The Arthurian legends feature the character Morgan Le Fay, Arthur’s evil older half-sister and queen of the fairies.
Now, the story here is that a good friend’s sister decided to name her baby Morgan Fay, and when I was surprised by the choice, my friend claimed that Morgan Le Fay, according to her origins in Celtic mythology, was not by any means an evil character. I can believe this; Arthurian myth is a bundle of legends from fairly disparate sources, and a Christian-motivated demonizing of a Celtic goddess is not surprising.
She went on to claim, however, that the original Celtic sources attested two figures, Morgan and Morgana, who were confused because of their names’ similarity. Morgan Le Fay, the queen of the fairies, was a generally good character, although she acted in the interests of the fairies, making her actions somewhat ambiguous. Morgana, on the other hand, was the actually evil character. (I’ve run across both names in reference to the character in different versions of the story, but my familiarity is mostly with fairly contemporary versions.)
Does anyone know enough about the origin of these stories to confirm or refute this notion? I ask because I’d never heard this until she told me.
Morgan is Arthur’s half-sister and was loyal to arthur until Gweneveire drove a wedge into their relationship. She was not an evil character.
Morgana was the aunt of Arthur and Morgan. She was conniving as she was not powerful enough to become lady of the lake and wasn’t trained in the same arts as her sister and Morgan. Morgana married one of the dukes ( I forget which one). When Morgan had Arthur’s child, Morgana adopted him and then she did her best to try to get him to gain the throne from Arthur.
Morgana was the evil conniving one.
Some movies (like Excalibur) seem to have combined the characters of Morgan and Morgana into one.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Vita Merlini, has Arthur (or his body) delivered by Merlin to the Isle of Apples, on which Morgan (who is not Arthur’s sister) rules the island as the chief of nine sisters. In this story, she can shapeshift and fly with wings.
Malory makes her Arthur’s half-sister by their mother’s, (Igraine’s) first marriage. (Geoffrey’s story is recalled in Malory as Morgan is one of the three women who carry off Arthur’s body.)
Other stories make her Arthur’s niece.
In his The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Arthurian Legends, Ronan Coghlan asserts that Morgan was probably the goddess Modron, with an earlier name of Matrona. He speculates that the change to Morgan came from an association with the Morgans (water fairies) of Brittany.
Mordred was not the son of Morgan, but of Morgause (another of Arthur’s half sister’s married to King Lot). (In earlier stories, Mordred was not Arthur’s son.) There is further confusion because in some early stories, Lot’s wife was Anna rather than Morgause. I suppose that Lot having a wife alternatively named Morgause or Anna may have contributed to some (later) versions combining the name to Morgana and conflating her with Morgan.
I have found no references to separate Morgan and Morgana and suspect that they may be simply the same name in different languages. I have found no reference to an “evil” Morgana.
Actually, given the widespread discrepancies among even the mainstream Arthurian tales, (e.g., Geoffrey, Malory, Tennyson, etc.), there are darned few aspects of the Arthurian legend that are consistent across all of them and nearly every person or event can be found depicted in wholly different ways throughout the various tales.
In contrst to the Wikipedia article, Coghan asserts that Morgan was not the Irish Morrigan. (Neither provide the arguments or sources that hold to either conjecture.)
Marian Zimmer Bradley’s version of the story (The Mists of Avalon) has two such characters – Arthur’s half-sister Morgaine and his aunt Morgause. Morgaine’s interest as a high priestess was in preserving the old religion against Guinevere’s Christianity. Morgause taught Mordred to be evil.
I wonder which “original” sorces your friend is referring to. The first reference to Morgan/Morgana was by Geoffery of Monmouth in the C12th, at least 600 years after she was supposed to have lived.