Morgan Le Fay - Origins

Origins

As her epithet "le Fay" (from the French la fée, meaning fairy) indicates, the figure of Morgan appears to have been originally a supernatural being. Her main name could be connected to the myths of Morgens, or Morgans or Mari-Morgans, which are Welsh and Breton water spirits. While later works make her specifically human, she retains her magical powers.

Inspiration for her character came from earlier Welsh mythology and literature; she has often been compared with the goddess Modron, a figure derived from the continental Dea Matrona and featured with some frequency in medieval Welsh literature. Modron appears in Welsh Triad 70, in which her children by Urien, Owain and Morfydd, are called the "Three Blessed Womb-Burdens of the Island of Britain," and a later folktale preserved in Peniarth MS 147 records the story behind these conceptions more fully.

Urien is Morgan le Fay's husband in the continental romances, while Owain mab Urien is the historical figure behind their son Ywain. Additionally, Modron is called "daughter of Avallach," a Welsh ancestor deity whose name can also be interpreted as a noun meaning "a place of apples". In fact, in the story of Owain and Morvydd's conception in Peniarth 147, Modron is called the "daughter of the king of Avallach." This is similar to Avalon, the "Isle of Apples" with which Morgan le Fay has been associated since her earliest appearances. Additional speculation sometimes connects Morgan with the Irish goddess Morrígan, though there are few similarities between the two beyond the spelling of their names.

Morgan first appears by name in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini, written about 1150. Purportedly an account of the wizard Merlin's later adventures, it elaborates some episodes from Geoffrey's more famous earlier work, Historia Regum Britanniae. In the Historia, Geoffrey explains that, after Arthur is seriously wounded at the Battle of Camlann, he is taken off to Avalon, the Isle of Apples, to be healed. In the Vita Merlini, he describes this island in more detail and names "Morgen" as the chief of nine magical sisters who dwell there. Morgan retains this role as Arthur's other-worldly healer in much later literature.

Before the cyclical Old French romances, appearances of Morgan are few. Chrétien de Troyes mentions her in his first romance Erec and Enide, completed around 1170; he says one guest at the titular characters' wedding, a certain Guigomar, Lord of the Isle of Avalon, is a friend of Morgan. She is later mentioned in the same poem when Arthur provides a wounded Erec with a healing balm made by his sister Morgan; this episode both affirms her early role as a healer and provides the first mention of Morgan as Arthur's sister. Chrétien again refers to Morgan as a great healer in his later romance Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, in an episode in which two ladies restore the maddened hero to his senses with a concoction provided by Morgan. However, while Modron is the mother of Owain in Welsh literature, and Morgan would be assigned this role in later French literature, this first continental association between Ywain and Morgan does not imply they are son and mother. The Arthurian tale, Geraint son of Erbin, based on Chretien de Troyes's Erec, mentions King Arthur's "chief physician", Morgan Tud; it is believed that this character, though considered a male in Gereint, may be derived from Morgan le Fay (though this has been a matter of debate among Arthurian scholars since the 19th century. The epithet Tud may be a Welsh or Breton cognate or borrowing of Old Irish tuath, "north, left, sinister, wicked", also "fairy, elf").