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Wednesday, April 15, 2020

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2020: M Is For ... Merlin!

Today, we will be checking out Merlin - Merlin the Magician, Merlin the Enchanter, Merlin the Wizard, even Merlin the phony... 

Merlin more or less first appears as a character in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History Of the Kings Of Britain (late12th century). He is not the old man with the long beard later imagined, but a boy. 

His Welsh name was Myrddin, but Geoffrey Latinised it to “Merlinus”. There is a suggestion that he chose Merlinus rather than Merdinus because that name sounds too much like the French word merde, as in shit! 

Traditionally, he is supposed to have been the son of a mortal woman and the Devil. This is important for his portrayal in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s book, because there is a story in which King Vortigern is trying to build a tower, which keeps falling down. He is told that it will only stand if he sacrifices a boy who never had a father. The boy is Merlin, but Merlin is quick witted. He says that the real problem is under the tower. 

The problem is soon revealed. It’s two dragons fighting, a red one and a white. The red dragon is a symbol of Britain, the white of the Saxons. The white dragon wins.

The young Merlin was also believed to have built Stonehenge, bringing the stones from Ireland. In Mary Stewart’s Merlin novel,The Crystal Cave, it is, in fact just one stone brought from Ireland, and it’s a feat of engineering bringing it to Britain and setting it up, not a feat of magic. 

The boy Merlin building Stonehenge. Public Domain 


Malory’s Merlin is probably the old white-haired one. He looks after Arthur from the very beginning. When Uther Pendragon lusts after the Duchess of Cornwall,  it’s Merlin who arranges what he wants, provided that the child conceived that night is put into his care, and takes him to Sir Ector, father of Kay.

Later, he arranges the whole sword in the stone thing - and goes to the Lady of the Lake with Arthur when the silly young man goes adventuring, nearly gets killed and breaks the sword from the stone. The new sword - Excalibur - comes with a scabbard, and Merlin warns Arthur not to lose that, because it will stop him from bleeding to death.


That Merlin ends up locked in a cave, or a tree in the Forest of Broceliande. He is put there by his apprentice Nimue(more of her tomorrow), after he annoys her by being a dirty old man chasing after a young woman.


This has been dealt with in different books and films. Mary Stewart’s Merlin has been a virgin, because it was a choice between having love or having power. When he is ageing, he is losing the power anyway, and decides on love. In fact, she doesn’t lock him up at all. He simply gets a stroke that makes him seem dead. He is laid to rest in his “Crystal Cave”, which fortunately has air and food supplies he put there before, and dripping water. When he recovers he manages to cope until a passing knight hears him and lets him out. His beloved pupil has married by this time, and he wishes her well. 

 Edward Burne-Jones. Public Domain


T.H White’s Merlin does know he is going to be locked up, because he is living backwards, so he remembers things that haven’t yet happened. 

There seems to be an assumption in much fiction that this is traditional - it’s not. But because of it, Peter David’s Merlin(Knight Life) manages to escape from his cave as an eight year old boy(only physically, he still thinks like an adult).


In Dan Simmons’ science fiction novel, Hyperion, there is a dreadful condition called Merlin’s Syndrome, in which a young woman doing an archaeological dig on a far planet starts to live backwards, becoming ever younger until her desperate father takes his baby daughter back to the planet in hopes of finding a solution. 

Bernard Cornwell’s Merlin is portrayed as a crazy old Druid. 

Mark Twain’s Merlin is the fake. He was big at Camelot before the Connecticut Yankee, Hank Morgan, came along, so becomes Hank’s enemy. He does get in one bit of magic - he puts Hank to sleep for twelve hundred years, so he wakes up back in his own time. In fact, it’s he, not Merlin, who sleeps in that cave! 

In recent years, the Merlin portrayed in films and on TV has no longer been the old man with the starry robes. (In The Hollow Hills, by Mary Stewart, the newly crowned Arthur offers Merlin a robe with stars on it, asking if he would wear it for him. “Not even for you, Arthur!” he says). The TV series featuring Colin Morgan shows a young man who is about the same age as Arthur, who is the Crown Prince with a living father, not Sir Ector’s ward. 

There is another TV series about Merlin, in which the role is played by Sam Neill, an actor I think would have made a very good Mary Stewart Merlin, if they had ever gone past The Crystal Cave, which was turned into a children’s mini series starring young actor George Winter. It went as far as burying Merlin’s father, the warrior Ambrosius, at Stonehenge. (In that story, he is Arthur’s cousin; his mother made up the story about the demon lover in order to protect him from Vortigern, but it backfires, because it suggests the “boy without a father” thing is correct.) 

