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22/11/2014

Merlin's magic words were actually Mark's

19 Comments

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Picture
Colin Morgan as Merlin (or is it Moses?) performing spectacular lightning spells and even more spectacular linguistic feats. Click on the still to take you to YouTube.

Sorry to have to disabuse all you Colin Morgan fans, but Merlin needed a little help with his magic spells ... from a 21st-century linguist!

A few weeks ago I posted something on medieval dragons, with an intro on Colin Morgan's Merlin... well I have to be creative, you know, in my attempts to incentivise my blessed readers.
As it happened, it triggered a little bit of Twitter excitement (yes, of course the Medieval Monk is on Twitter), which led to me finding out who was behind Merlin's magic spells, linguistically speaking.
And here he is ... Dr Mark Faulkner!
I wanted to know how this blessed one got to put words into Merlin's mouth (not a hint of jealousy, here), but also what he gets up to in his real job.
So enjoy the interview below.
By the way, it's really not fair! No one ever asks me to perform any medieval magic. I know I've read a few Anglo-Saxon laws and penitentials in my time. But it would've been nice to have done a bit of magic, and meet Merlin... well, Colin Morgan. OK, I'm a Colin Morgan fan. I admit it! Get over it!
Interview
MM: How did you come to be involved as a language consultant for BBC’s Merlin?
Mark: One of my friends on my MA course (a late medievalist) had worked on the first series of Big Brother, and still retained a number of media contacts. She was asked if she could provide Old English translations for Merlin, and referred this inquiry on to me. It went from there.
MM: Did the producer/writers say what it was they were aiming for in the programme, particularly with Merlin’s link to the ‘old ways’ and the ancient language of magic?  Did they want to give an air of authenticity, perhaps?
Mark: There was never any explicit guidance about the affect the producer and writers were seeking. I was simply sent the phrases from the script that the script writers had decided should be in Old English.
That said, I learned a certain amount about the programme makers’ aims from the feedback I received about particular translations.
For example, several of the spells that I was asked to translate used words that could essentially be transliterated into Old English, for example, by supplying eorð for ‘earth’. This technique did not find favour, because the Old English did not sound appropriately alien, old or strange.
MM: There were lots of magic spells cast by Merlin.  Often, it sounded like he was speaking something akin to Old English: lots of imperatives concerning fire, if my memory serves me right.  Can you enlighten us?
Mark: Most of the spells were indeed imperatives to do with fire. Their sounding ‘something akin to Old English’ is probably a consequence of the procedure adopted for relaying the spells to the actors.
This involved me transliterating the Old English phonetically, not into IPA [International Phonetic Alphabet] but into a phonetic spelling based on RP [Received Pronunciation], this phonetic spelling being read into a dictaphone by my contact on the production team, and this recording eventually making its way to the actors in rehearsal.
MM: Similarly, when Merlin called out to the dragon, he also used an ‘ancient’ tongue, appearing to command the dragon with a Latinized word of sorts, not quite draco, but something similar, perhaps dracon. Do you remember anything about this? 
Mark: I don’t remember this particular instance, but Latin draco was borrowed into Old English (and quite widely used there, both in prose and poetry, for example, in Beowulf at line 2085) as a weak masculine noun, with dracan as its oblique form.
MM: I guess wyrm wouldn’t have cut it?
Mark: Again, I can’t recollect the precise instance, but given the concern with otherness, perhaps wyrm (> WORM) would have been judged bathetic.
MM: What languages have you engaged with in your academic research?
Mark: I routinely work with texts in Old and Middle English, Old French and Latin. In comparativist work, I also touch on other Germanic languages like Gothic, Old Saxon, and Old Norse.
MM: Have you been/are you involved in any other ‘non-academic’ ventures other than Merlin?
Mark: I’ve been involved with several public engagement projects, including (as part of the Mapping Medieval Chester project) reading a Latin encomium to the city on its shopper-filled High Street, and more recently a couple of events at the University of Sheffield designed to bring medieval manuscripts and research archives to a wider public.
MM: More broadly, is it important for you to take your research to a wider than academic audience?
Mark: Medieval texts require a particularly high knowledge threshold to appreciate them: a reader needs to be able to read what is effectively a foreign language, and to have an understanding of a culture very different from our own.
This means it’s more difficult to communicate research about medieval texts, than research about, say, films from the 1960s.
For this reason, I do worry about whether the impact and public engagement agenda will lead to more abstruse kinds of research being disadvantaged because they are not as easily communicable to the public.
That said, I think medievalists do have a role as public intellectuals. For me, the compelling reason to teach and research the Middle Ages is that, by virtue of what Chris Jones has called its ‘strange likeness’, they are an unparalleled mirror for the present.
The first step to allowing it to claim this place will be to unpick the Renaissance rhetoric of the barbarous Middle Ages which underpins, for example, David Cameron’s recent description of Islamic State as ‘literally medieval’.
MM: What is your main area of academic research?
Mark: I work on the twelfth century. This is a period of dramatic change in both literature and language. In linguistic terms, it is the period that Old English ends and Middle English begins.
In literary histories, it has until recently been described as a vacuum, a period in which no original texts were produced, and which therefore serves to insulate the Old English tradition from the rest of English literary history.
In crude terms, my work is thus about explaining how we got from Beowulf to Chaucer. The main output of this work will be a book, hopefully out in 2017.
I’m simultaneously working on a number of articles looking at how far processes of linguistic change, of interest to scholars working on contemporary languages, can be traced in medieval texts.
The one I’m working on at the moment concerns language attrition (how speakers who relocate to a new country gradually lose mastery of their native tongue), using the twelfth-century historian Orderic Vitalis, who moved from England to Normandy aged ten, as a case study.
I’m also preparing a study of destandardisation in twelfth-century English.










