Merlin (Ambrose), prince of enchanters. His mother was Matilda, a nun, who was seduced by a “guileful sprite,” or incubus, “half angel and half man, dwelling in mid-air betwixt the earth and moon.” Some say his mother was the daughter of Pubidius, lord of Math-traval, in Wales; and others make her a princess, daughter of Demetius, king of Demet´ia. Blaise baptized the infant, and thus rescued it from the powers of darkness.
Merlin died spell-bound, but the author and manner of his death are given differently by different authorities. Thus, in the History of Prince Arthur (Sir T. Malory, 1470), we are told that the enchantress Nimue or Ninive inveigled the old man, and “covered him with a stone under a rock.” In the Morte d’Arthur it is said “he sleeps and sighs in an old tree, spell-bound by Vivien.” Tennyson, in his Idylls (“Vivien”), says that Vivien induced Merlin to take shelter from a storm in a hollow oak tree, and left him spell-bound. Others say he was spell-bound in a hawthorn bush, but this is evidently a blunder. (See [Merlin the Wild].)
*** Merlin made “the fountain of love,” mentioned by Bojardo in Orlando Innamorato, l. 3.
Ariosto, in Orlando Furioso, says he made “one of the four fountains” (ch. xxvi).
He also made the Round Table at Carduel for 150 knights, which came into the possession of King Arthur on his marriage with Queen Guinever; and brought from Ireland the stones of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain.
Allusion is made to him in the Faëry Queen; in Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances; in Drayton’s Polyolbion; in Kenilworth, by Sir W. Scott, etc. T. Heywood has attempted to show the fulfilment of Merlin’s prophecies.
Of Merlin and his skill what region doth not hear?...
Who of a British nymph was gotten, whilst she played
With a seducing sprite ...
But all Demetia thro’ there was not found her peer.
Drayton, Polyolbion, v. (1612).
Merlin (The English), W. Lilly, the astrologer, who assumed the nom de plume of “Mer´linus Anglĭcus” (1602-1681).
Merlin the Wild, a native of Caledonia, who lived in the sixteenth century, about a century after the great Ambrose Merlin, the sorcerer. Fordun, in his Scotichronicon, gives particulars about him. It was predicted that he would die by earth, wood, and water, which prediction was fulfilled thus: A mob of rustics hounded him, and he jumped from a rock into the Tweed, and was impaled on a stake fixed in the river bed. His grave is still shown beneath an aged hawthorn bush at Drummelzier, a village on the Tweed.
Merlin’s Cave, in Dynevor, near Carmarthen, noted for its ghastly noises of rattling iron chains, brazen caldrons, groans, strokes of hammers, and ringing of anvils. The cause is this: Merlin set his spirits to fabricate a brazen wall to encompass the city of Carmarthen, and as he had to call on the Lady of the Lake, bade them not to slacken their labor till he returned; but he never did return, for Vivien by craft got him under the enchanted stone, and kept him there. Tennyson says he was spell-bound by Vivien in a hollow oak tree, but the History of Prince Arthur (Sir T. Malory) gives the other version.—Spenser, Faëry Queen, iii. 3 (1590).