The Mabinogion (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

By Sioned Davies

The collection of medieval Welsh prose tales known as The Mabinogion tells of heroes on magical quests, knights-in-arms whose adventures take them to the far ends of the earth in pursuit of true love, and powerful women who sometimes betray and sometimes are betrayed.

The Mabinogion provides insight into Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and the performance techniques of the traditional storyteller. The Mabinogion is rightly regarded as a classic, translated by now into many languages, and adapted into childrens books, opera, plays, and more recently into animation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411430525

Book preview

INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION

THE collection of medieval Welsh prose tales known as the Mabinogion tells of heroes on magical quests, knights-in-arms whose adventures take them to the far ends of the earth in pursuit of true love, and young men who are stopped in their tracks and forced to confront their destiny. The tales also tell of powerful women who betray, who are wronged, and who die. Dated sometime between the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, the Mabinogion provides insight into Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and the performance techniques of the traditional storyteller. They present an intriguing combination of themes and characters as two cultures collaborate -- the oral and the literary. The Mabinogion is rightly regarded as a classic, translated by now into many languages, adapted into children’s books, opera, plays, and more recently into animation. Although the authors of the individual tales are unknown, the collection has become synonymous with the name Charlotte Guest, ever since she introduced the texts to the English-speaking world through her translation, first published in instalments between 1838 and 1849. Her work, which must be read within the context of the Celtic revival of the nineteenth century, not only introduces us to the world of medieval, and Welsh, storytelling it also raises important issues related to both postcolonial and feminist theories of translation.

Charlotte Guest, neé Bertie, was an extraordinary woman whose life practically spanned the nineteenth century, from 1812 to 1895. She grew up near Stamford, Lincolnshire, and was the daughter of the ninth earl of Lindsey. A gifted linguist, she married the widower Josiah John Guest, twenty-seven years her senior, owner of the Dowlais Iron Company in South Wales (one of the largest ironworks in the world), and Member of Parliament for Merthyr Tydfil. Having settled in her new home, she not only took an active part in running the iron works, but also promoted schools for the education of the working classes in the area, for both male and female pupils. But most importantly, she set about learning Welsh, and in so doing came into contact with Welsh literary figures of the period. Through them she obtained access to texts from the Red Book of Hergest, a medieval Welsh manuscript dated to c.1400, and on New Year’s Day, 1838, she set about translating a collection of tales that came to be known as the Mabinogion. She was fired by her love of the Middle Ages and of Arthurian Romance, but she also had another motive -- she wanted to show to the English-speaking world, the colonizers, that the colonized were civilized and in possession of a noble literary heritage, of venerable relics of ancient lore as she claims in her dedication. Indeed, she even argues that the Cymric nation . . . has strong claims to be considered the cradle of European Romance. Once the translation was finished, however, her interest in Welsh literature, too, came to an end. In 1855, three years after the death of her husband, she married her eldest son’s tutor, Charles Schreiber, who was fourteen years her junior. In his company she traveled on the Continent and embarked on a new project, collecting eighteenth-century ceramics, as witnessed today in the prestigious Schreiber Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Charlotte Guest died in 1895, eleven years after the death of her second husband, and was buried in Canford, Dorset, where the family owned a large estate.

Although scholars prior to Lady Charlotte Guest had used the collective title Mabinogion, she, through her translation, was ultimately responsible for popularizing the term, which is a scribal error for the authentic mabinogi, and found in a single manuscript. However, since the suffix -(i) on is a very common plural ending in Welsh, mabinogion has become an extremely convenient label to describe this corpus of eleven tales, and is now well-established. The word itself contains the element mab, meaning boy, son, and it was originally thought that the tales were meant for boys, or that they were tales for apprentice storytellers. But in a fourteenth-century gospel text, mabinogi translates the Latin infantia, hence the later notion that the tales told of the boyhood deeds of certain heroes. A more recent explanation, offered by Hamp, is that the word originally meant the (collective) material pertaining to the god Maponos. Whatever the meaning, it must be emphasized that in Guest’s nineteenth-century sense, Mabinogion refers to no more than a collection of material.