The Sam Neill version included the Vortigern story(Rutger Hauer was Vortigern), but Merlin is a grown man. He and Nimue are the same age. The cave is where she is living. As an old man, he returns and uses his last bit of magic to restore their youth. 

Mary Stewart’s Merlin is my favourite. What about you? 


  

17 comments:

  1. I really loved Merlin in Once and Future King.
    Also, there are some Welsh legends where he has a twin sister, who is also an enchantress. Go figure!

    The Multicolored Diary

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  2. Merlin’s sister... Gwenddydd? I took that as my name in the SCA many years ago.

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  3. Merlin - he's such a changeable character in various versions. I do like the Sam Neil version and the Colin Morgan version, can't say I was overly fond of the one from Excalibur though. :)
    Tasha 💖
    Virginia's Parlour - The Manor (Adult concepts - nothing explicit in posts)
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  4. I'm a big fan of Merlin, the template for many a "wise fool" old man characters in literature and film.

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  5. Tasha - I quite like the one in Excalibur, myself. He doesn’t take nonsense from anyone, but still makes mistakes. Nicol Williamson, who played the role, went on to play an ageing Little John in Robin And Marion.

    Liam, yes, very true, Merlin was indeed the character people were thinking of when they created other wizards!

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  6. Mary Stewart’s Merlin is one I like too. He is not the traditional sorcerer, yet has just enough magic to make him believable as a man of power rather than just someone who has a brain and a knowledge of science and engineering.

    The one in T.H White is the traditional Merlin, but quirkier. I can’t see him sexually harassing a Nimue, either.

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  7. I'd forgotten about the link in Hyperion (been forever since I've read that). I had no idea he was supposed to be the offspring of a woman and the devil!

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  8. Yes, Hyperion has that link. Plus it’s meant to be a sort of dark Canterbury Tales! And yes, his devil or demon father is a part of the story. In Mary Stewart’s books, his father is actually Ambrosius, the rightful king, who is in exile with his brother Uther Pendragon. He sneaks into a Britain to see his love, when both are in their teens. Merlin is conceived!

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  9. I never realised there was such a diverse range of Merlins, but I guess that shouldn't be surprising. I'll guilty admit that Sam Neill's Merlin (the mini-series) is the one that sticks out in my head.

    You're referencing a lot of different books which cover some of the Arthurian legends - which would you recommend for a beginner to break into the lore?

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  10. Nothing to feel guilty about, Melanie! Sam Neill was an interesting Merlin, and if they had made a film of The Hollow Hills, the sequel to Mary Stewart’s Crystal Cave, I would have wanted him cast in the role. Plus the telemovie with him used some bits from Geoffrey of Monmouth - nobody else in film or TV did!

    I would suggest you start with The Once And Future King. That is the classic Arthurian novel, based on Malory, but quirkier. It brings in all the characters and tells the story as we hear it in all those films. Plus, the musical, Camelot, was based on it. Then, if you like it, try Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Sword At Sunset, which shows Arthur as he might really have been, if he existed, in post-Roman Britain; if you have read any of her books from Eagle Of The Ninth on, it’s in that same series, with a descendant of Marcus Aquila, hero of Eagle Of The Ninth, in Artos’s army. Then Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy, which is based on Geoffrey of Monmouth, but has just a touch of fantasy about it. It’s delightful.

    I think only the American edition of Sword At Sunset is still around and you may need to buy it on line, perhaps secondhand, but you can get it in ebook.

    Anyway, have fun discovering Arthur. Cheers!

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  11. Merlin has been one of my favourite Arthurian characters for decades, with the Vorigern and the dragons one of my earliest memories. Nicol Williamson's portrayal in Excalibur is the first celluloid image that sparks in my head - an actor I admire - although the TV series featuring Colin Morgan was excellent.

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  12. I think Nicol Williamson was an excellent Merlin. And Colin Morgan was adorable. Did you know, by the way, that he played the role of Newton Pulsifer in the radio version of a Good Omens?

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  14. I missed the radio version - but not the TV series with David Tennant and 'Tony Blair'.

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  15. A wonderful series! I bought the DVD. Plus, I have read the novel over and over again.

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  16. I like how Merlin has been portrayed in various ways through film and literature -- such an ambiguous character at times!

    An A-Z of Faerie: Merrows

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  17. I think everyone has their own Merlin, including me. I rather like Mary Stewart’s, who is more or less a normal human being with a bit of magic.

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