Among many others in the hall there was one particular boy. This clever woman noticed him and then and there thought of an ingenious trick to show up her brother. She called the boy over and asked her brother to predict the death the boy would die. So her brother said to her: "Dearest sister, when he is a man, this lad will die by falling from a high rock."

The queen smiled at this, and then told the boy to go away, take off the clothes he was wearing and put on others, and cut off his long hair. She told him that he was then to come in again, looking like another person. The boy did what he was told, for he returned to them in different clothes, as instructed. After a little while, the queen once more appealed to her brother, saying, "My dear, tell your sister what the death of this one will be."

Merlin said, "When this boy grows up, he will meet a violent death in a tree though misjudgment."

So he spoke. The queen, addressing her husband, said, "Has this false prophet been able to deceive you so far that you could think I had committed such a great crime as this? If you consider how much sense there is in what he has just said about this boy, you will realise that what he has said about me has been made up so that he can be off to the woods. As if I would do such a thing! I shall keep my bed chaste, and chaste shall I ever be while there is breath in me. I showed him up in questioning him about the boy's death. I shall now show him up again: you must watch and judge." So saying, she whispered to the boy to go out, dress himself in woman's clothes and then come back. He soon after slipped away and quickly carried out her instructions. He returned dressed in woman's clothing, looking like a girl. He came and stood in front of Merlin, to whom the queen said jokingly, "Well, brother, tell me of the death of this girl."

"Girl or not," said her brother to her, "she will die in a river."

This made Rodarch laugh loudly at his powers of reasoning. For to a question about the death of a single boy he had given three predictions.

Vita Merlini