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120-532: 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

240-598: A Lady of the Lake , while either removing or altering many other episodes. Merlin's magical interventions in the Post-Vulgate versions of his story are relatively limited and markedly less spectacular, even compared to the magical feats of his own students, and his character becomes less moral. In addition, Merlin's prophecies also include sets of alternative possibilities (meaning future can be changed) instead of only certain outcomes. The Post-Vulgate Cycle has Merlin warn Arthur of how

360-573: 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 ("Prophecies of Merlin", c. 1130), which he claimed were the actual words of the legendary poet (including some distinctively apocalyptic prophecies for Geoffrey's contemporary 12th century); however,

480-402: A wise old man with a long white beard, creating a modern wizard archetype reflected in many fantasy characters, such as J. R. R. Tolkien 's Gandalf or J. K. Rowling 's Dumbledore , who also use some of his other traits. While some modern authors write about Merlin positively through an explicitly Christian world-view, some New Age movements instead see Merlin as a druid who accesses all

600-423: A "capital", but it was not the bureaucratic administrative centre of modern society, nor the settlement or civitas of Roman rule. As the ruler and protector of his kingdom, the king would maintain multiple courts throughout his territory, travelling among them to exercise his authority and to address the needs of his people, such as in the dispensing of justice. This ancient method of dispensing justice survived as

720-644: A "wild man" figure, evoking his prototype Myrddin Wyllt, as a civilized man of any age (including as a very young child), or even as a talking animal. His guises can be highly deformed and animalistic even when Merlin is presenting as a human or humanoid being. In the Perceval en prose (also known as the Didot Perceval and usually also attributed to Robert), where Merlin is the initiator of the Grail Quest and cannot die until

840-452: A Lady of the Lake, or the "chief Lady of the Lake" in the case of Malory's Nimue. In Perceforest , the ancestry of both Merlin and the Lady of the Lake is descended from the ancient fairy Morgane (unrelated to Arthur's sister), who cursed their bloodline when she wrongly believed that her daughter was raped by her daughter's human lover. Viviane's character in relation to Merlin is first found in

960-488: A Northumbrian partisan and spoke with prejudice against the native Britons, his Ecclesiastical History of the English People is highly regarded for its effort towards an accurate telling of history, and for its use of reliable sources. When passing along "traditional" information that lacks a historical foundation, Bede takes care to note it as such. The De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae by Gildas (c. 516–570)

1080-702: A cave, a tree, or hole either within or under a large rock (according to Le Morte d'Arthur , this happens somewhere in Benwick, the kingdom of Lancelot's father ), or an invisible tower made of magic with no physical walls. The scene is often placed in the enchanted forest of Brocéliande , a legendary location today identified with the real-life Paimpont forest in Brittany. A Breton tradition cited by Roger Sherman Loomis in Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (where he also asserts that it "seems almost certain that Morgan le Fay and

1200-1136: A champion for the idea of return to nature. Diverging from his traditional role in medieval romances, Merlin is also sometimes portrayed as a villain. As Peter H. Goodrich wrote in Merlin: A Casebook : Merlin's primary characteristics continue to be recalled, refined, and expanded today, continually encompassing new ideas and technologies as well as old ones. The ability of this complex figure to endure for more than fourteen centuries results not only from his manifold roles and their imaginative appeal, but also from significant, often irresolvable tensions or polarities [...] between beast and human (Wild Man), natural and supernatural (Wonder Child), physical and metaphysical (Poet), secular and sacred (Prophet), active and passive (Counselor), magic and science (Wizard), and male and female (Lover). Interwoven with these primary tensions are additional polarities that apply to all of Merlin's roles, such as those between madness and sanity, pagan and Christian, demonic and heavenly, mortality and immortality, and impotency and potency. Things named in honour of

1320-574: A descendant of one of Magnus Maximus ' generals, Paternus, who Maximus appointed as commander at Alt Clut. The Welsh and the Men of the North may have seen themselves as one people. The Welsh name for themselves, Cymry , derives from this ancient relationship, although this is debatable, as while Gwynedd seemed to have good relationships with them, and with Ceredigion, it is unknown how the other Welsh Kingdoms saw them, since they were not unified themselves, especially

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1440-415: A deserted place. He has been condemned for his sins to wander in the company of beasts, having been the cause of the deaths of all of the persons killed in the battle fought on the plain between Liddel and Carwannok. Having told his story, the madman leaps up and flees from the presence of the saint back into the wilderness. He appears several times more in the narrative until at last asking St. Kentigern for

1560-690: A house of glass (Welsh: Tŷ Gwydr ) with the Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain (Welsh: Tri Thlws ar Ddeg Ynys Prydain ). One site of his tomb is said to be Marlborough Mound in Wiltshire , known in medieval times as Merlebergia (the Abbot of Cirencester wrote in 1215: "Merlin's tumulus gave you your name, Merlebergia"). Another site associated with Merlin's burial, in his 'Merlin Silvestris' aspect,

1680-625: A literary convenience. The Iolo Manuscripts are a collection of manuscripts presented in the early 19th century by Edward Williams, who is better known as Iolo Morganwg . Containing various tales, anecdotal material and elaborate genealogies that connect virtually everyone of note with everyone else of note (and with many connections to Arthur and Iolo's native region of Morgannwg ), they were at first accepted as genuine, but have since been shown to be an assortment of forged or doctored manuscripts, transcriptions, and fantasies, mainly invented by Iolo himself. A list of works tainted by their reliance on