Picture
Dr Mark Faulkner, The University of Sheffield. Update: now Trinity College, Dublin.






























My technique didn't
always find favour, because the Old English didn't always sound appropriately
alien, old or strange.


















Picture
Young Merlin does his first bit of dragon calling. The person posting this on YouTube (click the still) reckoned Morgan looked 'really, really stupid'. Well, no one ever said shouting out Old English to an imaginary dragon was cool, did they!












I've been involved
with several public engagement projects, including reading a
Latin encomium
on the shopper-filled
High Street of
Chester!









I worry that the
more abstruse kinds of research, like medieval literature, will become disadvantaged because they are not easily communicable to
the public.

Share

19 Comments
HD
22/11/2014 12:05:17 pm

These are great article and interview! I've always been interested by Ancient Greek and Medieval English. Thank you!
PS: I'm also a Colin Morgan fan!

Reply
Nithushan
19/2/2015 07:05:01 pm

Merlin hod you trien magces

Reply
Kung link
4/3/2016 08:22:46 am

I agree with you. Have you met Colin Morgan ?

Reply
The Anglo-Saxon Monk
4/3/2016 09:39:42 am

Alas, I have not had such a pleasure! Is this something you could arrange by any chance? I could maybe sneak out of my monastery for the day. More seriously, thank you for reading and leaving your comment.

Chris *The Anglo-Saxon Monk
22/11/2014 12:22:32 pm

Ah, thank you @HD for your kind comments. Looking forward to more Colin Morgan on Humans!

Reply
sandra
22/11/2014 03:29:14 pm

es bueno saber que todos esos raros hechizos significaban algo generalmente, muy bueno.

Reply
Chris *The Anglo-Saxon Monk
22/11/2014 05:19:49 pm

Gracias, Sandra, for your comment. Yes, it is a relief to know that all the spells aren't complete nonsense. However, listening again to the one where Merlin first commands the dragon, I have to say Merlin's Old English is a bit dodgy. I'm more use to reading the language than hearing it, myself, so I find it difficult to catch everything he says. Still, it's a great moment where his language befits his taming of the dragon.

Reply
Vivien
23/11/2014 01:20:54 am

Colin Morgan said once in an interview that the dragon tongue in Merlin is written in Old German. I've tried to figure it out but still yet done it. Anyway, thank you for the interview with Dr. Mark Faulkner. It's a precious and rare information that can give me a glimpse of Merlin's spoken language. I'm a Colin Morgan fan, too.

Chris *The Anglo-Saxon Monk
23/11/2014 04:22:22 am

Thanks, Vivien. You have intrigued me. Old English is a Germanic language. So there will be overlaps. My understanding is that Mark provided the language for the spells. I wonder if someone else provided the dragon tongue (the bits where Merlin commands yhe dragon)? I'm going to have to chase this up. Thanks again.

Reply
mark link
20/3/2022 11:04:14 am

ik denk dat het niet alleen Angelo Saxon is, maar ook nog een paar andere runnen talen die gebruikt zijn omdat ik zelf graag runnen gebruik.

Reply
Christopher Monk link
20/4/2022 07:55:31 am

Thanks for leaving your comment. It's curious. I never found out if other languages were used.

Ivana
3/1/2015 10:29:35 am

Thank you for this piece of information :-), wish i had it last year when i was working on my thesis - Old English Spells in BBC's Merlin - if anyone's interested, you can check it out here ;-): https://www.academia.edu/9992264/Old_English_Spells_in_BBCs_Merlin_

Reply
Chris *The Anglo-Saxon Monk
3/1/2015 01:02:45 pm

Thank you so much for the link to your Master's thesis. I've taken a quick look at it and I must say it has to be one of the coolest thesis I've seen! It also answers the question about the difference in language between Merlin's general magic spells and his commanding of the dragon.

I wonder if you would like to be interviewed about your thesis? If so send me a reply via the Contact Me form:http://anglo-saxon-monk.weebly.com/contact-me.html

Thanks again

Reply
Kay link
11/3/2016 01:29:52 am

Very interesting!

Reply
The Anglo-Saxon Monk
12/3/2016 08:49:13 am

Thank you, Kay. May you be blessed!

Reply
Morgana Pendragon link
12/3/2016 09:30:28 pm

Merry Meet! An interesting interview. I personally prefer the feel of the energy of spoken Old English for my Sexual Sorcery Spells Of Enchantment. I actually recorded a spell using both modern and then Old English and without a doubt Old English felt so much more powerful. We must not underestimate the magical power that a language gains with use. Blessed Be, Morgana xxx

Reply
The Anglo-Saxon Monk
13/3/2016 09:38:12 am

Now I can say genuinely that my blog is cool -- or, rather, cól! Thank you, Morgana, for your interesting observation, which I have to agree with. There is a certain earthly/earthy rhythm to Old English that generates that magic.

Reply
HORLAR
12/9/2017 09:25:02 pm

merlin must have season 6 because the great dragon told merlin that arthur will raise again

Reply
The Anglo-Saxon Monk
13/9/2017 11:12:30 am

Let's hope so.

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    Welcome, blessed readers! This is the blog of the Medieval Monk, the alter ego of Dr Christopher Monk.

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