The tales themselves are found in two main manuscripts -- the White Book of Rhydderch (c. 1350), and the Red Book of Hergest (c. 1400) on which Guest based her translation -- with fragments occurring in manuscripts earlier by a hundred years or so. But the tales were not conceived as a single collection -- they all vary in date, authorship, sources, context, and content. The Four Branches of the Mabinogi (Guest’s Pwyll, Branwen, Manawyddan, and Math), the only tales to include the term mabinogi, contain resonances of Celtic mythology, as the otherworld and the supernatural encroach upon the everyday lives of the characters. Yet throughout, the author uses this material to convey a scale of values which he commends to contemporary society -- he explores the nature of insult, compensation, friendship, and finally forgiveness. In the tale of Kilhwch and Olwen, Culhwch’s jealous stepmother puts a curse on him that he is to marry no one save Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden Chief Giant. With the help of Arthur and his warriors, many possessing supernatural attributes, Culhwch succeeds in all the seemingly impossible tasks that the giant sets before him, and finally wins his bride. The Arthurian world is again the background to the post Geoffrey of Monmouth romances of The Lady of the Fountain (or Owain son of Urien), Peredur son of Evrawc, and Geraint son of Erbin, which correspond to three of the French metrical romances of Chrétien de Troyes. Here, Arthur’s knights undertake adventures and learn that they must discover a delicate balance between love and military prowess. The Story of Lludd and Llevelys relates how the two brothers overcome three plagues that descend on the Island of Britain, and draws on the same pseudo-historical background as The Dream of Maxen Wledig, in which the Roman emperor Magnus Maximus dreams of a beautiful maiden whom he eventually discovers in North Wales, and marries. The Dream of Rhonabwy, on the other hand, presents a satirical view of the Arthurian past, and Arthur and his warriors are shown to be little better than Rhonabwy’s contemporaries in twelfth-century Wales. In her translation, Charlotte Guest also included a twelfth tale, namely Taliesin, based on eighteenth-century Welsh manuscript sources. Taliesin, a Welsh founder poet of the sixth century, is here portrayed as a legendary figure -- the young lad Gwion Bach swallows magical drops of poetic inspiration, is pursued by the witch Ceridwen, changes shape several times to avoid her but is eventually swallowed by her and is reborn as Taliesin. However, this tale is not included in the Mabinogion corpus by subsequent translators and editors since, unlike the other tales, it does not appear in any manuscript before the sixteenth century.

Lady Charlotte Guest’s installments of 1838-49 were brought together in 1849 in three luxurious volumes. They included the texts and translations of the twelve tales, notes and variant versions in other languages of the three Arthurian romances, illustrations by Samuel Williams, and facsimiles from the Red Book and from manuscripts of other versions -- this was, indeed, an impressive publication. The next edition of 1877, however, was aimed at a new and not so learned audience -- the Welsh text was omitted, for example, and the notes condensed, in other words the text was appropriated by the culture of the target language. Even so, this version remained the standard translation of the Mabinogion until 1948, when Thomas Jones and Gwyn Jones, two university professors, produced their collaborative work. They describe Guest’s translation as a charming and felicitous piece of English prose and emphatically pay tribute to so splendid an achievement. However they criticise her for the absence of strict scholarship, while others draw attention to the inaccuracies in her translation. Many critics have difficulty accepting that someone of Guest’s background could have actually undertaken such an awesome task, and that she was heavily indebted to literary scholars of the time. She certainly received help and advice -- she acknowledges the contribution of Tegid (Reverend John Jones) who transcribed the Red Book version of the tales on her behalf, and mentions in her diary the visits of the Reverend Thomas Price (Carnhuanawc) to Dowlais House, when he would discuss the translation with her. There is no reason to suppose that Guest could talk Welsh, nor is there reason to believe her written Welsh was fluent. However, such skills would not have been essential when her target language was English. As White notes, the problem seems to lie with the critics -- male Welsh scholars found it difficult to believe that an English female, with no university training, could be capable of such a linguistic tour de force.

Many nineteenth-century translations are deliberately archaic and therefore are obscure and difficult to read. Guest’s translation, on the other hand, is fluent and effortless, helped perhaps by years of journal writing. She would also read the translation to her children -- it thus fulfilled a similar function to that of her source language text, for most medieval manuscripts were written down with oral delivery in mind.

Indeed, the Welsh texts are full of techniques associated with orality, aurality, and performance -- their structure is episodic and chronological, with much repetition (especially tripartite); memory-friendly features such as onomastic elements and formulae are common; prolonged dramatic scenes imply a voiced performance and a need for gestures while passages in Kilhwch and Olwen, for example, are highly rhetorical and alliterative.

Charlotte Guest’s great accomplishment may be followed almost on a daily basis for she kept a detailed journal, from 1822 until 1881 (thirty-one volumes in all). Extracts have been edited by her grandson, the Earl of Bessborough, and by D. Rhys Phillips, while the authors of Lady Charlotte: A Biography of the Nineteenth Century draw extensively on her personal thoughts. The journal reflects her progress, her frustrations, and her continuous battle against time: She went on a European trip in 1838, translating in Milan and Lake Como, Florence, and Lausanne. But the greatest interruption to her work was the birth of her children as reflected, for example, in the journal entry for March 28, 1839: "To-day I worked hard at the translation of Peredur. I had the pleasure of giving birth to my fifth child and third boy to-day." Indeed, she gave birth to ten children in thirteen years. Her journal certainly shows the tension between her desire to be a dutiful wife and mother on the one hand, and yet to succeed as an independent creative individual on the other. Translation offered her a way into the traditionally male-dominated world, and a way of escape. Through translating, she may well have brought the female voice into the Mabinogion -- for example, she chose to give the title Branwen the daughter of Llyr to the second branch, rather than adhere to Bendigeidfran son of Llyr, favored by male scholars of the time (there are no tale titles in the manuscripts).

