ABSTRACT
An equal important love affair started to find a place in Arthurian tradition: the love between Arthur and Morgan le Fay. In medieval tradition the relationship between Morgan and Arthur has proved fascinatingly ambiguous. She first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's VitaMerlini as the eldest and most beautiful among nine sisters on the Isle of Avalon. Arthur is but one of the many lovers Morgan welcomes to her bed, and both are unaware of their relationship at the time. Morgana is one of the Prydn, a nomadic people who range north of Hadrian's Wall and are known to outsiders as Faerie. The supernatural fay of the earliest accounts, which are more closely based upon Celtic sources, becomes the evil witch in later medieval romances, reflecting the different role of women in the societies of the pre-Christian Celts and Christianized peoples of medieval Europe.
