Fata Morgana

This is an enchantress we know from Arthurian legend as Morgan le Fay (the Fairy). She is first mentioned in our literature in a Latin Life of Merlin the magician by the chronicler Geoffry of Monmouth (ca 1150), principal contributor of the legends of King Arthur to what became known as the Matter of Britain.

However, Morgan le Fay, sister of The Once and Future King, goes back much farther. She has some obscure connections with Celtic goddesses not of magic but of war and the sea. Her connection with fairy enchantments, much feared in the Middle Ages, gradually changed Morgan le Fay from a beautiful woman into a personification of malevolent witchcraft.

The whole story is in L.A. Paton's Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance (1903), but the undying popularity of the Arthurian legends has guaranteed that as much has been written about her in the rest of this century as in any other century.

She and Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot and Merlin and the rest have been featured in a novel by T.H. White, a musical that added the name Camelot to the common vocabulary, a novel by Walker Percy, a Walt Disney film or two, and much more.

While Merlin, from whom she was said to have learned her magic, remained a good magician, Morgan le Fay became a kind of femme fatale and an evil magician.