Merlin

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This article is about the wizard. For other uses, see Merlin (disambiguation).

Merlin is best known as the mighty wizard featured in Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures. Geoffrey combined existing stories of Myrddin Wyllt (Merlinus Caledonensis), a northern madman with no connection to King Arthur, with tales of Aurelius Ambrosius to form the figure he called Merlin Ambrosius.

Geoffrey's version of the character was immediately popular, and later writers expanded the account to produce a fuller image of the wizard. His traditional biography has him born the son of an incubus and a mortal woman who inherits his powers from his strange birth. He grows up to be a sage and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic. Later Merlin serves as the king's advisor until he is bewitched and imprisoned by the Lady of the Lake.

Merlin dictating his poems, as illustrated in a French book from the 13th century.
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Merlin dictating his poems, as illustrated in a French book from the 13th century.

Contents

[edit] Geoffrey's sources

Geoffrey's composite Merlin is based primarily on two figures: Myrddin Wyllt, also called Merlinus Caledonensis, and Aurelius Ambrosius, a highly fictionalized version of the historical war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus. The former had nothing to do with Arthur and flourished after the Arthurian period. Supposedly a bard who went mad after witnessing the horrors of war, he was said to have fled civilization to become a Wildman of the Woods in the late 6th century. Geoffrey had this individual in mind when he wrote his earliest surviving work, the Prophetiae Merlini (Prophecies of Merlin), which he claimed were the actual words of the legendary madman. He altered the name to "Merlinus" rather than the standard romanization "Merdinus" to avoid a resemblance to the obscene French word merde, meaning "shit".

Geoffrey's Prophetiae do not reveal much about Merlin's background. When he included the character in his next work, Historia Regum Britanniae, he supplemented the characterization with stories about Aurelius Ambrosius, taken from Nennius' Historia Brittonum. According to Nennius, Ambrosius was discovered when the British king Vortigern was trying to erect a tower. The tower always collapsed before completion, and his wise men told him the only solution was to sprinkle the foundation with the blood of a "child born without a father". Ambrosius was rumored to be such a child, but when brought before the king, he revealed the real reason for the tower's collapse: below the foundation was a lake containing two dragons who destroyed the tower by fighting.

Geoffrey retells this story in Historia Regum Britanniae with some embellishments, and gives the fatherless child the name of the prophetic bard, Merlin. He keeps this new figure separate from Aurelius Ambrosius, and to disguise his changing of Nennius, he simply and baldly states that Ambrosius was another name for Merlin. He goes on to add new episodes that tie Merlin into the story of King Arthur and his predecessors.

Geoffrey dealt with Merlin again in his third work, Vita Merlini. He based the Vita on stories of the original 6th century Myrddin. Though set long after his timeframe for the life of "Merlin Ambrosius", he tries to assert the characters are the same with references to King Arthur and his death as told in the Historia Regum Britanniae.

[edit] Merlinus Caledonensis/Myrddin Wyllt

Main article: Myrddin Wyllt

The earliest (pre-12th century) Welsh poems concerning the Myrddin legend present him as a madman living a wretched existence in the Caledonian Forest, ruminating on his former existence and the disaster that brought him low: the death of his lord Gwenddoleu, whom he served as bard. The allusions in these poems serve to sketch out the events of the Battle of Arfderydd, where Riderch Hael, King of Alt Clut (Strathclyde) slaughtered the forces of Gwenddoleu, and Myrddin went mad watching this defeat. The Annales Cambriae date this battle to AD 573, and name Gwenddoleu's adversaries as the sons of Eliffer, presumably Gwrgi and Peredur.

A version of this legend is preserved in a late 15th century manuscript, in a story called Lailoken and Kentigern. In this narrative, Saint Kentigern meets in a deserted place with a naked, hairy madman who is called Lailoken, although said by some to be called Merlynum or "Merlin", who declares that he has been condemned for his sins to wander in the company of beasts. He added that he had been the cause for the deaths of all of the persons killed in the battle fought "on the plain between Liddel and Carwannok." Having told his story, the madman lept up and fled from the presence of the saint back into the wilderness. He appears several times more in the narrative until at last asking Kentigern for the sacrament, prophesying that he was about to die a triple death. After some hesitation, the saint granted the madman's wish, and later that day the shepherds of King Meldred captured him, beat him with clubs, then cast him into the River Tweed where his body was pierced by a stake, thus fulfilling his prophecy.