Charlotte Guest’s journal entry for 9 March 1843 reads as follows:

I have to-day completed all that is in my power to do towards the Mabinogion. It is a vast weight off my mind... And now that my dear seven babies are growing up and require so much of my time and attention, it is quite right that I should have done with authorship. I am quite content with what will have been done when the present work is concluded, and I am sure, if a woman is to do her duty as a wife and mother, that the less she meddles with pen and ink the better.

Had she surrendered to such thoughts five years earlier, then the history of Celtic scholarship would have been entirely different. Despite its lack of rigorous scholarship, there is no doubt that Guest’s translation had far-reaching consequences. The work not only stimulated research on comparative and Celtic literature, as witnessed in the publications of scholars such as Matthew Arnold, but it 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 the Son of Erbin. In short, through the endeavours of Charlotte Guest, the tales of the Mabinogion were given their rightful place on the European stage.

Sioned Davies, who is Professor and Head of the School of Welsh at Cardiff University, Wales, has published extensively on the relationship between orality, literacy, and performance in medieval Welsh storytelling. She is currently undertaking a new translation of the Mabinogion tales for Oxford University Press’ World Classics series.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

WHILST engaged on the Translations contained in these volumes, and on the Notes appended to the various Tales, I have found myself led unavoidably into a much more extensive course of reading than I had originally contemplated, and one which in great measure bears directly upon the earlier Mediæval Romance.

Before commencing these labours, I was aware, generally, that there existed a connexion between the Welsh Mabinogion and the Romance of the Continent; but as I advanced, I became better acquainted with the closeness and extent of that connexion, its history, and the proofs by which it is supported.

At the same time, indeed, I became aware, and still strongly feel, that it is one thing to collect facts, and quite another to classify and draw from them their legitimate conclusions; and though I am loth that what has been collected with some pains, should be entirely thrown away, it is unwillingly, and with diffidence, that I trespass beyond the acknowledged province of a translator.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there arose into general notoriety in Europe, a body of Romance, which in various forms retained its popularity till the Reformation. In it the plot, the incidents, the characters, were almost wholly those of Chivalry, that bond which united the warriors of France, Spain, and Italy, with those of pure Teutonic descent, and embraced more or less firmly all the nations of Europe, excepting only the Slavonic races, not yet risen to power, and the Celts, who had fallen from it. It is not difficult to account for this latter omission. The Celts, driven from the plains into the mountains and islands, preserved their liberty, and hated their oppressors with fierce, and not causeless, hatred. A proud and free people, isolated both in country and language, were not likely to adopt customs which implied brotherhood with their foes.

Such being the case, it is remarkable that when the chief romances are examined, the name of many of the heroes and their scenes of action are found to be Celtic, and those of persons and places famous in the traditions of Wales and Brittany. Of this the romances of Ywaine and Gawaine, Sir Perceval de Galles, Eric and Enide, Mort d’Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Sir Tristan, the Graal, &c., may be cited as examples. In some cases a tendency to triads, and other matters of internal evidence, point in the same direction.

It may seem difficult to account for this. Although the ancient dominion of the Celts over Europe is not without enduring evidence in the names of the mountains and streams, the great features of a country, yet the loss of their prior language by the great mass of the Celtic nations in Southern Europe (if indeed their successors in territory be at all of their blood), prevents us from clearly seeing, and makes us wonder, how stories, originally embodied in the Celtic dialects of Great Britain and France, could so influence the literature of nations to whom the Celtic languages were utterly unknown. Whence then came these internal marks, and these proper names of persons and places, the features of a story usually of earliest date and least likely to change?

These romances were found in England, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and even Iceland, as early as the beginning of the thirteenth and end of the twelfth century. The Germans, who propagated them through the nations of the North, derived them certainly from France. Robert Wace published his Anglo-Norman Romance of the Brut d’Angleterre about 1155. Sir Tristan was written in French prose in 1170; and The Chevalier au Lion, Chevalier de l’Epée, and Sir Lancelot du Lac, in metrical French, by Chrestien de Troyes, before 1200.

