Imagine the scene. Merlin, however you see him—as a grey-bearded but ageless man, or youth with more knowledge in his eyes that he should have—sits in a room somewhere in Wales. He is speaking to a second man, a cleric or possibly a monk, who writes as fast as he can, with a sharpened quill on parchment, by the light of a rush lamp or wavering candle, the words of the great prophet. Almost in what we now would call stream-of-consciousness Merlin, perhaps with eyes closed, watches events unfold on the screen of his eyelids, unfolds the things only he can see: the coming of the Great Dragon, the Antichrist; the crowning of Arthur, the greatest king of the western
