The Mabinogion

The Mabinogion illustrated by Alan Lee

**The Mabinogion** is the oldest collection of stories that feature King Arthur and his knights. It is an amalgamation of two sources; *The White Book of Rhydderch* and the *Red Book of Hergest*. It features many popular Arthurian characters, such as Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere), Cai (Sir Kay), and Gwalchmai (Gawain). Precursor characters also feature, such as Morgan Tud who would later become Morgan le Fey. It is difficult to discern which characters are pure fiction and which may have had some tether to historical persons, as is the case with Emperor Maxen who was probably Magnus Maximus, emperor of Rome in 383AD. There is little consensus on the dates the stories were first written, generally considers to be around the 11th century, but it is clear they are the written form of much older oral tales that were baked into British culture, especially Welsh, long before the written forms existed. The full collection begins with the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, which are the most mythological in nature, featuring characters likely based on pre-Christian deities of Britain and Ireland and certainly features ancient cultural clues to the Celtic settlers of the British Isles. The subsequent chapters are additional entries, many of which feature King Arthur himself. The version of Arthur seen in *The Mabinogion* is especially useful as he has less of the later Christian majesty worked into his character, particularly as he is seen in How Culwch Met Olwen. The final chapter, The Tale of Taliesin, is featured only in some of the earlier versions of *The Mabinogion*, but is dropped from later editions, including the version by Sioned Davies, as the tale is clearly a far later addendum to the older stories. As these were collected from oral tales, it is unclear whether the original manuscripts, or some form of them, were used by writers such as Chrétien de Troyes, or whether those writers gleaned their tales from the same oral traditions and thus composed similar, but also different, versions of the tales and characters.

## The Four Branches of the Mabinogi

The initial four branches of the Mabinogion have a clear tether between them, ending with the same formula in both the Red and White Books. They are also the only stories within the complete Mabinogion that refer to themselves as Mabinogi. However, the narrative connection between the four tales is less concrete as they all differ in story, setting, characters, time and style. The only character to exist in all four tales is Pryderi, though only outside of his own narrative focus.

### The First Branch of the Mabinogion

*The First Branch of the Mabinogion* follows the character Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, who agrees to trade places with Arawn of the Otherworld so that he could defeat Arawn's rival, Hafgan, in mortal combat. Following this, he meets the forceful and magical Rhiannon and falls in love. She came up with the plan for Pwyll to defeat her betrothed, Gwawl, by trapping him within a bottomless sack. After the birth of their child, however, Rhiannon is accused of the boy's murder when he disappears. He appears before Teyrnon Twrf Liant, lord of Is Coed, who raised him as Gwri Wallt Euryn. Upon realising who the boy truly was, Teyrnon returned the boy to Pwyll and Rhiannon, where he was renamed as Pryderi.

### The Second Branch of the Mabinogion

*The Second Branch of the Mabinogion* follows a conflict between the island of Britain and Ireland. Matholwch, King of Ireland, seeks to wed Branwen, daughter of Brân the Blessed, the King of Britain. However, during negotiations, Brân's half-brother, Efnysien, maimed the Irish king's horses. In compensation, Brân offered him the Cauldron of Rebirth. Though Branwen bore a child with Matholwch, named Gwern, she was mistreated and made into a kitchen maid, where she was beaten. She used a bird to send word of her plight to her brother, who promptly invaded Ireland. Matholwch sought a peace agreement, but during the negotiations Efnysien murdered Gwern by throwing him into the fireplace. Battle broke out and the Irish used the Cauldron of Rebirth to create a neverending army, but Efnysien sacrificed himself by getting into it and destroying it from within. Brân himself was struck by poison and though they won the war, Brân would succumb to the poison. His head was taken to the magical island of Gwales where they remained unchanged for eighty years until they finally buried the head at London. Unfortunately, Branwen died from sorrow at the deaths caused in her name.

### The Third Branch of the Mabinogion

In *The Third Book of the Mabinogion*, following the burial of the head of Brân the Blessed in London, the seven nobles went their separate ways. Pryderi offered Manawyfn a place in his lands of Dyfed if he would marry his mother, Rhiannon, now that she was a widow. He agrees, but when the three of them, plus Pryderi's wife Cigfa, sit upon Gordsedd Arberth, the entire population of Dyfed vanishes, leaving the four of them behind. After living in England as craftsmen, they returned to Dyfed to live off the land and grow their own crops. However, Pryderi and Rhiannon are trapped within a mysterious fortress and also vanish. Manawydan and Cigfa remain behind, but Manawydan manages to capture a very fat mouse from the mice that were destroying his crops. He decided to execute the mouse and built a scaffold for the execution. He was then broached by several religious men, until the last of them is revealed to be a being of magic from the Otherworld and that the mouse was his wife. He is Llwyd, and he sought vengeance upon Rhiannon and Pryderi, as son of Pwyll, for the shame that Rhiannon and Pwyll wrought upon Gwawl in the *First Branch of the Mabinogion*. Upon freeing the mouse, the land and its people are restored.