From these facts it is to be argued that the further back these romances are traced, the more clearly does it appear that they spread over the Continent from the North-west of France. The older versions, it may be remarked, are far more simple than the later corruptions. In them there is less allusion to the habits and usages of Chivalry, and the Welsh names and elements stand out in stronger relief. It is a great step to be able to trace the stocks of these romances back to Wace, or to his country and age. For Wace’s work was not original. He himself, a native of Jersey, appears to have derived much of it from the Historia Britonum of Gruffydd ab Arthur, commonly known as Geoffrey of Monmouth, born 1128, who himself professes to have translated from a British original. It is, however, very possible that Wace may have had access, like Geoffrey, to independent sources of information.

To the claims set up on behalf of Wace and Geoffrey, to be regarded as the channels by which the Cymric tales passed into the Continental Romance, may be added those of a third almost contemporary author. Layamon, a Saxon priest, dwelling, about 1200, upon the banks of the upper Severn, acknowledges for the source of his British history, the English Bede, the Latin Albin, and the French Wace. The last-named however is by very much his chief, and, for Welsh matters, his only avowed authority. His book, nevertheless, contains a number of names and stories relating to Wales, of which no traces appear in Wace, or indeed in Geoffrey, but which he was certainly in a very favourable position to obtain for himself. Layamon, therefore, not only confirms Geoffrey in some points, but it is clear, that, professing to follow Wace, he had independent access to the great body of Welsh literature then current. Sir F. Madden has put this matter very clearly, in his recent edition of Layamon. The Abbé de la Rue, also, was of opinion that Gaimar, an Anglo-Norman, in the reign of Stephen, usually regarded as a translator of Geoffrey of Monmouth, had access to a Welsh independent authority.

In addition to these, is to be mentioned the English version of Sir Tristrem, which Sir Walter Scott considered to be derived from a distinct Celtic source, and not, like the later Amadis, Palmerin, and Lord Berners’s Canon of Romance, imported into English literature by translation from the French. For the Auntours of Arthur, recently published by the Camden Society, their Editor, Mr. Robson, seems to hint at a similar claim.

Here then are various known channels, by which portions of Welsh and Armoric fiction crossed the Celtic border, and gave rise to the more ornate, and widely-spread romance of the Age of Chivalry. It is not improbable that there may have existed many others. It appears then that a large portion of the stocks of Mediæval Romance proceeded from Wales. We have next to see in what condition they are still found in that country.

That Wales possessed an ancient literature, containing various lyric compositions, and certain triads, in which are arranged historical facts or moral aphorisms, has been shown by Sharon Turner, who has established the high antiquity of many of these compositions.

The more strictly Romantic Literature of Wales has been less fortunate, though not less deserving of critical attention. Small portions only of it have hitherto appeared in print, the remainder being still hidden in the obscurity of ancient Manuscripts: of these the chief is supposed to be the Red Book of Hergest, now in the Library of Jesus College, Oxford, and of the fourteenth century. This contains, besides poems, the prose romances known as Mabinogion. The Black Book of Caermarthen, preserved at Hengwrt, and considered not to be of later date than the twelfth century, is said to contain poems only.¹

The Mabinogion, however, though thus early recorded in the Welsh tongue, are in their existing form by no means wholly Welsh. They are of two tolerably distinct classes. Of these, the older contains few allusions to Norman customs, manners, arts, arms, and luxuries. The other, and less ancient, are full of such allusions, and of ecclesiastical terms. Both classes, no doubt, are equally of Welsh root, but the former are not more overlaid or corrupted, than might have been expected, from the communication that so early took place between the Normans and the Welsh; whereas the latter probably migrated from Wales, and were brought back and re-translated after an absence of centuries, with a load of Norman additions. Kilhwch and Olwen, and the dream of Rhonabwy, may be cited as examples of the older and purer class; the Lady of the Fountain, Peredur, and Geraint ab Erbin, of the later, or decorated.

Besides these, indeed, there are a few tales, as Amlyn and Amic, Sir Bevis of Hamtoun, the Seven Wise Masters, and the story of Charlemagne, so obviously of foreign extraction, and of late introduction into Wales, not presenting even a Welsh name, or allusion, and of such very slender intrinsic merit, that although comprised in the Llyvr Coch, they have not a shadow of claim to form part of the Canon of Welsh Romance. Therefore, although I have translated and examined them, I have given them no place in these volumes.

