Legend Celtic magician and prophet. The sorcerer Merlin, also known as Myrdin and Myrddin, is an important figure in Arthurian legend. He is best remembered as the enchanter who makes possible King Arthur’s accession. According to the 12th-century chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae (completed c. 1135-39) by Oxford clergyman Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1109-54) Merlin was the child of a British princess and a demon. The British king Vortigern, fleeing from the invading Saxons, learned of the fatherless child while building a stronghold in the Welsh mountains. He had Merlin summoned by the advice of his wise men, who claimed that Vortigern’s tower would stand if he killed a fatherless child and sprinkled its blood as a sacrifice over the stones of his fortress. Merlin shamed Vortigern’s wise men by proving that he himself had the gift of prophecy. He later became an important part of the story of King Arthur. He engineered Arthur’s conception and supported the young man in his position as war leader of the Celts. Existing sources depict Merlin as a mysterious character who differs from all other mortals in his powers and abilities.
One of the major questions asked about Merlin is whether he really existed. The best evidence for Merlin’s existence lay in the book known as the Prophecies of Merlin, which Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed to have translated from an ancient British language into Latin. During the Middle Ages, the story of Merlin and the book he left behind was accepted without question. Medieval mystics regarded Merlin’s Prophecies in the same way that Renaissance mystics regarded the prophecies of Nostradamus. Later critics denied the authenticity of the Prophecies, believing that they were invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth.