Merlin's grave
The remainder of two Allées couvertes in the forest of Paimpont in the Ille-et-Vilaine department in Brittany in France is referred to as Merlin's grave ( French Le tombeau de Merlin ) .
description
The megalithic complex is located in the north of the Paimpont forest in the Val de la Marette near the hamlet of Le Buisson.
The two standing and one flat plate come from two Allées couvertes, the "Tombeau de Merlin" and the "Tombeau de Viviane", the two systems were repeatedly disrupted. In 1892 some of the stone blocks were destroyed by grave robbers in search of hypothetical treasure. There is still a photo from 1900 on which the remains of the two systems can still be seen before they were put together in their present form before 1920.
Discovery story
The French poet Auguste Creuzé de Lesser (1771-1839) published an epic verse with 50,000 verses under the title La Table ronde (the round table ) in 1811 . Like some of his poetic models from past centuries, he refers to the figure of Merlin, who was buried in the legendary Brocéliande forest in Brittany. The epic had a huge impact in France. In 1820 the judge and scholar JCD Poignant wrote an article in the Brochure des Antiquités Historiques in which he identified the forest of Brocéliande with the forest of Paimpont, 30 kilometers southwest of Rennes . Then began a decade-long search for the grave, in which rich treasures were suspected. The Allées couvertes in the forest were repeatedly referred to as possible burial places for Merlin. Finally, in 1889, Félix Bellamy, a professor from Rennes, located the megalithic complex, based on statements from local residents, as Merlin's grave.
In the meantime, the Paimpont forest has become the destination of neo-pagan currents and supporters of the legends surrounding the Knights of the Round Table .
There are also monuments of this type with similar names in Great Britain.
The house of Viviane and the Allée couverte du tombeau des Anglais and the stone box of La Guette are nearby .
See also
literature
- Jacques Briard : Mégalithes de Bretagne. Ouest-France, Rennes 1987, ISBN 2-7373-0119-X .
- Jacques Briard, Loïc Langouët , Yvan Onnée : Les mégalithes du département d'Ille-et-Vilaine. Patrimoine archéologique de Bretagne, Institut culturel de Bretagne et al., Rennes 2004, ISBN 2-86822-092-4 , pp. 41-42.
Web links
Coordinates: 48 ° 4 '40.4 " N , 2 ° 7' 3.5" W.