### The Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion

*The Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion* follows Math, king of Gwynedd, who must have his feet held aloft by a virgin, else he would die if his feet touched the ground. The girl that held his feet was named Goewin, but one of Math's nephews, Gilfaethwy, desired her and, with the help of his brother Gwydion, hatched a plot to rape her. They travelled southwards to steal pigs from Pryderi, thus sparking a war between the two kingdoms, which lured out Math to battle. While he was distracted with the war, Gilfaethwy raped Goewin. During the war itself, Gwydion was able to kill Pryderi and end the war. However, upon learning of the rape of Goewin, the brother were punished. Math turned them into animals, one male and one female, and each year they returned to Math to be turned into new animals and their sexes switched over, so that they bore several children. After three years they were released from punishment and restored to service. Math still needed a new foot-holder, so Gwydion suggestes his sister, Aranrhod. However, the test to determin her virginity went badly, and from her dropped an object, which became a child. Gwydion raised the child, but later took him to his mother, but she rejected the boy. She cast a destiny upon the boy, that he would not have a name lest she gave it to him. Gwydion disguised them and interacted with Aranrhod, who, unwittingly, gave him the name Lleu Llaw Gyffes. A second destiny was cast that he would hold no weapon, but again she was tricked and gave the boy a weapon. So she cast a new destiny again, he would never have a wife born of earth. This time, they went back to Math. The two magicians created a woman from flowers; Blodeuedd. However, some years later she had an affair with Gronw Pebr. Knowing the only weakness of Lleu Llaw Gyffes, she set a trap but he was only wounded and flew away as a bird. He was found and restored by Gwydion. Blodeuedd fell and drowned as she tried to flee from Gwydion, while Gronw Pebr faced Lleu in battle and was lost after using a stone as protection and Lleu piercing the very stone with his spear.

## The Romances

Following the first four branches, the remaining stories have even less of a connection between them. The Mabinogion manuscripts do not make any kind of connection between them, but some scholars have grouped *Peredur son of Efrog*, *Geraint son of Erbin* and *The Lady of the Well* together as the romances, due to their comparison to Chrétien de Troyes' *Perceval*, *Erec et Enide* and *Yvain*. Each tale begins at the court of king Arthur in Caerllion on the island of Usk, after which the hero eventually goes beyond the boundary of Arthur's domain into their greatest challenge. While the three stories are speculated to be retellings of the de Troyes poems, they have been entirely reimagined and adapted to the local Welsh culture from whence they were written. Though the hold some hallmarks of the romance genre, these adaptations do not strictly follow the common tropes of that genre and it may be ill-fitting to truly call these 'romances' at all.

### Peredur son of Efrog

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### Geraint son of Erbin

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### The Lady of the Well

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## Arthurian Pair

The romances all have Arthur in common, but a further two stories also involve Arthur, but neither are romances. Indeed, both are grandiose and performative in their own styles, both verbose and reaching. *How Culhwch Won Olwen* is the longest adventure in the book and both it, and the second tale, *Rhonabwy's Dream*, features exhaustive lists of characters that serve Arthur in some fashion.

### How Culhwch Won Olwen

Culhwch is destined to wed Olwen, daughter of the notorious giant Ysbaddaden Bencawr. Given the impossible nature of the task, Culhwch goes to his cousin, king Arthur. Culhwch meets with the giant, alongside several knights of Arthur, including Cai and Bedwyr, who sets a series of impossible tasks to complete before he could wed Olwen. Thus, Arthur sets his entire court to the many tasks, many of which are prerequisites to complete additional tasks. Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd is a knight capable of speaking all languages, including those of the animals, so his group speak to the Oldest Animals in search of a missing man named Mabon. After Cai and Bedwyr manage to kill Dillius Farfog, Arthur makes an offhand remark that upsets Cai so much he refuses to continue helping these quests and leaves the court. Menw, a knight with magic powers, travelled to Ireland and found their target, the mighty Twrch Trwyth, a boar of great magnitude. Arthur's host travelled to attack the boar, but the boar then proceeded to lay waste to Britain in a great chase across England and Wales until they retrieve the treasures of the boar and her swims off into the ocean. Their final task was to defeat the Very Black Witch, from whom Arthur drew blood using his dagger Carnwennan. All tasks completed, they returned to the giant who had to allow the wedding, but he was beheaded for his crimes and his nephew, Gorau, was king in his place.

### Rhonabwy's Dream

*Rhonabwy's Dream* starts with a dispute between brothers, Madog, ruler of Powys, and Iorwerth, which leads Iorwerth to lead a warband throughout the commots of Powys and for Madog to send his warriors to find him. One small group consists of Rhonabwy and his two compatriots, Cynwrig Frychgoch and Cadwgan Fras. They stayed in the dishevelled house of Heilyn Goch, where Rhonabwy sleeps upon an ox-skin bed. This induces a surreal dream where he enters an alternate Britain and is met by Iddog Cordd Prydain, the "agitator", thus named for stirring up the misinformation between emperor Arthur and his nephew Medrawd so that the Battle of Camlann ensued and many perished. Iddog explained that he had found redemption and leads Rhonabwy through the dream world, where they meet many figures of Arthur's court. When Arthur meets Rhonabwy, he laments that Britain should be left in such less capable hands than those of his own generation. Arthur's host is out to battle the forces of Osla Gyllellfawr. During preparations, Arthur challenges Owain to a game of gwyddbwyll, which takes on a physical aspect in the dream world as Arthur's own soldiers begin to battle a squadron of Owain's ravens until both sides are slaughtered and the game ends. Finally, Osla requests a truce and the young Cadyriaith offers advice that they should accept. Cai bellows that they should all returned to Cornwall, which awoke Rhonabwy from his dream and back into the flea-infested home of Heilyn Goch.

## The Folktales

The two remaining narratives, *Lludd and Llefelys* and *The Dream of Emperor Maxen*, are short-stories of a folklore fashion that tell pseudo-historical accounts of British history.

### Llud and Llefelys

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### The Dream of Emperor Maxen

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## References

### Literature

#### Academic References

1. ↑ Page x, Introduction, Sioned Davies, **The Mabinogion**, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, ISBN: 978-0-19-881524-2.
2. ↑ Page xi, Introduction, Sioned Davies, **The Mabinogion**, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, ISBN: 978-0-19-881524-2.
3. ↑ Page xii, Introduction, Sioned Davies, **The Mabinogion**, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, ISBN: 978-0-19-881524-2.