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Merlin’s Island

Essays on Britain in the Dark Ages

Methuen & Co. Ltd, London 1948

It is difficult for those who were not around in 1948 to imagine Lethbridge’s world. He lived a privileged existence and his place in a cosy profession would, for most, have been suffice, but for him, the proverbial boat was there to be rocked. Merlin’s Island is a book written by a man who cared little for the rules laid down by his profession. He was a maverick who detested the orthodoxy and dogma that surrounded him.

In this, his first major publication, Lethbridge sets out his stall for his future writing career by challenging the views of his peers. He seized upon a remark made by the Cambridge medievalist Dr. W.M. Palmer, “Who is this young man who has just written a book? No man ought to write a book until he has studied a subject for at least twenty years”. To Lethbridge this was like a ‘red rag to a bull’. For he believed that lengthy studies created ‘information overload’ which resulted in a mass of detail and triviality, which often clouded and silted the mind.

He was a protagonist of what he called ‘the common-sense’ attitude to archaeology. He calls his book a collection of ‘damnable-heresies’, that blow like a breath of fresh air through a room musty with the smell of textbooks and museum exhibits!

Lethbridge was astutely aware of his place in history. In a changing world, on the cusp of the mechanical age, he realised that his adventuring and fieldwork had been carried out during a unique epoch. He feared that although future generations would have superior techniques for archaeological analysis and research, they would not be conversant with what he considered to be the last stages in the development of civilisation. A development, which had been growing steadily since the arrival of the earliest cultivators and boat-builders, was now on the verge of accelerating beyond comprehension. That is why he believed that his own ‘common-sense’ approach to his vocation was as, if not more important, than the technician’s or the academic’s view. It was this philosophy that fired him to kick against the dogma that prevailed amongst his peers and in his profession.

Merlin’s Island was published in the same year as Robert Graves’ The White Goddess. In these post-war years of caution, it was Lethbridge’s publication that was considered the most favourable in the archaeological world. His level-headed, although at times unconventional and challenging approach, was perceived as the least radical of the two works.

Prior to the publication of Merlin’s Island, Lethbridge was well known in the world of archaeology through his stimulating articles and lectures. His first published work was therefore long awaited by his peers and the media. The work contains six connected essays dealing with various aspects of Britain in the Dark Ages. They are all likeable for their originality and coherency. They are written freshly with a wealth of discursive anecdote and with many a tilt at orthodox scholarship.

Lethbridge provides a brilliant sketch of the change from Roman Britain to Saxon England, stressing the devastating results of freeing the slaves as a consequence of the great Pict War of 367AD. He attempts to illuminate the exaggerated chapter of the Anglo-Saxon and Viking invaders in Dark Age Britain. He dismisses the British contribution to English history, as would most of us, conscious of our Romano-British ancestry. Britain is as much the island of Merlin, he rightly argues, as it is the land of the barbarian Angles.

He urges fresh researches of the Western and Atlantic aspects of early British history in the Dark Ages, suggesting that the Celtic inhabitants of Western Britain, Ireland and Scotland had, in pre-Viking and perhaps even in Roman times, not only travelled to Iceland but also to Greenland and had possibly, discovered America. This was an idea that had been previously aired eleven years earlier in the self-published work Umiak. These ‘possibilities’ he supports with a comparative analysis of Eskimo archaeology. He suggests that it was the Celtic influence on the Vikings that led them to Iceland and to Greenland and that the Welsh tales of the discovery of America are not myths, but legends containing historical truths.

Lethbridge reminds us that the scapular and the plaid are symbols of Roman culture in an area outside Roman occupation. He also observes relics of the Dark Ages, surviving in the thatched East Anglian barns and cottages that are still ornamented with carved, wooden finials or heads of dragons. These designs are perpetuated on the wooden, Norwegian ‘Stave Churches’ and Lethbridge suggests that our turned-up thatch really is a neck; the neck of the Saxon or Viking dragon, there to deter evil spirits from sitting on the roof.

Possibly inspired by observing Kerry men in 1929, carrying their upturned curragh on their heads, Lethbridge traces the history of boats in North West Europe, back to the primitive coracle. Here he suggests that they are in fact prototypes of boat and house types, deriving all from the primitive skin tent, including the possibility that the longhouse was derived from an upturned boat. Here the mind is set racing at these possibilities. Is the long barrow a form derived from the upturned boat? Its resemblance to a curragh is certainly very striking. In fact, the Balkan long barrows are even called ‘navetas’ locally and may be preserving an awareness of this affinity. Certain Menorcan tombs were also named &lsquo navetas’ by J.Ramis, who may also have been aware of this similarity. Once the stone had been cast into the pool of possibilities, his work was complete. It is now up to us, the readers, to ponder upon what will emerge.

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