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Merlin: The Prophet and His History
A major analysis of the character and legacy of the Arthurian wizard traces the numerous tales attributed to his mythical status to the real life of Myrddin Emrys, a Welsh prophet whose legacy includes numerous literary works including those by Spenser and Mary Stewart.
242 pages, Hardcover
First published November 23, 2006
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174 people want to read
About the author
Geoffrey Ashe
99 books42 followersGeoffrey Thomas Leslie Ashe is a British cultural historian, a writer of non-fiction books and novels.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 31, 2023
Mientras que el autor puede divagar en ciertos puntos sigue siendo una vision concisa e interesante sobre quien fue Merlin, de donde aparece y cómo ha evolucionado hasta nuestros días.
January 27, 2021
This is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn more about Merlin's appearances throughout the immense body of Arthurian work and his evolution across it. As with all Arthurian characters, he is introduced by an author who has a particular goal for him (to use his prophecies to establish a noble history to the Britons and their rulers), and then other authors pick up aspects of Merlin and discard others based on the socially appropriate morals of the time being written in, with each author both consistently moving forward with their own cultural context while being able to reference back to the whole body of work so far. With almost 1000 years of writing and vastly different social mores, this zig-zag back and forth of new things getting added and old things getting written out then written back in is bound to happen. This book does a great job of tracing what's picked up where, what gets absorbed into popular culture/folklore of the time, and what gets deliberately discarded by whom and why.
(For example, early on Merlin's written as the child of a devil, so that he can fulfill the "boy with no father" role, but the time period being very religious, in order for him to be a positive figure, he has to be purified by his mother's morality and choose to use his powers for God and be a very religious being himself. Then later, the mentions of the devil and his origins are dropped entirely, and his downfall by Nimue/Vivian is emphasized because the view of magic had become much more black/white and so the fact he was a magician meant that for things to feel right he had to be 'undone' by his own magic etc).
In addition, this is written in a very clear and readable style. Ashe has been writing on Arthurian history, literary, and archaeological traditions for 52 years and he is easily able to explain his points. The text doesn't have a great deal of academic jargon in it, and Ashe doesn't assume that readers necessarily have a full background and does his best to fill in references he makes by describing the history around new things he wants to discuss.
The downside is that, to this end, he both sometimes overexplains things in tangents and does not make it clear when he is returning from those tangents. Some examples:
* When describing Merlin (in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account) discussing getting the stones of the "giants crown" from Ireland to move it to where it will eventually become Stonehenge, he goes on a long tangent about giants from other cultures and then makes the point that they are "irrelevant here", where giants weren't like that culturally. It meant I had to try to mentally dump information I'd just made a note of.
* He talks about how Geoffrey of Monmouth wouldn't use material from early Welsh Arthurian tales such as Culhwch and Olwen due to it not fitting his needs of what he was setting up (it's pretty gory, gruesome, and wild), and then gave a full multi-page plot summary of it.
In addition, he's so engaged in telling you the literary tradition AND the historical tradition AND the archaeological record that it can be sometimes hard to tell when he jumps between them. For example:
* Ashe describes how in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Life of Merlin, Merlin meets the poet Taliesin, who is an actual historical figure, then jumps to sharing some of the historical Taliesin's poems, and then jumps right back to Taliesin talking to Merlin. The fact he IS talking to Merlin clued me in fast that we were back into Life of Merlin, but going from historical Taliesin talking -> literary Taliesin talking without much of a segue made it hard for me to mentally sort each part into its appropriate 'category'.
* He goes into depth during the Geoffrey of Monmouth section about Merlin's prophecies, and the historical goal that Geoffrey of Monmouth had here to build out a noble bloodline for the Britons to elevate them culturally and so mixed in some 'verifiable' prophecies (since he was writing them from 600 years after Merlin was making them) with some incoherent ones. Then, still in this section (and thus before we've got to Ashe's section on Wace's translation and expansion) explains how Wace would later dump the prophecies because he couldn't interpret them.
The tl;dr is it's a VERY good book but despite the clear narrative style, you'll want to put aside time to make notes and pay attention because there's a few trailing tangents and back and forth across different literary authors, archaeological commentary, and historical analysis that can trip you up if you're not attentive. 4 stars.
