E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Merlin.
Prince of Enchanters; also the name of a romance. He was the son of a damsel seduced by a fiend, but Blaise baptised the infant, and so rescued it from the power of Satan. He died spell-bound by his mistress Vivian in a hawthorn-bush. (See Spenser’s Faërie Queene, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances.)
1
The English Merlin. Lilly, the astrologer, who published two tracts under the assumed name of “Mer’linus An’glicus.”
