the cure of sickness or wounds,
probably points to some ritual for healing in connection with these
megaliths. Finally, we hear of his transformation of the lovelorn Uther
and of his confidant Ulfin, as well as of himself.[438] Here he appears
as little more than an ideal magician, possibly an old god, like the
Irish "god of Druidism," to whose legend had been attached a story of
supernatural conception. Professor Rh[^y]s regards him as a Celtic Zeus
or as the sun, because late legends tell of his disappearance in a glass
house into the sea. The glass house is the expanse of light travelling
with the sun (Merlin), while the Lady of the Lake who comes daily to
solace Merlin in his enchanted prison is a dawn-goddess. Stonehenge was
probably a temple of this Celtic Zeus "whose late legendary self we have
in Merlin."[439] Such late romantic episodes and an aetiological myth can
hardly be regarded as affording safe basis for these views, and their
mythological interpretation is more than doubtful. The sun is never
prisoner of the dawn as Merlin is of Viviane. Merlin and his glass house
disappear for ever, but the sun reappears every morning. Even the most
poetic mythology must conform in some degree to actual phenomena, but
this cannot be said of the systems of mythological interpretation. If
Merlin belongs to the pagan period at all, he was probably an ideal
magician or god of magicians, prominent, perhaps, in the Arthur saga as
in the later romances, and credited with a mysterious origin and an
equally mysterious ending, the latter described in many different ways.

The boastful Kei of the romances appears already in _Kulhwych_, while in
Geoffrey he is Arthur's seneschal.[440] Nobler traits are his in later
Welsh poetry; he is a mighty warrior, fighting even against a hundred,
though his powers as a toper are also great. Here, too, his death is
lamented.[441] He may thus have been a god of war, and his battle-fury
may be poetically described in a curious passage referring to him in
_Kulhwych_: "His breath lasted nine days and nine nights under water. He
could remain without sleep for the same period. No physician could heal
a wound inflicted by his sword. When he pleased he could make himself as
tall as the tallest tree in the wood. And when it rained hardest,
whatever he carried remained dry above and below his hand to the
distance of a handbreadth, so great was his natural heat. When it was
coldest he was as glowing fuel