(For example, early on Merlin's written as the child of a devil, so that he can fulfill the "boy with no father" role, but the time period being very religious, in order for him to be a positive figure, he has to be purified by his mother's morality and choose to use his powers for God and be a very religious being himself. Then later, the mentions of the devil and his origins are dropped entirely, and his downfall by Nimue/Vivian is emphasized because the view of magic had become much more black/white and so the fact he was a magician meant that for things to feel right he had to be 'undone' by his own magic etc).
In addition, this is written in a very clear and readable style. Ashe has been writing on Arthurian history, literary, and archaeological traditions for 52 years and he is easily able to explain his points. The text doesn't have a great deal of academic jargon in it, and Ashe doesn't assume that readers necessarily have a full background and does his best to fill in references he makes by describing the history around new things he wants to discuss.
The downside is that, to this end, he both sometimes overexplains things in tangents and does not make it clear when he is returning from those tangents. Some examples:
* When describing Merlin (in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account) discussing getting the stones of the "giants crown" from Ireland to move it to where it will eventually become Stonehenge, he goes on a long tangent about giants from other cultures and then makes the point that they are "irrelevant here", where giants weren't like that culturally. It meant I had to try to mentally dump information I'd just made a note of.
* He talks about how Geoffrey of Monmouth wouldn't use material from early Welsh Arthurian tales such as Culhwch and Olwen due to it not fitting his needs of what he was setting up (it's pretty gory, gruesome, and wild), and then gave a full multi-page plot summary of it.
In addition, he's so engaged in telling you the literary tradition AND the historical tradition AND the archaeological record that it can be sometimes hard to tell when he jumps between them. For example:
* Ashe describes how in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Life of Merlin, Merlin meets the poet Taliesin, who is an actual historical figure, then jumps to sharing some of the historical Taliesin's poems, and then jumps right back to Taliesin talking to Merlin. The fact he IS talking to Merlin clued me in fast that we were back into Life of Merlin, but going from historical Taliesin talking -> literary Taliesin talking without much of a segue made it hard for me to mentally sort each part into its appropriate 'category'.
* He goes into depth during the Geoffrey of Monmouth section about Merlin's prophecies, and the historical goal that Geoffrey of Monmouth had here to build out a noble bloodline for the Britons to elevate them culturally and so mixed in some 'verifiable' prophecies (since he was writing them from 600 years after Merlin was making them) with some incoherent ones. Then, still in this section (and thus before we've got to Ashe's section on Wace's translation and expansion) explains how Wace would later dump the prophecies because he couldn't interpret them.
The tl;dr is it's a VERY good book but despite the clear narrative style, you'll want to put aside time to make notes and pay attention because there's a few trailing tangents and back and forth across different literary authors, archaeological commentary, and historical analysis that can trip you up if you're not attentive. 4 stars.
June 20, 2013
Ashe produced his first book on the Arthurian legends – King Arthur’s Avalon – in 1957, and over half a century later he still returns to the Matter of Britain, most recently in this overview of Merlin (first published in 2006 as a hardback by Sutton, now subsumed into The History Press).
In his own words Ashe “traces the evolution of the legend, the growth of Merlin as a character, his possible historical aspect, and the principal treatments of him in literature,” and adds a supplementary list of modern transformations. There is a select group of illustrations which reflect different aspects of Merlin’s developing story, and a useful bibliography (would, however, that it had been divided up into fiction and non-fiction).
Ashe was famously described as a “middlebrow” author, and here he writes with his customary confidence, born of long familiarity with the material, eschewing scholarly references (or even, disappointingly, an index) and revisiting old themes of his. As always, he writes with flair and ease, and there is the usual oblique approach to some of the strands he teases out which means the subject is illuminated as if by flashes of lightning. A useful introduction this, but for more detailed argument you would have to go elsewhere. This is, above all, a personal response, as befits someone who lives in Glastonbury, that most legendary of Arthurian places, on a site subsequently chosen as Merlin’s “nest” by the romantic novelist Persia Woolley.
http://wp.me/s2oNj1-prophet
In his own words Ashe “traces the evolution of the legend, the growth of Merlin as a character, his possible historical aspect, and the principal treatments of him in literature,” and adds a supplementary list of modern transformations. There is a select group of illustrations which reflect different aspects of Merlin’s developing story, and a useful bibliography (would, however, that it had been divided up into fiction and non-fiction).