1800-676: A lost Cornish-language original Prophecy of Merlin exists in the Vatican library by John of Cornwall . In the Black Book of Carmarthen the poems Yr Afallennau and Yr Oianau describe Myrddin talking to an apple tree and a pig, prophesying the success or failure of the Welsh army in battles with the Normans in South Wales. Clas Myrddin , or Merlin's Enclosure , is an early name for Great Britain stated in

1920-585: A lustful demon and an unmarried beautiful young lady and was never baptized. As the Arthurian myths were retold, Merlin's prophetic " seer " aspects were sometimes de-emphasized (or even seemingly vanish entirely, as in the fragmentary and more fantastical Livre d'Artus ) in favor of portraying him as a wizard and an advisor to the young Arthur, sometimes in the struggle between good and evil sides of his character, and living in deep forests connected with nature. Through his ability to change his shape, he may appear as

2040-473: A major weakness that leads him to his relatively early doom: young beautiful women of femme fatale archetype. Contrary to many modern works in which they are archenemies, Merlin and Morgan are never opposed to each other in any medieval tradition, other than Morgan forcibly rejecting him in some texts. In fact, his love for Morgan is so great that he even lies to the king to save her in the Huth Merlin , which

2160-506: A northern Welsh and southern Scottish story of the mad prophet Lailoken ( Laleocen ), probably the same as Myrddin son of Morfryn ( Myrddin map Morfryn ) mentioned in the Welsh Triads, and with Buile Shuibhne , an Irish tale of the wandering insane king Suibihne mac Colmáin (often Anglicised to Sweeney ). In Welsh poetry, Myrddin was a bard who was driven mad after witnessing the horrors of war and subsequently fled civilization to become

2280-534: A part of royal procedure until the reforms of Henry II (reigned 1154–1189) modernised the administration of law. Modern scholarship uses the term "Cumbric" for the Brittonic language spoken in the Hen Ogledd. It appears to have been very closely related to Old Welsh , with some local variances, and more distantly related to Cornish , Breton and the pre-Gaelic form of Pictish . There are no surviving texts written in

2400-586: A publication now in the public domain :  " Myrddin Wyllt ". Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. Hen Ogledd Yr Hen Ogledd ( Welsh pronunciation: [ər ˌheːn ˈɔɡlɛð] ), meaning the Old North , is the historical region that was inhabited by the Brittonic people of sub-Roman Britain in the Early Middle Ages , now Northern England and

2520-647: 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. Geoffrey's composite Merlin is based mostly on the North Brythonic poet and seer Myrddin Wyllt , that is Myrddin the Wild (known as Merlinus Caledonensis or Merlin Sylvestris in later texts influenced by Geoffrey). Myrddin's legend has parallels with

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2640-759: A righteous seer chastising people for their sins, as does the 13th-14th Italian story collection Il Novellino which draws heavily from it. An even more political Italian text was Joachim of Fiore 's Expositio Sybillae et Merlini , directed against Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor whom the author regarded as the Antichrist. The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland , which sympathizes with Mordred as usual in Scottish chronicle tradition, particularly attributes Merlin's supernatural evil influence on Arthur to its very negative portrayal of his rule. The earliest Merlin text written in Germany

2760-412: 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

2880-710: A vast cyclical series of Old French prose works also known as the Vulgate Cycle, in the form of the Estoire de Merlin ( Story of Merlin ), also known as the Vulgate Merlin or the Prose Merlin . There, while not identifying his mother, it is stated that Merlin was named after his grandfather on her side. The Vulgate's Prose Lancelot further relates that after growing up in the borderlands between 'Scotland' (i.e. Pictish lands) and 'Ireland' (i.e. Argyll ), Merlin "possessed all

3000-590: Is created as a demon spawn, but in Robert's account he is explicitly to become the Antichrist intended to reverse the effect of the Harrowing of Hell . The infernal plot is thwarted when a priest named Blaise  [ fr ] (the story's narrator and perhaps Merlin's divine twin in a hypothetical now-lost oral tradition) is contacted by the child's mother; Blaise immediately baptizes the boy at birth, thus freeing him from

3120-563: Is disparaged as pseudohistory , though it looms large as a source for the largely fictional chivalric romance stories known collectively as the Matter of Britain . The lack of historical value attributed to the Historia lies only partly in the fact that it contains so many fictions and falsifications of history; the fact that historical accuracy clearly was not a consideration in its creation makes any references to actual people and places no more than

3240-617: Is occasionally relevant in that it mentions early people and places also mentioned in the literary and historical sources. The work was intended to preach Christianity to Gildas' contemporaries and was not meant to be a history. It is one of the few contemporary accounts of his era to have survived. Brittonic place names in Scotland south of the Forth and Clyde, and in Cumberland and neighbouring counties, indicate areas of Hen Ogledd inhabited by Britons in

3360-419: 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 (and his disciple Saint Hilaire) in hagiography and folklore are similar to these of Merlin. If

