The Mabinogion

Product Information

This Penguin Classic translated by Jeffrey Gantz (not the same illustration as pictured here) is the third translation of The Mabinogion I have read, and it’s by far the best. The title is misleading, stemming from Lady Charlotte Guest’s use of it in her nineteenth century translation, but it’s now ”established and convenient”. In his introduction Gantz explains the misuse in detail. The love of Blodeuedd (from blodeu, ‘flowers’) blooms and fades and has not the constancy of mortal feeling”. Violence and death and battle are frequent movers in the stories, as are voyages to distant lands, the solitude and power of nature, strange fortresses deep in the woods, cryptic occurrences and odd imagery, ruthless oppressors and warlords, mystic knights, and bewildering sequences of events that gradually grow into forms more confounding than they seemed at first.

Watercolour painting and pencil sketches are among the media that Lee commonly uses. [3] Film [ edit ] The collection comprises eleven medieval Welsh folk tales, or, as I think of them, fragments, transcribed orally down the centuries and with consequent distortion. It must be that the significance of many of the details has been lost, details, and repetition of detail, that would have been expected and eagerly listened for as the tales were recited. Those clearest to understand are the three final tales, which are Arthurian, and are different versions of the tales in Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain, Perceval, and Erec and Enide, the last of which I have reviewed separately on GR. The Welsh equivalents of the heroes' names are Owein, Peredur and Geraint. “Peredur” is likened by Jeffrey Gantz to “Pryderi” in an earlier Welsh tale in the same volume, forming part of the first ‘branch’ of the tales. There are four branches, from South Wales, North Wales, tales from broader sources, and Arthurian. There are connections to and counterparts with early Irish tales, and even, in The Dream of Maxen, with Rome. The geography of the tales is fluid, which again reflects the borrowed or common elements. Often there are deafening noises that come roaring out of nowhere and seem to cue some intrusion from the Otherworld. It’s not uncommon after such a noise to find the landscape completely devoid of people or to suddenly find oneself standing in front of a vast army of horses and men with banners whipping in the wind. Here is 11 Welsh stories with myth, folklore and history shining through. In a way, they are escapist stories, but real history grounds them. They were mostly written down from oral stories (from storytelling bards) around 13th century, and happen in the forest and valleys of Wales, and the shadowy otherworld connected to it. Each story has its own introduction; there is also a writing on the pronunciation of certain words, plus a map of Wales. The title of the book was established only around 1849, but is actually quite suitable (and short)

Alan Lee

David V. Barrett, "James, John" in St. James Guide To Fantasy Writers, edited by David Pringle. St. James Press, 1996, ISBN 9781558622050 (pp. 308-9) . THE MABINOGION embraces much of ancient and early British culture, combining the numinous world of Celtic mythology, Arthurian legend and feudal Europe's Age of Chivalry. Indeed scholars have identified that it was out of THE MABINOGION that the Arthurian legends were born.

A scene very much like this one appears in the Irish myth of Dierdre, in which a snowscape of ravens feasting on the dead gets Dierdre thinking about the appearance of the man she loves. Artful contrasts and vivid imagery like this abound in the Mabinogion.Rhiannon characteristically rebukes him for not considering this course before, then explains she has sought him out to marry him, in preference to her current betrothed, Gwawl ap Clud. Pwyll gladly agrees, but at their wedding feast at her father's court, an unknown man requests Pwyll grant a request; which he does without asking what it is. The man is Gwawl, and he requests Rhiannon. Strange and otherworldly, the Four Branches of the Mabinogi are unquestionably the jewels of this collection of medieval Welsh mythology and folklore. In volume they make up only a little over a third of the book, but trust me — this is what you are here for. The style of storytelling is very different from our common present day style. While the language and sentence construction is fairly basic, the narrative threads themselves are very compressed, with less emphasis on the slow rise and fall of dramatic tensions and more simply abrupt happenings and endings. In this regard I found similarities between it and many of the Old Testament tales. It’s as if much more was left up to the reader (or listener), more room given for the play of the receivers’ imaginations, less pre-digested if you will. It took just a little while for me to get accustomed to this, and once I did I was gripped and transported to another time, another mindset; a mindset shrouded in obscurity but definitely still vibrantly alive; a mindset where journeys to and from the Otherworld, talking owls, and ferocious giants come as naturally as meat and drink and a maiden's pale thigh. bw): Richard Day, George James Hopkins / (c): Cedric Gibbons, E. Preston Ames, Edwin B. Willis, F. Keogh Gleason

A fascinating mixture of high drama, philosophy, romance, tragedy, fantasy, humor, and unique vision of ancient British history, the tales preserved in The Mabinogion represent a treasure of ancient Celtic myth as set down in the medieval age by unknown Welsh authors with groundbreaking literary skills. How does a person even presume to review a book that has survived 700 years, containing stories that survived close to their current form without anyone writing them down for a further 300 years? The last chapter reflects upon castles from fantasy literature - the Castle of Earthly Paradise, Oberon's Castle of Gold, Dracula's Castle, Poe's Castle of the Red Death, Barad-Dur, the Dark Tower of Mordor and Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings, and even Gormenghast from Mervyn Peake's the Gormenghast Trilogy.Rhiannon is connected to three mystical birds. The Birds of Rhiannon ( Adar Rhiannon) appear in the Second Branch, in the Triads of Britain, and in Culhwch ac Olwen. In the latter, the giant Ysbaddaden demands them as part of the bride price of his daughter. They are described as "they that wake the dead and lull the living to sleep." This possibly suggests Rhiannon is based on an earlier goddess of Celtic polytheism.

The Mabinogion is a collection of Welsh stories preserved in manuscripts from the fourteenth century, but it's assumed that the stories are older than that, they have been translated into English since the eighteenth century and this collection is in that tradition. Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed is the first tale collected here. I only took one King Arthur oriented class in college, and we didn’t have to read this one there. All the other instances of Arthurian literature I read on my own time.

I cannot say why I resonate with some cultures and times more than others - why, for example, I love the literature of Sumer but not Egypt. I can say that I am grateful that we have the Mabinogion to puzzle over, to study, and to treasure as an invaluable source of information about the literature and history of the Welsh, even if I do not deeply respond to it on an artistic level to the same degree as, say, The Book of Invasions, with which it was approximately contemporaneous. Rhiannon appears in many retellings and performances of the Mabinogi (Mabinogion) today. There is also a vigorous culture of modern fantasy novels. [10] These include Not For All The Gold In Ireland (1968) by John James, where Rhiannon marries the Irish god Manannan. [11] Rhiannon also appears in The Song of Rhiannon (1972) by Evangeline Walton, which retells the Third Branch of the Mabinogion. [12] In the fantasy world of Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, there is a "University of Rhiannon", where Magic is taught. I like mythological and I like medieval but this book is much more than that. There’s a dreaminess to these tales I find so surprising, seductive, and mysterious. They intoxicate me with dream and weird my imagination in wonderful ways.