INTRODUCTION
MIKE ASHLEY
Merlin . . . the very name conjures up images of magic and mystery. And what a mystery. Perhaps even more than King Arthur, the real character and person of Merlin remains obscure, lost in fifteen centuries of tales retold. But as a creature of the imagination Merlin lives on, and will forever. We all love to dream, and in Merlin we have the forefather of all our dreams, the master of enchantments, the prophet and kingmaker. To Merlin, the all-seeing, the all-knowing, nothing was impossible. Merlin is the root and branch of all that is magic and wonder in the world.
This volume looks at both the life and character of Merlin and the world of magic and enchantment that surrounded him. Merlin was not the only being possessed of magic. The Arthurian world also brings us Morgan le Fay, the half-sister of Arthur, who learned her magic skills from Merlin, and who was the queen who ferried Arthur away to Avalon after the Battle of Camlann. There was also Vivienne, sometimes called Nimuë, who became the lover of Merlin and learned his magical craft, and at length imprisoned him in a cave or tomb where he remains trapped to this day. Some link both Vivienne and Morgan le Fay with the Lady of the Lake. To me there is no more glorious image in the whole of Arthurian literature, perhaps even the whole of fantasy, than when, after the battle of Camlann, Sir Bedivere is charged with throwing Excalibur back into the lake. He twice refuses, but the third time throws it far into the lake where an arm rises from the water, catches the sword, brandishes it three times, and then sinks into the lake. Pure magic. This anthology considers all of that mystery and magic from the earliest days of Merlin to his fate . . . and beyond. For magic never dies, and the influence of Merlin and Morgan le Fay lives on in other tales and legends down through the centuries.
I was delighted at the response from authors when I first sent out word of this anthology. My early researches had shown that whilst Merlin features heavily in many Arthurian stories, few have him as their central character. I wanted writers to explore Merlin’s life and character a little more deeply. The response was marvellous, the authors demonstrating their own fascination for Merlin and his influence on the Arthurian world. Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of The Mists of Avalon, reworked an extract from that book to present a story about the childhood of Nimuë. The Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis, who writes fiction under the name Peter Tremayne, recreated Merlin in the historical world of ancient Britain, and considered his early life. Robert Holdstock, who has been developing the myths of the Matter of Britain in his books Mythago Wood, Lavondyss and Merlin’s Wood, brings us his own interpretation of the scheming, artful Merlin, and of the origins of Arthur. Tanith Lee was the first to respond to my enquiries with a story which considers Merlin’s involvement in the quest for the Holy Grail. This raises some of the mystical aspects of Merlin’s world, which are further explored by Darrell Schweitzer, who tackled the thorny problem of the very nature of Merlin’s existence; Peter Valentine Timlett, who considers the mystical import of the Round Table; and Jessica Amanda Salmonson, who explores the enduring myth of the Dark Lady Nimuë. And that’s only half the contents. Inevitably some incidents arise in more than one story, each author developing their own interpretation. This is most true of how Arthur first received Excalibur, and it is fascinating to see the different variations on that theme, all seeking to explore and explain the significance of that episode. And there are similar twice-told tales about Merlin and Nimuë and Merlin’s passing. The result is an intriguing exploration of the Merlin myth.
If that’s whetted your appetite, let me not detain you, but move on and I hope you enjoy the stories. You can always return here later. But if you wish to stay, I want to explore the literary and historical background to Merlin, partly to help set these stories in the context of the legend, but also for the sheer delight of trying to draw back the veils of time and see if we can catch some glimpse of the real Merlin.
The Origins of Merlin
Merlin’s appearance in the ancient writings is patchy, for although some events later ascribed to him are referred to by Nennius in the ninth century, Merlin himself is not named. The Merlin we know was born fully fledged in the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey was a cleric and teacher who lived from about 1090 to 1155, for most of that time being resident in Oxford. He tells us that he was fascinated with the ancient tales of the kings of Britain but was unable to learn much about them until a friend of his, Walter, the Archdeacon of Oxford, gave him an ancient little book written in Welsh which gave a complete history of the kings of Britain. This Geoffrey chose to translate into Latin. Unfortunately this original book has vanished over the years and it is impossible to know how much Geoffrey derived from that source and how much was either of his own muddled research or the product of his own imagination. He started his translation around the year 1130. This was a period of much interest in the early tales and legends. A few years earlier William of Malmesbury had produced his Gesta Regum Anglorum, another history of the kings of Britain, which mentioned the deeds of King Arthur, and at the same time Caradoc of Llancarfan was writing his Vita Gildae, the life of St Gildas, a monk and contemporary of Merlin. This biography mentions Arthur and Guinevere and makes the first links between Arthur and Glastonbury.