3480-548: Is perhaps the most frequently portrayed Arthurian character." According to Stephen Thomas Knight , Merlin embodies a conflict between knowledge and power: beginning as a symbol of wisdom in the first Welsh stories, he became an advisor to kings in the Middle Ages, and eventually a mentor and teacher to Arthur and others in the works around the world since the 19th century. Since the Romantic period, Merlin has been typically depicted as

3600-402: Is reliably known. These sources are not without deficiencies. Both the authors and their later transcribers sometimes displayed a partisanship that promoted their own interests, portraying their own agendas in a positive light, always on the side of justice and moral rectitude. Facts in opposition to those agendas are sometimes omitted, and apocryphal entries are sometimes added. While Bede was

3720-623: Is reputed to lie near the River Tweed in the village of Drumelzier near Peebles , although nothing remains above ground level at the site. The earliest (pre-12th century) Welsh poems about the Myrddin legend present him as a madman living an existence in the Caledonian Forest . He was born in 540. In the forest he ruminates on his former existence and the events of the Battle of Arfderydd , where Riderch Hael , King of Alt Clut (Strathclyde) slaughtered

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3840-537: Is the confluence of the Pausalyl Burn and River Tweed in Drumelzier , Scotland. The 15th-century Scotichronicon tells that Merlin himself underwent a triple-death , at the hands of some shepherds of the under-king Meldred : stoned and beaten by the shepherds, he falls over a cliff and is impaled on a stake, his head falls forward into the water, and he drowns. The fulfillment of another prophecy, ascribed to Thomas

3960-442: Is the only instance of him ever intentionally misleading Arthur. Instead, Merlin's eventual undoing comes from his lusting after another of his female students: the one often named Viviane, among various other names and spellings (including Malory's own Nyneve that his editor William Caxton changed to Nymue which in turn eventually became the now-popular Nimue). She is also called a fairy (French fee ) like Morgan and described as

4080-516: 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

4200-560: The Vita Merlini , an account based more closely on the earlier Welsh stories about Myrddin and his experiences at Arfderyd, and explained that the action was taking place long after Merlin's involvement with Arthur. However, the Vita Merlini did not prove popular enough to counter the version of Merlin in the Historia , which went on to influence most later accounts of the character. [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from

4320-531: The Brythonic 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 (from Latin merda ) for feces. 'Merlin' may also be an adjective, in which case he should be called "The Merlin", from

4440-507: The Cymry ), and in the English county name Cumbria , both meaning "homeland", "mother country". Many of the traditional sources of information about the Hen Ogledd survive in Welsh tradition, and bards such as Aneirin (the reputed author of Y Gododdin ) are thought to have been court poets in the Hen Ogledd. A listing of passages from the literary and historical sources, particularly relevant to

4560-509: The Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata to the northwest. All of these peoples would play a role in the history of the Old North. From a historical perspective, wars were frequently internecine, and Britons were aggressors as well as defenders, as was also true of the Angles, Picts, and Gaels . However, those Welsh stories of the Hen Ogledd that tell of Britons fighting Anglians have a counterpart, told from

4680-565: The Kingdom of England , the Anglo-Saxon enemies against whom Merlin aids first Uther and then Arthur tend to be replaced by the Saracens or simply just invading pagans. The 15th-century English poem Sir Gowther presents the titular redeemed half-demon as Merlin's half-brother. In Britain, Merlin remained as much as a prophet as a magician up to and including the 16th century, when political content in

4800-830: The Lancelot-Grail cycle, after having been inserted into the legend of Merlin by either de Boron or his continuator. There are many different versions of their story. Common themes in most of them include Merlin actually having the prior prophetic knowledge of her plot against him (one exception is the Spanish Post-Vulgate Baladro where his foresight ability is explicitly dampened by sexual desire) but lacking either ability or will to counteract it in any way, along with her using one of his own spells to get rid of him. Usually (including in Le Morte d'Arthur ), having learned everything she could from him, Viviane will then also replace

4920-530: The Prophetiae in his more famous second work, the Historia Regum Britanniae . In this work, however, he constructed an account of Merlin's life that placed him in the time of Ambrosius Aurelianus and King Arthur , decades before the lifetime of Myrddin Wyllt. He also attached to him an episode originally ascribed to Ambrosius, and others that appear to be of his own invention. Geoffrey later wrote

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5040-530: The Sacrament , prophesying that he was about to die a triple death . After some hesitation, the saint grants the madman's wish, and later that day the shepherds of King Meldred capture him, beat him with clubs, then cast him into the river Tweed where his body is pierced by a stake, thus fulfilling his prophecy. Legend has it that second part of Carmarthen's name (in Welsh -fyrddin ) was derived from Myrddin and identified his place of birth. However, when Britannia

5160-703: The Southwestern Brittonic languages . In general, however, the differences appear to be slight, and the distinction between Cumbric and Old Welsh is largely geographical rather than linguistic. Cumbric gradually disappeared as the area was conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, and later the Scots and Norse , though it survived in the Kingdom of Strathclyde , centred at Alt Clut in what is now Dumbarton in Scotland. Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that it re-emerged in Cumbria in

5280-519: The Suite du Merlin , the mage both predicts and, wielding elemental magic, influences the course of battles, in addition to helping the young Arthur in other ways. Eventually, he arranges the reconciliation between Arthur and his rivals, and the surrender of the defeated Saxons and their departure from Britain. The extended prose rendering of Merlin was incorporated as a foundation of the Lancelot-Grail ,

