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The mantle pleased the king greatly, though he made but brief reply as he accepted it from the hand of the messenger. At that perilous moment there came to him the damsel Nimue, who had so recently helped him in his dire need. "Sir, may I speak with you in private?" she asked the king. "What have you to say?" he replied, withdrawing from the throng. "It is this.
Morgan le Fay, Britomart, Vivien, Nimue, Merlin did not convince me; they were picturesque conventions whose decorative quality I felt, while so far as I was concerned they were garniture or apparatus. And yet the fruitful meadows through which I took my daily way were as forests to me; the grass-stems spired up to my fired fancy like great trees.
Probably these ladies are the fairies of popular Celtic tradition, taken up into the more elaborate poetry of Cymric literature and mediaeval romance. Mr Rhys traces Vivien, or Nimue, or Nyneue, back, through a series of palaeographic changes and errors, to Rhiannon, wife of Pwyll, a kind of lady of the lake he thinks, but the identification is not very satisfactory.
Very beautiful was Iseult, and the face of Luned sparkled like a moving gem; Morgaine and Enid and Viviane and shrewd Nimue were lovely, too; and the comeliness of Ettarde exalted the beholder like a proud music: these, going statelily about Arthur's hall, seemed Heaven's finest craftsmanship until the Queen came to her dais, as the moon among glowing stars: men then affirmed that God in making Guenevere had used both hands.
At this juncture there came among the spectators the damsel Nimue, she who had put Merlin under the stone. She knew, by the art that Merlin had taught her, how Morgan le Fay had plotted that Arthur should be slain that day, and she came to save his life if it lay in her power, for she loved the king as deeply as she hated Merlin.
Great was the marvel of all and the grief of the king on learning this, and much he besought Nimue to set Merlin free. But neither threats nor entreaties could move her obdurate heart, and at length she left the court in anger and defiance, vowing that she would never set free her old tormentor.
Then he and Nimue crossed the sea to the land of Benwick, the realm of King Ban, who had helped King Arthur so nobly in his wars, and here he saw young Lancelot, the son of King Ban and his wife Elaine, who was in the time to come to win world-wide fame. The queen lamented bitterly to Merlin the mortal war which King Claudas made upon her lord and his lands, and the ruin that she feared.
Sir, my name is Sir Meliot of Logurs, and this lady my cousin hight Nimue, and the knight that was in the other pavilion is my sworn brother, a passing good knight, and his name is Brian of the Isles, and he is full loath to do wrong, and full loath to fight with any man, but if he be sore sought on, so that for shame he may not leave it.
Sir Pelleas that loved the lady Ettard, and he had died for her love had not been one of the ladies of the lake, her name was Dame Nimue, and she wedded Sir Pelleas, and she saved him that he was never slain, and he was a full noble knight; and Sir Lamiel of Cardiff that was a great lover.
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