Geoffrey found himself pressured to complete his book, but he was determined to be thorough. In order to satisfy demand, in particular that of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, Geoffrey hurriedly completed a translation of another text he was consulting, the Prophetiae Merlini, or the Prophecies of Merlin, which he issued in 1134. This text he later incorporated into his major work, the Historia Regum Britanniae, or the History of the Kings of Britain, which was eventually completed in 1136. It proved instantly popular with a couple of hundred known copies (and probably many more now lost) in circulation before the end of the century.
This book, which seeks to give the kings of Britain a pedigree going back as far as 1200 BC and the Fall of Troy, devotes much of its space to the story of King Arthur, which is itself presaged by the story of Merlin. Although throughout the book history and imagination fight for supremacy, the appearance of Merlin seems to have allowed Geoffrey to pull out all the stops and deliver a tale for the telling.
We are in fifth-century Britain. The British king Vortigern, whose name was synonymous with evil and corruption, had invited the armies of the Saxon king Hengist to Britain to help fight the Picts. The Saxons took advantage of the situation and Vortigern soon found his kingdom under threat. He fled to the Welsh mountains where he attempted to build a fortress, but no matter how hard he tried the fortress kept crumbling. He consulted his advisers who told him to seek out a boy with no father who should be killed and his blood sprinkled over the site. Vortigern’s soldiers sought high and low and eventually, at Carmarthen, found Merlin, a boy of about eight or nine. Vortigern learned that Merlin’s mother, though herself of royal birth, was a nun who had been visited by demons or incubi, leading to the birth of Merlin. Merlin was aware of the threats against him, but he not only revealed to Vortigern the reason why his tower could not be built, but also issued his prophecies of the future of Britain.
Thus Merlin appears as a supernatural agent, the offspring of demons. This episode had also appeared in the Historia Brittonum of Nennius, but there the character of Merlin is called Ambrosius, presumed to be Ambrosius Aurelianus, the general or leader of the British. This anomaly has been reconciled by some by referring to Merlin as Merlin Ambrosius, or Merlin the Divine.
The French poet, Robert de Boron, who was the first to convert the so-called history of Merlin into genuine romance in the 1190s, made more of this background. He suggested that the demons were seeking to place an anti-Christ on earth, a being of total evil to combat the good that was spreading with Christianity. Their plans were thwarted, though, when they impregnated a nun. This resulted in Merlin being a mixture of old-world paganism and modern Christianity, which perfectly depicts the anguish and turbulence of the Arthurian world.
Merlin remains, thereafter, a schemer. His prophecies begin to come true. Vortigern had previously usurped the throne from King Constantine whose sons, Uther and Aurelianus, had fled to safety in France. Now mature, they return to Britain, besiege Vortigern in his fortress which is set on fire, and the usurper perishes. In celebration Aurelianus, now king, seeks to establish a monument. Uther is despatched to Ireland with Merlin to bring back a massive stone circle. Through his magical arts, Merlin dismantles the circle, transports it to Britain and resurrects it on Salisbury Plain – Stonehenge.
Aurelianus dies after a short reign and his brother, Uther, becomes king. Merlin now schemes to arrange the birth of Arthur. Uther desires Ygraine, the wife of Gorlois, duke of Cornwall. Merlin conjures up a glamour which transforms Uther into Gorlois and Ygraine, so deceived, welcomes him to her chamber. Thus Arthur is conceived. In making this arrangement with Uther, Merlin had ordained that he would raise the child. It is Arthur’s boyhood with Merlin that forms the basis of T. H. White’s humorous and beguiling novel The Sword in the Stone.
During Uther’s reign the Saxons recommence their incursions into Britain. After Uther’s death, the nobles clamour to have Arthur declared king of Britain for, despite his youth, they believe that he is the man to save the island. Geoffrey of Monmouth makes no mention of the incident of the sword in the stone. That appears to be the invention of Robert de Boron who describes how Merlin magically embeds a sword in an anvil which is set upon a stone (not in the stone itself) and challenges the nobles to remove it. He who succeeds shall be king. Needless to say, Merlin’s magic ensures that Arthur alone succeeds.
