Merlin

(European mythology)

The archetypal wizard of Arthurian legend. He brought together the royal couple who were to become Arthur's parents, King Uther Pendragon and Igraine, who at the time was the wife of the Duke of Cornwall. He accomplished the seduction by magic arts, and then he himself watched over Arthur's youth, preparing him in secret for the hour of his destiny. According to one tradition, he also used his magic to build Stonehenge. The stones came from Ireland and they were erected as a monument to British nobles killed by the Saxons. Another work to his credit was the Round Table, a copy of which may still exist at Winchester.

Merlin himself had been begotten upon a king's daughter by a mysterious youth who came at night to her nun's cell. In his Historia Regum, written in the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth reckoned that Merlin's father was a demon. So potent an influence did his prophecies have on medieval Europe that they were included in the Index by the Council of Trent. Merlin's end was testimony of the overwhelming power of the fairy world, a recurrent notion in Celtic mythology. Because of his love for Nineve, possibly the daughter of a Sicilian siren, he taught her enough magic lore to be placed under one of her spells. Thus he was trapped forever in an enchanted wood. As he told Sir Gawain, who once passed him: ‘I am also the greatest fool. I love another more than I love myself, and I taught my beloved how to bind me to herself, and now no one can set me free.’

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He that made with his hond

Wynd and water, wode and lond;

Geve heom alle good endyng

That wolon listne this talkyng,

And y schal telle, yow byfore,

How Merlyn was geten and bore

And of his wisdoms also

And othre happes mony mo

Sum whyle byfeol Engelonde. (Of Arthour and Merlin, c. 1260)

Did a historical Merlin really exist? Was there ever a mysterious Druid who stood as a hinge between the "old religion" and Christian Britain? Did he walk the sacred forests and counsel the young King Arthur? Did he rebuild Stonehenge as the final resting-place for his father, Ambrosias, bringing the capstone all the way from Ireland to serve as his memorial? Did he arrange both the conception and the coronation of the young king who would be a beacon to all kings? And does he sleep now in his crystal cave, awaiting the restoration of all things?

If not, we would probably have had to invent him. His is just too good a story to miss. Every year, it seems, someone comes out with a new twist, a new interpretation, a new way of understanding. He has been discovered by young boys who want to be knights of the round table, young girls who want to know more about the feminine presence in Avalon, new-age Druids who want to know more about magic, Wiccans who want to understand the natural world, and publishers who want to make more money by dipping again into the tried and true.

Some feel Merlin is completely a figure of British mythology, invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain to serve as a connection between the old Celtic religion of Druidism and King Arthur's acceptance of Christianity. Others feel the Merlin we know is a composite of any number of prophets and wizards who lived in the hills of ancient Britain. Still more believe that any story with such a long and illustrious history must be based in fact. And a few believe in Merlin just because they are unabashed, unrepentant romantics. (Ask any of the millions who flock to see the Lord of the Rings movies, in which Gandalf is a Merlin clone.)

Nikolai Tolstoy has written a book describing his quest to find the historical Merlin. He presents the thesis that Merlin did exist, though not as a contemporary to Arthur. After reading ancient manuscripts and walking the Scottish lowlands, he came to believe that Merlin was a Druid who lived in the north after Britain was left alone following the collapse of the Roman Empire. If this is the case, Merlin represents an old religion going back to prehistoric times when Bronze-Age Britain was dealing with the religious implications of the new Iron Age.

However Merlin is presented, the aspect of the hinge between two religious cultures, two spiritual worldviews, seems always to be present. When the new replaces the old, you need a guide. Merlin was that guide.

Think, for a moment, about the implications of this particular clash of religions. It required the people to completely change everything about the way they viewed the world. Celtic religion was all about connection with nature. Gods and spirits were everywhere. Nature itself was the church. The religious calendar was based on the position of the sun and the phases of the moon. Woodland sprites and fairies of the hill competed for the offerings left on roadside shrines. The environment was the religion. And humans were subject to it.

Then along came Christianity. Now humans were separate from nature. People were expected to subdue the earth, not to try to placate it. Fairies and woodland sprites became devils and demons.

It didn't help the confusion any when the church began to "baptize" Merlin's religion after discovering they couldn't root it out. Merlin's sacred groves were cut down, decorated with holly, and brought right into the house on Christmas Eve. His gods were made into saints. His sacred fire at the winter solstice became the Yule log fire. It took some getting used to. But Merlin, far-seeing prophet that he was, was there to guide the way. He knew the gods were just taking on a new incarnation. He knew the goddess would surface as Mary, the Mother of God. He knew Jesus was just another expression of the god taking on human form.

So he was there to soften the blow, accept the inevitable as the whim of God, and prepare the way for the new age.

(See also Arthur)

Sources: Tolstoy, Nikolai. The Quest for Merlin. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985.

Merlin was famous in myth as the soothsayer and magician at King Arthur's court. Fragmentary evidence of early oral traditions suggests Merlin's earliest incarnation was as the mythical Welsh poet-madman Myrddin. This figure's transformation into Merlin was probably the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100-54), who welded Merlin onto the Arthurian myth.

