Merlin actually has a better claim to have been a real person than Arthur, and he may have been less thoroughly transformed by the bards who passed down his legend. If he did live, though, it was two generations after the most plausible dates for Arthur, and the stories do not put them together until the 12th century.
The Welsh annals include this notice from the Year 573:
The Battle of Arfderydd, between the sons of Elifer, and Guendoleu son of Keidau; in which battle Guendoleu fell; and Merlin went mad. The Battle of Arfderydd is a well-attested event by the standards of the period, so there is no reason to doubt it. All the combatants were Welsh, living in what is now the border country between England and Scotland. The tradition that associates Merlin with this event is old, going back to the 9th century. So we have a character who may have lived in the sixth century and fought in a famous battle between Welsh kings.
If there was a Merlin, he seems to have been a bard. The Welsh manuscripts include several poems attributed to Merlin or Myrddin. Some of them can be dated to the high middle ages and can therefore be ruled out as the actual products of a sixth-century bard, but others are older. These older poems are all difficult and obscure, in the druidical manner. One of them,
The Appletrees, seems to be a lament by a man who was once a favored nobleman but now hides in an appletree from pursuers who want to kill him. "At the Battle of Arfderydd, my torc was of gold," he says. Once he was loved by a beautiful woman, but now he is alone. He must forage for food, living in caves or huts, with wolves and bears for friends. Merlin was best known in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as a prophet, on whom new prophecies were foisted at regular intervals. Prophecy, especially in the Celtic tradition, is strongly associated with both madness and poetry. Prophets were strange men who ranted obscurely, and only time would tell which of the ranters had the true gift of foresight. There is no more agreement on what the name Merlin means than about that of Arthur, but one interpretation derives it from Celtic roots meaning "madman."
It has to be said, though, that this story of a man who goes crazy after a battle and thereafter lives in the wilderness, making prophecies, had other protagonists besides Merlin. A character named Lailoken who appears in the Life of St. Kentigern has exactly these characteristics, and some of the people who believe in a historical Merlin think they were one in the same person. Perhaps Lailoken was his name and Merlin his title, so he was Lailoken the Madman. There are other, less exact parallels in Ireland and Brittany.
After the druids disappeared, with the coming of Christianity, their role as the custodians of traditional Celtic culture was taken over by the bards. As a bard who composed verse in the ancient manner, full of esoteric allusions, Merlin would have been an expert in that older culture. He thus would have been in some sense the thing that some contemporary pagans want him to be, a defender of the ancient pagan ways against assaults by Christianity and simple forgetting.
That is a lot of would haves and ifs, but the history of the sixth century is full of such phrases no matter what the subject. Someone wrote the poems attributed to Merlin, and that person was steeped in ancient lore. Prophecy is certainly part of the Welsh poetic tradition, strongly associated with madness. I can think of no reason why some pagan prophets might not have lived for a time in the wilderness, or at least in rough huts at the edge of civilization -- after all, plenty of Christian hermits did. Such a rejection of the settled world is recognized in many cultures, everywhere including elements of both divinity and madness. I suspect there was a Merlin, who fought at Arfderydd and later acquired or intentionally cultivated a reputation as a mad prophet, who glimpsed the future in ways the church did not know. As with Arthur, his story was changed in the telling, taking up more and more attributes of myth. He became a mighty wizard, a tamer of dragons, an arranger of the fates of nations. But perhaps he had once seen himself as something not so different from his own legend.
Merlin actually has a better claim to have been a real person than Arthur, and he may have been less thoroughly transformed by the bards who passed down his legend. If he did live, though, it was two generations after the most plausible dates for Arthur, and the stories do not put them together until the 12th century.
The Welsh annals include this notice from the Year 573: The Battle of Arfderydd, between the sons of Elifer, and Guendoleu son of Keidau; in which battle Guendoleu fell; and Merlin went mad. The Battle of Arfderydd is a well-attested event by the standards of the period, so there is no reason to doubt it. All the combatants were Welsh, living in what is now the border country between England and Scotland. The tradition that associates Merlin with this event is old, going back to the 9th century. So we have a character who may have lived in the sixth century and fought in a famous battle between Welsh kings.
If there was a Merlin, he seems to have been a bard. The Welsh manuscripts include several poems attributed to Merlin or Myrddin. Some of them can be dated to the high middle ages and can therefore be ruled out as the actual products of a sixth-century bard, but others are older. These older poems are all difficult and obscure, in the druidical manner. One of them, The Appletrees, seems to be a lament by a man who was once a favored nobleman but now hides in an appletree from pursuers who want to kill him. "At the Battle of Arfderydd, my torc was of gold," he says. Once he was loved by a beautiful woman, but now he is alone. He must forage for food, living in caves or huts, with wolves and bears for friends. Merlin was best known in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as a prophet, on whom new prophecies were foisted at regular intervals. Prophecy, especially in the Celtic tradition, is strongly associated with both madness and poetry. Prophets were strange men who ranted obscurely, and only time would tell which of the ranters had the true gift of foresight. There is no more agreement on what the name Merlin means than about that of Arthur, but one interpretation derives it from Celtic roots meaning "madman."
It has to be said, though, that this story of a man who goes crazy after a battle and thereafter lives in the wilderness, making prophecies, had other protagonists besides Merlin. A character named Lailoken who appears in the Life of St. Kentigern has exactly these characteristics, and some of the people who believe in a historical Merlin think they were one in the same person. Perhaps Lailoken was his name and Merlin his title, so he was Lailoken the Madman. There are other, less exact parallels in Ireland and Brittany.
After the druids disappeared, with the coming of Christianity, their role as the custodians of traditional Celtic culture was taken over by the bards. As a bard who composed verse in the ancient manner, full of esoteric allusions, Merlin would have been an expert in that older culture. He thus would have been in some sense the thing that some contemporary pagans want him to be, a defender of the ancient pagan ways against assaults by Christianity and simple forgetting.
That is a lot of would haves and ifs, but the history of the sixth century is full of such phrases no matter what the subject. Someone wrote the poems attributed to Merlin, and that person was steeped in ancient lore. Prophecy is certainly part of the Welsh poetic tradition, strongly associated with madness. I can think of no reason why some pagan prophets might not have lived for a time in the wilderness, or at least in rough huts at the edge of civilization -- after all, plenty of Christian hermits did. Such a rejection of the settled world is recognized in many cultures, everywhere including elements of both divinity and madness. I suspect there was a Merlin, who fought at Arfderydd and later acquired or intentionally cultivated a reputation as a mad prophet, who glimpsed the future in ways the church did not know. As with Arthur, his story was changed in the telling, taking up more and more attributes of myth. He became a mighty wizard, a tamer of dragons, an arranger of the fates of nations. But perhaps he had once seen himself as something not so different from his own legend.
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