omance Arthur, but probably as a
result of the growing popularity of the saga Arthur he is added to many
Triads as a more remarkable person than the three whom they
describe.[435] Arthurian place-names over the Brythonic area are more
probably the result of the popularity of the saga than that of the later
romantic cycle, a parallel instance being found in the extent of
Ossianic place-names over the Goidelic area as a result of the spread of
the Fionn saga.

The character of the romance Arthur--the flower of knighthood and a
great warrior--and the blending of the historic war-leader Arthur with
the mythic Arthur, suggest that the latter was the ideal hero of certain
Brythonic groups, as Fionn and Cuchulainn of certain Goidelic groups. He
may have been the object of a cult as these heroes perhaps were, or he
may have been a god more and more idealised as a hero. If the earlier
form of his name was Artor, "a ploughman," but perhaps with a wider
significance, and having an equivalent in Artaius, a Gaulish god equated
with Mercury,[436] he may have been a god of agriculture who became a
war-god. But he was also regarded as a culture-hero, stealing a cauldron
and also swine from the gods' land, the last incident euhemerised into
the tale of an unsuccessful theft from March, son of Meirchion,[437]
while, like other culture-heroes, he is a bard. To his story was easily
fitted that of the wonder-child, who, having finally disappeared into
Elysium (later located at Glastonbury), would reappear one day, like
Fionn, as the Saviour of his people. The local Arthur finally attained a
fame far exceeding that of any Brythonic god or hero.

Merlin, or Myrddin, appears in the romances as a great magician who is
finally overcome by the Lady of the Lake, and is in Geoffrey son of a
mysterious invisible personage who visits a woman, and, finally taking
human shape, begets Merlin. As a son who never had a father he is chosen
as the foundation sacrifice for Vortigern's tower by his magicians, but
he confutes them and shows why the tower can never be built, namely,
because of the dragons in the pool beneath it. Then follow his
prophecies regarding the dragons and the future of the country, and the
story of his removal of the Giant's Dance, or Stonehenge, from Ireland
to its present site--an aetiological myth explaining the origin of the
great stone circle. His description of how the giants used the water
with which they washed the stones for