One of the most extraordinary personages whose story is thus delivered
to us, is Merlin. He appears to have been contemporary with the period
of the Saxon invasion of Britain in the latter part of the fifth
century; but probably the earliest mention of his name by any writer
that has come down to us is not previous to the eleventh. We may the
less wonder therefore at the incredible things that are reported of
him. He is first mentioned in connection with the fortune of Vortigern,
who is represented by Geoffrey of Monmouth as at that time king of
England. The Romans having withdrawn their legions from this island,
the unwarlike Britons found themselves incompetent to repel the
invasions of the uncivilised Scots and Picts, and Vortigern perceived
no remedy but in inviting the Saxons from the northern continent to
his aid. The Saxons successfully repelled the invader; but, having
done this, they refused to return home. They determined to settle here,
and, having taken various towns, are represented as at length inviting
Vortigern and his principal nobility to a feast near Salisbury under
pretence of a peace, where they treacherously slew three hundred of
the chief men of the island, and threw Vortigern into chains. Here, by
way of purchasing the restoration of his liberty, they induced him to
order the surrender of London, York, Winchester, and other principal
towns. Having lost all his strong holds, he consulted his magicians as
to how he was to secure himself from this terrible foe. They advised
him to build an impregnable tower, and pointed out the situation where
it was to be erected. But so unfortunately did their advice succeed,
that all the work that his engineers did in the building one day, the
earth swallowed, so that no vestige was to be found on the next. The
magicians were consulted again on this fresh calamity; and they told
the king that that there was no remedying this disaster, other than by
cementing the walls of his edifice with the blood of a human being,
who was born of no human father.
Vortigern sent out his emissaries in every direction in search of this
victim; and at length by strange good fortune they lighted on Merlin
near the town of Caermarthen, who told them that his mother was the
daughter of a king, but that she had been got with child of him by a
being of an angelic nature, and not a man. No sooner had they received
this information, than they seized him, and hurried him away to
Vortigern as the victim required. But in presence of the king he
baffled the magicians; he told the king that the ground they had
chosen for his tower, had underneath it a lake, which being drained,
they would find at the bottom two dragons of inextinguishable
hostility, that under that form figured the Britons and Saxons, all of
which upon the experiment proved to be true.
Vortigern died shortly after, and was succeeded first by Ambrosius,
and then by Uther Pendragon. Merlin was the confident of all these
kings. To Uther he exhibited a very criminal sort of compliance. Uther
became desperately enamoured of Igerna, wife of the duke of Cornwal,
and tried every means to seduce her in vain. Having consulted Merlin,
the magician contrived by an extraordinary unguent to metamorphose
Uther into the form of the duke. The duke had shut up his wife for
safety in a very strong tower; but Uther in his new form gained
unsuspected entrance; and the virtuous Igerna received him to her
embraces, by means of which he begot Arthur, afterwards the most
renowned sovereign of this island. Uther now contrived that the duke,
her husband, should be slain in battle, and immediately married the
fair Igerna, and made her his queen.
The next exploit of Merlin was with the intent to erect a monument
that should last for ever, to the memory of the three hundred British
nobles that were massacred by the Saxons. This design produced the
extraordinary edifice called Stonehenge. These mighty stones, which by
no human power could be placed in the position in which we behold them,
had originally been set up in Africa, and afterwards by means unknown
were transported to Ireland. Merlin commanded that they should be
carried over the sea, and placed where they now are, on Salisbury
Plain. The workmen, having received his directions, exerted all their
power and skill, but could not move one of them. Merlin, having for
some time watched their exertions, at length applied his magic; and to
the amazement of every one, the stones spontaneously quitted the
situation in which they had been placed, rose to a great height in the
air, and then pursued the course which Merlin had prescribed, finally
settling themselves in Wiltshire, precisely in the position in which
we now find them, and which they will for ever retain.
The last adventure recorded of Merlin proceeded from a project he
conceived for surrounding his native town of Caermarthen with a brazen
wall. He committed the execution of this project to a multitude of
fiends, who laboured upon the plan underground in a neighbouring
cavern. [150] In the mean while Merlin had become enamoured of a
supernatural being, called the Lady of the Lake. The lady had long
resisted his importunities, and in fact had no inclination to yield to
his suit. One day however she sent for him in great haste; and Merlin
was of course eager to comply with her invitation. Nevertheless,
before he set out, he gave it strictly in charge to the fiends, that
they should by no means suspend their labours till they saw him return.
The design of the lady was to make sport with him, and elude his
addresses. Merlin on the contrary, with the hope to melt her severity,
undertook to shew her the wonders of his art. Among the rest he
exhibited to her observation a tomb, formed to contain two bodies; at
the same time teaching her a charm, by means of which the sepulchre
would close, and never again be opened. The lady pretended not to
believe that the tomb was wide enough for its purpose, and inveigled
the credulous Merlin to enter it, and place himself as one dead. No
sooner had she so far succeeded, than she closed the lid of the
sepulchre, and pronouncing the charm, rendered it impossible that it
should ever be opened again till the day of judgment. Thus, according
to the story, Merlin was shut in, a corrupted and putrifying body with
a living soul, to which still inhered the faculty of returning in
audible sounds a prophetic answer to such as resorted to it as an
oracle. Meanwhile the fiends, at work in the cavern near Caermarthen,
mindful of the injunction of their taskmaster, not to suspend their
labours till his return, proceed for ever in their office; and the
traveller who passes that way, if he lays his ear close to the mouth
of the cavern, may hear a ghastly noise of iron chains and brazen
caldrons, the loud strokes of the hammer, and the ringing sound of the
anvil, intermixed with the pants and groans of the workmen, enough to
unsettle the brain and confound the faculties of him that for any time
shall listen to the din.
As six hundred years elapsed between the time of Merlin and the
earliest known records of his achievements, it is impossible to
pronounce what he really pretended to perform, and how great were the
additions which successive reporters have annexed to the wonders of
his art, more than the prophet himself perhaps ever dreamed of. In
later times, when the historians were the contemporaries of the
persons by whom the supposed wonders were achieved, or the persons who
have for these causes been celebrated have bequeathed certain literary
productions to posterity, we may be able to form some conjecture as to
the degree in which the heroes of the tale were deluding or deluded,
and may exercise our sagacity in the question by what strange
peculiarity of mind adventures which we now hold to be impossible
obtained so general belief. But in a case like this of Merlin, who
lived in a time so remote from that in which his history is first
known to have been recorded, it is impracticable to determine at what
time the fiction which was afterwards generally received began to be
reported, or whether the person to whom the miracles were imputed ever
heard or dreamed of the extraordinary things he is represented as
having achieved.