My rewrite of this article was prompted by this passage in the original:
- Stories of his origins include his birth as the intended Antichrist, being the offspring of a demon fathered on a virgin; but his expectant mother, realising what was amiss, had him baptized at birth to foil this Satanic plot. However, being half-demon, he still had tremendous magical powers.
Now my memory is not as good as I think it was (e.g., I probably never could keep my facts in my head), but having read widely in the Arthurian mythos, I have never seen any suggestion that Merlin was wholy, partly, or when in costume on Hollowe'en, a demon! The people who told the stories of Arthur and Merlin before the 20th century would never lightly suggest that someone was kin to the Antichrist, not only because that personage was the ultimate evil made human, but his presence would be a harbinger of the Apocalypse. Merlin was always portrayed as a positive individual, an asset to the people of Britain, although in the later stories his desire for Nimue brought on his downfall.
I have to assume that this story of Merlin was written by someone who not only knew of the later legends of Merlin better than the earlier, but for whom "Antichrist" has the same connotation as any monster encountered in a Dungeon and Dragons game. In other words, someone from the last quarter of the 20th century.
If this is the creation of a published author, proper attribution would allow us to add this bizarre tale to this article. There are certainly enough bizarre tales about well-known personages -- for example the story of "The Great God Pan is dead" told in Plutarch. However, I suspect that this tale is just an imaginative creation of someone eager to add to the Wikipedia, and had never existed beyond this one article. But until we see more evidence either way, I'm placing this snippet of a story here in Talk. -- llywrch 02:11 Dec 21, 2002 (UTC)