A few minutes later he was called away. I dismantled the model, and sat down to my new calculations. I had not told Tremorinus about them; he had more important things to think about, and in any case he would have laughed if I had told him I had learnt from a poet how to lift the standing stones.

It had happened this way.

One day about a week before this, as I walked by the water that guarded the town walls, I heard a man singing. The voice was old and wavering, and hoarse with overuse—the voice of a professional singer who has strained it above the noise of the crowd, and through singing with the winter cold in his throat. What caught my attention was neither the voice nor the tune, which could hardly be picked out, but the sound of my own name.

Merlin, Merlin, where art thou going?

He was sitting by the bridge, with a bowl for begging. I saw that he was blind, but the remains of his voice were true, and he made no gesture with his bowl as he heard me stop near him, but sat as one sits at a harp, head bent, listening to what the strings say, with fingers stirring as if they felt the notes. He had sung, I would judge, in kings’ halls.

Merlin, Merlin, where art thou going

So early in the day with thy black dog?

I have been searching for the egg,

The red egg of the sea-serpent,

Which lies by the shore in the hollow stone.

And I go to gather cresses in the meadow,

The green cress and the golden grasses,

The golden moss that gives sleep,

And the mistletoe high on the oak, the druids’ bough

That grows deep in the woods by the running water.

Merlin, Merlin, come back from the wood and the fountain!

Leave the oak and the golden grasses

Leave the cress in the water-meadow,

And the red egg of the sea-serpent

In the foam by the hollow stone!

Merlin, Merlin, leave thy seeking!

There is no diviner but God.