"One tale of the legend." Merlin, legendary bard, magician, wizard, or necromancer and counselor in Arthurian romance; He was said to have been born of faery birth or, another version was that he was born of a human mother and a spirit father, from whom he inherited his supernatural abilities; aided kings of Britain, especially Arthur, by means of his magic art; through the treachery of Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, to whom he taught his magic, he disappeared and lived in an enchanted tower in the forest of Brécéliande..... "And those who knew Merlin well and who had served Uther Pendragon came to the king and said to him; 'Sire, honour Merlin greatly for he was a good prophet for your father and has always loved your family much. And he foretold to Vertiger his death and it was he who had the Round Table made. Now see to it that he is well honoured, for you will never ask him about anything that he will not tell you.' And Arthur responded that thus he would do." --Didor Perceval

"Right-Illustration from a French History of Merlin" Merlin is a multi-faceted figure- Druid, shaman, monk, bard, necromancer, magician, astronomer, youth and old sage. He was also known as a seer and a prophet, and his predictions always came true. In the legends of Arthur, it is Merlin the sorceror, court wizard, and prophet who embodies the themes of magic and myth, and who acts as Arthur's principal advisor. It is believed that the story of Merlin originates in legends of a Celtic poet and prophet who lived in the 500's, a man named Myrddin. He lived in what was then a Cymric borderland near the Solway Firth. Fragments of poetry by and about him survive, and a man named Lailoken, a madman and prophet who figures in Scottish legend, may be the same man. Legends of Myrddin recount his creating unrest between British chieftains and causing the Battle of Arderydd near Carlisle, which was fought in the 570's. As a supernatural punishment, he loses his reason and is sent wandering through the forest of Celidon in the Scottish lowlands.

Merlin first takes literary shape in the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the early 12th century. Geoffrey published some prophecies around 1135 that dealt with British and Welsh affairs over the coming several centuries. He ascribed them to a British prophet named Merlin, and soon afterwards included those prophecies in his History of the Kings of Britain. Geoffrey also wrote a Latin poem entitled Vita Merlini (Life of Merlin). Geoffrey's Merlin is the son of an demon which had lain with his mother, a nun at Carmarthen in southwest Wales, while she slept. In Geoffrey's History, Merlin is credited with using magic at the request of King Aurelius to help transport Stonehenge from its supposed original site in Ireland to Salisbury Plain.

Medieval legends of Merlin credit him with the birth of Arthur. King Uther Pendragon was smitten by another man's wife, Lady Ingraine, and although he wanted to lay with her, she refused. Uther called upon Merlin to help him gain access to the fair lady, and Merlin devised a magical deceit where Uther appeared to Ingraine as her own husband. The result of this union was Arthur, and according to Sir Thomas Malory's Tales of King Arthur one of the conditions of Merlin performing this magic for Uther was that he would turn over the child to Merlin to nourish and eductate him, to which Uther agreed.

As the stories of Merlin developed through the writings of various poets, he became associated, like Arthur, with places, roots, trees, and other natural magics. One of his many magical skills was the ablity to change shape. His prophecies were held in great esteem, and commentators endeavored to make sense of them. Romancers added to the mythology of Merlin by crediting him with the foundation of the Round Table and by giving him a major role in the mysteries of the Grail. Sir Thomas Malory, in his Tales of King Arthur writes how the seer secured Arthur's ascension to the throne by providing the sword in the stone where Arthur can prove himself. In Malory's tales it is Merlin who creates the Round Table for Uther Pendragon.

Uther Pendragon, legendary English ruler and, according to the medieval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, the father of King Arthur. There is no proof that Uther Pendragon really existed, though scholars believe he may have lived sometime during the mid-400s to the early 500s AD. According to Monmouth's account, Uther and his older brother, Aurelianus Ambrosius, vanquished Vortigern, the treacherous high king of England, and Ambrosius took the throne. Ambrosius then sent Uther, along with the magician Merlin, to Ireland to pick up the healing stones that were to become Stonehenge. Not long after, Ambrosius died, poisoned by Saxons. Merlin, witnessing a spectacular vision in the sky--a fiery dragon and a shooting star--at the time of Ambrosius' death, prophesied that Uther, who should now be called Pendragon, would father a great king who would be England's salvation.

