=Merlin the Wild=, a native of Caledonia, who lived in the sixteenth century, about a century after the great Ambrose Merlin, the sorcerer. Fordun, in his _Scotichronicon_, gives particulars about him. It was predicted that he would die by earth, wood, and water, which prediction was fulfilled thus: A mob of rustics hounded him, and he jumped from a rock into the Tweed, and was impaled on a stake fixed in the river bed. His grave is still shown beneath an aged hawthorn bush at Drummelzier, a village on the Tweed. =Merlin’s Cave=, in Dynevor, near Carmarthen, noted for its ghastly noises of rattling iron chains, brazen caldrons, groans, strokes of hammers, and ringing of anvils. The cause is this: Merlin set his spirits to fabricate a brazen wall to encompass the city of Carmarthen, and as he had to call on the Lady of the Lake, bade them not to slacken their labor till he returned; but he never did return, for Vivien by craft got him under the enchanted stone, and kept him there. Tennyson says he was spell-bound by Vivien in a hollow oak tree, but the _History of Prince Arthur_ (Sir T. Malory) gives the other version.--Spenser, _Faëry Queen_, iii. 3 (1590). =Merop’s Son=, a nobody, a _terræ filius_, who thinks himself somebody. Thus Phaëton (Merop’s son), forgetting that his mother was an earthborn woman, thought he could drive the horses of the sun, but not being able to guide them, nearly set the earth on fire. Many presume like him, and think themselves capable or worthy of great things, forgetting all the while that they are only “Merop’s son.” Why, Phaëton (for thou art Merop’s son), Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car, And with thy daring folly burn the world? Shakespeare, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act iii. sc. 1 (1594). =Merrilees= (_Meg_), a half-crazy woman, part sibyl and part gypsy. She is the ruler and terror of the gypsy race. Meg Merrilees was the nurse of Harry Bertram.--Sir W. Scott, _Gay Mannering_ (time, George II.). In the dramatized version of Scott’s novel, Miss Cushman [1845-9] made “Meg Merrilees” her own. She showed therein indisputably the attributes of genius. Such was her power over the intention and feeling of the part, that the mere words were quite a secondary matter. It was the figure, the gait, the look, the gesture, the tone, by which she put beauty and passion into language the most indifferent.--Henry Morley. =Merry Andrew=, Andrew Borde, physician to Henry VIII. (1500-1549). ⁂ Prior has a poem on _Merry Andrew_. =Merry Monarch= (_The_), Charles II., of England (1630, 1660-1685). =Merry Mount.= Name of the home of a certain Englishman, called in the chronicle “the pestilent Morton,” who set up a May-pole in colonial Massachusetts.