This sword is not the same as Excalibur. Merlin later introduces Arthur to Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake, who gives Arthur the sword. She advises him that the scabbard is more important than the sword, and that provided the scabbard is safe, Arthur will not be defeated. The later plotting of Morgan le Fay ensures that the scabbard is lost and thereafter Arthur’s fate is sealed.
Throughout the early part of Arthur’s reign Merlin is always there, behind the scenes, twisting and shaping events, perhaps to his own advantage, perhaps to Arthur’s. Interestingly, the creation of this role was the job of the later romancers, starting from Robert de Boron, and not Geoffrey of Monmouth. After Arthur has become king, Merlin does not feature again in Geoffrey’s History. However, after he had completed that work, Geoffrey discovered more about Merlin, or Myrddin in his own language, and in about 1150 published the Vita Merlini, or Life of Merlin. This is a different Merlin from the one described in the History, and Geoffrey may have regretted his haste in completing the earlier work. His later researches had unearthed the story of the British bard, Myrddin, whose name Geoffrey had taken and linked with other legends. Did Geoffrey realize what he had done, or was he just careless in his research? Rather than contradict his earlier work, Geoffrey fudged some of the facts and timescales, and consequently gave us two different portrayals of the character Merlin: one of the kingmaker and magician, the other the poet who descends into madness. The result amongst his readers, though, was not confusion but fascination.
For this later tale, Geoffrey drew upon various poems attributed to sixth-century bards, Aneirin and Talieson, though purported to be by Merlin himself. These tell of a Merlin living a century after the death of Arthur. He became allied to King Gwenddolau and, after that king’s death at the battle of Arderydd, Merlin, feeling guilty for not saving his king, suffers bouts of madness and flees to the Caledonian forest where he lives like a Wild Man.
In the work of the romancers, Merlin’s fate is much more exciting. He falls in love with the beguiling Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake. Having learned his magical craft she lures him to a cave (in other legends a tower or a forest) and there imprisons him. Undying, his spirit remains ensnared down through the centuries.
That, then, is the story of Merlin in its simplest outline. We have a magician, born of demons, who shapes the fate of kings but who falls, himself, for the love of a young girl, and is ensnared by his own magic. Perhaps he lives on, but racked by guilt he flees into the forests where he lives like an animal and becomes mad.
Merlin appears as both friend and foe, as representative of good and evil, of paganism and Christianity. He may be wise but he is not someone to be trusted, and in the end he becomes a victim of his own schemes.
Such is the fabric of legend and romance. But was Merlin purely the invention of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Robert de Boron, or was there a real man, or men, behind the tales?
The Real Merlin?
Like Arthur’s, Merlin’s story becomes entwined with a number of recorded historical events that may at least give us a starting point to identify when he lived. We are told that he was about eight or nine when Vortigern’s soldiers found him, and this followed the Saxon invasion of Britain under Hengist. Hengist’s arrival in Britain is usually dated to about AD 449.
Just to set it in context, it might be useful to check out how that date relates to others who were living near or at that time, and who are likely to be better known. To be honest there aren’t many. We are really at the dawn of the Dark Ages. There was, though, St Patrick. Although his dates are uncertain it is probable that he arrived in Ireland sometime around 432 on his mission to convert the Irish to Christianity. He at length established a bishopric at Armagh around the year 454 and died around 461. If Merlin existed, Patrick may well have known him or known of him. Attila the Hun was also alive. He had become king of the Huns in 434, and after ravaging most of eastern Europe he invaded France in 451. The following year he invaded Italy and Rome itself was only saved by the intercession of the pope, Leo I, regarded as one of the greatest of the early popes.
This then was the period of Vortigern and Hengist. On Hengist’s arrival all at first went well. The Saxons aided Vortigern in the repulsion of the Picts and for a short period there was peace. Vortigern even married Hengist’s daughter, Reinwen, to form an alliance. But Hengist now had a toe-hold on Britain and, in 455, he sent for further reinforcements. It would be at this time that Vortigern fled. How long he remained in the Welsh hills is uncertain, but we can imagine there were a few years before his death. The likely date for the first appearance of Merlin, therefore, is around AD 457 or 458, which would place his birth at about the year 450.