Shortly after, while hosting an Easter banquet, Uther became smitten by Ygerne (or Ygerna), the beautiful wife of Gorlois, duke of Cornwall. The duke, uncomfortable with Uther's attention to his wife, sneaked her away before the festivities were over and hid her at the castle Tintagel. The offended Uther assembled an army and marched to Tintagel but found the castle reachable only by a small, heavily guarded pathway. Merlin cast a spell on Uther that made him look just like Gorlois, and he entered the castle unchallenged. Believing he was her own husband returned from battle, Ygerne welcomed Uther into her chamber, and Arthur was conceived. In the meantime, Gorlois died in battle, and Uther was free to marry Ygerne. Sixteen years later, like his brother, Uther was poisoned by Saxons, and Arthur assumed the throne....

Merlin falls in love with Nimue, (called Nyneve by Malory, also known as Vivienne) with disastrous results. She accompanies Merlin on a journey to learn his magic, though never does consent to be his lover. Although Merlin foresees the tragic end through prophesy he is unable to avert it. Nimue grows tired of him, and turns one of his own spells against him to imprison Merlin forever in a cave, buried under a great rock. Some retellings of the tale have Nimue trapping Merlin in a bush or a Hawthorne tree, from which his voice may sometimes still be heard; Tennyson's Idylls of the King is adapted from this version. Different versions of the story have Merlin variously living forever within his confinements, dying, or descending into madness. In the romance Suite de Merlin Vivienne tricks Merlin into a tomb and forces him to die a slow death upon being sealed within.

Afterwards, Merlin's tomb becomes known as the 'Perron de Merlin' or Stone of Merlin and there the Knights of the round Table meet to begin their adventures. Thus, even in his withdrawn state, Merlin may be said to influence the activities of the world of Arthur.....

C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor The image of Merlin that surfaces in the medieval romances is a complex syncretism reflecting Celtic, Christian, Alano-Sarmatian, and possibly historical overlays.The figures of Merlin and the Dame du Lac may ultimately derive from a common, probably female, prototype. (CSL/LAM)

The legends of Merlin occupy a significant portion of the Arthurian Cycle. It is no accident that most of the thirteenth-century texts in which the wizard appears - Robert de Boron's Merlin, Arthour and Merlin, and others - bear the wizard's name (Micha 1980, Kölbing 1890). Merlin's association with Arthur dates from the earliest written records of the tradition. The Merlin introduced into the Arthurian material by Geoffrey of Monmouth does not exhibit the same shapeshifting, magical fairy powers that the character displays in other branches of the tradition (cf. Goodrich 1987, 4-8). Geoffrey's version of the story tells of a scholar, trained by monks, who outwits magicians, accomplishes skilled feats of engineering, and uses 'drugs' rather than spells to transform himself and Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, into the likenesses of other people (Geoffrey of Monmouth 1966, 167-207). But first and foremost Merlin is a prophet, and it is this characterization of him, rather than the portrayal of him as a spellcaster, that remained popular throughout the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance.

Geoffrey's Prophetiae Merlini predates the rest of his Historia Regum Britanniae (1130s).2 The French Les Prophécies de Merlin (1270s) were ostensibly translated from Latin by Richart d'Irlande and are unrelated to Geoffrey's account of Merlin's prophecies.3 The Icelandic Merlínússpá (ca. 1200), in contrast, is a verse translation of Geoffrey's Prophetiae Merlini, and many other medieval accounts of the prophet draw on Geoffrey's rendition of the legend.4 A fifteenth-century Spanish sermon, for example, retells the Merlin and Uther story. This tale relates how Merlin used 'drugs,' or in later renditions 'magic,' to disguise Uther, making the British king look like the Duke of Cornwall (who was on the battlefield fighting Uther's troops) so that Uther could slip into the Duke's castle and rape Igraine (the Duke's wife and Uther's future queen).5 In this legend Merlin displays the classical, trickster-figure characteristics that one would expect from the Germanic Loki in a tale about Thor or from the Ossetic Syrdon in a saga about Xwmyc rather than from the statesman/magician of the Round Table in a story about Uther.6

