The Lady of the Lake () is a title used by multiple characters in the Matter of Britain, the body of medieval literature and mythology associated with the legend of King Arthur. As either actually fairy or fairy-like yet human enchantresses, they play important roles in various stories, notably by providing Arthur with the sword Excalibur, eliminating the wizard Merlin, raising the knight Lancelot after the death of his father, and helping to take the dying Arthur to Avalon after his final battle.
Different Ladies of the Lake appear concurrently as separate characters in some versions of the legend since at least the Post-Vulgate Cycle and consequently the seminal Le Morte d'Arthur, with the latter describing them as members of a hierarchical group, while some texts also give this title to either Morgan or her sister."Morgan is also later said to be either a sister or the Lady herself. Descriptions of [the Lady] as a fairy queen are also similar to Geoffrey's depiction of Morgan on the Isle of Avalon to whom Arthur is taken to be healed after Camlan." As either single character or multiple ones, the figure of the Lady of the Lake often appears in various roles in the works of modern culture.
Names and origins
Today, the Lady of the Lake is best known as the character called either Nimue, or several scribal variantsChristopher Bruce (1999) The Arthurian Name Dictionary. In manuscript form, the letters u, n, v (written ıı) are all easily confounded, as is m with any of them plus the vowel i (all written ııı) or any two of them with im or mi (all written ıııı). of Ninianne and Viviane. French and foreign medieval authors and copyists since the early 13th century produced various forms of the latter two. Such forms include Nymenche (in addition to Ninianne / Ninienne) in the Vulgate Lancelot; Nim[i]ane and Ui[n/ui]ane (in addition to Viviane) in the Vulgate Merlin (Niniane in the version Livre d'Artus); Nin[i]eve / Nivene / Niviène / Nivienne and Vivienne in the Post-Vulgate Merlin (Niviana in the Spanish Baladro del Sage Merlin); and Nimiane / Niniame and Vivian / Vivien in Arthour and Merlin and Henry Lovelich's Merlin. Further variations of these include alternate spellings with the letter i written as y, such as in the cases of Nymanne (Nimanne as in Michel le Noir's Merlin) and Nynyane (Niniane). According to Lucy Paton, the most primitive French form of this name might have been Niniane. Danielle Quéruel of the Bibliothèque nationale de France explains:
The much later form Nimue, in which the letter e can be written as ë or é, was invented and popularized by Thomas Malory through his 15th-century English Le Morte d'Arthur and itself has several variations: her name appears as Nymue, Nyneue, Nyneve and Nynyue in William Caxton's print edition, but it had been rather Nynyve (used predominantly) and Nenyve in the Winchester Manuscript. Even though 'Nymue' (with the m) appears only in the Caxton text, the modernized and standardized 'Nimue' is now the most common form of the name of Malory's character, as Caxton's edition was the only version of Le Morte d'Arthur published until 1947.Holbrook, S. E. "Nymue, the Chief Lady of the Lake, in Malory's Le Morte D’arthur." Speculum 53.4 (1978): 761–777. JSTOR. NCSU University Libraries, Raleigh, NC. 15 March 2009. Nimue is also sometimes rendered by modern authors and artists as either Nimuë or Nimüe (the forms introduced in the 19th century through Tennyson's poem "Enid and Nimuë: The True and the False" and Burne-Jones' painting Merlin and Nimüe.)
Arthurian scholar A. O. H. Jarman, following suggestions first made in the 19th century, proposed that the name Viviane used in French Arthurian romances, was ultimately derived from (and a corruption of) the Welsh word chwyfleian (also spelled hwimleian and chwibleian in medieval Welsh sources), meaning "a wanderer of pallid countenance", which was originally applied as an epithet to the famous prototype of Merlin, a prophetic wild man figure Myrddin Wyllt in medieval Welsh poetry. Due to the relative obscurity of the word, it was misunderstood as "fair wanton maiden" and taken to be the name of Myrddin's female captor. Others have linked the name Nymenche with the Irish mythology's figure Niamh (an otherworldly woman from the legend of Tír na nÓg), and the name Niniane with the Welsh mythology's figure Rhiannon (another otherworldly woman of a Celtic myth), or, as a feminine form of the masculine name Ninian, with the likes of the 5th-century (male) saint Ninian and the river Ninian.
Further theories connect her to the Welsh lake fairies known as the Gwragedd Annwn (including a Lady of the Lake unrelated to the legend of Arthur), the Celtic water goddess Covianna (worshipped in the Romano-British times as Coventina), and the Irish goddess of the underworld Bé Finn (Bébinn, mother of the hero Fráech). It has been also noted how the North Caucasian goddess Satana (Satanaya) from the Nart sagas is both associated with water and helps the Scythian hero Batraz gain his magic sword. Possible literary prototypes include two characters from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini: Merlin's one-time wife Guendoloena and Merlin's half-sister Ganieda. Another possibility involves Diana, the Roman goddess of hunt and nature, a direct or spiritual descent from whom is actually explicitly attributed to Viviane within some French prose narratives, in which she is arguably even serving as Diana's avatar. It has also been speculated that the name Viviane may be a derivative form of Diana (French Diane).
