I photographed this merlin today and it got me wondering, which came first, the bird or the wizard of King Arthur fame?
Merlin (Falco columbarius) at Cox Park along the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky
Merlin, the Enchanter by Louis Rhead, 1923 (speaking to a raven, not a merlin)
Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Catholic cleric who lived from roughly 1095 to 1155, introduced Merlin in his Latin work titled Prophetiæ Merlini around the year 1130. He later incorporated Merlin into Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) which led to the enormous popularity of the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The name “Merlin” derives from the name of the Welsh sage Myrddin Wyllt ("Myrddin the Wild") who allegedly inspired the character.
Our feathered merlin was first formally described by English naturalist Mark Catesby around 1730. Carl Linneaus himself bestowed the merlin its binomial name, Falco columbarius, in 1758 based on Catesby’s description. So, case closed, right? Monmouth named his wizard “Merlin” around 1130, six centuries before Catesby described the bird?
Not quite. As with most things, it is not that simple. Merlin the bird and Merlin the wizard are actually completely unrelated. Whereas Merlin the wizard gets his name from Myrddin, our little falcon’s name comes from the old French word esmerillon, or the Anglo-Norman esmerilun, which means… merlin (circuitous, I know). Esmerilun was the Anglo-Norman’s word for the species we now call merlin. These words date to at least 1250, and esmerilun is related to the Germanic smiril, dating to at least 1180. People have been admiring these swift and agile birds of prey, small in size, large in character, for a long time.
Merlins are fast and agile in flight and have long been used in falconry as a result.
So now we have a raptor called merlin back to 1180, getting pretty close to the wizard’s 1130 debut. But considering merlins were historically used in falconry, which dates to possibly as far back as 2000 BC, it seems likely that people were discussing merlins (as esmerilun or smiril) long before Monmouth transformed Myrddin the Wild into Merlin the Wizard. We just don’t know for sure. But if this seems confusing, here is what we do know:
The shared name of the bird and the wizard is pure coincidence. Merlin and the merlin have completely separate and unrelated origins.
Their modern(ish) names appear in writing, in Monmouth’s Prophetiæ Merlini and in early Germanic texts about falconry, at about the same time in the 1100s.
The actual species we now call Falco columbarius was snatching pigeons from the sky and quail from the ground thousands of years before we humans started writing about wizards (or writing at all, for that matter!).
One more Merlin: if you have any interest in birds at all, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s free Merlin bird identification app is a must have. Its ability to identify birds from photos and sound is truly wizard-like!
It has been a while since my last post and I have made some changes and updates to my website, so I encourage you to look around. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below - a better option than replying via email which arrives in my already overwhelmed inbox.
Happy New Year!
Greg
Merlins are easy to distinguish from our other small falcon, the American kestrel, not only by their markings, but because they look like they are on steroids compared to kestrels. They are much bulkier and stronger - just a little larger in length and wingspan (about 24in), but up to 50% heavier.