Merlin
Merlin is a mythical figure prominently featured in the legend of King Arthur and best known as a magician, along with several other main roles. The familiar depiction of Merlin, based on an amalgamation of historical and legendary figures, was introduced by the 12th-century Catholic cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth and then built on by the French poet Robert de Boron and prose successors in the 13th century. Geoffrey’s account presented Merlin as a prophet and royal advisor to Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon.
Geoffrey seems to have combined earlier Welsh tales of Myrddin and Ambrosius, two legendary Briton prophets with no connection to Arthur, to form the composite figure that he called Merlinus Ambrosius. His rendering of the character became immediately popular, especially in Wales. Later chronicle and romance writers in France and elsewhere expanded the account to produce a more full, multifaceted character, creating one of the most important figures in the imagination and literature of the Middle Ages.
Merlin's traditional biography casts him as an often-mad cambion, born of a mortal woman and an incubus, from whom he inherits his supernatural powers and abilities. His most notable abilities commonly include prophecy and shapeshifting. Merlin matures to an ascendant sagehood and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic and intrigue. Later stories have Merlin as an advisor and mentor to the young king until he disappears from the tale, leaving behind a series of prophecies foretelling events to come. A popular version from the French prose cycles tells of Merlin being bewitched and forever sealed up or killed by his student, the Lady of the Lake, after having fallen in love with her. Other texts variously describe his retirement, at times supernatural, or death.
Name
The name Merlin is derived from the Welsh name of the legendary bard Myrddin that Geoffrey of Monmouth Latinised to Merlinus in his works. Medievalist Gaston Paris suggests that Geoffrey chose the form Merlinus rather than the expected *Merdinus to avoid a resemblance to the Anglo-Norman word merde for feces. 'Merlin' may also be an adjective, in which case he should be called "The Merlin", from the French merle meaning blackbird. According to Martin Aurell, the Latin form Merlinus is a euphony of the Welsh form Myrddin to bring him closer to the blackbird into which he could metamorphose through his shamanic powers, as was notably the case for Merlin's Irish counterpart.Myrddin may be a combination of *mer and the Welsh dyn, to mean 'madman'. It may also mean ' many names' if it was derived from the Welsh myrdd, myriad. In his Myrdhinn, ou l'Enchanteur Merlin, La Villemarqué derived Marzin, which he considered the original form of Merlin's name, from the Breton word marz to mean 'wonder man'. italic=no or Merlin's Enclosure is an early name for Great Britain as stated in the third series of Welsh Triads.
Celticist Alfred Owen Hughes Jarman 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 after the bard. The name Carmarthen is derived from the town's previous Roman name Moridunum, in turn, derived from the Celtic Brittonic moridunon, 'sea fort'. Eric P. Hamp proposed a similar etymology: Morij:n, 'the maritime' or 'born of the sea'. There is no obvious connection between Merlin and the sea in the texts about him, but Claude Sterckx has suggested that Merlin's father in the Welsh texts, Morfryn, might have been a sea spirit. Philippe Walter connected it with the figure of the insular Celtic sea god Manannán.
Folklorist Jean Markale proposed that the name of Merlin is of French origin and means 'little blackbird', an allusion to the mocking and provocative personality usually attributed to him in medieval stories. The Welsh Myrddin could be also phonetically connected to the name Martin and some of the powers and other attributes of the 4th-century French saint Martin of Tours in hagiography and folklore are similar to these of Merlin. If a relationship between the two figures does exist, however, it may rather be a reverse one in which the Merlin tradition inspired the later accounts of the saint's miracles and life.
Legend
Overview
As summarized by Danielle Quéruel of the Bibliothèque nationale de France,Geoffrey and his sources
Geoffrey's composite Merlin is based mostly on the North Brythonic poet and seer Myrddin Wyllt, that is Myrddin the Wild, appearing in 12th-century poems such as "Afallennau Myrddin" or "Yr Oianau". Myrddin's legend has parallels with a northern Welsh and southern Scottish story of the mad prophet Lailoken, probably the same as Myrddin son of Morfryn mentioned in the Welsh Triads, and with Buile Shuibhne, an Irish tale of the wandering insane king Suibihne mac Colmáin.In Welsh poetry, Myrddin was a bard who was driven mad after witnessing the horrors of war and subsequently fled civilization to become a wild man of the wood in the 6th century. He roamed the Caledonian Forest until he was cured of his madness by Kentigern, also known as Saint Mungo. Geoffrey had Myrddin in mind when he wrote his earliest surviving work, the Prophetiae Merlini, which he claimed were the actual words of the legendary poet ; however, the work reveals little about Merlin's background.