When medieval authors chose to tell of the spell-casting, supernatural Merlin, the Merlin-as-prophet figure tends to be edited out of the legend. Wace, for instance, uses a supernatural version of Merlin and omits the prophecies. Yet even this Merlin exhibits a heavy Christian overlay. In most legends this scholar of the Round Table is depicted in black, flowing robes that are more reminiscent of a Benedictine cleric7 than of a Celtic druid, who would have worn white, as would have the priests and monks of the Celtic church (Jung and von Franz 1986, 359-360; Piggott 1968, 98-99; Gougaud 1923, xviii-xix). Merlin's connection with the Church of Rome is even more explicit in continental works. In the French Vulgate Merlin the infant prophet dictates the history of Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail to Blaise, a cleric who supposedly lived in Britain under the fifth-century king 'Constant' (Robert de Boron 1979).8 Merlin is responsible for the creation of the Siège Perilous of the Round Table, the chair on which only a pure knight may sit.9 Many of Merlin's 'miracles' are arranged to take place on Christian holy days, as well as at Christian locations. The 'Sword in the Stone,' for instance, appears in a churchyard at Whitsuntide.10 In this particular episode Merlin advises the Archbishop of Canterbury to send for all British nobles and to order them at Christmas to ride to the churchyard where the sword-bearing stone appeared (Malory 1969, 1: 15-16). Although none of the medieval texts says so explicitly (cf. West 1969, 115), one cannot help but get the impression that he somehow stage-managed the whole business, that he himself put the sword into the stone, as he later in fact does with Galahad's sword (Malory 1969, 1: 90-91).

There is no general agreement among Arthurian scholars as to the source of this curious figure. Markale asserts that his prototype was probably the historical late fifth-century figure Ambrosius Aurelianus, who later came to be known as Myrddin Emrys and, finally, Merlin (1977, 94-96; cf. Littleton and Malcor 1994, 61-77).11 Perhaps a partial conflation between the character of Ambrosius and the cleric Constans accounts in part for Merlin's odd penchant for Benedictine-style dress and Christian festivals.12 Or perhaps Merlin's description derives from the appearance of clerical advisers to kings within the experience of the scribes who transmitted these legends, a style of dress that may have suggested itself to the writers by virtue of Merlin's role as adviser to Arthur. Other scholars see a lingering reflection of the ancient druids, those shadowy priest-magicians who played such a central role in pre-Christian Celtic religion everywhere (Jung and von Franz 1986, 359-360), in the mentor of Arthur who watches the king's battles from a nearby hill. But neither Geoffrey nor his immediate predecessors (such as Gildas, Bede, Nennius, William of Malmesbury, and any of the anonymous authors of the Welsh Arthurian tradition) knew the 'Sword in the Stone' (Brengle 1964; Littleton and Malcor 1994, 181-193). So why do the French romances make such a point of connecting Merlin with this episode?

Perhaps a clue lies in the fact that the 'Sword in the Stone' is not the only sword closely associated with Merlin in British tradition. Another is that which Balin draws from the girdle of a female messenger from the Lady Lile of Avelion at the court of Arthur (Malory 1969, 1 60-64).13 Merlin eventually takes this sword from Balin's tomb and places it in a stone, which he floats down a river to Camelot, where the blade is ultimately drawn from its resting place by Galahad to serve as his weapon in the quest for the Holy Grail. Merlin closely parallels the Dame du Lac in this and similar tales. In Malory's version of the story, Merlin makes the connection even more explicit by taking Arthur to the lake where the Dame du Lac grants the king another sword (Malory 1969, 1 55-57).14 The parallels between Merlin and the Dame du Lac, in their roles as the mentor to the young hero and as the provider of his sword, in their use of female messengers to Arthur's court (Jung and von Franz 1986, 373-374), and in their associations with water and tombs have led us to consider the possibility that Merlin may be a reflection of the same prototype as the Dame du Lac (Littleton and Malcor 1994, 153-178). The end result was a complex syncretism. The Merlin who finally surfaced in the medieval romances had undergone a series of transformations as profound in their way as those undergone by Arthur himself. He underwent a sex change, attracted Trickster elements to his story, and became the subject of Celtic, Christian, and possibly even historical overlays. But the specifics of how Merlin functions in the life of Arthur and of how the Dame du Lac functions in the life of Lancelot are too exact to be ignored.

The "Sword in the Stone" story itself, in all of its manifestations, probably derives from a ritual that was practiced by the Alans, a group of Northeast Iranian-speaking nomads from the trans-Caucasian steppes who invaded the Roman Empire in the fifth century C.E. (Littleton 1982; Littleton and Malcor 1994, 181-193).15 These horse-riding nomads settled heavily over the area that became France and founded many of the noble families who would become patrons of the medieval Arthurian tradition (Littleton 1982; Littleton and Malcor 1994, 3-57, 293-325). Many of them also became prominent figures in the medieval Church (Littleton and Malcor 1994, passim), which brings us back to the references to Merlin being trained by clerics, possibly in the north of Britain. Following the Norman invasion of 1066 C.E., William the Conqueror gave many of the lands in the north of Britain to descendants of the Alans.16 One of these families, the FitzAlans, became patrons of the Arthurian legends.17 It is not inconceivable that the tradition of the prophet Merlin was introduced by clerics who were themselves descendants of the ancient Alans, especially since the Holy Grail cycle in which Merlin plays a role was codified and disseminated almost entirely by such clerics.18

