Earlier still, Shakespeare's play The Tempest centres on the ageing wizard Prospero. But one figure towers over them all. This is the first and perhaps the greatest of all fictional wizards: King Arthur's adviser, Merlin.
Our modern image of Merlin was crystallised by TH White's The Sword in the Stone, written in 1938 and filmed by Disney in 1963. The great wizard is portrayed as aged and absent-minded, immersed in a lifetime's magical lore. Under Merlin's care, the young Arthur undergoes an initiation in magic. As part of Arthur's preparation for kingship, Merlin shows him how to transform himself into an animal. Arthur emerges from this training wiser and more mature; when he becomes king, the elderly but ageless Merlin is his most trusted adviser.
The sources from which TH White's Merlin was drawn tell a different story. In Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century History of the Kings of Britain, Merlin first appears as an adviser to the 5th-century British king, Vortigern, and his successor, Ambrose; Ambrose in turn is followed by his brother Uther, whose son is King Arthur. This may explain the depiction of Merlin as an old man; supposedly he was born in 460CE and died in 580, not bad going for the Dark Ages. This Merlin was the illegitimate son of a Welsh princess, who had supposedly been visited in the night by a demon.
The mystery of his parentage may explain both Merlin's supernatural powers and his visionary gifts. As a boy, Merlin was nearly made a human sacrifice by King Vortigern, who had been told that only the sacrifice of a child with no father would prevent his castle from collapsing. Merlin was taken to the site, where he said that Vortigern's problems actually stemmed from two dragons, one red and one white, who were fighting under the foundations; only the victory of the red dragon would end the battle. Merlin saved his life with this prophecy, which cleverly combined clairvoyancy with politics: the red dragon represented Wales, the white dragon stood for the Saxon invaders.
Geoffrey's Merlin is associated with all the familiar events in the Arthurian legend: he arranges the trial of the sword in the stone, makes the Lady of the Lake give Arthur the sword Excalibur and, after Arthur's last battle, accompanies the wounded king to the isle of Avalon. But the figure of Merlin is different from White's absent-minded professor: as well as giving him psychic powers, his demonic parentage gave him greater height and strength than other men. In Harry Potter terms, Merlin was a combination of Dumbledore and Hagrid: an imposing and rather frightening figure.
Earlier tales about Merlin present an even more uncanny figure. It seems that the original Merlin - or Myrddin - was a 6th-century military leader who saw four of his brothers killed in a battle and went mad with grief, fleeing to the woods and living as a wild man. After a year, he was found there by courtiers of the King of Strathclyde and brought back to the court. But Merlin never quite returned to civilisation. He was said to have the gift of prophecy; there are stories of him travelling accompanied by a wolf and a boar, running with wild deer and even flying.
As we reach back to the earliest stories of Merlin - the ones which stand the best chance of reflecting historical reality - something strange happens. Suddenly we're not dealing with a kindly old sage or a sharp political operator; the magic of the real Merlin was something much wilder and darker. But what was it? Who was Merlin - and who were the real wizards?
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