5400-593: The Welsh Triads . Almost nothing is reliably known of Central Britain before c.  550 . There had never been a period of long-term, effective Roman control north of the Tyne – Solway line, and south of that line effective Roman control began to erode before the traditionally given date of departure of the Roman military from Roman Britain in 407. It was noted in the writings of Ammianus Marcellinus and others that there

5520-466: The 10th century, as Strathclyde established hegemony over that area. It is unknown when Cumbric finally became extinct, but the series of counting systems of Brittonic origin recorded in Northern England since the 18th century have been proposed as evidence of a survival of elements of Cumbric; though the view has been largely rejected on linguistic grounds, with evidence pointing to the fact that it

5640-451: The Celtic peoples of Great Britain who will join and drive the English – and later the Normans – back into the sea. Some of these works were presented as prophecies of Myrddin. The Armes Prydein (one of the earliest mentions of him) contains the line “Myrddin foretells that they will meet”. The tradition was apparently shared with Cornish literature, however only a single Latin translation of

5760-594: The French merle meaning blackbird. According to Martin Aurell, the Latin form Merlinus is a euphony of the Celtic form Myrddin to bring him closer to the blackbird (Latin merula ) 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 (mad) and the Welsh dyn (man), to mean 'madman'. It may also mean '[of] many names' if it

5880-603: The Hen Ogledd, can be found in Sir Edward Anwyl 's article Wales and the Britons of the North . A somewhat dated introduction to the study of old Welsh poetry can be found in his 1904 article Prolegomena to the Study of Old Welsh Poetry . Stories praising a patron and the construction of flattering genealogies are neither unbiased nor reliable sources of historically accurate information. However, while they may exaggerate and make apocryphal assertions, they do not falsify or change

6000-734: The Lady of the Isle of Avalon (Dama di Isola do Vallone). Others who have learned sorcery from Merlin include the Wise Damsel in the Italian Historia di Merlino , and the male wizard Mabon in the Post-Vulgate Merlin Continuation and the Prose Tristan . His various apprentices gain or expand their magical powers through Merlin, however his prophetic powers cannot be passed on. In the prose chivalric romance tradition, Merlin has

6120-460: The Lady of the Lake were originally the same person" in the legend) has Merlin trapped by his mistress inside a tree on the Île de Sein . Niniane, as the Lady of the Lake student of Merlin is known in the Livre d'Artus continuation of Merlin , is mentioned as having broken his heart before his later second relationship with Morgan, but here the text does not tell how exactly Merlin did vanish, other than relating his farewell meeting with Blaise. In

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6240-412: The Men of the North during the early 7th century (and possibly earlier), and was used throughout the Middle Ages to describe the Kingdom of Strathclyde . Before this, and for some centuries after, the traditional as well as the more literary term was Brythoniaid , recalling the still older time when all on the island remained a unity. Cymry survives today in the native name for Wales ( Cymru , land of

6360-403: The North ( Alba ) and was a contemporary of Arthur, saw a horrible portent in the sky while fighting in a battle and spent the rest of his days a madman in the woods. The third one is “Myrddin Wyllt”, whom Lloyd identifies with the Lailoken mentioned in Jocelyn of Furness ' Life of St. Kentigern . Although Lailoken is identified with Merlin in the late 15th-century Lailoken and Kentigern ,

6480-435: The Northumbrian and Pictish royal families would produce the Pictish king Talorgan I . Áedán mac Gabráin fought as an ally of the Britons against the Northumbrians. Cadwallon ap Cadfan of the Kingdom of Gwynedd allied with Penda of Mercia to defeat Edwin of Northumbria . Conquest and defeat did not necessarily mean the extirpation of one culture and its replacement by another. The Brittonic region of northwestern England

6600-435: The Post-Vulgate Suite (along with an earlier version of the Prose Merlin ) was the main source for the opening section of Thomas Malory 's English-language compilation work Le Morte d'Arthur which formed a now-iconic version of the legend. Compared to some of his French sources (such as the Vulgate Lancelot which described Merlin as "treacherous and disloyal by nature, like his [demon] father before him"), Malory limited

6720-570: The Rhymer , came about when a spate of the Tweed and Pausayl occurred during the reign of the Scottish James VI and I on the English throne: "When Tweed and Pausayl meet at Merlin's grave, / Scotland and England one king shall have." Merlin and stories involving him have continued to be popular from the Renaissance to the present day, especially since the renewed interest in the legend of Arthur in modern times. As noted by Arthurian scholar Alan Lupack, "numerous novels, poems and plays center around Merlin. In American literature and popular culture, Merlin

6840-436: The Second Continuation of Perceval, the Story of the Grail , a young daughter of Merlin himself, called the Lady of the High Peak of Mont Dolorous, appears to guide Perceval towards the Grail Castle. The earliest English verse romance concerning Merlin is Of Arthour and of Merlin of the late 13th century, which drew from the chronicles and the Vulgate Cycle. In English-language medieval texts that conflate Britain with