There is one argument in favour of the high antiquity in Wales of many of the Mabinogion, which deserves to be mentioned here. This argument is founded on the topography of the country. It is found that Saxon names of places are very frequently definitions of the nature of the locality to which they are attached, as Clifton, Deepden, Bridge-ford, Thorpe, Ham, Wick, and the like; whereas those of Wales are more frequently commemorative of some event, real or supposed, said to have happened on or near the spot, or bearing allusion to some person renowned in the story of the country or district. Such are Llyn y Morwynion, the Lake of the Maidens; Rhyd y Bedd, the Ford of the Grave; Bryn Cyfergyr, the Hill of Assault; and so on. But as these names could not have preceded the events to which they refer, the events themselves must be not unfrequently as old as the early settlement in the country. And as some of these events and fictions are the subjects of, and are explained by, existing Welsh legends, it follows that the legends must be, in some shape or other, of very remote antiquity. It will be observed that this argument supports remote antiquity only for such legends as are connected with the greater topographical features, as mountains, lakes, rivers, seas, which must have been named at an early period in the inhabitation of the country by man. But there exist, also, legends connected with the lesser features, as pools, hills, detached rocks, caves, fords, and the like, places not necessarily named by the earlier settlers, but the names of which are, nevertheless, probably very old, since the words of which they are composed are in many cases not retained in the colloquial tongue, in which they must once have been included, and are in some instances lost from the language altogether, so much so as to be only partially explicable even by scholars. The argument applies likewise, in their degree, to camps, barrows, and other artificial earth-works.

Conclusions thus drawn, when established, rest upon a very firm basis. They depend upon the number and appositeness of the facts, and it would be very interesting to pursue this branch of evidence in detail. In following up this idea, the names to be sought for might thus be classed:—

I. Names of the great features, involving proper names and actions.

Cadair Idris and Cadair Arthur both involve more than a mere name. Idris and Arthur must have been invested with heroic qualifications to have been placed in such seats.

II. Names of lesser features, as Bryn y Saeth, Hill of the Dart; Llyn Llyngclys, Lake of the Engulphed Court; Ceven y Bedd, the Ridge of the Grave; Rhyd y Saeson, the Saxons’ Ford.

III. Names of mixed natural and artificial objects, as Coeten Arthur, Arthur’s Coit; Cerrig y Drudion, the Crag of the Heroes; which involve actions. And such as embody proper names only, as Cerrig Howell, the Crag of Howell; Caer Arianrod, the Camp of Arianrod; Bron Goronwy, the Breast (of the Hill) of Goronwy; Castell mab Wynion, the Castle of the son of Wynion; Nant Gwrtheyrn, the Rill of Vortigern.

The selection of names would demand much care and discretion. The translations should be indisputable, and, where known, the connexion of a name with a legend should be noted. Such a name as Mochdrev, Swine-town, would be valueless unless accompanied by a legend.

It is always valuable to find a place or work called after an individual, because it may help to support some tradition of his existence or his actions. But it is requisite that care be taken not to push the etymological dissection too far. Thus, Caer Arianrod should be taken simply as the Camp of Arianrod, and not rendered the Camp of the silver circle, because the latter, though it might possibly have something to do with the reason for which the name was borne by Arianrod herself, had clearly no reference to its application to her camp.

It appears to me, then, looking back upon what has been advanced:—

I. That we have throughout Europe, at an early period, a great body of literature, known as Mediæval Romance, which, amidst much that is wholly of Teutonic origin and character, includes certain well-marked traces of an older Celtic nucleus.

II. Proceeding backwards in time, we find these romances, their ornaments falling away at each step, existing towards the twelfth century, of simpler structure, and with less encumbered Celtic features, in the works of Wace, and other Bards of the Langue d’Oil.

III. We find that Geoffrey of Monmouth, Layamon, and other early British and Anglo-Saxon historians, and minstrels, on the one hand, transmitted to Europe the rudiments of its after romance, much of which, on the other hand, they drew from Wales.

IV. Crossing into Wales we find, in the Mabinogion, the evident counterpart of the Celtic portion of the continental romance, mixed up, indeed, with various reflex additions from beyond the border, but still containing ample internal evidence of a Welsh original.

V. Looking at the connexion between divers of the more ancient Mabinogion, and the topographical nomenclature of part of the country, we find evidence of the great, though indefinite, antiquity of these tales, and of an origin, which, if not indigenous, is certainly derived from no European nation.

It was with a general belief in some of these conclusions, that I commenced my labours, and I end them with my impressions strongly confirmed. The subject is one not unworthy of the talents of a Llwyd or a Prichard. It might, I think, be shown, by pursuing the inquiry, that the Cymric nation is not only, as Dr. Prichard has proved it to be, an early offshoot of the Indo-European family, and a people of unmixed descent, but that when driven out of their conquests by the later nations, the names and exploits of their heroes, and the compositions of their bards, spread far and wide among the invaders, and affected intimately their tastes and literature for many centuries, and that it has strong claims to be considered the cradle of European Romance.

C. E. G.

DOWLAIS, August 29th, 1848.

