The Mabinogion (Oxford World's Classics) (2 page)

Of the remaining four tales, two are again Arthurian in content, while the other two deal with traditions about early British history. ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’ portrays a world far removed from that of European romance, a world where Arthur holds court in Celli Wig in Cornwall, and heads a band of the strangest warriors ever— men such as Canhastyr Hundred-Hands, Sgilti Lightfoot, and Gwiawn Cat-Eye—who, together with Arthur, ensure that Culhwch overcomes his stepmother’s curse and marries Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden Chief Giant. The interest throughout is in the action, with the hunting of the magical boar Twrch Trwyth reminiscent of a fast-moving film as he and his piglets are chased by Arthur and his men from Ireland, across South Wales, and eventually to Cornwall. All characters are stereotyped—the beautiful Olwen, the handsome Culhwch, the treacherous Ysbaddaden; talking to ants, owls, stags, and salmon poses no problem as one of Arthur’s men, Gwrhyr
Interpreter of Languages, is there to translate. Indeed, the story, with its rhetorical set-pieces and burlesque scenes, is a world apart from the restraint and control of the ‘Four Branches’, and is, without doubt, a tale to be performed—vocality is of its essence.

Whereas all the other tales draw directly from oral tradition, ‘Rhonabwy’s Dream’ probably only ever existed in a written form, as suggested by its colophon which claims that ‘neither poet nor storyteller’ knew the Dream ‘without a book’. While the author is aware of traditional material, he uses this to create something completely new—a sophisticated piece of satirical writing which parodies not only the traditional storytelling techniques but also the Arthurian myth and its values. Indeed, as soon as Rhonabwy and his companions enter the house of a certain Heilyn Goch, and are up to their ankles in cows’ urine and dung, and try to get to sleep in flea-infested beds, we realize that all is not as it should be! Moreover, having slept for three days and three nights on the yellow ox-skin, neither Rhonabwy nor the reader is offered an explanation, leaving the tale open to a variety of interpretations. This certainly is the most literary tale of them all, satirizing not only the elaborate descriptions of Arthurian knights, their horses, and their trappings, but also the structure of medieval romance itself.

The two short tales of ‘Lludd and Llefelys’ and ‘The Dream of the Emperor Maxen’ combine pseudo-historical traditions with folktale motifs, and offer an intriguing interpretation of British history. Lludd, who according to tradition was king of Britain shortly before Julius Caesar’s invasion, overcomes three plagues that threaten the land, with the help of his brother Llefelys, king of France. All three plagues have parallels elsewhere in Welsh literature, and can be seen as variants on the theme of the historical invaders who threatened the sovereignty of the Island of Britain. However, despite great potential, the treatment throughout is rather dull and unimaginative. Maxen’s story, on the other hand, is skilfully crafted, as he travels to Wales to marry the maiden he met in his love-dream. Maxen is the historical Magnus Maximus, proclaimed emperor by his troops in Britain in
AD
383, and who became an important figure in Welsh historiography. The author of the tale clearly had antiquarian interests, for he then proceeds to give an onomastic account of the founding of Brittany by Cynan, Maxen’s brother-in-law. Both tales are
heavily indebted to historical sources and, like ‘Rhonabwy’s Dream’, reflect a distancing from the oral tradition and a more conscious literary activity.

The
Mabinogion
, therefore, are a ‘collection’ of independent and extremely diverse tales. They provide a snapshot of the storyteller’s repertoire, and give us an insight into the wealth of narrative material that was circulating in medieval Wales. Not only do they reflect themes and characters from myth and legend, they also show how Wales responded to conquest and colonization, and in so doing made a unique contribution to European literature.

Although the
Mabinogion
have come down to us in written form, they clearly draw heavily on oral tradition and on the narrative techniques of the medieval storyteller. Of course, they are not merely written versions of oral narratives, but rather the work of authors using and shaping traditional material for their own purposes. Unlike the poetry of the period, none of the tales is attributed to an identified author, suggesting that there was no sense of ‘ownership’ as such, and that the texts were viewed as part of the collective memory. Indeed, on several occasions the final redactors (which may perhaps be a more correct term than ‘authors’ in many cases) draw attention to their sources, a common feature of medieval literature, but in so doing they distance themselves from those sources and set themselves up as merely the mouthpiece of tradition.

Although we have some evidence regarding the performance of poetry in medieval Wales, together with references to musicians such as harpists, crowthers, and pipers, and entertainers such as tumblers and magicians, very little is known of the performance of prose narrative. There is little evidence within the tales themselves— there are no requests for silence, no introductory remarks to the audience, and very few authorial asides. However, the Fourth Branch of the
Mabinogi
contains two passages that give a tantalizing glimpse of a storyteller in action. Upon entering the court of Pryderi, in the guise of a poet, the shape-shifter Gwydion receives a warm welcome and is offered the place of honour at table. When Pryderi asks some of Gwydion’s young companions for a story, Gwydion offers his own services:

‘Our custom, lord … is that on the first night we come to a great man, the chief poet performs. I would be happy to tell a story.’

