Merlin

Legend

Overview

Commonly in his medieval appearances, Merlin guides, helps, saves, predicts, and judges through his great wisdom. According to Gaëlle Zussa, "Merlin's literary legend presents itself as a sort of great dump in which pieces of the myth are scattered. Contemporary authors come to draw their ideas and recycle this debris to recreate an ever-new Merlin, in motion." For Berthet and Walter, the legend was constructed in stages as the ancient Celtic character was continuously reinterpreted and reinvented by Christianity, with Merlin's messianism testifying to this religious influence. Villemarqué attempted to synthesize the known information around Merlin, beginning as a figure of bard gifted with prophecy. While Merlin's prototypes were originally those of both poet and warrior king, the familiar character from the French romances became the master of amazing magical knowledge. According to a summary of the legend by Danielle Quéruel of the Bibliothèque nationale de France,

R. Howard Bloch described Merlin's character throughout the legend:

Geoffrey and his sources

Geoffrey of Manmouth's composite Merlin, imagined primarily as a prophet, is fundamentally based 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), in turn inspired by either real or legendary figure from the Welsh oral tradition that appears in 12th-century written poems such as "Afallennau Myrddin" ("Myrddin's Apple Trees") or "Yr Oianau" ("The Piglet"). Myrddin's legend has parallels with 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), set after the 637 Battle of Moira.

In Welsh poetry, Myrddin was a bard who was driven mad after witnessing the horrors of war and subsequently fled civilisation to become 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), a collection of prophecies consist of a long series of predictions concerning the reign of the Saxons and the independence of Britain, which he claimed were the actual words of the legendary poet (including some distinctively apocalyptic prophecies for Geoffrey's contemporary 12th century). However, the work reveals little about Merlin's background.

Geoffrey was further inspired by Emrys (Old Welsh: Embreis), a Welsh legendary character based in part on the 5th-century historical figure of the Romano-British war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus (Welsh name Emrys Wledig, later also known as Myrddin Emrys). When Geoffrey included Merlin in his next work, Historia Regum Britanniae ("The History of the Kings of Britain", c. 1136), he supplemented his characterisation of Merlin by attributing to him a story taken from the early 9th-century Historia Brittonum attributed to Nennius, which Geoffrey adapted almost without changes. In the source text, 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 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 each other, representing the struggle between the invading Saxons (the white dragon) and the native Celtic Britons (the red dragon). Geoffrey included the story in his Historia Regum Britanniæ, adding the new later episodes that tie Merlin with King Arthur and his predecessors. Geoffrey stated that this Ambrosius was also called "Merlin" (Merlinus), hence Ambrosius Merlinus.

Geoffrey's account of Merlin's early life is thus based closely on the story from the Historia Brittonum. A popular theory has his Merlin as a fusion between a legendary Celtic character possibly based on a historical figure, a supposed clan leader named Myrddin, confused with the Ambrosius spoken of by Saint Gildas. 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 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. This was the first popular account of demonic parentage motif in Western Christian literature.

The Historia's Merlin (Ambrosius Merlinus) is born all hairy like a bear 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 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 the stones from Mount Killaraus in Ireland. This episode establishes Merlin as a great builder endowed with astonishing knowledge of science. Unlike in the later accounts since Layamon's Brut, Geoffrey's Merlin actually does not use magic in this episode. In the second follow-up story, 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 three iconic episodes appear, separately or together, in many later adaptations of Geoffrey's account. However, Merlin subsequently disappears from the Historia narrative. He does not tutor or advise Arthur as in later versions.

Geoffrey of Monmouth dealt with Merlin again in his third work, the Vita Merlini ("The Life of Merlin", 1150). He based it on stories of 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 the Vita Merlini are the same as told in the Historia Regum Britanniae. According to Walter, the text is based on a slightly restored myth rather than historical sources, and should be read as a palimpsest as it contains many legendary elements (the majority purely Celtic) integrated into a biographical story in Latin. Geoffrey adapts his story to his time, but seems to have respected his sources.