PWYLL PRINCE OF DYVED

PWYLL Prince of Dyved was lord of the seven Cantrevs of Dyved; and once upon a time he was at Narberth his chief palace, and he was minded to go and hunt, and the part of his dominions in which it pleased him to hunt was Glyn Cuch. So he set forth from Narbeth that night, and went as far as Llwyn Diarwyd. And that night he tarried there, and early on the morrow he rose and came to Glyn Cuch, when he let loose the dogs in the wood, and sounded the horn, and began the chase. And as he followed the dogs, he lost his companions; and whilst he listened to the hounds, he heard the cry of other hounds, a cry different from his own, and coming in the opposite direction.

And he beheld a glade in the wood forming a level plain, and as his dogs came to the edge of the glade, he saw a stag before the other dogs. And lo, as it reached the middle of the glade, the dogs that followed the stag overtook it and brought it down. Then looked he at the colour of the dogs, staying not to look at the stag, and of all the hounds that he had seen in the world, he had never seen any that were like unto these. For their hair was of a brilliant shining white, and their ears were red; and as the whiteness of their bodies shone, so did the redness of their ears glisten. And he came towards the dogs, and drove away those that had brought down the stag, and set his own dogs upon it.

And as he was setting on his dogs he saw a horseman coming towards him upon a large light-grey steed, with a hunting horn round his neck, and clad in garments of grey woollen in the fashion of a hunting garb. And the horseman drew near and spoke unto him thus. Chieftain, said he, I know who thou art, and I greet thee not. Peradventure, said Pwyll, thou art of such dignity that thou shouldest not do so. Verily, answered he, it is not my dignity that prevents me. What is it then, O Chieftain? asked he. By Heaven, it is by reason of thine own ignorance and want of courtesy. What discourtesy, Chieftain, hast thou seen in me? Greater discourtesy saw I never in man, said he, than to drive away the dogs that were killing the stag and to set upon it thine own. This was discourteous, and though I may not be revenged upon thee, yet I declare to Heaven that I will do thee more dishonour than the value of an hundred stags. O Chieftain, he replied, if I have done ill I will redeem thy friendship. How wilt thou redeem it? According as thy dignity may be, but I know not who thou art? A crowned king am I in the land whence I come. Lord, said he, may the day prosper with thee, and from what land comest thou? From Annwvyn,¹ answered he; Arawn, a King of Annwvyn, am I. Lord, said he, how may I gain thy friendship? After this manner mayest thou, he said. There is a man whose dominions are opposite to mine, who is ever warring against me, and he is Havgan, a King of Annwvyn, and by ridding me of this oppression, which thou canst easily do, shalt thou gain my friendship. Gladly will I do this, said he. Show me how I may. I will show thee. Behold thus it is thou mayest. I will make firm friendship with thee; and this will I do. I will send thee to Annwvyn in my stead, and I will give thee the fairest lady thou didst ever behold to be thy companion, and I will put my form and semblance upon thee, so that not a page of the chamber, nor an officer, nor any other man that has always followed me shall know that it is not I. And this shall be for the space of a year from to-morrow, and then we will meet in this place. Yes, said he; but when I shall have been there for the space of a year, by what means shall I discover him of whom thou speakest? One year from this night, he answered, "is the time fixed between him and me that we should meet at the Ford; be thou there in my likeness, and with one stroke that thou givest him, he shall no longer live. And if he ask thee to give him another,

Reviews for The Mabinogion (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

[cecrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Penguin edition's introduction goes to enormous pains to tell me that the contents of the Mabinogian today probably do not reflect the original versions. They are only the oldest capturing we have of legends which were told orally for as many as several centuries prior. Further, we do not know exactly when this recording took place. Nor can we say for certain that it does not bear a heavy French influence which colors the lost originals. Nor is there much evidence that these stories held much influence over the development of Welsh culture. By the time I'd finished this detailed and inspiring intro, I almost reconsidered reading it at all.Happily the Welsh legends of the Mabinogian have several memorable bits, loaded with mythological elements, curious reasoning and fantastic events. It has the usual conflicts and cruel acts of violence encountered in most peoples' mythologies, but there's also some humour laced into it that I thought was more unusual. The most fantastical elements are met by the characters with forthright aplomb. This seems like a characteristic of most people of legend but here it's perhaps especially worth noting. As the (otherwise unhelpful) introduction notes, it's a recurring theme to see the fantastical and the real intertwined, and to see a crossing between the two come as naturally as fording a stream. I find Greek and Norse mythology more engaging and this is not all casual reading, but enough of it is entertaining.

[the_literary_jedi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Probably my single most favorite collection of mythology ever, The Mabinogion is a collection of Welsh legendary tales. They are gathered and written down from the bardic tradition of song so they prose may seem a bit off in places.

