Merlin

Merlin. 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).