Welsh literature has many examples of a prophetic literature, predicting the military victory of all of the Celtic peoples of Great Britain who will join together and drive the English – and later the Normans – back into the sea. Some of these works were claimed to be the prophecies of Myrddin; some were not, as for example the Armes Prydein. This wild prophetic Merlin was also treated by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Vita Merlini which looks like a close adaptation of a number of Myrddin poems.

[edit] Merlin Ambrosius, Myrddin Emrys

Main article: Ambrosius Aurelianus

As said above, Geoffrey's account of Merlin Ambrosius' early life in the Historia Regum Britanniae is based on the story of Ambrosius in the Historia Brittonum. He adds his own embellishments to the tale, which he sets in Carmarthen (Welsh: Caerfyrddin). While Nennius' Ambrosius eventually reveals himself to be the son of a Roman consul, Geoffrey's Merlin is begotten on a king's daughter by an incubus. The story of Vortigern's tower is essentially the same; the underground dragons, one white and one red, represent the Saxons and the British, and their final battle is a portent of things to come.

At this point Geoffrey inserts a long section of Merlin's prophecies, taken from his earlier Prophetiae Merlini. He tells only two further tales of the character; in the first, Merlin creates Stonehenge as a burial place for Aurelius Ambrosius. In the second, Merlin's magic enables Uther Pendragon to enter into Tintagel in disguise and father his son Arthur. These episodes also appear in many later adaptations of Geoffrey's account.

[edit] Later adaptations of the legend

Merlin, from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)
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Merlin, from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)

Somewhat later the poet Robert de Boron retold this material in his poem Merlin. Only a few lines of the poem have survived, but a prose retelling became popular and was later incorporated into two other romances. In Robert's account Merlin is begotten by a devil on a virgin as an intended Antichrist. This plot is thwarted when the expectant mother informs her confessor Blaise of her predicament; they immediately baptize the boy at birth, thus freeing him from the power of Satan. The demonic birth bestows upon Merlin an uncanny knowledge of the past and present, which is supplemented by God himself, who gives the boy a prophetic knowledge of the future.

Robert de Boron lays great emphasis on Merlin's power to change his shape, on his joking personality and on his connection to the Holy Grail. This text introduces Merlin's master Blaise, who is pictured as writing down Merlin's deeds, explaining how they came to be known and preserved. Robert was inspired by Wace's Roman de Brut, an Anglo-Norman adaptation of Geoffrey's Historia.

Robert's poem was rewritten in prose in the 12th century as the Estoire de Merlin, also called the Vulgate or Prose Merlin. It was originally attached to a cycle of prose versions of Robert's poems, which tells the story of the Holy Grail; brought from the Middle East to Britain by followers of Joseph of Arimathea, and eventually recovered by Arthur's knight Percival. The Prose Merlin was detached from that shorter cycle to serve as a sort of prequel to the vast Lancelot-Grail, also known as the Vulgate Cycle. The authors of that work expanded it with the Vulgate Suite du Merlin (Vulgate Merlin Continuation), which described King Arthur's early adventures. The Prose Merlin was also used as a prequel to the later Post-Vulgate Cycle, the authors of which added their own continuation, the Huth Merlin or Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin. These works were adapted and translated into several other languages; the Post-Vulgate Suite was the inspiration for the early parts of Sir Thomas Malory's English language Le Morte d'Arthur.

Many later medieval works in also deal with the Merlin legend. For example, The Prophecies of Merlin and contains long prophecies of Merlin (mostly concerned with 13th century Italian politics), some by his ghost after his death. The prophecies are interspersed with episodes relating Merlin's deeds and with various Arthurian adventures in which Merlin does not appear at all. The earliest English verse romance concerning Merlin is Arthour and Merlin, which drew from chronicles and the French Lancelot-Grail.