Here, Merlin survives the reign of Arthur, whose fall he is told about by the bard Taliesin. Merlin himself is depicted as a Welsh king of Dyfed, a scholar, a diviner, and a cursed prophet. He loses a battle with his army and, after fleeing from the soldiers of his Scottish enemy Gwenddolau (a character inspired by the historic Brythonic king Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio), he then spends a part of his life as a madman in the woods, transforming both mentally and physically (as Merlin always do in the stories of his madness; here his changes being triggered, lycanthropy-style, by the phenomenon of red full moon). He abortively marries a woman named Guendoloena, whose new husband he later murders after arriving at their wedding while riding a stag. Cured of his madness, 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, another soothsayer named Maeldin, and his own sister Ganieda (a Latinised name of Myrddin's sister Gwenddydd), who has become queen of the Cumbrians and is also endowed with prophetic powers. Merlin's spiritual search brings him closer to Christianity, and the text concludes with his redemption. Compared to Geoffrey's own Historia, his Vita seems to have little influence on the later portrayals of Merlin.

A long-running debate in the Arthurian scholarship pits supporters of a historical origin of Merlin against those of a mythological origin. Mark Chorvinsky hypothesised 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 recognised), the inference being that those characteristics were not invented by the early chroniclers but belonged to a real person, "the last of the druids": the Myrddin of Welsh poems, deliberately merged with another character into one by Geoffrey. Regarding the druidical origins theories, Walter noted Merlin's connections to apples and trees (including oaks) in Geoffrey and some of the other versions, and how Myrddin Wyllt, Lailoken, and Suibhne (considered variations of the same mythical theme) all three convert to the Christian faith at the end of their respective stories. Notably, Myrddin also shares similarities with the druidic bard figure of Taliesin. The two appear alongside each other in the Welsh Triads and in the Vita Merlini, as well as in the poem "Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin" ("The Conversation between Myrddin and Taliesin", where they discuss seven battles that would fill rivers with blood) from The Black Book of Carmarthen, which was dated by Rachel Bromwich as "certainly" before 1100, that is predating the Vita by at least half century while telling a different version of the same story.

The existence of one or more "historical Merlins" has been defended by others, such as Norma Lorre Goodrich. Such a proposed "historical Merlin" may have inspired various authors since the 6th century, but their versions would be now lost. A late version of the Annales Cambriae dubbed the "B-text", written at the end of the 13th century and regarded as influenced by Geoffrey, records that in the year 573 after "the battle of Arfderydd, between the sons of Eliffer and Gwenddolau son of Ceidio; in which battle Gwenddolau fell; Myrddin went mad." However, 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. In another Black Book poem, "The Dialogue Between Merlin and His Sister Gwendydd", she dubs her brother a set of titles including the Judge of the North, the Prophet, the Master of Song, and the Warrior of Arfderydd. Nevertheless, even if Myrddin was presented as a historical figure in certain period sources, it does not necessarily mean that he really did exist.

Some scholarship considers him to be not a literary creation of the Middle Ages, but rather an echo of a much earlier legend, that would have been rediscovered, Christianised, and gradually reinvented by different authors, including Geoffrey. According to Claude Lecouteux, Merlin comes "from the literary adaptation and Christianisation of an individual from elsewhere, from a distant past that even 12th-century authors probably no longer understood." Legendary stories surrounding Merlin may thus have their origins not only in Celtic but even in pre-Celtic background, in a proto-myth prior to the changes brought by the influence of Christianity, as well as by the aristocratic traditions of the Britons of their time. Some "folkloric" beliefs, including a set of poetic and narrative traditions, would survive orally until the 12th century, when clerics committed this oral material to writing. In his earliest expressions, according to Walter, Merlin embodies magical sovereignty and shamanic royalty, quite far from the later warrior and priest functions, and his power is essentially spiritual. Shamanic practices show similarities with the powers attributed to Merlin, suggesting that he may have originated in a primitive Eurasian shamanism: feralisation, prophecy, and (especially) transformation into a bird. In more of arguably shamanistic characteristics, Merlin of the Vita rides a stag accompanied by a wolf and understands all animals that, in turn, all can understand him. Markale suggested that the original Merlin figure was an avatar of Cernunnos, a Celtic god of nature. For Villemarqué, a possible origin of the legend of Merlin may be the Roman story of Marsus, a son of the goddess Circe, which would eventually influence the Breton and Welsh tales of a supernaturally-born bard or enchanter named Marzin or Marddin.

Romance reimagination

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, but not based directly on it. The work presents itself as 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 popular prose version had a great influence on the emerging genre of Arthurian-themed chivalric romance.

