Page:Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds Vol 1.djvu/253

Rh wisdom of the young prophet most effectually to the test, the judge asked him if he knew his own father? To which the infant Merlin replied, in a clear, sonorous voice, "Yes, my father is the Devil; and I have his power, and know all things, past, present, and to come."

His worship clapped his hands in astonishment, and took the prudent resolution of not molesting so awful a child or its mother either.

Early tradition attributes the building of Stonehenge to the power of Merlin. It was believed that those mighty stones were whirled through the air, at his command, from Ireland to Salisbury Plain; and that he arranged them in the form in which they now stand, to commemorate for ever the unhappy fate of three hundred British chiefs, who were massacred on that spot by the Saxons.

At Abergwylly, near Carmarthen, is still shewn the cave of the prophet and the scene of his incantations. How beautiful is the description of it given by Spenser in his Faerie Queene! The lines need no apology for their repetition here, and any sketch of the great prophet of Britain would be incomplete without them:
 * "There the wise Merlin, whilom wont (they say,)
 * To make his wonne low underneath the ground,
 * In a deep delve far from the view of day,
 * That of no living wight he mote be found,

Whenso he counselled with his sprites encompassed round.


 * And if thou ever happen that same way
 * To travel, go to see that dreadful place;
 * It is a hideous, hollow cave, they say,
 * Under a rock that lies, a little space
 * From the swift Barry, tumbling down apace
 * Amongst the woody hills of Dynevoure;
 * But dare thou not, I charge, in any case,
 * To enter into that same baleful bower,

For fear the cruel fiendes should thee unwares devour!

But, standing high aloft, low lay thine eare,
 * And there such ghastly noise of iron chaines
 * And brazen caudrons thou shalt rombling heare,
 * Which thousand sprites with long-enduring paines
 * Doe tosse, that it will stun thy feeble braines;
 * And often times great groans and grievous stownds,
 * When too huge toile and labour them constraines;
 * And often times loud strokes and ringing sounds

From under that deep rock most horribly rebounds.

The cause, they say, is this. A little while
 * Before that Merlin died, he did intend
 * A brazen wall in compass, to compile
 * About Cayr Merdin, and did it commend
 * Unto these sprites to bring to perfect end;