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In Arthurian legend, The Lady of the Lake gave King Arthur the sword known as Excalibur. Nimue is the name given to the Lady of the Lake when referring to her romance with Merlin the wizard. She is also called Dame du Lac, Viviane and Niviene. The Lady also raised Lancelot as her foster child.
Later, Merlin fell in love with Nimue when Arthur retrieved Excalibur from her lake in Brittany. Nimue's incentive to preserve their romance was to gain the knowledge of magic that the wizard had.
She learned a spell from Merlin that could entrap a person for all time. After Lancelot rescued Guinevere and before the battle at Joyous Gard, Nimue cast the spell on Merlin. The sources differ in what Merlin was trapped in. Some say that it was in a Crystal Cave, while others say that he was trapped in a Castle of Air, a Glass Tower or an oak tree. This spell was irreversible.
Nimue also has various other exploits, one involving Pelleas.
Walter Scott wrote an influential poem Lady of the Lake in 1810, drawing on the romance of the legend, but transplanting it to Loch Katrine in the Trossachs of Scotland.
Later, mystery novelist Raymond Chandler wrote The Lady in the Lake, revolving around a set of mysterious deaths in the San Bernadino Mountains. Here, the symbolic Arthur, questing for the Grail of truth and adhering to his own chivalric code, is Chandler's hero Philip Marlowe. As in the original tales, Marlowe's lady in the lake is not what she first seemed, and has a devastating effect on her lover.
The Lady of the Lake is mentioned in the comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which King Arthur describes her presentation of Excalibur as a divine confirmation of his right to be king, prompting an anarcho-syndicalist peasant to complain that "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."
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fr:Viviane, la Dame du Lac
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