The French Merlin links the two British traditions, that of the fatherless child prophet and that of the wild man. As in the Historia, Merlin 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 (the story's narrator and perhaps Merlin's divine twin in a hypothetical now-lost original Breton oral tradition) is contacted by the child's mother: Blaise immediately baptizes the boy at birth, thus freeing him from 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. It presents him during his childhood as a being both disturbing and prodigious, describes Merlin's efforts to escape the influence of his diabolical ancestry, and contains many scenes in which Merlin laughs (especially when he practices magic). Robert does not give much space to Merlin's madness, but his laughter may reflect the otherness of his mind.

Merlin is thought to be part of a trilogy of Robert's stories that tell the history of the Grail over the centuries, sometimes dubbed the Little Grail Cycle. The narrative of the Prose 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 are the episodes of the baby Arthur being secreted away by Merlin (presenting himself successively as an old man to abduct the newborn Arthur, then as a young man to hand him over to be raised by Ector) and the young Arthur years later drawing the sword from the stone, an event orchestrated by Merlin in the role of kingmaker. Earlier, Merlin also instructs Uther to establish the quasi-religious chivalric order of the Knights of the Round Table for fifty members, handpicked by Merlin, following his own act of creating the table itself as a replica of both the original Last Supper table and the subsequent table of Joseph of Arimathea. The text ends with the coronation of Arthur. In the Perceval en prose (alternatively known as the Didot Perceval and usually attributed to Robert as the final part of his purported cycle), where Merlin is the initiator of the Grail Quest and cannot die until 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.

The story of the prose version of Merlin was resumed 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 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.

This extended prose rendering of Merlin was incorporated as a foundation of the Lancelot-Grail, 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 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 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). The work contains a series of prophecies entrusted to Blaise by Merlin and presents the Grail as the central point of all of them. It adds some content, such as Merlin providing Arthur with the sword Excalibur through 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 include sets of alternative possibilities (meaning the future can be changed) rather than sure outcomes. The Post-Vulgate Cycle has Merlin warn Arthur of how 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.

Other aspects and developments

As the Arthurian myths were retold, Merlin's prophetic "seer" aspects were sometimes de-emphasised (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. The forest setting often serves as Merlin's natural and favorite domain, dating back to his origins in Welsh and Irish poetry. In the romances, he may take refuge from Arthur's court to live with Blaise in a forest in Northumberland, which over time became identified with Brocéliande. Through his ability to change his shape, he may appear as a "wild man" figure, evoking his prototype Myrddin Wyllt, as a civilised 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 that, Merlin recalls the tradition of pagan deities and creatures of nature and forests, such as Silvanus (who, like Merlin, can appear as an old man and possess the strength of a young man), Faunus (in the Post-Vulgate Cycle, Merlin himself actually tells a Christianised version of the Greco-Roman myth of Faunus and Diana), and the wild man.

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, 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 the extent of the negative association of Merlin and his powers. Malory's Merlin is rarely condemned as demonic by other characters, such as King Lot, being presented as an ambiguous trickster.

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 the Kingdom of England, the Anglo-Saxon enemies against whom Merlin aids first Uther and then Arthur tend to be replaced by either the Saracens or unnamed heathen invaders. The earliest Merlin work written in Germany was Caesarius of Heisterbach's Latin theological text Dialogus Miraculorum (1220). Among other medieval works dealing with the Merlin legend is the 13th-century French romance Roman de Silence, and the 13th-14th Italian story collection Il Novellino that pictures him as a righteous seer chastising people for their sins.

Conversely, 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. He is also a villainous figure, opposing Arthur's daughter, in the late Irish romance Eachtra Mhelóra agus Orlando. Merlin is presented as inherently evil in the so-called non-cyclic Lancelot, in which he was born as the "fatherless child" from not a supernatural rape of a virgin but a consensual union between a lustful demon and an unmarried beautiful young lady, and was never baptised. It even says that he never did anything good in his life. Wilhelm von Österreich by Johann von Würzburg (1324) paints a villainous portrait of Merlin as a magician born of a devil in an otherwise non-Arthurian story.

