Merlin

Merlin, bard and prophet of Celtic legendary history, magician and seer of Arthurian legend, and the protector and counsellor of the young King Arthur. The name Merlin or Merlinus first occurs in British legend in Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain, c. 1139) by English chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth. The name is a Latinization of the Welsh Merddin or Myrddin. Geoffrey's Merlin is a wonder child, the son of an incubus (male demon) that had intercourse with Merlin’s mother, a nun at Carmarthen in south-western Wales, while she was asleep. Geoffrey includes a long series of prophecies supposedly uttered by Merlin, known as the “Prophetiae Merlini”, which enjoyed widespread popularity during the later centuries of the Middle Ages. Merlin is said to have removed the stones of Stonehenge from Ireland to Salisbury Plain and to have brought about the conception of King Arthur.

Geoffrey’s text was translated into Old French as Roman de Brut (1175) by Anglo-Norman poet Wace. Before the end of the 12th century it formed the substance of Robert de Boron's poem Merlin, of which only approximately 500 lines survive. However, a prose version of Boron’s poem was written during the first half of the 13th century; this, together with a lengthy sequel, constitutes the Estoire de Merlin of the Vulgate Cycle of romances. The prose version is also found, with a different continuation, in the romance known as the Huth Merlin or Suite de Merlin.

A series of Welsh poems from the 12th to the 14th centuries contains an earlier form of the legend. These poems portray Merlin as a warrior who, having lost his reason in battle, was endowed with a prophetic gift and fled to spend his life in the Caledonian Forest. Later versions of the Arthurian legends usually present Merlin as an aged magician whose life is marked by marvellous deeds and experiences. In Le Morte d’Arthur (The Death of Arthur, 1469-1470) by Sir Thomas Malory, for example, Merlin creates the Round Table, King Arthur’s gathering of knights, for Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon. Later in Malory’s work, Merlin becomes infatuated with the enchantress Nimue, who buries him under a great rock from which he can never escape. In another version he becomes entangled in the branches of a thorn bush from which his voice may still occasionally be heard, and this episode in turn inspired Idylls of the King (1859-1885), an adaptation of the legend by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.