the monks were said to have discovered an unmarked tomb with a massive treetrunk coffin and, also buried, a lead cross bearing the inscription: Merlin Links between King Arthur's magician Merlin, and Glastonbury are “practically non-existent”, but for the legend that King Arthur was buried there. However, Merlin is important in the lives of two of the novel's main characters, Owen Evans and John Geard. Evans is writing a life of Merlin and believes that hidden in the ancient Welsh grail myths is a spiritual wisdom that will enable him to free himself from the nightmare of his sadistic obsession and find happiness (A Glastonbury Romance, p, 151). Geard spends a night in a room at Marks Court associated with fear and death, because it was where Merlin returned and punished King Mark's crimes by turning him into "a pinch of thin grey dust" (p. 406). After struggling within fear, upon hearing the voice of Merlin "Geard reaches out to comfort the disconsolate ghost ... and from then on does in a sense become Merlin himself". C. A. Coates comments that after this experience Geard "has achieved something in the psychic sphere and established his right to be called a magician". This combined with the legend about the Holy grail containing drops of Christ's blood, gives Geard the Christ-like power of curing Tithie Petherton of her cancer, and bringing an apparently dead boy back to life (pp. 707, 893-4). In his Autobiography Powys states that "my dominant life-illusion was that I was, or at least would eventually be, a magician". Later, after describing how reading Thomas Hardy helped him overcome his sadistic thoughts, Powys says that he felt himself "to be what the great Magician Merlin was before he met his 'Belle Dame sans Merci' " (Autobiography, p. 309). Merlin again appears in Morwyn (1937), and as Myrddin in Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages (1951), while in Owen Glendower (1941), Glendower is presented as a magician by Powys, following Shakespeare's suggestion, in Henry IV: Part 1 (III.i. 530), There is also, earlier, in Wolf Solent (1929) reference to Christie's mother being Welsh and claiming descent from Merlin. Christ One of the legends that Powys make use of is that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Grail, a vessel containing the blood of Christ, to Glastonbury. With regard to Powys's use of Christ, Glen Cavaliero, comments that: The figure of