6960-460: The Third Series of Welsh Triads . The modern depiction of Merlin began with Geoffrey of Monmouth , who portrayed Merlin as a prophet and a madman, and introduced him into Arthurian legend . Geoffrey of Monmouth popularised Merlin the wizard, associated with the town of Carmarthen in South Wales . His book Prophetiae Merlini was intended to be a collection of the prophecies of the Welsh figure of Myrddin, whom he called Merlin . He included

7080-473: The Tudors' Welsh supporters, including bards, interpreted the prophecy of King Arthur's return as having been fulfilled after their ascent to the throne of England that they sought to legitimize following the Wars of the Roses . Prophecies attributed to Merlin were also used by the 14th-century Welsh hero Owain Glyndŵr in his fight against the English rule. The vagueness of Merlin's prophecies enabled British monarchs and historians to continue using them even in

7200-400: The Vulgate Lancelot , which predates the later Vulgate Merlin , she (aged just 12 at the time) makes Merlin sleep forever in a pit in the forest of Darnantes, "and that is where he remained, for never again did anyone see or hear of him or have news to tell of him." In the Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin , the young King Bagdemagus (one of the early Knights of the Round Table ) manages to find

7320-399: The Welsh Triads and in Vita Merlini , as well as in the poem "Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin" ("The Conversation between Myrddin and Taliesin") 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

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7440-449: The Welsh name Myrddin ( Welsh pronunciation: [ˈmərðin] ) 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[ress]'. Eric P. Hamp proposed

7560-431: The Wild", Cornish : Merdhyn Gwyls , Breton : Marzhin Gouez ) is a figure in medieval Welsh legend . In Middle Welsh poetry he is accounted a chief bard, the speaker of several poems in The Black Book of Carmarthen and The Red Book of Hergest . He is called Wyllt —"the Wild"—by Elis Gruffydd , and elsewhere Myrddin Emrys ("Ambrosius"), Merlinus Caledonensis ("of Caledonia") or Merlin Sylvestris ("of

7680-489: The alternative name may already have been present in the Middle Welsh poem Dialogue of Myrddin with his sister Gwendydd (also named Gwenddydd or Languoreth), for she addresses him several times as Llallwg , for which the diminutive would be Llallwgan . A version of this legend is preserved in the late-15th-century Lailoken and Kentigern . In this narrative St. Kentigern meets a naked, hairy madman called Lailoken , said by some to be called Merlynum or Merlin , in

7800-403: The beasts and received the gift of prophecy. Myrddin Wyllt's legend closely resembles that of a north-British figure called Lailoken , which appears in Jocelyn of Furness ' 12th-century Life of Kentigern . Scholars differ as to the independence or identity of Lailoken and Myrddin, though there is more agreement as to Myrddin's original independence from later Welsh legends. Myrddin's grave

7920-503: The birth of his other son will bring great misfortune and ruin to his kingdom, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy . Eventually, long after Merlin is gone, his advice to dispose of the baby Mordred through an event evoking the Biblical Massacre of the Innocents leads to the deaths of many, among them Arthur. Both Merlin and its continuations have been adapted in verse and prose, translated into several languages, and further modified to various degrees by other authors. Notably,

8040-498: The deadly magic traps around it, while the Lady of the Lake comes to taunt Merlin, asking if he has rotted yet. One notably alternate version that has a happier ending for Merlin is the Premiers Faits section of the Livre du Graal , where Niniane peacefully confines him in Brocéliande with walls of air, visible only as a mist to others but as a beautiful yet unbreakable crystal tower to him (only Merlin's disembodied voice can escape his prison one last time when he speaks to Gawain on

8160-481: The destruction of the Brittonic kingdoms of the north. Welsh tradition included genealogies of the Gwŷr y Gogledd , or Men of the North, and several important Welsh dynasties traced their lineage to them. A number of important early Welsh texts were attributed to the Men of the North, such as Taliesin , Aneirin , Myrddin Wyllt , and the Cynfeirdd poets. Heroes of the north such as Urien , Owain mab Urien , and Coel Hen and his descendants feature in Welsh poetry and

8280-408: The dialect; evidence for it comes from placenames, proper names in a few early inscriptions and later non-Cumbric sources, two terms in the Leges inter Brettos et Scottos , and the corpus of poetry by the cynfeirdd , the "early poets", nearly all of which deals with the north. The cynfeirdd poetry is the largest source of information, and it is generally accepted that some part of the corpus

8400-414: 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 (City of 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

8520-475: The early Middle Ages. Isolated locations of later British presence are also indicated by place names of Old English and Old Norse origin. In Yorkshire, the names of Walden , Walton and Walburn , from Old English walas "Britons or Welshmen", indicate Britons encountered by the Anglo-Saxons, and the name of Birkby , from Old Norse Breta "Britons", indicates a place where the Vikings met Britons. The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth

8640-632: The early modern period. Notably, the King of Scotland and later also of England and Ireland, James VI and I , claimed his 1603 unification of Britain into the United Kingdom had been foretold by Merlin. Merlin's apprentice in chivalric romances is often Arthur's half-sister, Morgan le Fay , who is sometimes depicted as Merlin's lover and sometimes as just his unrequited love interest. In the Prophéties de Merlin , he also tutors Sebile , two other witch queens, and

8760-429: The eliminated Merlin within the story, taking up his role as Arthur's adviser and court mage. However, Merlin's fate of either demise or eternal imprisonment, along with his destroyer or captor's motivation (from her fear of Merlin and protecting her own virginity, to her jealousy of his relationship with Morgan), is recounted differently in variants of this motif. The exact form of his prison or grave can be also variably

