can you give me some information about merlin the magician? can you tell me some of his stories?

Answer 1

Merlin - Merlin's Prophecies
Merlin is best known as the mighty wizard featured in Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures. Geoffrey combined existing stories of Myrddin Wyllt (Merlinus Caledonensis), a northern madman with no connection to King Arthur, with tales of Aurelius Ambrosius to form the figure he called Merlin Ambrosius.

Geoffrey's version of the character was immediately popular, and later writers expanded the account to produce a fuller image of the wizard. His traditional biography has him born the son of an incubus and a mortal woman who inherits his powers from his strange birth. He grows up to be a sage and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic. Later Merlin serves as the king's advisor until he is bewitched and imprisoned by the Lady of the Lake.

Merlin, as King Arthur's adviser, prophet and magician, is basically the creation of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who in his twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain combined the Welsh traditions about a bard and prophet named Myrddin with the story that the ninth-century chronicler Nennius tells about Ambrosius (that he had no human father and that he prophesied the defeat of the British by the Saxons).

Geoffrey gave his character the name Merlinus rather than Merdinus (the normal Latinization of Myrddin) because the latter might have suggested to his Anglo-Norman audience the vulgar word "merde." In Geoffrey's book, Merlin assists Uther Pendragon and is responsible for transporting the stones of Stonehenge from Ireland, but he is not associated with King Arthur.

Geoffrey's composite Merlin is based primarily on two figures: Myrddin Wyllt, also called Merlinus Caledonensis, and Aurelius Ambrosius, a highly fictionalized version of the historical war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus. The former had nothing to do with Arthur and flourished after the Arthurian period. Supposedly a bard who went mad after witnessing the horrors of war, he was said to have fled civilization to become a Wildman of the Woods in the late 6th century. Geoffrey had this individual in mind when he wrote his earliest surviving work, the Prophetiae Merlini (Prophecies of Merlin), which he claimed were the actual words of the legendary madman. (See below)

Geoffrey's Prophetiae do not reveal much about Merlin's background. When he included the prophet in his next work, Historia Regum Britanniae, he supplemented the characterization with stories about Aurelius Ambrosius, taken from Nennius' Historia Brittonum. According to Nennius, Ambrosius was discovered when the British king Vortigern was trying to erect a tower. The tower always collapsed before completion, and his wise men told him the only solution was to sprinkle the foundation with the blood of a "child born without a father". Ambrosius was rumored to be such a child, but when brought before the king, he revealed the real reason for the tower's collapse: below the foundation was a lake containing two dragons who destroyed the tower by fighting.

Geoffrey retells this story in Historia Regum Britanniae with some embellishments, and gives the fatherless child the name of the prophetic bard, Merlin. He keeps this new figure separate from Aurelius Ambrosius, and to disguise his changing of Nennius, he simply and baldly states that Ambrosius was another name for Merlin. He goes on to add new episodes that tie Merlin into the story of King Arthur and his predecessors.

Geoffrey dealt with Merlin again in his third work, Vita Merlini. He based the Vita on stories of the original 6th century Myrddin. Though set long after his timeframe for the life of "Merlin Ambrosius", he tries to assert the characters are the same with references to King Arthur and his death as told in the Historia Regum Britanniae.

Do you want to know more click on link below
http://www.crystalinks.com/merlin.html

Love & Blessings
Milly

Answer 2

try the movie, The mists of Avalon. I don't know how accurate this account is compared to the origional myth but I am a King Author buff and and it gives a good lineage of king auther wich includes alot about Merlin and the rest of the key figures in Autharien legend

Answer 3

Merlin, in some versions of the stories, ages backwards. This gives him his wisdom and many of his "wizard" abilities. Morgan le Fay was his student, but betrayed him and trapped him in a cave because he would not give her spells of ultimate power.

Answer 4

Magic exists interior the bible self reliant of the type granted with the aid of god (miracles). yet asking what a fictional entity replaced into or replaced into no longer exterior of the context of the tale itself is notably stupid.

Answer 5

You COULD use Google, you know.

I have several books on him, but I don't feel like trying to type them out for you. Sorry.