As the Arthurian mythos was retold and embellished, Merlin's prophetic aspects were sometimes de-emphasized in favor of portraying Merlin as a wizard and elder advisor to Arthur. On the other hand in Lancelot-Grail it is said that Merlin was never baptized and never did any good in his life, only evil. Medieval Arthurian tales abound in inconsistencies. In the Lancelot-Grail and later accounts Merlin's eventual downfall came from his lusting after a woman named Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, who coaxed his magical secrets from him before turning her new powers against her master and trapping him in an enchanted prison (variously described as a cave, a large rock, an invisible tower, etc.) This is unfortunate for Arthur, who has lost his greatest counselor.

[edit] Name and etymology

The name "Myrddin" may have arisen from the Roman-period Celtic name for a place in Wales, *Mori-dunon, meaning "sea fort". The name became Carmarthen (Caerfyrddin in Welsh), which can be loosely translated as "Fort of Moridunum", since a Caer is a fortified royal residence. It seems that the name was taken to mean "Caer of [some man called] Myrddin".

Some accounts describe two different figures named Merlin. For example, the Welsh Triads state there were three baptisimal bards: Chief of Bards Taliesin, Myrddin Wyllt, and Myrddin Emrys. It is believed that these two bards called Myrddin were originally variants of the same figure. The stories of Wyllt and Emrys have become different in the earliest texts that they are treated as separate characters, even though similar incidents are ascribed to both.

[edit] Fiction about Merlin

Much Arthurian fiction includes Merlin as a character. The following works are either told from Merlin's point of view, or are based on the earlier legends of Merlin.

[edit] Novels and plays

  • Mark Twain made Merlin the villain in his novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
  • C. S. Lewis used the figure of Merlin Ambrosius in his 1946 novel That Hideous Strength, the third book in the Space Trilogy. In it, Merlin has supposedly lain asleep for centuries to be awakened for the battle against the materialistic agents of the devil, able to consort with the angelic powers because he came from a time when sorcery was not yet a corrupt art. Lewis's character of Ransom has apparently inherited the title of Pendragon from the Arthurian tradition. Merlin also mentions "Numinor," a nod to J. R. R. Tolkien's Númenor.
  • T.H. White's Arthurian retelling, The Once and Future King, in which "Merlyn", as White calls him, has the curious affliction of living backwards in time to everyone else. This affliction also appears in Dan Simmons' Hyperion as the "Merlin sickness."
  • Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon retells the Arthurian legend with Morgan Le Fay as protagonist, in the tradition of John Gardner's Grendel. It includes two distinct characters who, in succession, hold the title of "The Merlin of Britain," an office which grants leadership of the Druids in the same way that "The Lady of the Lake" is the title of the high priestess of Avalon. This usage ("the Merlin") has found its way into a fair amount of subsequent Arthurian fiction.
  • Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy. "Myrddin Emrys'" (Merlin Ambrosius) is the protagonist of the first two novels, The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills, which are based on earlier traditions of the character, as shown above. The last book of the trilogy, The Last Enchantment, and a related book, The Wicked Day, focus more on Arthur and Mordred, though the former is still told from his viewpoint. Stewart portrays Aurelius Ambrosius (brother to Uther Pendragon) as his father, and thus makes him Arthur's cousin. Here Merlin goes mad due to Morgause's poison.
  • Arthurian scholar Nikolai Tolstoy (a relation of Leo Tolstoy) wrote a non-fiction book, The Quest For Merlin, and a historical fantasy, The Coming of the King, the first of an unfinished trilogy. The latter book's depiction of Merlin may be the most historically accurate of all, since he lives after Arthur's death. The hero Beowulf even appears as an invader.
  • T.A. Barron portrays Merlin as a young man in his Lost Years of Merlin series, and is an adult in its sequel series, The Great Tree of Avalon. Merlin also figures prominently in Barron's The Merlin Effect, which may be in the same fictional continuity.
  • Merlin—or Caius Merlyn Britannicus, this time—is a soldier who raises Arthur and builds Camelot in many of Jack Whyte's The Dream of Eagles series (known as The Camulod Chronicles outside Canada).
  • Kara Dalkey has written a trilogy called Water for young adults where Niniane and Merlin (known as Nia and Corwin respectively) must recover Excalibur to save Atlantis, the underwater city in which lives he lives. The books are subtitled Ascension, Reunion, and Transformation.
  • René Barjavel's L'Enchanteur.
  • Michel Rio's "Merlin."
  • Merlin, by Robert Nye, (1978, Hamish Hamilton, ISBN 0-241-89952-4)
  • William Rowley's The Birth of Merlin (play, 1622)
  • Merlin was a Broadway musical in 1983 featuring illusionist Doug Henning and music by Elmer Bernstein.
  • Irene Radford portrays a tragically human Merlin in Guardian of the Balance, the first book in the Merlin's Descendants series. Merlin is, through his daughter, the ancestor of other major characters in the series.
  • Merlin is one of the main characters in the Magic Tree House series of children's books by Mary Pope Osborne. He appears in the later volumes of the series, known as the Merlin Missions.
  • Merlin is a druid who rules over Avalon in Bernard Cornwell's The Warlord Chronicles