8880-612: The end of days, he eventually retires after Arthur's downfall by turning himself into a bird and entering the mysterious esplumoir , never to be seen again. Among other medieval works dealing with the Merlin legend is the 13th-century Le Roman de Silence . The Prophéties de Merlin (c. 1276) contains long prophecies of Merlin (mostly concerned with 11th to 13th-century Italian history and contemporary politics), some by his ghost after his death, interspersed with episodes relating Merlin's deeds and with assorted Arthurian adventures in which Merlin does not appear at all. It pictures Merlin as

9000-405: The extent of the negative association of Merlin and his powers. He is relatively rarely condemned as demonic by other characters such as King Lot , instead he is presented as an ambiguous trickster. Conversely, Merlin seems to be inherently evil in the so-called non-cyclic Lancelot , where he was born as the "fatherless child" from not a supernatural rape of a virgin but a consensual union between

9120-462: The forces of Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio , and Myrddin went mad watching this defeat. The Annales Cambriae date this battle to 573, naming Gwenddoleu's adversaries as the sons of Eliffer , presumably Gwrgi and Peredur . This battle, the subsequent assassination of Urien Rheged and the defeat of the Gododdin at Catraeth are cited as reasons for the collapse of the alliance of early British kingdoms in

9240-490: The historic king Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio ). 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 (a Latinized name of Myrddin's sister Gwenddydd ), 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

9360-436: The historical facts that were known to the bards' listeners, as that would bring ridicule and disrepute to both the bards and their patrons. In addition, the existence of stories of defeat and tragedy , as well as stories of victory, lends additional credibility to their value as sources of history. Within that context, the stories contain useful information, much of it incidental, about an era of British history where very little

9480-496: 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 (dubbed the "B-text", written at the end of the 13th century) and influenced by Geoffrey, records that in the year 573 after "the battle of Arfderydd , between

9600-480: The kingdoms of the Hen Ogledd except Strathclyde were gradually either integrated or subsumed by the emerging Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Gaelic Scots and fellow Brittonic Picts by about 800; Strathclyde was eventually incorporated into the rising Middle Irish -speaking Kingdom of Scotland in the 11th century. The memory of the Hen Ogledd remained strong in Wales after its fall, and indeed the term came into being in Wales after

9720-450: The knight's quest to find him), where they then spend almost every night together as lovers. Besides evoking the final scenes from Vita Merlini , this particular variant of their story also mirrors episodes found in some other texts, wherein Merlin either is an object of one-sided desire by a different amorous sorceress who too (unsuccessfully) plots to trap him or it is Merlin himself who traps an unwilling lover with his magic. Unrelated to

9840-426: 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 (but that sources of the time would not have recognized),

9960-607: 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. Around the turn of the 13th century, Robert de Boron retold and expanded on this material in Merlin , an Old French epic poem inspired by Wace 's Roman de Brut , an Anglo-Norman creative adaptation of Geoffrey's Historia . The work presents itself as

10080-493: The legend of the Lady of the Lake, other purported sites of Merlin's burial include a cave deep inside Merlin's Hill ( Welsh : Bryn Myrddin ), outside Carmarthen. Carmarthen is also associated with Merlin more generally, including through the 13th-century manuscript known as the Black Book and the local lore of Merlin's Oak . In North Welsh tradition, Merlin retires to Bardsey Island (Welsh: Ynys Enlli ), where he lives in

10200-577: The legendary figure have included asteroid 2598 Merlin , the British company Merlin Entertainments , the handheld console Merlin , the literary magazine Merlin , the metal band Merlin , and more than a dozen different British warships each called HMS Merlin . He was one of eight British magical figures who were commemorated on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail in 2011, and one of

10320-522: The marriage to Guinevere . A further reworking and an alternative continuation of the Prose Merlin were included within the subsequent Post-Vulgate Cycle as the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin or the Huth Merlin , the so-called "romantic" rewrite (as opposed to the so-called "historical" original of the Vulgate). It added some content such as Merlin providing Arthur with the sword Excalibur through

10440-486: The material presented by Iolo (sometimes without attribution) would be quite long. Places in the Old North that are mentioned as kingdoms in the literary and historical sources include: Several regions are mentioned in the sources, assumed to be notable regions within one of the kingdoms if not separate kingdoms themselves: Kingdoms that were not part of the Old North but are part of its history include: The following names appear in historical and literary sources, but it

10560-482: 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

10680-627: The mysteries of the world. For instance, Merlin appears in the teachings of the Montana-based New Age religious-survivalist group Church Universal and Triumphant as one of their " ascended masters ". Francophone artistic productions since the end of the 20th century have tended to avoid the Christian aspects of the character in favor of the pagan aspects and the tradition sylvestre (attributing positive values to one's links to forest and wild animals), thus "dechristianizing" Merlin to present him as

10800-584: The north before the Angles, Scots and Picts. Welsh historian John Edward Lloyd suggests there were three traditions that were conflated. The first, “ Merlinus Ambrosius ” (the Arthurian Merlin ), identified by Giraldus Cambrensis as Myrddin Emrys —the Welsh form of Ambrosius —, who was found at Carmarthen and prophesied before Vortigern . The second, “ Merlinus Silvester ” or “ Merlinus Caledonius ” who came from

10920-599: The opposite side. The story of the demise of the kingdoms of the Old North is the story of the rise of the Kingdom of Northumbria from two coastal kingdoms to become the premier power in Britain north of the Humber and south of the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth . The interests of kingdoms of this era were not restricted to their immediate vicinity. Alliances were not made only within

11040-560: 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 (a character inspired by

11160-498: The power of Satan and his intended destiny. The demonic legacy invests Merlin (already able to speak fluently even as a newborn) with a preternatural knowledge of the past and present, which is supplemented by God, who gives the boy prophetic knowledge of the future. The text lays great emphasis on Merlin's power to shapeshift , his joking personality, and his connection to the Holy Grail , the quest for which he later foretells. Merlin

11280-457: The rock under which Merlin is entombed alive by Niviene, as she is named there. He communicates with Merlin, but is unable to lift the stone; what follows next is supposedly narrated in the mysterious text Conte del Brait ( Tale of the Cry ). In Prophéties de Merlin , his tomb is unsuccessfully searched for by various parties, including Morgan and her enchantresses, but the tomb cannot be accessed due to

11400-524: The role of kingmaker. Earlier, Merlin also instructs Uther to establish the original order of the Round Table for fifty members, following his own act of creating the table itself. The text ends with the coronation of Arthur. The prose version of Robert's poem was then continued in the 13th-century Merlin Continuation , telling of King Arthur's early wars and Merlin's role in them. In this text, also known as

11520-517: The same ethnic groups, nor were enmities restricted to nearby different ethnic groups. An alliance of Britons fought against another alliance of Britons at the Battle of Arfderydd . Áedán mac Gabráin of Dál Riata appears in the Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd , a genealogy among the pedigrees of the Men of the North. The Historia Brittonum states that Oswiu , king of Northumbria, married a Briton who may have had some Pictish ancestry. A marriage between

11640-620: The son of a Roman consul , Geoffrey's Merlin is fathered by an incubus demon through a nun, daughter of the King of Dyfed ( Demetae , today's South West Wales ). 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

11760-476: 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 (in the "A-text", written c. 1100), as well as a later copy (the "C-text", written towards the end of the 13th century) do not mention Myrddin. Myrddin furthermore shares similarities with the shamanic bard figure of Taliesin, alongside whom he appears in

11880-489: The southern Scottish Lowlands , alongside the fellow Brittonic Celtic Kingdom of Elmet , in Yorkshire . Its population spoke a variety of the Brittonic language known as Cumbric which is closely related to, if not a dialect of Old Welsh . The people of Wales and the Hen Ogledd considered themselves to be one people, and both were referred to as Cymry ('fellow-countrymen') from the Brittonic word combrogi . The Hen Ogledd

12000-601: The southern Kingdoms like Dyfed and Ystrad Tywi , which had heavy Irish presence at the time. 'Cymry' was a term that referred to both the Welsh and the Men of the North but was sometimes applied to others such as the Picts and the Irish as well. It is derived from the Brittonic word c ombrogoi , which meant "fellow-countrymen", and it is worth noting in passing that its Breton counterpart kenvroiz still has this original meaning of "compatriots". The word began to be used as an endonym by

12120-518: 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 ( Igraine ). These episodes appear in many later adaptations of Geoffrey's account. As Lewis Thorpe notes, 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 (1150). He based it on stories of

12240-450: The story of Merlin's life as told by Merlin himself to be written down by the "real" author while the actual author claimed merely to translate the story into French. Only a few lines of what is believed to be the original text have survived, but a more popular prose version had a great influence on the emerging genre of Arthurian-themed chivalric romance . As in Geoffrey's Historia , Merlin

12360-579: The style of Agrippa d'Aubigné continued to be written using Merlin's name to guarantee their authenticity. During the 15th century, Welsh works predicting the Celtic revenge and victory over the Saxons were recast as Merlin's (Myrddin's) prophecies and used along with Geoffrey by the propaganda of the Welsh-descended Henry VII of England (who fought under the red dragon banner) of the House of Tudor , which traced its lineage directly to Arthur. Later,

12480-631: The three Arthurian figures (along with Arthur and Morgan) commemorated on the gold and silver British pound coins issued by the Royal Mint in 2023. Merlinia , the Ordovician trilobite , is also named after Merlin; the name is given in memory of a Welsh legend in which the broken tail parts of trilobites were identified as butterflies turned to stone by Merlin. Myrddin Wyllt Myrddin Wyllt ( Welsh: [ˈmərðɪn ˈwɨɬt] —"Myrddin

12600-486: The wisdom that can come from demons, which is why he was so feared by the Bretons and so revered that everyone called him a holy prophet and the ordinary people all called him their god." In the Vulgate Cycle's version of Merlin , his acts include arranging the consummation of Arthur's desire for "the most beautiful maiden ever born," Lady Lisanor of Cardigan, resulting in the birth of Arthur's illegitimate son Lohot from before

12720-459: The woods"). Myrddin Wylt was born in 540 CE. Although his legend centres on a known Celtic theme , Myrddin's legend is rooted in history, for he is said to have gone mad after the Battle of Arfderydd ( Arthuret ) at which Rhydderch Hael of Strathclyde defeated the Brythonic king Gwenddoleu . According to the Annales Cambriae this took place in 573. Myrddin fled into the forest, lived with