Read in college (06-07)

[stevesbookstuff · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love to read history and while these tales are not histories, they do give a perspective of what was of on the minds of early medieval readers. These are traditional Welch tales, some pre-Christian era, some related to the myths of Arthur. I found Davies translations very readable and the extensive notes were for the most part helpful in providing background and context.

The 11 stories in this collection are likely more than 1000 years old (perhaps some are much older but the written versions are in that range), and yet they are both similar to and different from modern stories. Similar in that sex and violence are common themes. Many of the fantastical elements form the basis for modern fantasy stories. Different in the way the stories are told and the expectation of what the reader will understand / accept as part of a good story. A couple of examples of that:

1. The mix of pagan, pre-Christian notions with references to the Christian God. God, for instance, in one story curses a king and his men by turning them into pigs.

2. In the "romances" in this collection, knights are constantly running about and killing people to win the hand of the "woman they love best", even to the point of killing other men to take their wives for themselves, and those wives scheming with them to do so. Perhaps an early form of "a code of chivalry" (and the medieval notion of love at first sight) when these tales were told, but certainly not a modern understanding of appropriate behavior between the sexes.

3. The understanding that children of the noble class were commonly given away to be reared by "foster parents".

I have not read the other translations that people mention in other reviews, but I enjoyed reading this enough to (at some point) seek out some of those translations.

[pmtracy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Used mainly as a reference in a course. Would have liked footnotes instead of end notes but the information was helpful. I've found more modern translations to be more easily understood as some of the arcane word patterns here made reading comprehension challenging in some parts.

[infjsarah · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Sadly I found the language style and way of storytelling dull. I read the first 4 mabagoni but then gave up - too much like hard work.

[avarisclari · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The stories themselves are fascinating, but between the Old English translation and the near impossible to pronounce names, this translation is a pass.

[woolgathering · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This translation was pretty painful to get through. There were several instances of tense shifting within the same sentence, all throughout the book. The entire thing seemed kind of sloppy.

[threadnsong · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is the standard for early mideval Welsh mythology and pre-Malory Arthurian myth. The gods are there, but the heroes do much of the work. I've just finished the story of Culhwch and Olwen, and in order for our hero to marry Olwen, the daughter of Ysbadadden the Chief Giant, he must undertake a number of tasks that would make Odysseus himself swoon. His tasks involve bringing a cauldron that the owner does not want to surrender, finding a comb and shears between the ears of Twrch Trwyth and his piglets (and I'm not sure if Twrch Trwyth is himself a giant boar or a human giant. Either interpretation works), and there is much chasing over the lands of the Isle of Britain, France, Normandy, Brittany, and Ireland. There is mention of Arthur's loyal hound, Cafall, often a missing character in later Athurian romances. The translation is made with lots of thee's" and "so forth's" which can make the reading laborious. On the other hand, it gives a good historical view of the nobles and famous folk whom history has otherwise forgotten. Well worth reading, especially for scholars of early European history and myth."

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a set of tales translated from the original Welsh. They were collected together in the 1350s, although some of them probably have much older origins. They are from an oral tradition that was dying out, cultural changes meant that the old Welsh mode of living was being diminished. And you can see that within these stories, there are mounted knights and jousts - surely not a part of ancient Celtic life. There are some startling images, the sheep that change colour from black to white and back again as the cross the stream, the tree that is half burning flame and half in leaf, the colourful knights and messengers. It is captivating. It doesn't always, strictly, make sense. But there is something about them that captures the imagination. In the same vein as Beowulf, and again reflecting that transition from oral to written history, you could view this as being part of the touchstone of being Welsh.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fairly confusing Welsh mythology introducing ferries and other sprites among historical figures.

[petreaburchard · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm giving the Mabinogion five stars because it is so much itself. These old tales are not for everyone and the language comes down to us a bit stilted, but I love the repetition and pageantry. It's dreamlike: evil giants, strange beasts, knights so powerful they kill a thousand men in a day. I love phrases like "the loudest thing anyone ever heard" and "the hoary-haired man."

It's old-fashioned. It's put-downable. And there's nothing else like it.

Petrea Burchard
Camelot & Vine

[brendan.h · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first four stories are really excellent, weird old stuff from pre-christian Wales that move quickly and are consistently entertaining and surprising. I found the Arthurian stories a little less interesting, though not terrible by any stretch. The Welsh taxonomy is just fantastic, and puzzling out the correct pronunciation of character and place names (with the help of the pronunciation guide) is a great game. Wales seems to get short shrift among Celt-crazy Americans, and it seems a bit unfair after reading this.

Also recommended if you enjoyed Lloyd Alexander in your youth, as he clearly drew heavily from this and similar sources.