A figure from Welsh legend, who entered English literature via Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (1136). There, he is a ‘fatherless’ youth, conceived by an incubus and gifted with prophecy, who becomes counsellor first to the British king Aurelius (for whom he transports and builds Stonehenge) and later to Aurelius's brother Uther Pendragon, whom he magically helps in an illicit love-affair which results in the birth of Arthur. In Geoffrey's History he plays no further part, but a Burgundian poem c.1200 has him continue as young Arthur's protector and adviser, a role later made familiar by Malory. Another strand of tradition, Welsh and Scottish rather than English but reflected in Geoffrey's poem The Life of Merlin (c.1150), shows Merlin as a tragic figure unconnected with Arthur, a crazed forest-dwelling recluse uttering mysterious verses and foretelling his own death. Medieval, Elizabethan, Victorian, and modern writers further elaborate Merlin's story.

Folk tradition stressed Merlin's prophecies. Geoffrey had previously composed the Prophecia Merlini, a series of obscure symbolic utterances, some alluding to political events of his own times, which he incorporated into his History; they were so vague that later generations easily found new applications for them. A later anonymous text in the same style, The Last Kings of the English, was also alleged to be Merlin's prophecy. Both were widely known, adapted, and used as propaganda in many medieval wars and rebellions, and in Reformation controversies (Thomas, 1971: 389-422). Compilers of almanacs, astrologers, and pamphleteers continued to exploit Merlin's name till the end of the 18th century.

Surprisingly, Merlin rarely features in English local lore, apart from his link with Stonehenge. The town of Marlborough (Wiltshire) claims that its name means ‘Merlin's Barrow’ and that he rests under a mound in the grounds of the public school there; James I granted the town the motto Ubi nunc sapientis ossa Merlini.

Celebrated magician, prophet, and tutor of Arthur in Arthuriana, drawn in part from the 6th-century Welsh fictional poet and prophet Myrddin, known from the Black Book of Carmarthen; in Welsh translations of Arthurian texts Myrddin is made the equivalent of Merlin. As one of the oldest of Arthurian characters, with roots independent of the king himself, Merlin also draws from Lailoken, the naked wild man of the woods. Three works of Geoffrey of Monmouth forged the conception of Merlin as he came to be known in Arthurian tradition. In several books of the Historia Regum Britanniae (1136), Geoffrey implies that Merlin has a demonic ancestry, his mother being a nun impregnated by an incubus. In Book VII, earlier known as Prophetiae Merlini, Geoffrey identifies Merlin with the boy-prophet Ambrosius Aurelianus (Latin name for Emrys Wledig). Geoffrey's last work, the Vita Merlini (c.1149), depicts Merlin's adventures apart from King Arthur, some of which also appear in Prophetiae Merlini. Merlin is sometimes bested; Viviane/Nimiane (the Lady of the Lake) imprisons him in an oak tree in the Breton forest of Brocéliande. In late life he retires to the Isle of Bardsey with his pet boar and the treasures of Britain. See SENCHA MAC AILELLA. See also Paul Zumthor, Merlin le prophète (Lausanne, 1943); A. O. H. Jarman, The Legend of Merlin (Cardiff, 1959); ‘The Merlin Legend and the Welsh Tradition of Prophecy’, in R. Bromwich et al. (eds.), The Arthur of the Welsh (Cardiff, 1991), 117–45; Basil Clarke, Life of Merlin (Cardiff, 1972); Théophile Briant, Le Testament de Merlin (Nantes, 1975); Nikolai Tolstoy, The Quest for Merlin (London and Boston, 1985); Carol E. Harding, Merlin and Legendary Romance (New York, 1989); Peter Goodrich (ed.), The Romance of Merlin (New York, 1990).

A legendary British enchanter who lived at the court of King Arthur. He emerged as a character in Geoffrey of Manmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (completed around 1135 C.E.). Geoffrey later wrote a complete book on Merlin, Vita Merlini (ca. 1150). According to Geoffrey, Merlin's mother was a nun, and he was borne of his mother's intercourse with an incubus. He lived in the sixth century in north Britain. By the end of the century, he was the subject of poems in Wales, where Geoffrey's character was merged with the folklore image of a Wildman in the Wood.

Merlin seems to have been associated with King Arthur in the poem "Merlin" by Robert de Boron. In Boron's account, Merlin is the product of a demon's mating with a young girl. She confesses the incident to her confessor, who puts the sign of the cross on her. The son, Merlin, is born without the demon's evil nature, but with supernatural abilities. He assists Pendragon, the British king who was slain in a battle with the Saxons. Merlin then assists the king's brother, Uterpendragon. He directs the new king's construction of a roundtable, a replica of the one believed to have been used by Jesus at the Last Supper.

Uterpendragon (with Merlin's magical help) seduces the wife of one of the noblemen. From that union, Arthur is born. Though the king married the woman, who was widowed soon after conceiving Arthur, Merlin advises that Arthur be given to foster parents for his own protection. That action set up Arthur's later claiming the throne based upon his pulling a sword from the stone.

From Boron's basic story, Merlin's story grew and developed. By the nineteenth century, he had become the quinessential magician, and in the twentieth century the number of appearances in fantasy novels soared.

Sources:

Lacy, Norris J., ed. The Arthurian Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 1986.

Loomis, Roger Sherman, ed. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.

Quotes:

"You are the land. The land is you."

"When a man lies, he murders some part of the world."