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Merlin
Ambrose Merlin, prince of enchanters. His mother was Matilda, a nun, who was seduced by a “guileful sprite,” or incubus, “half angel and half man, dwelling in mid-air betwixt the earth and moon.” Some say his mother was the daughter of Pubidius, lord of Math-traval, in Wales; and others make her a princess, daughter of Demetius, king of Demetia. Blaise baptized the infant, and thus rescued it from the powers of darkness.
Merlin died spell-bound, but the author and manner of his death are given differently by different authorities. Thus, in Le Morte d'Arthur By Sir Thomas Malory, we are told that the enchantress Nimue or Ninive inveigled the old man, and “covered him with a stone under a rock.” In the Morte d’Arthur it is said “he sleeps and sighs in an old tree, spell-bound by Vivien.” Tennyson, in his Idylls (“Vivien”), says that Vivien induced Merlin to take shelter from a storm in a hollow oak tree, and left him spell-bound. Others say he was spell-bound in a hawthorn bush, but this is evidently a blunder.
Merlin made “the fountain of love,” mentioned by Bojardo in Orlando Innamorato, Ariosto, in Orlando Furioso, says he made “one of the four fountains” (ch. xxvi).
He also made the Round Table at Carduel for 150 knights, which came into the possession of King Arthur on his marriage with Queen Guinever; and brought from Ireland the stones of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain.
Allusion is made to him in the Faëry Queen; in Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances; in Drayton’s Polyolbion; in Kenilworth, by Sir W. Scott, etc. T. Heywood has attempted to show the fulfilment of Merlin’s prophecies.
Of Merlin and his skill what region doth not hear?...
Who of a British nymph was gotten, whilst she played
With a seducing sprite ...
But all Demetia thro’ there was not found her peer.
Drayton, Polyolbion, v. (1612).
"One night, however, she forgot to cross herself, and thus the Devil could approach her,--even against her will. The pious girl underwent the severest penance, and when her time came she had a son whose hairy appearance betrayed his diabolical parentage. The child, however, was baptised and received the name Merlin. The excitement in heaven was great. What a triumph would it be to win the Devil's own son over to the cause of Christ. The Devil gave to his son all the knowledge of the past and the present; God added the knowledge of the future, and this proved the best weapon against the evil attempts of his wicked father. When Merlin grew up, he slighted his father and performed many marvellous things. He was full of wisdom, and his prophecies were reliable. It is generally assumed that after his death he did not descend into hell but went to heaven." The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil from Earliest Times to the Present Day by Paul Carus
"There is a fountain called Barenton, of romantic fame, in those “wild woods of Broceliande,” where, if legend be true, the wizard Merlin still sleeps his magic slumber in the hawthorn shade. Thither the Breton peasants used to resort when they needed rain. They caught some of the water in a tankard and threw it on a slab near the spring." The Golden Bough : A Study Of Magic and Religion. The Magical Control of the Weather
Merlin the Enchanter
"In one of the old books called Welsh Triads, in which all things are classed by threes, there is a description of three men called "The Three Generous Heroes of the Isle of Britain." One of these--named Nud or Nodens, and later called Merlin--was first brought from the sea, it is stated, with a herd of cattle consisting of 21,000 milch cows, which are supposed to mean those waves of the sea that the poets often describe as White Horses. He grew up to be a king and warrior, a magician and prophet, and on the whole the most important figure in the Celtic traditions. He came from the sea and at last returned to it, but meanwhile he did great works on land, one of which is said to have been the building of Stonehenge.
This is the way, as the old legends tell, in which the vast stones of Stonehenge came to be placed on Salisbury Plain. It is a thing which has always been a puzzle to every one, inasmuch as their size and weight are enormous, and there is no stone of the same description to be found within hundreds of miles of Salisbury Plain, where they now stand." Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Aurelius Ambrosius, Merlin builds Stonehenge, Uther Pendragon, the birth of Arthur
Myrddin, or Merlin
"A deity named Myrddin holds in Arthur's mythological cycle the place of the Sky and Sun-god, Nudd. One of the Welsh Triads tells us that Britain, before it was inhabited, was called Clas Myrddin, Myrddin's Enclosure. One is reminded of the Irish fashion of calling any favoured spot a "cattle-fold of the sun" - the name is applied by Deirdre to her beloved Scottish home in Glen Etive." From Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race by Thomas Rolleston
"To the same family of legends belong the notion that St. John is sleeping at Ephesus until the last days of the world; the myth of the enchanter Merlin, spell-bound by Vivien; the story of the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, who dozed away fifty-seven years in a cave; and Rip Van Winkle's nap in the Catskills." Myths and Myth-Makers
Merlin the Wild
A native of Caledonia, who lived in the sixteenth century, about a century after the great Ambrose Merlin, the sorcerer. Fordun, in his Scotichronicon, gives particulars about him. It was predicted that he would die by earth, wood, and water, which prediction was fulfilled thus: A mob of rustics hounded him, and he jumped from a rock into the Tweed, and was impaled on a stake fixed in the river bed. His grave is still shown beneath an aged hawthorn bush at Drummelzier, a village on the Tweed.
Merlin’s Cave
In Dynevor, near Carmarthen, noted for its ghastly noises of
rattling iron chains, brazen caldrons, groans, strokes of
hammers, and ringing of anvils. The cause is this: Merlin set his
spirits to fabricate a brazen wall to encompass the city of
Carmarthen, and as he had to call on the Lady of the Lake, bade
them not to slacken their labor till he returned; but he never
did return, for Vivien by craft got him under the enchanted
stone, and kept him there. Tennyson says he was spell-bound by
Vivien in a hollow oak tree, Le
Morte d'Arthur By Sir Thomas Malory gives the other
version.
