MERLIN: THE MOST FAMOUS WIZARD OF THE LITERATURE

Merlin, the Wizard

The Grandma is reading about Merlin, the most famous wizard in the universal literature and one of the most important characters in the Arthurian Cycle.

Before reading about the amazing and interesting character relationed with the King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, The Grandma has studied a new and difficult lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Chapter 44).

More information: Verbs followed by prepositions I, II, III & IV

Merlin, in Welsh Myrddin, is a legendary figure best known as the wizard featured in Arthurian legend and medieval Welsh poetry. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures.

Geoffrey combined existing stories of Myrddin Wyllt, Merlinus Caledonensis, a North Brythonic prophet and madman with no connection to King Arthur, with tales of the Romano-British war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus to form the composite figure he called Merlin Ambrosius in Wels, Myrddin Emrys.

Merlin, the wizard

Geoffrey's rendering of the character was immediately popular, especially in Wales. Later writers expanded the account to produce a fuller image of the wizard.

Merlin's traditional biography casts him as a cambion: born of a mortal woman, sired by an incubus, the non-human from whom he inherits his supernatural powers and abilities. Merlin matures to an ascendant sagehood and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic and intrigue. Later authors have Merlin serve as the king's advisor and mentor to the knights until he is bewitched and imprisoned by the Lady of the Lake. He is popularly said to be buried in the magical forest of Brocéliande.

More information: Britannica

The name Merlin is derived from the Welsh Myrddin, the name of the bard Myrddin Wyllt, one of the chief sources for the later legendary figure. Geoffrey of Monmouth Latinised the name to Merlinus in his works.
 

Merlin, the Wizard

Clas Myrddin or Merlin's Enclosure is an early name for Great Britain stated in the Third Series of Welsh Triads. It's suggested that the Welsh name Myrddin was derived from the toponym Caerfyrddin, the Welsh name for the town known in English as Carmarthen.

This contrasts with the popular folk etymology that the town was named for the bard. The name Carmarthen is derived from the town's previous Roman name Moridunum, in turn derived from Celtic Brittonic moridunon, sea fortress.

Geoffrey's composite Merlin is based primarily on Myrddin Wyllt, also called Merlinus Caledonensis, and Aurelius Ambrosius, a mostly fictionalised version of the historical war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus. The former had nothing to do with King Arthur: in British poetry he was a bard driven mad after witnessing the horrors of war, who fled civilization to become a wild man of the wood in the 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.

More information: Ancient Origins

Geoffrey's Prophetiae do not reveal much about Merlin's background. He included the prophet in his next work Historia Regum Britanniae, supplementing the characterisation by attributing to him 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 that the only solution was to sprinkle the foundation with the blood of a child born without a father. Ambrosius was rumoured 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 fought a battle representing the struggle between the invading Saxons and the native Celtic Britons, which suggested that the tower would never stand under the leadership of Vortigern, but only under that of Ambrosius.

Merlin, the Wizard

This is why Ambrosius is given the kingdom or the tower: he tells Vortigern to go elsewhere and says I will stay here. The tower is metaphorically the kingdom, which is the notional ability to beat the Saxons.

Geoffrey retells this story in Historia Regum Britanniæ 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, with regard to his changing of the original Nennian character, he states that Ambrosius was also called Merlin, that is, Ambrosius Merlinus. He goes on to add new episodes that tie Merlin into the story of King Arthur and his predecessors, such as bringing the stones for Stonehenge from the Preseli Hills in south-west Wales and Ireland.

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, Wales in 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 demon. 

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The name of Merlin's mother is not usually stated, but is given as Adhan in the oldest version of the Prose Brut. The story of Vortigern's tower is essentially the same; the underground dragons, one white and one red, represent the Saxons and the Britons, 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 the British king Uther Pendragon to enter into Tintagel in disguise and father his son Arthur with his enemy's wife, Igraine. These episodes appear in many later adaptations of Geoffrey's account. As Lewis Thorpe notes, Merlin disappears from the narrative after this; he does not tutor and advise Arthur as in later versions.

Merlin, the Wizard in a Walt Disney version

Geoffrey dealt with Merlin again in his third work Vita Merlini. He based the Vita on stories of the original 6th-century Myrddin, set long after his time frame for the life of Merlin Ambrosius. He tries to assert that the characters are the same with references to King Arthur and his death, as told in the Historia Regum Britanniae. In this story, Merlin survives Arthur.

Several decades 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 chivalric romances. In Robert's account, as in Geoffrey's Historia, Merlin is begotten by a demon on a virgin as an intended Antichrist. 

This plot is thwarted when the expectant mother informs her confessor Blase or Blaise of her predicament; they immediately baptize the boy at birth, thus freeing him from the power of Satan and his intended destiny. The demonic legacy invests Merlin with a preternatural knowledge of the past and present, which is supplemented by God, who gives the boy a prophetic knowledge of the future.  

More information: The Guardian

Camelot isn't built on magic, but on people, on their faith.

Merlin