[edit] Feature films

Naturally, Merlin is featured in many Arthurian films, like:

  • The Sword in the Stone (1963), the Disney animated adaptation of T.H. White's book, featuring an old and funny Merlin (voiced by Karl Swenson) helping a young lad named Wart to become King Arthur. This Merlin also appeared in the Kingdom Hearts video games to help train Sora in the arts of magic and assist in the reconstruction of Hollow Bastion. He was voiced by Jeff Bennett in Kingdom Hearts II and Minoru Uchida in the Japanese version.
  • Excalibur (1981), which featured Nicol Williamson as an eccentric Merlin who is mystically connected to the land.
  • Merlin of The Crystal Cave (1991), based on the novel by Mary Stewart of the same name.
  • Merlin (1992), a young reporter is stunned to discover that she is the reincarnated daughter of Merlin and must protect the Sword of Power from the evil sorcerer, Pendragon.
  • King Arthur (2004), purportedly a "historical" take on the legends, which featured Merlin (Stephen Dillane) as the father of Guinevere and leader of the "Woads" (Picts), who resist Roman rule, which is enforced by Arthur (Clive Owen). The two later join forces to fight the Saxons.

[edit] Television

  • Merlin (1998), a television movie starring Sam Neill as Merlin, Miranda Richardson as both the villainess Queen Mab and her supporting protagonist sister, the famous Lady of the Lake, Martin Short as her servant Frik, Isabella Rossellini as Nimue, and Rutger Hauer as Vortigern. The film depicts his life, from his magical birth through the reigns of Vortigern, Uther, and Arthur, and ends with him as an old man.
  • Mr. Merlin, a 1981–82 sitcom starring Barnard Hughes as the wizard, disguised as Max Merlin, a mechanic in modern-day San Francisco. He hires Zachary Rogers, played by Clark Brandon, to work in his garage, and when Zac pulls a crowbar out of a rock, the crowbar is revealed to be Arthur's sword Excalibur, and Merlin must reveal himself to Zac and make him an apprentice. Magic-based hijinks ensue. When Zac asks him how he can still be alive after 1,600 years, Merlin says, "I do 30 push-ups a day, and I don't eat fried food." However, in the middle of the season, he must have his tonsils removed. The show, while sometimes funny, was typical of late-1970s and early-1980s sci-fi/fantasy TV and film, and was perhaps too campy for its own good.
  • In a two-part MacGyver episode/dream sequence, Merlin is shown to be a bumbling trickster who relies on the title character's wit and wisdom to save the day (later taking credit himself, generating his legend off of MacGyver's exploits).
  • In Stargate SG-1, Merlin is revealed to have been an Ancient, named Myrddin, who returned to earth 10,000 years ago, after the Ancients abandoned Atlantis. He later retook mortal form when he realized the threat that the Ori posed to the galaxy. Ancient technology is revealed to be the basis of many of the myths about Merlin on Earth.

[edit] See also

 Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

[edit] References

  • Lacy, Norris J. (Ed.) (1991). The New Arthurian Encyclopedia. New York: Garland. ISBN 0-8240-4377-4.

[edit] External links

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