The magician Merlin had a strange laugh, and it was heard when nobody else was laughing…. He laughed because he knew what was coming next.

Davies uses Merlin—the archetypal seer and magician—as a figure for a particular kind of laughter: not social amusement, but the private response of someone who perceives hidden patterns and impending consequences. The “strange laugh” heard when no one else is laughing suggests an intelligence out of sync with the present moment, reacting instead to what lies just ahead. In this sense, the line points to the unsettling isolation of foresight: knowledge can make ordinary scenes ironic, ominous, or absurd before others recognize why. It also hints at Davies’s recurring interest in mythic consciousness—how old stories and symbols illuminate human motives and the way events seem to unfold with a logic visible only in retrospect (or to the visionary).