Ashe was famously described as a “middlebrow” author, and here he writes with his customary confidence, born of long familiarity with the material, eschewing scholarly references (or even, disappointingly, an index) and revisiting old themes of his. As always, he writes with flair and ease, and there is the usual oblique approach to some of the strands he teases out which means the subject is illuminated as if by flashes of lightning. A useful introduction this, but for more detailed argument you would have to go elsewhere. This is, above all, a personal response, as befits someone who lives in Glastonbury, that most legendary of Arthurian places, on a site subsequently chosen as Merlin’s “nest” by the romantic novelist Persia Woolley.
http://wp.me/s2oNj1-prophet
November 9, 2017
Ashe presents a fine study in the myths of Merlin and offers the theory that Merlin may be a form of a deity which holds a particular association, and affinity, for Britain.
The first half of the text is fantastic. The second half loses focus somewhat, hence I have scored it 4/5. The addition of a greater depth of footnotes would add further value to the study.
Ashe also reveals a bias towards the preservation of a distinct Celtic basis for 'the Merlin', rather than accept the conclusion of his own analysis that links Apollo with the archetype. His dismissal of Jungian arhcetypes is also ill-judged and is done so on the basis of a perceived difference in physical appearance, with Ashe offering that Merlin is other than the Jungian 'wise old man' with little reason beyond that the historic Merlin was a youth.
The first half of the text is fantastic. The second half loses focus somewhat, hence I have scored it 4/5. The addition of a greater depth of footnotes would add further value to the study.
Ashe also reveals a bias towards the preservation of a distinct Celtic basis for 'the Merlin', rather than accept the conclusion of his own analysis that links Apollo with the archetype. His dismissal of Jungian arhcetypes is also ill-judged and is done so on the basis of a perceived difference in physical appearance, with Ashe offering that Merlin is other than the Jungian 'wise old man' with little reason beyond that the historic Merlin was a youth.
March 7, 2011
I'm not a history (or legend) kind of fan, so to give this book 4 stars means it's just that good. And I love Merlore, as I like to call it.
February 2, 2019
Bueniiiismo...Merlín y algo de Arturo bajo la mirada de un gran historiador en la materia. Los hechos reales, los datos que se conocen, las hipotesis y el análisis de la Literatura sobre tradición Artúrica desde sus comienzos con Monmouth hasta la actualidad. Infaltable para entender y relacionar el mito con la persona y la época.
April 8, 2018
Made me think . . . why is there this phenomenon, Merlin, that persists? Throughly documents the facts and the fiction, but all in all a dry read.
I did enjoy his occasional "personal interpretation" i.e. that Merlin was perhaps history's first patriot (Arthur's England).
Rod
I did enjoy his occasional "personal interpretation" i.e. that Merlin was perhaps history's first patriot (Arthur's England).
Rod
August 23, 2020
straight forward look at the history of Merlin's creation; short and to the point, as well as interesting.
July 19, 2022
The early parts were quite interesting, albeit not always clearly organized.
October 14, 2025
This book was a great read! The bibliography at the end of the book is a good jumping off point for further reading. I appreciated the order the chapters are in; the only thing I would change, would be to have endnotes sorted by chapter instead of just a bibliography at the end.
July 21, 2017
Algunas de las teorías y conclusiones sobre el posible origen histórico de la figura de Merlín me han resultado demasiado fantasiosas (desde mi falta de conocimientos profundos sobre el tema, claro), pero en general me ha parecido un resumen muy curioso e interesante sobre la figura del personaje.
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August 20, 2012new
October 1, 2014
A fascinating look at the origins and evolution of the legend of Merlin. Makes me want to read more of Ashe's work, to look at his similar treatments of the broader Arthurian legends.
August 15, 2015
Meh. It rambles on and on.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews