The Mabinogion (Oxford World's Classics) Read online

  The underlying structure of the tale is, therefore, quite simple, and is a focus for a myriad of international motifs—grateful animals, magical helpers, horns and hampers of plenty. However, we are presented with an inconsistent, undisciplined, and lengthy composition. The main flaw in the structure is that the listing of the tasks and their ultimate completion do not form a balanced unity—of the forty tasks that are set by the giant Ysbaddaden, only twenty-one are accomplished. But was there ever a version of the tale in which all forty tasks were successfully executed? As was suggested earlier, the long prose form may never have existed at all in the oral medium, and may have only come into being with the development of literary writing. Indeed, perhaps the male and female protagonists—the stereotyped Culhwch and Olwen—were a deliberate creation on the part of the author as a vehicle to bring together numerous episodes that were already in circulation concerning Arthur and the Arthurian world. The hunting of Twrch Trwyth certainly has a long history—a reference is made to Arthur’s hunting of the supernatural creature in the ninth-century History of the Britons, while allusions in medieval poetry show that traditions concerning the animal were well known all over Wales. Indeed, it might be no coincidence that Culhwch himself takes his name from the pig-run in which he was born. Or was this onomastic merely another creation on the part of an author who delighted so much in words and word-play? For, more than anything else, this is what makes the tale unique, together with its unbounding energy, its humour, and sheer panache.

  The Arthurian world presented in ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’ is very different to that found in ‘Peredur son of Efrog’, ‘Geraint son of Erbin’, and ‘The Lady of the Well’.8 In the former Culhwch and Arthur’s men encounter giants, witches, and magical creatures; Arthur is a proactive figure, leading by example; his court, home to archaic social and legal customs, is at Celli Wig in Cornwall; the atmosphere is one of aggression and heroic machismo. In the later tales, however, his court is relocated at Caerllion on Usk, under the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Arthur’s role is similar to that found in the Continental romances—as a shadowy, fairly passive figure, who leaves adventure and danger to his knights. There are no clear geographical or political boundaries to his kingdom, and the action takes place in a somewhat unreal, daydream-like world. On the surface the three tales convey a common theme, in that the young hero embarks on a journey and goes in search of adventure; a string of events follow, usually in no particular order—their raison d’être is to put the hero to the test. Owain wins his bride, but he neglects her, preferring to remain at Arthur’s court with his companions; however, he is reminded of the error of his ways and the couple are eventually reunited. Geraint wins his bride, but becomes preoccupied with her and deserts his knightly responsibilities; he misinterprets her anxiety as love for another man, and takes her on a gruelling journey, but eventually, after a series of trials, they are reconciled. In Peredur, on the other hand, the hero’s initial journey transforms him from a country bumpkin into a skilful knight; he then wins a reluctant love, Angharad, before gaining the admiration of the empress of Constantinople, with whom he stays for fourteen years; finally he embarks on a perilous journey that takes him to the Castle of Wonders, where the witches of Caerloyw (Gloucester) are slain and vengeance is his. The treatment tends to be uncourtly, with no interest in the characters’ feelings or motives, no authorial asides or comments; rather, the emphasis throughout is on the action, with no attempt whatsoever at psychological digressions. What seems to have occurred, therefore, is that Wales accepted certain themes prevalent in the romance tradition, such as the education of the knight, and moderation between love and military prowess; however, other features were rejected as being too foreign, culminating in three hybrid texts, typical of a post-colonial world.

  Structurally, the three tales are different: ‘The Lady of the Well’ is concise and well proportioned, based on three journeys to the magic well; ‘Geraint’ is longer and slightly more complex, especially in the opening section, where the narrative alternates between different protagonists; but the overall structure is clear and linear. ‘Peredur’, however, is a different matter, due perhaps to its textual instability which raises questions regarding the nature of the tale itself. A ‘full’ version is preserved in the White and the Red Books, an incomplete fragment in the manuscript Peniarth 14 (c.1300–50), which breaks off in mid-sentence during Peredur’s visit to his second uncle, while an earlier version has survived in Peniarth 7 (c.1300), which lacks the opening paragraphs and ends the story, deliberately so it would seem, when the hero settles down to reign with the empress of Constantinople. This short version is the earliest, and probably the closest to the oral milieu; indeed, it may have been circulating for a while before some individual added further episodes in an attempt to explain the unresolved events of the first part of the tale. Both long and short versions can be regarded as authentic and complete in themselves, raising significant issues regarding the notion of ‘authorship’ and ‘version’ in the medieval context.

  With ‘The Four Branches of the Mabinogi’ we return to a familiar geographical landscape and a society apparently pre-dating any Norman influence. Indeed, the action is located in a pre-Christian Wales, where the main protagonists are mythological figures such as Lleu, cognate with the Celtic god Lugus, and Rhiannon, whose horse-imagery has led her to be equated with Epona, the Celtic horse-goddess. Even though it is doubtful whether their significance was understood by a medieval audience, the mythological themes make for fascinating stories: journeys to an otherworld paradise where time stands still and mortals do not age; the Cauldron of Rebirth, which revives dead warriors but takes away their speech; shape-shifting, where an unfaithful wife is transformed into an owl or a pregnant wife into a mouse. Such events are interwoven with well-known themes and motifs from the world of storytelling. Both Rhiannon’s and Branwen’s penances are variations on the theme of the Calumniated Wife: when her son disappears on the night of his birth, Rhiannon is forced to act like a horse and carry people on her back to court, while Branwen is made to suffer for her half-brother Efnysien’s insult to the king of Ireland. A monster hand, a cloak of invisibility, a magic mist—these are all elements that contribute to making the Four Branches examples of some of the best storytelling ever.

  But these are more than mere tales of magic and suspense. Despite the absence of a clear, overarching structure, there is within them a thematic unity that gives a consistency to the tales and suggests a single author working with traditional material to put forward a consistent view regarding appropriate moral behaviour. In the first three branches the nature of insult, compensation, and friendship are explored, and acts of revenge are shown to be totally destructive—legal settlement and hard bargaining are to be preferred. In the Fourth Branch, however, further considerations are raised. Math, lord of Gwynedd, is not only insulted but also dishonoured, as his virgin foot-holder is raped and his dignity as a person is attacked. The offenders, his own nephews, are transformed into animals—male and female—and are shamed by having offspring from one another. However, once their punishment is complete Math forgives them in the spirit of reconciliation. As noted by Brynley F. Roberts, ‘legal justice is necessary for the smooth working of society, but without the graces of forgetting and forgiving, human pride will render the best systems unworkable’.9 Throughout the Four Branches, therefore, the author conveys a scale of values which he commends to contemporary society, doing so by implication rather than by any direct commentary. The listeners are left to draw their own conclusions, and to realize that the image of a man alone, at the end of the Fourth Branch, with no wife and no heir, does not make for a promising future.

  It is this genuine interest in human nature that makes the Four Branches stand out, suggesting that we are here dealing with an author in the true sense of the word. Although he is deeply indebted to oral narrative techniques, he has begun to move away from the one-dimensional world of the storyteller, creating
strongly delineated characters that he uses to convey his views—the wise and cautious Manawydan; the warped Efnysien; the complex Gwydion; and the impetuous Pwyll, who gradually discovers the true meaning of his name—‘wisdom’ or ‘caution’. Even so, it is probably the women who are the most memorable; between them Rhiannon, Branwen, Blodeuedd, and Aranrhod place the men in situations where they must make decisions, and their choice determines the fate of all concerned. The characters come alive not through any authorial comments, but through lively dialogue which becomes more than simply pleasantries, and is harnessed to create intense drama. The identity of this medieval author is, of course, unknown. He may have been a cleric, or perhaps a court lawyer, as suggested by the legal terms and concepts reflected in the tales. However, any conjecture rests on dating, and although the general consensus is that the tales were first committed to writing between c.1060 and 1120, nothing is certain. But the author, whoever it was, had an extraordinary ear for dialogue, created unforgettable characters, and conjured up the most dramatic scenes; all in all, he gave us stories unparalleled in the literature of the Middle Ages.

  Re-creating the Mabinogion

  After the medieval period the Mabinogion were mainly the preserve of copyists and antiquarians until the nineteenth century, when they were ‘re-created’ in the wake of the Romantic Revival and the rediscovery of medieval literature. By then King Arthur had returned from Avalon, with his legend reinvented through Victorian eyes. Writers—and artists too—projected their own ideals and values onto the legendary characters and events, so that the chivalric past became a vehicle for educating the present, as reflected in the works of Walter Scott and Tennyson. The time was ripe, therefore, to introduce the Mabinogion to an English-speaking audience.

  Lady Charlotte Guest (1812–95) was not only responsible for publishing the first translation of the Mabinogion into English, but she must be given credit, too, for popularizing the tales and, of course, their title. Daughter of the ninth earl of Lindsay, she grew up in Lincolnshire, but in 1833 married the industrialist Josiah John Guest, owner of the Dowlais Iron Company in South Wales. Her detailed journal, from 1822 to 1881, relates how, among other things, she gave birth to ten children, founded schools for the education of the working classes in the Dowlais area (for both male and female pupils), and translated all eleven tales of the Mabinogion (together with the tale of Taliesin) into English.10 Her huge, multi-volume work (1838–46) presents the text in English and in Welsh, with detailed scholarly notes, variant versions in other languages of the three Arthurian romances, illustrations, and facsimiles from the Red Book of Hergest and from manuscripts of other versions.11 Apart from translating in the spirit of the Romantic Revival, she had another reason for wanting to turn these medieval Welsh tales into English: she wanted to reveal to the Englishspeaking world the supremacy of the ‘ancient’ Celtic literature, of the ‘venerable relics of ancient lore’. In her opinion, Welsh literature had an intrinsic worth, and the tales of the Mabinogion deserved a place on the European stage; indeed, Guest went so far as to argue that ‘the Cymric nation … has strong claims to be considered the cradle of European Romance’. Similar views are expressed by nineteenth-century translators, translating from Irish into English, as outlined by Michael Cronin, where he argues that ‘translation relationships between minority and majority languages are rarely divorced from issues of power and identity’.12 Indeed, in Wales, as in Ireland, associations emerged to promote scholarship in the language—ancient texts were resurrected from manuscripts and translated to show the ‘colonizers’ that the ‘colonized’ were civilized and in possession of a noble literary heritage.

  Despite its lack of rigour, there is no doubt that Guest’s translation had far-reaching consequences. The texts were translated quickly into both French (1842 and 1889) and German (1841); John Campbell compared the Welsh tales with those he had collected in the West Highlands, while Alfred Nutt pointed out resemblances between the story of Branwen and the Nibelung and Gudrun sagas. The translation also stimulated further scholarship on Celtic literature, such as Ernest Renan’s Essai sur la poésie des races celtiques (1854)—the first attempt at any kind of comparative study of the Celtic literatures— and Matthew Arnold’s Lectures upon the Study of Celtic Literature (1867). The work also had a direct impact on the literature of the target language—Tennyson founded his poem ‘Geraint and Enid’ in his Idylls of the King on her translation of ‘Geraint son of Erbin’. Indeed, through the endeavours of Charlotte Guest the tales of the Mabinogion were given their rightful place on the European stage and assumed a prestige far beyond that which they might have achieved had they remained in the Welsh language alone, lending support to Lefevere’s argument that ‘rewritten texts can be as important for the reception and canonization of a work of literature as its actual writing’.13

  Since then three other English translations have appeared, most notably the rigorously accurate, if overtly literal, translation of Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones (1948), which replaced Guest’s version in the renowned Everyman’s Library.14 In spite of the performance potential of the Mabinogion, dramatic genres have been slow to exploit the material. The Cauldron of Annwn, an operatic trilogy loosely based on the Four Branches, was composed and performed in the first quarter of the twentieth century—Lord Howard de Walden (T. E. Scott-Ellis) wrote the librettos, with music by Josef Holbrooke. Its three operas are concerned with the effects of a cauldron whose fumes magnify emotion to the point of obsession: The Children of Don,15 Bronwen, and Dylan: Son of Wave (staged in London at Drury Lane in 1914, with the sets and costumes designed by the English artist Sidney Herbert Sime and the orchestra conducted by Thomas Beecham).16 Welsh dramatists Saunders Lewis and Gareth Miles have also turned to the Four Branches, while the tales in general continue to inspire Welsh poets and novelists, as well as English-language writers such as Evangeline Walton, Anthony Conran, Gillian Clarke, and Alan Garner. In each case the modern authors have interpreted the tales according to their own personal vision, tangible proof of their lasting significance and resonance. More recent ventures in re-creating the Mabinogion have included a foray into film: 2002 saw the release of a ninety-minute animated version of the Four Branches under the title Y Mabinogi (Otherworld in the English-language version), produced by Cartŵn Cymru for the Welsh television channel S4C. The scriptwriters decided that the animated version should not only entertain but also educate and inspire; there is a genuine attempt, therefore, to reflect the ideological perspectives of the literary narrator.17 Transmitting the Four Branches to the screen offers a return to the oral and the aural, but at the same time it offers wider dissemination and an international audience. This ‘new’ orality has a striking resemblance to the old in its fostering of a communal sense, its invitation to a shared experience, its focus on the actual moment; but, of course, it is a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, where communication is strictly one-way, with no inter action between listener and performer.

  We have travelled a long way from the storytellers of medieval Wales, yet the Mabinogion retain their fascination, captivating us not only with their fantastic glimpses of the surreal world of magic and enchantment, but also through their sheer inventive fecundity—the pleasure the narratives take in fabrics and colour, in weapons and horses, in people and places. Individually, each tale is unique; together, they form a collection that is unsurpassed. With stories such as these to draw upon, it is no wonder that Gwydion, in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, is described as ‘the best storyteller in the world’.

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  THE present translation is based largely on current editions of the eleven tales (see the Select Bibliography), although paragraphing and sentence division have been modified in line with my own interpretation of narrative structure and punctuation—the two manuscripts which form the basis for most of the edited versions (the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest) present the tales in blocks of continuous prose, with large capi
tals, rubrications, and opening/ending formulae segmenting the narrative. My debt to all the editors will be apparent, as will the benefit received from the most recent linguistic scholarship in the field.

  The overriding aim of this translation has been to convey the performability of the surviving manuscript versions. As emphasized in the Introduction, the Mabinogion were tales to be read aloud to a listening audience—the parchment was ‘interactive’ and vocality was of its essence. Indeed, many passages can only be truly captured by the speaking voice. The acoustic dimension was, therefore, a major consideration in this new translation: every effort has been made to transfer the rhythm, tempo, and alliteration of the original to the target language. The repetitive element in all eleven tales has been preserved, with due regard for the formulaic content, while the present tense, employed to describe dramatic events in the source-language text, has been retained where possible to convey the excitement of the narration. In ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’ the rhetorical passages have been divided into short lines in an attempt to transmit the rhythm of the oral performance visually to the printed page. Yet, inevitably, the demands of modern English usage have overriden choices in certain areas: for example, the connective ‘and’, an integral part of the tales’ micro-structure, has sometimes been omitted where it was felt to be too intrusive; and where speakers are not identified, their names have sometimes been added to the lines of direct speech, for clarification. Many of the proper names, especially in ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’, embody meanings that give an insight into the characters, and are often associated with onomastic explanations, although to what extent this was always apparent to a medieval audience is unclear. In an attempt to weigh up the loss to the English-speaking reader if personal names are in Welsh only, against the loss of authenticity if they are translated, I have chosen to retain the original Welsh name (in modern orthography), but to provide a translation, and often a further explanation, in the Explanatory Notes at the first occurrence of the name. At subsequent occurrences the reader is able to turn to the Index of Personal Names, which repeats the English translation and refers to the relevant notes. The long Court List of ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’, with its 260 proper names, proved a challenge worthy of the giant Ysbaddaden’s impossible tasks. I decided to give the reader a choice—the original Welsh names are retained in the main text, so that the reader can appreciate the rhythm and alliterative quality, while an alternative list is provided in the notes, where all names, as far as possible, have been translated into English.