Geoffrey’s chronology becomes a little truncated over the next events. Aurelianus and Uther return from Gaul almost immediately; Vortigern and Hengist are killed. This is at variance to the traditional story. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the death of Hengist in the year 488, thirty years later. In place of Geoffrey’s record we can envisage that Aurelianus fought back the Saxons from overrunning Britain and established an uneasy peace with Hengist’s men remaining in Kent, and Aurelianus having lordship over the rest of southern Britain.
Not much is known about Aurelianus, or Ambrosius Aurelianus (Aurelian the Divine) as he is sometimes called. He is believed to have been a descendant of a Roman family who sought to uphold the last vestiges of Roman civilization in Britain. He may well have been from a noble British family with Roman sympathies. He was certainly alive around AD 437 when he was involved in a battle at Guoloph, or Wallop, in Hampshire. The date of his death is uncertain but it was probably around the year 473, because it was then that the Saxons began again their incursions, which suggests that opposition to them had weakened.
Geoffrey, of course, now records Uther, called the Pendragon (or chief dragon or ruler), as king, and no doubt there was a successor to Aurelianus who sought to hold back the Saxons, though less successfully than his predecessor. It is possible that there was a second Ambrosius, the son of the first, because some records suggest Ambrosius survived until perhaps AD 500.
Uther must have ruled a few years before he succumbed to the beauty of Ygraine, though that period is not identified in Geoffrey. Allowing for some uncertainty over the dating of the death of Aurelianus, we could place Arthur’s conception at around AD 470.
Geoffrey tells us that Arthur was fifteen years old when Uther died, which would bring us to about the year 485, by which time Merlin would be approaching forty. Although a boy king may sustain the support of his people, he would still require a wise counsellor to help him in his judgements, and that would be an obvious role for Merlin.
If Merlin held such an important role, it would seem that there should be some record of him somewhere. It is strange that Geoffrey makes no record of this. But there is something in Geoffrey that may give us a clue. When Uther dies the noblemen of Britain implored to “Dubricius, Archbishop of the City of the Legions, that as their king he should crown Arthur”. Here was someone with clear authority and the power to anoint kings. Who was Dubricius?
Dubricius is an acknowledged historical person, who in later years was raised to the sainthood. He is claimed to have founded the bishopric at Llandaff, and to have ordained Samson, late Bishop of Dol in Brittany. Some of the recorded dates conflict here. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Dubricius died in about AD 612 (his entry states that the date of his death is “the most authentic information we have about him”). However, Samson’s life is recorded as 480–565. Something is wrong. It may be that because of his later fame, Dubricius’s life became entangled with other great names of history. However, other studies assign different dates to Dubricius, such as The Oxford Dictionary of Saints which gives his death as about AD 550, whilst other sources date him even earlier living from about 465 to 530. These dates would not only accord with the dates for Samson, but are remarkably close to Merlin’s supposed life.
It does seem strange that once Arthur becomes king, Merlin does not appear again in Geoffrey’s history. When we come to the all-important battle of Mount Badon, where Arthur convincingly defeats the Saxons and establishes a peace that lasts for forty years, we find that it is Dubricius who speaks to the troops from the Mount. You might think, considering the reputation that Geoffrey has been building for Merlin, that it would have been he who delivered the speech. It is as if Dubricius had supplanted Merlin – the Christian bishop replacing the Druid mage. If so, what had become of Merlin?
There could, of course, be plenty of explanations. In real life, Merlin and Dubricius may have been enemies. Dubricius represented the church whereas Merlin, because of his dubious birth and magical arts, represented a pagan culture, synonymous with the Druids. For Arthur to be a Christian king, it would have been impossible for Merlin to crown him or, for that matter, to remain his principal adviser.
There is another interesting point. Tales and legends about Dubricius were abundant at the time that Geoffrey was researching his History. Dubricius’s remains had purportedly been discovered on the Isle of Bardsey and transported to the abbey at Llandaff in the year 1120, the same year that a book about him, Lectiones de vita Sancti Dubricii, appeared. This book, and other writings, gave Dubricius a miraculous birth. Apparently he had no father, but was the son of a nun, herself a granddaughter of King Constantine and thus second cousin to King Arthur. This accords entirely with the supposed origins of Merlin, and it is more than tempting to think that Geoffrey either confused or linked the stories of Dubricius and Merlin.