The mythical Greek sea nymph Thetis, mother of the hero Achilles, similarly provides her son with magical weapons. Like the Lady of the Lake, Thetis is a water spirit who raises the greatest warrior of her time. Thetis' husband is named Peleus, while in some tales the Lady of the Lake has the knight Pelleas as her lover; Thetis also uses magic to make her son invulnerable, similar to how Lancelot receives a ring that protects him from evil magic. The Greek myth may therefore have inspired or influenced the Arthurian legend, especially since The Iliad involving Thetis was well known across the former Roman Empire and among the medieval writers dealing with Celtic myths and lore. The Roman fort Aballava, known to the post-Roman Britons as Avalana and today seen by some as the location of the historical Avalon, had been also curiously dedicated the Roman water goddess Dea Latis. Laurence Gardner interpreted the supposed (as attributed by medieval authors) Biblical origins of Lancelot's bloodline by noting the belief about Jesus' purported wife Mary Magdalene's later life in Gaul (today's France) and her death at Aquae Sextiae; he identified her descendant as the 6th-century Comtess of Avallon named Viviane del Acqs ("of the water"), whose three daughters (associated with the mothers of Lancelot, of Arthur, and of Gawain) would thus become known as the 'Ladies of the Lake'.
Chrétien de Troyes's French Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, the first known story featuring Lancelot as a prominent character, was also the first to mention his upbringing by a fairy in a lake. If it is accepted that the Franco-German Lanzelet by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven contains elements of a more primitive version of this tale than Chrétien's, the infant Lancelot was spirited away to a lake by a water fairy (merfeine in Old High German) known as the Lady of the Sea and then raised in her Land of Maidens (Meide lant). The fairy queen character and her paradise island in Lanzelet are reminiscent of Morgen (Morgan) of the Island of Avallon in Geoffrey's work. Furthermore, the fairy from Lanzelet has a son whose name Mabuz is an Anglo-Norman form of Mabon, son of Morgan's early Welsh counterpart Modron. According to Roger Sherman Loomis, "it seems almost certain" that Morgan and the Lady of the Lake have originally began as one character in the legend. In a related hypothesis, the early Myrddyn tradition could have merged with the fairy lover motif popular in medieval stories, and such role would later split into Merlin's two fairy mistresses, one of them 'good' and the other 'bad'.
Character evolution + Iconic motifs and their sources Select element or episode Earliest textA fairy lady has raised and magically aids Lancelot.Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (c. 1177)A water fairy queen abducts and raises the young Lancelot as a great knight.Lanzelet (after 1194) (translation from an unknown earlier source)Introducing the concept and name of the Lady of the Lake. After rescuing and raising Lancelot, she sends him to the court of King Arthur, and later aids him during his knight-errant adventures and in his romance with Guinevere.Vulgate Lancelot (c. 1215)The Lady of the Lake is retrospectively identified as the fairy Viviane (Niniane), introduced as a young teenage noble (with supernatural ancient origins) from Little Britain. She captures the wizard Merlin, using the very magic that he himself taught her out of his love for her, almost always unrequited.Vulgate Merlin Continuation (before 1235)Another Lady of the Lake gives the sword Excalibur to Arthur and is later killed by Balin. Viviane cruelly kills Merlin out of her hatred of him. Afterwards, she begins to aid Arthur and protects him from his wicked sister Morgan.Post-Vulgate Merlin Continuation (after 1235)Compiler Malory's redefinition of Viviane as Nimue (Nynyve), the "chief Lady of the Lake", who marries Pelleas and in the end accompanies Morgan in taking Arthur to Avalon.Le Morte d'Arthur (1485)Modern author Tennyson splitting the evil Vivien back from Malory's Nimue while keeping the latter as a separate character, a development that influenced modern portrayals."Vivien" (1859) in Idylls of the King
According to Maureen Fries, "more beneficent splittings-off from [Morgan's] original role emerge in the several Ladies of the Lake who later develop from her archetype: literally watered-down from Morgan (whose name indicates her origins in the greater body of water, the sea)." She wrote about this "fluid figure, always at least double and usually multiple in her manifestations":
Legend Lancelot's guardian
Following her early appearances in the 12th-century poems of Chrétien and Ulrich, the Lady of the Lake began being featured by this title in the French chivalric romance prose by the 13th century. As a fairy godmother-type foster mother of the hero Lancelot, Chrétien's version resembles an unnamed aquatic (sea) fairy queen in Ulrich's Lanzelet, where she is known only as "the lady" or "the queen". Ulrich uses the changeling part of the fairy abduction lore for the background of Lancelot as having been swapped with her son Mabuz. However, the figure of Lancelot's supernatural foster mother has no offspring of her own in any of the later texts. She does not appear in person in Chrétien's Lancelot that only mentions her briefly, referred to as just the "lady" by Lancelot, as an unnamed fairy "who had cared for [Lancelot] in his infancy" and continues to aid him remotely through her magic ring worn by him. Chrétien does not explictly link her to any body of water, but he does name Lancelot himself as "of the Lake" (du Lac).