By CHE, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Merlin ‘the Wizard’ is one of the most famous characters in legend. Usually we are presented with a Disney-style, romantic and largely fictional account. The bare bones of the actual history rarely see the light of day. In this short article we will look at the evidence, which has been based on the book called Scotland’s Merlin, written by Tim Clarkson, whose PhD is in medieval history.
For weeks we had been looking forward to doing the Merlin trail near Peebles in Scotland. Finally we arrived at the hamlet of Stobo and went into the church there. Its history goes back to the sixth century, being contemporary with Merlin. It did not take us long to find the stained glass image of Kentigern baptising Myrddin, or Merlin, and the altar from which he traditionally received communion from Kentigern. This raised many questions. Who was Myrddin/Merlin? Was he really in Scotland? Was he a Christian, rather than a pagan? Clarkson pieced together the fragments of the story from the earliest medieval accounts of Jocelinus of Furness, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and other sources. According to The Life of Merlin, written in about 1150, probably by Geoffrey of Monmouth, we read, ‘One day, in the time when St Kentigern was living in the wilderness, he was praying in the forest when a naked, hairy madman, an utterly wretched creature, ran towards him in a frenzy. His name was Lailoken. Some folk say that he was Merlin, a famous prophet of the Britons, but this is not certain.’ In this account Lailoken says, ‘I am a Christian, although not worthy of such a great name.’ He then recounts his sad story of being involved in a battle in AD 573 which was fought in a field between the river ‘Liddel’ and ‘Carwannock’ (today’s Carwinley in North Cumbria), at a place called Arfderydd, or modern day Arthuret.
Suffering post-traumatic stress because of what he had witnessed, he says an evil spirit took hold of him and he fled north into the Scottish Caledonian Forest to live as a wild hermit, and do penance for his sins. Travellers sometimes came across this wild man who raved and prophesied. In The Life of Merlin, a local king called Meldred heard about him and had Merlin brought to his fortress at Dunmeller, reckoned to have once been on the hill overlooking today’s Scottish village of Drumelzier, near Stobo. He entertained Meldred’s court, but also revealed that the king’s wife was committing adultery. Being furious at Lailoken/Merlin, she plotted his death, and he was murdered near Dunmeller. He had predicted his own death, which he claimed would happen in a tri-fold way: by being stoned and clubbed, by being impaled on a stake, and by being drowned in water. He had requested in advance that he be buried in a Christian churchyard ‘where the Pausayl Burn joins the River Tweed’, which is near Drumelzier today. Before this had happened he was given communion as a Christian by Kentigern, although his baptism is not mentioned, and being overjoyed ‘Lailoken dashed away, like a wild goat’ to his forest retreat.