MERLIN. The origins of Merlin, the magician, prophet, and guardian of the legendary British king Arthur and a central figure in medieval Arthurian romance in both French and English, are to be found in a number of early Welsh poems and related material in Latin. The name Merlin was created by the twelfth-century pseudohistorian Geoffrey of Monmouth, who described the conception of "a fatherless boy" by a nun who had been impregnated by an incubus in the South Wales town of Caerfyrddin (modern-day Carmarthen). The omniscient boy's advice to King Vortigern suggests that Geoffrey modeled his Merlin on an earlier Welsh story of the wonder-child Ambrosius. Although two later exploits, the removal of Stonehenge from Ireland to England and the disguising of Uter Pendragon as Gorlois so that he might sleep with the latter's wife (a ruse that results in the conception of Arthur), are not found in...