[baswood · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"And they took counsel and cut out the tongues of the women lest they should corrupt their speech. And because of the silence of the women from their own speech, the men of Amorica are called Britons. From that time their came frequently, and still comes, that language from the island of Briton""And he (Lludd) dwelt therein most part of the year, and therefore was it called Caer Lludd, and at last Caer London. And after the stranger-race came there it was called London or Lwndrys"The above must be true as I read them in Lady Guest's 1849 translation of the Mabinogion. These tales were collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts and draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology. The first four stories in the collection are the oldest and are known as the four branches of the Mabinogi. Pryderi fab Pwyll from Welsh mythology occurs in all of them and they have a very medieval feel to them and are not always easy to follow. Magic features prominently in all of them and there is much going "to meat" and "taking counsel", however these feel more like crude devices to keep the story moving or to depict time passing. There is no character development: merely a relating of events, but these get a bit bogged down by the need to list the names of characters that might be relevant to the narrative.The five following tales are more recognisable because they are based around the figure of king Arthur and his knights. There are still difficulties however as in Kilhwch and Olwen there is a four page list of Arthur's knights, which are largely unrecognisable in their Welsh spellings. However all the tales have some interest especially the dream vision of Rhonabwy, which features Arthur, Gawain and flocks of ravens.The next three tales are all recognisable from Chretien de Troyes Arthurian Romances. The Lady of the Fountain has the same source material as "The knight with the lion (Yvain)" and "Peredur the son of Evrawc" and "Geraint the son of Erbin use material from "The story of the Grail". They do not however have the same Christian message as Chretien's tales for example we find this in Peredur:"Then said Peredur, to heaven I render thanks that I have not broken my vow to the Lady that best I love, which was that I would not speak one word unto any Christian"As these three tales in particular have not been dated, it is still not known whether they came from an original source or are adapted from Chretien de Troyes Arthurian Romances. The final story in the collection is Taliesin; the story of the Welsh bard and features some of the poems accredited to him. Apparently this is from a later manuscript and there is a direct reference to Christianity in the first poem that Taliesin wrote which ends like so:There lies a virtue in my tongue.While I continue thy protectorThou hast not much to fear;Remembering the name of the Trinity,None shall be able to harm thee.The Mabinogion is certainly of interest for those who wish to delve into the history of the Arthurian legends and to medievalists in general. The Lady Charlotte E Guest's translation has been criticised for a bowdlerisation of the original text and at times it feels a bit clunky. There are more recent translations available but these may not include the Taliesin poems

[tonidew · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An accessible and eminently readable new translation with copious notes which are almost as interesting as the original stories themselves.

[tlachtga_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm splitting the difference between my love of the medieval collection (i.e. Y Mabinogi and the other Welsh tales) and Lady Charlotte Guest's sometimes-bowdlerized, romanticized, nineteenth-century (and I mean that in the worst possible way) translation (which would garner at best two stars, because I'm feeling generous). The real advantage of this book is if you're interested in the history of how the Mabinogion has been treated in the English language; otherwise, you should decide if you wanta.) a literal translation: in that case, go with the Jones and Jones translation of the 1950s (IIRC), offered by Everymanb.) a readable translation that also tries to give the flavor of the medieval original: in that case, go with Sioned Davies' translation from 2006.c.) a translation that focuses on the pre-Christian mythology of the non-Romance tales: in that case, go with the Patrick Ford translation from the 1970s. The advantage of Ford's translation is its inclusion of the earliest version of "The Story of Taliesin"; the disadvantage is it doesn't include the Three Romances ("Peredur", "Owain", and "Gereint").d.) a translation that focuses on the environment of Wales: the Bollard translation is great for this.

[jpsnow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Eleven Welsh stories dating from the 14th century shares much content with Morte d' Arthur. Arthur and Gwenhwyfar are principle characters. The tales shares parallels with Arthur, and Homer, and yet are much simpler and rustic. Comparatively, it's as if these tales were neither written by a single genius nor had time to be refined through successive iterations of storytelling.

[mdrmoore-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The 4 Branches stories are better than the other 2 parts. The native tales and the romances seemed to be tainted with Chrétien's touch. Favorite tale: Branwen, Daughter of Llŷr(Efnisien's complexity). Least Favorite: Culhwch and Olwen( way to many lists).

[yuuago · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This collection of Welsh tales is a must-read for any lover of Arthurian literature. It contains "Culhwch and Olwen", the first full-length tale (that we know of) starring Arthur and his men in its entirety. Other tales contained in this collection bear resemblance to works by Chretien de Troyes, and serve as interesting comparisons to the French variations, which people are more likely to be familiar with.

[jontseng · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Full of Welsh people with silly names, but an interesting glimpse into folk memeries from the edges of History.

[morgannakerrie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Gorgeous collection of Welsh tales.