or MERDDIN, the name of two ancient British wizards:

Ambrose Merlin was the reputed son of a demon and of the daughter of a British prince, Demetrius, and flourished about the end of the fifth century. He was brought up at a city called Caer-Merlin (the City of Merlin), and supposed to be the present Caernarvon. When a mere boy he recommended himself by his supernatural powers to the notice of King Vortigern. He was afterwards the inseparable counsellor of that monarch, and of his immediate successors Ambrosius, Uterpendragon, and Arthur. His alleged miraculous insight is supposed by Leland to have been merely a knowledge of mathematics far transcending the comprehension of his contemporaries. Allusion is made to Merlin in the Faery Queen and other old poems. A book of Prophecies attributed to him was printed in French in 1498, in English in 1529, and in Latin in 1554. *The Life of Merlin Ambrosius, his Prophecies and Predictions Interpreted, and their Truth made good by our English Annals*, by T. Heywood, was published in 1641, and reprinted in 1813.

Merlin the Wild, Merlianus Caledonius, or Merlinus Sylvester, was a native of Caledonia, and lived in the sixth century. From the *Scotichronicon* of Fordun we learn, that in penance for the death of his nephew, he fled into the woods of Tweeddale, and there lived like a squall savage for the rest of his days. The same authority also states, that being pursued into his fastnesses by a band of rustics, he sprang from a rock into the Tweed, was impaled on a stake fixed in the bed of the river, and thus, in accordance with his own prediction, died by means of earth, wood, and water. But Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his metrical history of Merlin, ascribes this fate to a page whose death Merlin had prophesied in the terms mentioned above.

The grave of Merlin is still shown beneath an aged thorn at Drummelzier, a village on the Tweed. The book of prophecies which has been generally ascribed to Ambrose Merlin is sometimes attributed to Merlin the Caledonian, and was published at Edinburgh in 1615 under the name of the latter. (See part ii. of "Thomas the Rhymer" in Sir W. Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.)