In the Second Continuation of Perceval, the Story of the Grail, written around 1210, a young daughter of Merlin called the Lady of the High Peak of Mont Dolorous, appears to guide Perceval towards the Grail Castle. Merlin's usually unspecified mother is sometimes called Adhan or Aldan, or Optima, as in Bauduin (Baudouin) Butor's 1294 romance known as either Les Fils du Roi Constant or Pandragus et Libanor. Paolino Pieri's 14th-century Italian La Storia di Merlino, which invents a new version of the story of Merlin's youth, names his mother as Marinaia. Ulrich Füetrer's 15th-century Buch der Abenteuer, in the section based on Albrecht von Scharfenberg's lost Merlin, turns Merlin into father of Uter, effectively making Merlin's grandson Arthur a part-devil too. The eponymous redeemed half-demon Gowther is Merlin's half-brother in the 15th-century English poem Sir Gowther. The Liber Exemplorum (1275) features a demon who claims to know Merlin perfectly. One version of the Prose Tristan also makes Merlin essentially a "half-brother" of the monster known as the Questing Beast.

In much of the prose tradition, Merlin has a major weakness—young beautiful women of femme fatale archetype. This is what eventually leads him to his doom by a Lady of the Lake. Besides her, Merlin's apprentice in chivalric romances is often King Arthur's half-sister, Morgan, who is sometimes depicted as Merlin's lover and sometimes as just his unrequited love interest. Contrary to many modern works in which they are archenemies, Merlin and Morgan are never opposed to each other in any medieval text, other than she forcibly rejecting him in some of them. Merlin's love for Morgan is so great that he even lies to the king to save her in the Huth Merlin, which is the only instance of him ever intentionally misleading Arthur.

In the originally Venetian prose romance Prophéties de Merlin, alternatively known as the Prophécies de Merlin (c. 1274–79), he further tutors Sebile, two other witch queens, and the Lady of the Isle of Avalon (Dama di Isola do Vallone). Those who learn sorcery from Merlin also include the male wizard Mabon in the Post-Vulgate Merlin Continuation and the Prose Tristan, and the Wise Damsel (Savia Donzella / Savia Damigella) in the Italian prose romance Historia di Merlino. While Merlin's apprentices are able to gain or expand their magical powers through him, his unique prophetic powers cannot be passed on.

Merlin's prophecies

The works dealing with Merlin's prophecies did not end with Geoffrey's Prophetiae. Abundant prophetic literature attributed to Merlin is divided into two main currents, the prophecies of the British Isles and those of the European continent, different in their themes, purposes, and inspirations. Particularly in Britain, Merlin remained as much as a prophet as a magician up to and including the 16th century, when political content in the style of Agrippa d'Aubigné continued to be written using Merlin's name to guarantee their authenticity. For instance, John of Cornwall's 12th-century Latin poem Prophecy of Merlin contains a selection of 'updated' prophecies from Geoffrey's Prophetae that come with the author's interpretations relating them to his contemporary Cornish and English political affairs. The late medieval Vita di Merlino con le sue Profetie (1379), combining Merlin romance material and prophecies related to the author's recent contemporary history and politics, became the first Arthurian text printed in Italy.

The influential Prophéties de Merlin (later abridged and clarified in Pieri's Storia) was written in French but obviously by an Italian in Venice (falsely claiming to be one "Richard from Ireland") on the bidding of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and to propagate on his behalf. It contains long prophecies, mostly concerned with 11th- to 13th-century history and contemporary politics relating to Italy and the Holy Land, some supposedly told by Merlin's ghost after his death, interspersed with episodes recounting Merlin's deeds and with assorted Arthurian adventures in which Merlin does not appear at all. The German Sagen von Merlin from the same era, which included the War of the Keys between Frederick and the Papacy, contains prophecies directed against the Popes. The widely circulated short political tract Expositio Abbatis Joachimi super Sibillis et Merlino (c. 1240), falsely attributed to Joachim of Fiore, contains the praise of Frederick's miraculous birth, which backfired, making it look like the coming of Antichrist.

During the 15th century, old 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 claimed to trace its lineage directly to Arthur. Later, the Tudors' Welsh supporters, including bards, interpreted the prophecy of King Arthur's return as having been fulfilled after the Tudors' ascent to the throne of England that they sought to legitimize following the Wars of the Roses. Prophecies attributed to Merlin have been also previously 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 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.

Tales of Merlin's disappearance

The Merlin stories often end with his removal from the world. In the prose romance tradition, Merlin's eventual undoing comes from his lusting after another of his female students: the one often named Viviane or Vivien, 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). The theme of Merlin's entrapment by a woman became one of the most popular and iconic in his legend. Her character and relation to Merlin have been added to the legend of Merlin in the prose continuations of de Boron's Merlin, identifying her with the figure of Lancelot's supernatural foster mother. She is also called a fairy (French fee), like Morgan, and is described as a Lady of the Lake, or the "chief Lady of the Lake" in the case of Malory's Nimue. In the Arthurian prequel Perceforest, the ancestry of both Merlin and the Lady of the Lake descends from the ancient fairy named Morgane (unrelated to Arthur's sister). Here, their bloodline had been cursed by Morgane (out of a false belief that her daughter was raped by her daughter's human lover), thus making her female descendant destined to kill a male one.

There are several 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 replace 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 several variants of this motif. The form of his prison or grave can be variably a cave, a tree, or a hole, either within or under a large rock, or an invisible tower made of magic with no physical walls.

The scene is sometimes explicitly placed in the enchanted forest of Brocéliande, a legendary location today identified with the real-life Paimpont forest in Brittany. According to Le Morte d'Arthur, this happens somewhere in Benwick, the kingdom of Lancelot's father 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 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 vanished, other than relating his farewell meeting with Blaise. In the 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 the rock under which Merlin is entombed alive by Niviene, as she is named there. He does communicate 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 the Prophéties de Merlin, his tomb is unsuccessfully searched for by various parties, including Morgan and her enchantresses, but cannot be accessed due to the deadly magic traps around it, while the Lady of the Lake comes to cruelly taunt Merlin, asking if he has rotted yet. She only allows Tristan's half-brother Meliadus the Younger (her lover, groomed by her from childhood) to access it and record Merlin's prophecies.

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 the knight's quest to find him), where they then spend almost every night together as lovers. Besides evoking the final scenes from the Vita Merlini, this particular variant of their story also mirrors a certain episode type found in romances in two versions. There, depending on the variant, Merlin can be object of one-sided desire by a different amorous sorceress who (unsuccessfully) plots to trap him, or it is him who does trap an unwilling lover with his magic.

Unrelated to 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 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, 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 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."

Modern culture

Merlin and stories about him have remained popular from the Renaissance to the present day, especially since the renewed interest in the legend of Arthur in modern times. During the French Renaissance, Merlin would continue to be a uniquely appealing figure of theater and ballet even after the interest in Arthur himself had already waned. In William Rowley's play The Birth of Merlin, or, The Child Hath Found his Father (1622), for instance, Merlin is a son of the Devil that becomes an adviser to Uther, the young King of Britain. Since the Romantic period, Merlin has been typically depicted as 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. As noted by Arthurian scholar Alan Lupack, "numerous novels, poems and plays center around Merlin. In American literature and popular culture, Merlin 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 primarily a mentor and teacher to Arthur and others in the works around the world since the 19th century. While some modern authors write about Merlin positively through an explicitly Christian world-view, such as Stephen R. Lawhead in The Pendragon Cycle, some New Age movements instead see Merlin as a druid who accesses all 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 works 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 "dechristianising" Merlin to present him as a champion for the idea of return to nature. Other authors may make Merlin obsessed with the quest for knowledge through astrology and alchemy, or highlight the duality of the character from a demonic father. Diverging from his traditional role in medieval romances, Merlin is also sometimes portrayed as a villain, as in Mark Twain's 1889 classic A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. 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 the legendary figure include asteroid 2598 Merlin, the 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. 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. The British-made Merlin helicopter has been in use by the armed forces of Britain, Denmark, Portugal, and others under the name Merlin instead of its original AgustaWestland AW101 designation.

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 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. Universal Islands of Adventure used to have a medieval section called Merlinwood which held the Flying Unicorn and Dueling Dragons roller coasters and also featured the Enchanted Oak Tavern, a restaurant located inside a giant tree-stump with a face of Merlin on it; this area has since been demolished for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and its attractions incorporated into the Harry Potter universe as Flight of the Hippogriff and Dragon Challenge. Merlin's Marvelous Miscellany, opened in 2022 as a tribute to Merlin's Magic Shop of the 1950s, is a souvenir shop in Fantasyland at Disneyland; several Disney Parks also feature The Sword in the Stone Ceremony hosted by Disney's Merlin from the 1963 animated film The Sword in the Stone.

Contrary to a popular belief among the Royal Air Force pilots and general society at the time (and also later), the Merlin engine that powered several types of British aircraft during the Second World War (including the famous Spitfire fighters that helped to win the Battle of Britain) was not named after the Arthurian legend figure, but after the bird, as dictated by the Rolls-Royce company naming policy. That coincidence nevertheless had a positive effect on British war morale.