12840-602: The work reveals little about Merlin's background. Geoffrey was further inspired by Emrys ( Old Welsh : Embreis ), a character based in part on the 5th-century historical figure of the Romano-British war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus (Welsh name Emrys Wledig , also known as Myrddin Emrys ). When Geoffrey included Merlin in his next work, Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), he supplemented his characterisation of Merlin by attributing stories of Ambrosius to Merlin. These stories were taken from one of Geoffrey's primary sources,

12960-457: 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 he fell in love with her. Other texts variously describe his retirement, at times supernatural, or death. The name Merlin is derived from

13080-645: Was Caesarius of Heisterbach 's Latin Dialogus Miraculorum (1220). Ulrich Füetrer 's 15th-century Buch der Abenteuer , in the section based on Albrecht von Scharfenberg 's lost Merlin , presents Merlin as Uter's father, effectively making Merlin's grandson Arthur a part-devil too. Bauduin (Baudouin) Butor's 1294 romance known as either Les Fils du Roi Constant or Pandragus et Libanor names Merlin's usually unspecified mother as Optima, daughter of King Melias of Demetia (Dyfed), while Paolino Pieri's 14th-century Italian La Storia di Merlino calls her Marinaia. In

13200-456: Was a Roman province, Carmarthen was the civitas capital of the Demetae tribe, known as Moridunum (from Brittonic *mori-dunon meaning "sea fort"), and this is the true source of the town's name. Celticist A. O. H. Jarman suggests that instead the name Myrddin was derived from Carmarthen's name. Welsh literature has examples of a prophetic literature, predicting the military victory of all of

13320-452: Was absorbed by Anglian Northumbria in the 7th century, yet it would reemerge 300 years later as South Cumbria, joined with North Cumbria (Strathclyde) into a single state. The organisation of the Men of the North was tribal , based on kinship groups of extended families, owing allegiance to a dominant "royal" family, sometimes indirectly through client relationships, and receiving protection in return. For Celtic peoples, this organisation

13440-587: Was also called "Merlin", hence Ambrosius Merlinus. 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 (Welsh: Caerfyrddin). While Nennius' "fatherless" Ambrosius eventually reveals himself to be

13560-434: Was derived from the Welsh myrdd , myriad. In his Myrdhinn, ou l'Enchanteur Merlin (1862), La Villemarqué derived Marz[h]in , which he considered the original form of Merlin's name, from the Breton word marz (wonder) to mean 'wonder man'. Clas Myrddin 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

13680-567: Was distinct from the parts of Great Britain inhabited by the Picts , Anglo-Saxons , and Scoti . The major kingdoms of the Hen Ogledd were Elmet , Gododdin , Rheged , and the Kingdom of Strathclyde (Welsh: Ystrad Clud ). Smaller kingdoms included Aeron and Calchfynydd . Eidyn , Lleuddiniawn , and Manaw Gododdin were evidently parts of Gododdin. The later Anglian kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia both had Brittonic-derived names, suggesting they may have been Brittonic kingdoms originally. All

13800-569: Was ever-decreasing Roman control from about 100 onward, and in the years after 360 there was widespread disorder and the large-scale permanent abandonment of territory by the Romans. By 550, the region was controlled by native Brittonic -speaking peoples except for the eastern coastal areas, which were controlled by the Anglian peoples of Bernicia and Deira . To the north were the Picts (now also accepted as Brittonic speakers prior to Gaelicisation) with

13920-481: Was first composed in the Hen Ogledd. However, it survives entirely in later manuscripts created in Wales where the oral tradition continued on, and it is unknown how faithful they are to the originals. Still, the texts do contain discernible variances that distinguish the speech from the Welsh dialects. In particular, these texts contain a number of archaisms – features that appear to have once been common in all Brittonic varieties, but which later vanished from Welsh and

14040-486: Was imported to England after the Old English era. One of the traditional stories relating to the genealogies of Welsh dynasties derived from Cunedda and his sons as "Men of the North". Cunedda himself is held to be the progenitor of the royal dynasty of the Kingdom of Gwynedd, one of the largest and most powerful of the medieval Welsh kingdoms, and an ongoing connection to the Hen Ogledd. Cunedda's genealogy shows him as

14160-460: Was originally part of a cycle of Robert's poems telling the story of the Grail over the centuries. The narrative of Merlin is largely based on Geoffrey's familiar tale of Vortigern's Tower, Uther's war against the Saxons, and Arthur's conception. New in this retelling is the episode of young Arthur (who had been secreted away by Merlin) drawing the sword from the stone , an event orchestrated by Merlin in

14280-484: 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 (the white dragon) and the native Celtic Britons (the red dragon). 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

14400-662: Was still in effect hundreds of years later, as shown in the Irish Brehon law , the Welsh Laws of Hywel Dda , and the Scottish Laws of the Brets and Scots . The Anglo-Saxon law had culturally different origins, but with many similarities to Celtic law . Like Celtic law, it was based on cultural tradition, without any perceivable debt to the Roman occupation of Britain. A primary royal court ( Welsh : llys ) would be maintained as

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