on the island of Britain. <\/span><\/p>\n These giants were, on one level, just British versions of the titans of Greek mythology. Yet Geoffrey was also faithful to a much older Anglo-Saxon tradition that interpreted Britain\u2019s ancient monuments as enta geweorc, \u201cthe work of giants\u201d. According to Geoffrey, the giants built Stonehenge in Ireland before Merlin transported it by magic to Salisbury Plain. This is one instance where the truth turned out to be almost as strange as the fables, as we now know that one version of Stonehenge was indeed transported from a distant land in the prehistoric west \u2013 not from Ireland, but Wales\u2019s Preseli Hills.<\/span><\/p>\n Invoking folklore<\/strong><\/p>\n Many British rulers have drawn on the unifying power of folklore at times of crisis and change. Henry Tudor<\/a>, whose claim to the throne was somewhat slender, promoted his Welsh ancestry as a supposed descendant of King Arthur. He displayed the red dragon of Wales on his personal standard and named his heir Arthur. Henry VIII<\/a> oversaw the painting of the replica of the round table in Winchester, while the magician John Dee encouraged Elizabeth I<\/a> to claim the \u201cNew World\u201d as it had already been conquered by her legendary ancestor, Arthur.<\/span><\/p>\n