The potential Alano-Sarmatian influence on Merlin seems to go beyond the episode of the 'Sword in the Stone.' The fifteenth-century English poem Arthour and Merlin ends with Pendragon, who is described in this poem as Uther's brother and who, like Arthur, is supposedly buried at Glastonbury.19 The name 'Pendragon' in all probability derives from a widespread Eastern European word for 'ruler,' pan/panje, which would yield 'Dragon Ruler.' This is consonant with the images of Sarmatian warriors on grave stelae and elsewhere, many of whom bear banners shaped like dragons (Littleton and Malcor 1994, 14 [plate 1], 101).20

The Merlin who appears in the thirteenth-century Tale of Balain is quite distinct from the prophet of the Grail romances

Merlin . . . stayed on the island for a little more than a month and cast there various spells. Next to the tomb he constructed a bed that was so strange that no one could sleep in it without losing his mind and his memory in such a manner that he couldn't remember anything which he had done before he came to the island. And this spell lasted until Lancelot, son of the King Ban de Benoic [Benoich/Benwick], came there, and then the spell of this bed was broken, not by Lancelot but by a ring which he was wearing which broke all enchantments. (Campbell 1972, 119)21

Here, unlike the 'clerical' Merlin of the Grail tradition, the sage of the Round Table is truly a spellcaster, a wizard who gains his ends through enchantments rather than through prophecy.

The Continent, rather than Britain, serves as the setting for this particular legend. This is important since this work and the other Continental tales of Merlin tend to exhibit the same apparent Alanic influence that can be seen elsewhere in the Continental Arthurian tradition. For example, the author of the Huth Merlin promises to tell of 'Helain the White, who became Emperor of Constantinople' and whose name is but one of many examples of Alans/Elaines in the Arthurian material (Littleton and Malcor 1994, 98-99);22 however, the legend is not contained in the version of this work which survives (Waite 1961, 199). Similarly the Suite du Merlin introduces Ban as if the reader were already acquainted with him and his affairs - and those affairs appear to include Merlin (Bogdanow 1966, 35). As Merlin and Niviene (Niniane) pass through Benoich (i.e., Benwick), war is raging there. They come to the Castle of Trebes,23 and Helaine (Elaine), Ban's wife, explains that Claudas24 does them harm whenever he can. In the Cambridge Manuscript (fol. 301d) she adds that they are forever at war with him. Merlin comforts Helaine by predicting that her son Lancelot will one day overcome Claudas (Cambridge MS, fols. 301c-302a; Paris and Ulrich 1888, 144). In the rebellion section, Ban and Bors ('Boors') play a considerable role. On Merlin's suggestion they do homage to Arthur and help him in his wars, an alliance that becomes the focus of the entire first section of Malory's Le Morte Darthur. Their own troubles with Claudas are also mentioned. Ban had built a castle on a piece of ground that Claudas claimed as his, but Ban denied the validity of his claim (Cambridge MS, fol. 208a).25 As Arthur's messengers, Ulfin and Bretel,26 pass through Ban's lands, Claudas has just been defeated by Ban, but the author predicts that Claudas will take revenge later (Cambridge MS, fol. 208b-c),27 a prophecy that results in the death of Ban and the kidnapping of Lancelot by the Dame du Lac - events set in motion by Merlin.

The tellers of the legends of Lancelot apparently recognized something in Merlin that led them to include him in stories of the Dame du Lac. We suggest that this 'something' was the parallels between these two figures. But where the Dame du Lac became most closely associated with the legends of the 'sword from the lake,' Merlin became most closely associated with the stories of the 'Sword in the Stone.' The stories filtered to Britain, where the Dame du Lac eventually became attached to the figure of Arthur, who was originally paired with Merlin, just as Merlin had become associated with the figure of Lancelot, who was originally paired with the Dame du Lac, on the Continent. The figure of Merlin, in particular, has been the subject of Celtic, Christian, and possibly historical overlays resulting in the complex figure who emerges as the statesman/magician of the Round Table.....

[ Back to Ulrickastle's Hall of Poetry! ] [ Ulrickastle's Portals to Camelot! ] [ HOME ]