There’s no telling how long
I’ve been fascinated by the figure of Merlin. Probably the first time I ever
saw him was in his T. H. White/Walt Disney incarnation, in the clip of the
‘Wizard’s Duel’ from The Sword in the Stone, that was shown on The
Wonderful World of Disney each year at Christmas. But he was everywhere in
children’s programming when I was small.
In King Arthur and the
Square Knights of the Round Table (1966; 1969, American release) Merlin is
a force for good, King Arthur’s wise man; in
the 1970 CBS: Famous Classic Tales version of A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Mark Twain’s Merlin is a villain, the epitome
of the superstition, chicanery, and ignorance of Twain’s perceived version of
the Middle Ages; in The Saturday Superstar Movie of The Adventures of
Robin Hoodnik (1972) he appeared as Whirlin’ Merlin, a magician for hire
engaged by the bad guys; in the 1972 The Brady Kids animated show, Larry
Storch voiced Marlon, a magical bird expy of the famed magician, and his old
pal Merlin, a beardless, W. C. Fields sound-alike even appears in one episode.
Merlin appeared as a figure representing the artist in The Seven Faces of
Dr. Lao, a movie that was often on TV.
In Fourth Grade Jerry
Williams brought a comic book to class, DC’s The Demon #1, that featured Merlin
as a catalyst to Jason Blood’s back story. In Fifth Grade I read Blanch
Winder’s Stories of King Arthur and was enchanted: the first few stories were
about Merlin and his origins, perhaps the first place I ever saw Merlin young
before being a bearded sage. Then came Middle School and Merlin was let loose.
I graduated into the next
level of Merlin. Howard Pyle’s King Arthur and his Knights of the Round
Table, actually reading T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, Mary
Stewart’s The Crystal Cave (another young Merlin tale), all were in the
Briesemeister library. Even in The Dark is Rising Merriman Lyon, the
Oldest of the Old Ones, was Merlin, a fact I might have known right away if Under
Sea, Under Stone (the first book in the series) had been available.
High school took me to the
research phase on Merlin. Geoffrey Ashe was the main Arthurian scholar then, in
search of the historical origins of King Arthur and his court, including how
the figure of Merlin developed. Those were the years that The Book of
Merlyn (T. H. White’s unpublished conclusion to his Matter of Britain
books) came out, as did John Steinbeck’s unfinished The Acts of King
Arthur and His Noble Knights. I read C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength,
where the awakened Merlin plays a pivotal part. Towards the end of high school,
I read Merlin by Robert Nye, which drew on a lot of the original sources
as well as on scurrilous humor.
While in college, a lot of
those original sources became available to me, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas
Malory and Spencer and so on, including drips and dabs from medieval tales.
That was when I read Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex, where of course Merlin
appears in the early chapters. The movie Excalibur (1981) featured Nicol
Williamson as the mercurial magician.
And so it goes. Merlin is a character
of greater or lesser importance in dozens of books (many of dubious quality,
but I had to look into them), TV series (I might mention the 2008 BBC series –
which I never watched, or the 1998 Sam Neill miniseries), and films since then,
so many in fact I cannot keep up with them, nor I doubt could anybody. Merlin
is even an ‘historical figure’ in the Harry Potter mythos. Villain, hero,
youth, sage, bard, devil, wizard – Merlin continues to fill all those niches, and may
well continue to do so through all time.
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