In Book 8 of his History, Geoffrey mentions Dubricius and Merlin in almost the same sentence. He notes the raising of Dubricius to the see of Caerleon, and he then goes on to describe how Merlin raises the memorial of Stonehenge as a “sepulchre”. It does seem strange that within almost one breath Geoffrey would favour a Christian and then a pagan act. In fact Merlin would seem to be performing a Christian ceremony. However, in Book 9, when describing the members of Arthur’s court, Geoffrey makes no reference to Merlin but not only mentions Dubricius as “Primate of Britain”, but attributes to him miraculous powers of healing. The last reference to Dubricius tells us that the saintly man had resigned his archbishopric in order to become a hermit, and presumably to devote his final years to solace and prayer.
However you consider it, there are several similarities between the roles of Merlin and Dubricius, both as Arthur’s mentor and adviser. This even extends to their names. They could easily be the same person, regardless of the legends that grew around them in later years.
Dubricius is, of course, a Latin name and not the original Welsh, which was Dyfrig. Dyfrig, in Welsh, means “waterman”, which might be likened to “baptist”, although in Latin it became confused with “merman”. By a coincidence one translation of the name Merlin was “mermaid”, although the real meaning of the word “mermaid” is maid, or lady, of the mere, or lake!
Merlin was also a Latin name, the original Welsh being Myrddin, a name which is believed to mean “fortress”. It was, in fact, an ancient and much revered name, possibly attributable to a god. In ancient days, the island of Britain was referred to as the Fortress Isle, or Myrddin’s Isle. It would be no surprise, therefore, to want to link the legendary status of Merlin, as Arthur’s protector, with that of the very matter and origin of Britain itself. And if Dubricius was recognized in his day as the Primate of Britain he may have been termed Dubricius of Myrddin.
Either way there is some substance here which could untangle the tales. It seems possible that Geoffrey, knowing the stories and legends of Dubricius, and knowing the other names by which he was called, interlaced these with tales he read in his “little book” and developed the story of Merlin, as Britain’s kingmaker, out of the original tales of Dubricius. Although the actions of one were pagan and of the other Christian, six centuries after their existence these events had become impossibly entwined.
There is one other matter to resolve, though, which may provide an additional explanation, and that is the later life of Merlin, or Myrddin, and his relationship to King Gwenddolau. Here we really run into problems with dates. Gwenddolau died at the battle of Arderydd, which is assigned to the year AD 573. The Merlin of Vortigern would have been over 120 by then. Our image of Merlin as a white-haired, white-bearded old mage, rather like the near-immortal Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, might fit that dating, but in all seriousness it is pushing credibility, even with all of the accepted anachronisms.
In his book The Quest for Merlin, Nikolai Tolstoy establishes that this Merlin or Myrddin is a later and distinctly historical person, recognized in the Dictionary of National Biography as Myrddin Wyllt, or Merlin the Wild. Myrddin was a bard and adviser at the court of King Gwenddolau. He was known to the Strathclyde bishop of Glasgow, Kentigern, who lived from 550 to 612. Kentigern was appointed bishop by Riderch, the new king of Strathclyde who had defeated Gwenddolau at Arderydd and was, apparently, threatening to hunt Myrddin down – probably because of propaganda Myrddin had been spreading against him. It was for this reason that Myrddin fled into the forest, having already almost lost his reason because both his king and his brothers had been killed in the battle.
Perhaps of most significance is that this later Myrddin, who lived from perhaps 520 to 590, was a contemporary of the Scottish prince Artúir, son of Aedan, king of Dalriada. This Artúir never became king because he was killed in battle against the Picts in 596. Although Myrddin was not his counsellor or mentor, Myrddin was active in the neighbouring kingdom of Strathclyde so there is little doubt that they would have known each other. Moreover, Myrddin was the contemporary of another Artúir who ruled Dyfed sometime around the end of the sixth century and start of the seventh. Dyfed was a small kingdom in the west of Wales though it is unlikely, but not impossible, that Myrddin ventured that far south. The point here is that this later Myrddin/Merlin lived at a time when two warlords called Artúir/Arthur were active, suggesting that Geoffrey had found details about a genuine Merlin but in his History transplanted him in error a century earlier.
Although Geoffrey in his Life of Merlin sought to reconcile these two legends, clearly they cannot be. What is more likely is that in his research for the History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey had come across the Prophecies of Myrddin (the sixth-century bard) and had worked them into his story of Dubricius, either because they seemed to fit well with the story of Vortigern, which he had copied from Nennius, or because he genuinely confused Myrddin with an earlier Merlin. As a result, over the centuries, some of the writings and stories associated with the later bard have been grafted on to the story of the earlier enchanter and kingmaker.