Geoffrey was further inspired by Emrys, a character based in part on the 5th-century historical figure of the Romano-British war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus. When Geoffrey included Merlin in his next work, Historia Regum Britanniae, he supplemented his characterisation of Merlin by attributing stories of Ambrosius to Merlin. These stories were taken from one of Geoffrey's primary sources, the early 9th-century Historia Brittonum attributed to Nennius. In this source, Ambrosius was discovered when the King of the Britons, Vortigern, attempted to erect a tower at Dinas Emrys. More than once, the tower collapsed before completion. Vortigen's wise men advised 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. When he was brought before the king, Ambrosius revealed that below the foundation of the tower was a lake containing two dragons battling into each other, representing the struggle between the invading Saxons and the native Celtic Britons. Geoffrey retold the story in his Historia Regum Britanniæ, adding new episodes that tie Merlin with King Arthur and his predecessors. Geoffrey stated that this Ambrosius was also called "Merlin", hence Ambrosius Merlinus.
File:BLEgerton3028Fol30rStonehengeCropped.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Giants help the young Merlin build Stonehenge in an illustration for a circa 1325—1350 manuscript of Wace's Roman de Brut, an expanded adaptation of Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae
Geoffrey's account of Merlin's early life is based on the story from the Historia Brittonum. At the same time, however, Geoffrey also turned Ambrosius Aurelianus into the separate character of Uther Pendragon's brother Aurelius Ambrosius. Geoffrey added his own embellishments to the tale, which he set in Carmarthen, Wales. While Nennius' "fatherless" Ambrosius eventually reveals himself to be the son of a Roman consul, Geoffrey's Merlin is fathered by an incubus demon through a nun, daughter of the King of Dyfed. Usually, the name of Merlin's mother is not stated, but it is given as Adhan in the oldest version of the Prose Brut, the text also naming his grandfather as King Conaan.
Merlin is born all hairy and already able to speak like an adult, as well as possessing supernatural knowledge that he uses to save his mother. The story of Vortigern's tower is 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 inserted a long section of Merlin's prophecies, taken from his earlier Prophetiae Merlini. Geoffrey also told two further tales of the character. In the first, Merlin creates Stonehenge as a burial place for Aurelius Ambrosius, bringing the stones from Ireland. In the second, Merlin's magic enables the new British king, Uther Pendragon, to enter into Tintagel Castle in disguise and to father Arthur with his enemy's wife, Igerna. These episodes appear in many later adaptations of Geoffrey's account. Merlin subsequently disappears from the narrative. He does not tutor or advise Arthur as in later versions.
Geoffrey dealt with Merlin again in his third work, Vita Merlini. He based it on stories of the original 6th-century Myrddin, set long after his time frame for the life of Merlin Ambrosius. Nevertheless, Geoffrey asserts that the characters and events of Vita Merlini are the same as told in the Historia Regum Britanniae. Here, Merlin survives the reign of Arthur, whose fall he is told about by Taliesin. Merlin spends a part of his life as a madman in the woods and marries a woman named Guendoloena. He eventually retires to observing stars from his house with seventy windows in the remote woods of Rhydderch. There, he is often visited by Taliesin and by his own sister Ganieda, who has become queen of the Cumbrians and is also endowed with prophetic powers. Compared to Geoffrey's Historia, his Vita seems to have little influence on the later portrayals of Merlin.
Mark Chorvinsky hypothesized that Merlin is based on a historical person, probably a 5th and/or 6th-century druid living in southern Scotland. Nikolai Tolstoy makes a similar argument based on the fact that early references to Merlin describe him as possessing characteristics which modern scholarship would recognize as druidical, the inference being that those characteristics were not invented by the early chroniclers but belonged to a real person. If so, the hypothetical proto-Merlin would have lived about a century after the hypothetical historical Arthur.
A late version of the Annales Cambriae and influenced by Geoffrey, records that in the year 573 after "the battle of Arfderydd, between the sons of Eliffer and Gwenddolau son of Ceidio; in which battle Gwenddolau fell; Myrddin went mad." The earliest version of the same entry in Annales Cambriae, as well as a later copy do not mention Myrddin. Myrddin furthermore shares similarities with the shamanic bard figure of Taliesin, alongside whom he appears in the Welsh Triads and in Vita Merlini, as well as in the poem "Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin" from The Black Book of Carmarthen, which was dated by Rachel Bromwich as "certainly" before 1100, that is predating Vita Merlini by at least half century while telling a different version of the same story. According to Villemarqué, the origin of the legend of Merlin lies with the Roman story of Marsus, a son of Circe, which eventually influenced the Breton and Welsh tales of a supernaturally-born bard or enchanter named Marzin or Marddin.