This is all, of course, supposition, although it’s fairly convincing. If we start from the viewpoint that King Arthur existed, it is not difficult to believe that he would have had a senior adviser, and that that adviser could have been Dubricius. It could also follow that Dubricius became confused with a man of equivalent miraculous powers whom Geoffrey called Merlin, a name he possibly confused with the later bard Myrddin.
It is not surprising that because of, not despite, this confusion, Merlin has become such a fascinating character, with a blending of so many facets: wisdom, madness, good and evil, adviser and schemer. The Arthurian world would be fascinating enough without Merlin: all of those chivalrous and heroic adventures, but add the dimension of magic and mischief provided by Merlin, and you have the greatest fantasy on Earth. For near nine hundred years, since Geoffrey unleashed the story of Merlin and Arthur, writers, poets and artists have been fascinated with the life and the legend.
The Literary Merlin
I will not dwell long on the medieval romancers. We have already seen that the legend of Merlin evolved after Geoffrey through the work of Robert de Boron. He wrote at least three Arthurian ballads, Joseph d’Arimathie, Merlin and Perceval, though none of the last-named sur vives. All were composed sometime between the period 1190 and 1202, and between them would have provided contemporary and later troubadours with enough of a basis for the Merlin story to embellish it continually from court to court. At length the tales were incorporated in Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, writing around 1470, from where it passed into the very fabric of literature.
With the rebirth of the romantic age in literature in the early nineteenth century the poets and artists focused more on the heroic and tragic aspects of the Arthurian legends, and though Merlin featured he did not have a central role. The writers tended to repeat only the basic legends.
Merlin did not return to centre stage until T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone in 1938. Typical of the literature of the day, White’s Arthurian world is somewhat anachronistic with modern-day elements as visible as the elder world, and the whole book having an air of general amusement. Merlin, or Merlyn as White chooses to spell the name, is already old, with a long white beard, and is rather scruffy and dirty – “some large bird seemed to have been nesting in his hair”. His wizard’s den included, amongst its paraphernalia, the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and a complete set of cigarette cards featuring wild fowl by Peter Scott! He wears spectacles and knits. Clearly this is no historical Merlin, certainly not from the fifth century. White has set his story closer to the period of Malory, but lumped in whatever anachronisms he wanted. What makes White’s book so enjoyable is that he uses enough of the legend to make it familiar and acceptable, but blends it with a light-hearted dig at contemporary society and morals. White wasn’t the first to do this. Mark Twain had created the concept in A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court in 1889, but White went much further in developing his own character of Merlyn, so much so that it’s the one we’ve come to accept, without thinking, today. Merlyn appears throughout the four books of The Once and Future King, though he’s not central to the later ones. Toward the end of the Second World War White added a fifth book, The Book of Merlyn, which was not published until 1977. It sits uneasily with the earlier books, and reflects the mood in Britain during the war years. Some of the humour remains, but it is less successful.
It was up to the American pulp magazines to give further consideration to Merlin. Some were deliberately humorous fantasies, like “The Enchanted Week End” by John MacCormac (Unknown, October 1939). Here, Merlin is released from his tomb by an American scholar who then seeks the wizard’s assistance in making him an all-rounder on the local sports day. This story was apparently very popular at the time, but it’s rather too shallow and contemporary for my liking.
Much better was H. Warner Munn’s “King of the World’s Edge” (Weird Tales, September–December 1939). Munn brought much originality to the legend. He considers a Roman commander who had remained in Britain and fought with Arthur. After Arthur’s death, the commander writes a letter back to Rome which tells of Merlin’s plans to leave Britain and explore the lands to the West, ultimately settling in America. An extract from this work is included in this anthology.
Other stories at this time were essentially retellings of the original legends, although Theodore Goodridge Roberts, writing in Blue Book, at least brought some verve and excitement to his embellished tales, one of which is also reprinted in this anthology.
A major step forward was made by John Cowper Powys in his long and detailed novel Porius (1951). Set in the year AD 499, it tells of a young lad, Porius, who determines to join Arthur’s cause. Porius, though, must experience the rites of passage to prove himself. This includes taking upon himself the demands of Merlin, here called Myrddin Wyllt. Merlin is given a strong mystical aura – he is called a “creature of earth”. He has a long black beard and wears sheepskin clothes. He is depicted as sinister, but forgetful, something of a shaman with shape-changing powers but finding this harder to achieve in his later years. Powys injects some humour into what is otherwise a bleak novel seeking to depict as accurately as possible Britain at the end of the fifth century. It was the first honest portrayal of Merlin to appear in fiction. Powys’s achievement was further advanced by Henry Treece in three novels, but especially The Green Man (1966), which also depicted the historical world of Arthur and sought to rationalize the Merlin of legend with the known mystical and religious beliefs of the day.
Merlin moved centre stage with a vengeance in the trilogy by Mary Stewart which began with The Crystal Cave in 1970, and continued with The Hollow Hills (1973) and The Last Enchantment (1979). The Crystal Cave remains the most complete novel about Merlin’s youth, and ends with the conception of Arthur. It is one of the few to consider the legend of the creation of Stonehenge, and Mary Stewart brings a most satisfactory logic to the tale. The Hollow Hills follows the same time-frame as White’s The Sword in the Stone, but is deliberately less facile in its treatment. Merlin supervises Arthur’s upbringing from a distance but is still seen as engineering his future. Since these novels are related in the first person we see little of Merlin’s physical appearance but get to know much about his thoughts and motives. The Last Enchantment is the most powerful of the novels and considers Merlin’s own fate. In all three of these books Mary Stewart draws from a basis of legend but applies her own interpretation. She was the first to consider Merlin’s whole life seriously and place him, not in an historical context, but in a legitimate interpretation of the legend.
Mary Stewart’s novels set the standard for later works, and were a difficult act to follow. Most Arthurian novels since then have continued to focus on the tragic life of Arthur, his knights or his queen, and only a few have looked in depth at Merlin. Robert Nye brought an erotic and bawdy interpretation to the legend in Merlin (1978), a book which nevertheless pumps life into the old man, and develops the links between Merlin and the source of life. Some of these mystical aspects also emerged in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s brilliant The Mists of Avalon (1982), which sought to blend history, legend and the religious beliefs of the day. It depicts Merlin, or the Merlin as he is here (recognizing the name as a title not a personal name), as a victim more than a vehicle of fate as Christianity seeks to blend with pagan beliefs in sustaining the elder world of ancient Britain.
Jane Yolen cleverly took different aspects of Merlin’s life and blended them in a series of stories which made up Merlin’s Booke (1986). Because they are distinct stories she is able to explore various forms of Merlin’s character without being restricted, and though it makes the book uneven as a single read, the individual stories are ever refreshing, and one of them is reprinted here.
Stephen Lawhead’s Merlin (1988), the second volume in his Pendragon Cycle, is set in the same time as Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, following Merlin’s life from youth to the events of the sword in the stone. Merlin is less scheming, finding himself as much a victim of fate as the world unravels in the violent days before Arthur.
Then there is Nikolai Tolstoy’s The Coming of the King (1988), the most complete book to look at the bard and mystic Myrddin. Tolstoy provides another first-person narrative of Merlin’s life, but this time set in a post-Arthurian world, showing Merlin’s role in uniting the successor kings of Britain in an attempt to protect Britain.
There are plenty of other recent Arthurian series which feature Merlin even if he is not always centre stage. Of special merit are the Guinevere trilogy by Persia Woolley: Child of the Northern Spring (1987), Queen of the Summer Stars (1990) and Legend in Autumn (1991). Merlin’s role is most prominent in the first volume where he is seen as a wise man and seer who somehow gets involved in events mightier than he had reckoned. There is also the Daughter of Tintagel sequence by Fay Sampson which focuses more on Morgan le Fay, but is a detailed interpretation of the clash of magic and power. The influence of Merlyn (as he is here) is evident throughout but especially in the third novel Black Smith’s Telling, though the image remains more romantic than realistic. The series runs Wise Woman’s Telling (1989), White Nun’s Telling (1989), Black Smith’s Telling (1990), Taliesin’s Telling (1991) and the rather idiosyncratic and personalized Herself (1992).
Merlin has also been depicted in films and on television, notably in the film Excalibur (1981), where he was portrayed by Nicol Williamson, the American TV mini-series Merlin (1997) with Sam Neill, and the British TV series Merlin (2008) where Colin Morgan plays him as a young man. Even if you’ve read other books about Merlin I am sure you will discover something new here. Now, for those who have waited patiently, I hope you feel you have learned something about Merlin’s life and world. Let us now hand the centre stage over to him. Merlin . . . your world awaits you.