Gwydion was the best storyteller in the world. And that night he entertained the court with amusing anecdotes and stories, until he was admired by everyone in the court, and Pryderi enjoyed conversing with him. (
p. 48
)

Later in the tale, Gwydion gains entrance to Aranrhod’s court, again in the guise of a poet, and after dinner he and his host talk of tales and storytelling—‘And Gwydion was a good storyteller’ (
p.57
).
³

In both examples, there is a clear indication of an integral relationship between the poet and storytelling. According to the medieval Welsh laws, there were three types of poet—the
pencerdd
(‘chief poet’), the
bardd teulu
(‘household bard’), and
cerddor (joculator
), a generic term for poets and musicians rather than the more specific ‘jester’ or ‘buffoon’. However, the laws make no reference at all to storytelling, implying perhaps that this was a secondary bardic function, given much less priority than elegy and eulogy, the predominant domains of the poet. Certainly, poets were acquainted with traditional stories, as reflected in the many allusions scattered throughout their work; yet it would seem from the surviving evidence that verse itself was not used for extended narrative in medieval Wales—the preferred medium, unlike most Indo-European countries, was prose. The situation, therefore, was not only a complex, but surely a dynamic one: despite the hierarchical legal structure, one could expect a certain degree of interaction between the various professional ‘performers’ as they entertained at feasts and gatherings. Moreover, there are examples within the
Mabinogion
themselves of personal narratives arising out of informal conversation at table, as in the Second Branch when Matholwch, king of Ireland, tells his table-companion Bendigeidfran the history of the Cauldron of Rebirth (
pp. 26–7
). It would appear, therefore, that storytelling was the domain of both the professional and the amateur, while the numerous words for ‘story’, as reflected in the tales themselves, point to a wide range of forms within the narrative genre.

In order to fully appreciate the
Mabinogion
, we have to understand the effect that this oral milieu had on the written tales. Oral and
performance features are an integral part of their fabric, partly because the authors inherited pre-literary modes of narrating, but also because the written tales were composed for oral delivery, so that their reception and dissemination continued to have an influence on both style and structure. Indeed, one of the overriding concerns of this new translation has been the attempt to communicate to readers the exhilarating power of performance.

Many features related to the tales’ structure are inexorably linked to memorability: after all, if an oral tale is impossible to remember it will not survive. The structure of each tale is divided into manageable episodes, as reflected in manuscript layout and decoration, where large initials divide the manuscript texts in many instances. A more common technique is for tales to be divided by scene-setting phrases such as ‘one day’, ‘one afternoon’, which function as a boundary between one event and the next, or for episodes to be framed by verbal repetition, which acts as a ‘chorus’ of sorts and functions as a signal to a listening audience.
⁴
Indeed, one could argue that the episode was the all-important narrative unit, and that the authors were the first to combine such units into long composite texts, although the audience might well have been aware of an immanent whole. The chronological structure of each episode is again linked to memory, while the overwhelming presence of the conjunction ‘and’ may well be a reflection of the fragmented nature of spoken language. This, together with features such as the use of the present tense as the action intensifies, is a constant reminder of the crucial role played by oral performance in shaping the grammar and linguistic structure of vernacular narratives from the Middle Ages.

The onomastic tags that conclude several episodes point again to narrative that is memory-friendly: the three major episodes of the First Branch of the
Mabinogi
, for example, can be remembered by recourse to three onomastic explanations: (i) Why was Pwyll called Head of Annwfn? (ii) When was ‘Badger in the Bag’ first played? (iii) How did Pryderi get his name? Onomastic tales linked with place-names are a common feature of much of the corpus, too—they are a constant reminder of the significance of the place and the legends connected with it.

Repetition of events, with a high dependency on verbal repetition, is a common feature of any oral tale. This makes sense in practice, due to the ephemeral nature of oral prose or poetry. Tripartite repetition is particularly prevalent in the
Mabinogion
, employed to create suspense, and to focus. As well as verbal repetition within individual tales, one finds that certain phrases are common to more than one tale in the corpus, suggesting that the authors are drawing on a common pool of formulae or traditional patterns. Much has been written on the significance of the formula in oral poetry, ever since the work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord on Homeric diction and South Slavic heroic songs. Although metre is an integral part of the Parry–Lord formula, many scholars have shown that formulae, or stereotyped forms of expression, are also a distinctive feature of orally transmitted
prose
. In the
Mabinogion
they are employed to describe physical appearance, combat, horses, approach to a building, feasting, transition from one day to the next, and openings and endings of tales, so that although composition was in writing, formulae facilitated the retention, and therefore the reception, of the written text when read or heard.

Many passages in the
Mabinogion
demand a voiced performance. This is particularly true in the case of dialogue, which in some tales constitutes almost half the narrative. Often the action calls for a wide range of voices, from the giant Ysbaddaden to the drunken Peredur, from the ferocious boar Twrch Trwyth to the distressed Lady of the Well. Indeed, characters come alive through their words rather than through any descriptions which, if they exist at all, are in the main highly stereotyped. There are many other examples in the tales where a silent reading does not do them justice. This is particularly so in the case of ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’, of which it has often been said it is a tale to be heard. The long rhetorical passage describing in detail Culhwch’s steed, hounds, and equipment in a rhythmical fashion is highly reminiscent of the elaborate style of the court poets of medieval Wales, a style linked inexorably with public declamation, and found elsewhere throughout the corpus, not in extended paragraphs but as isolated descriptive phrases, especially with reference to horses, knights, squires, and in descriptions of combats, physical or verbal. The two lists in the tale also need to be read out loud for full effect. The first, a roll-call of those present at Arthur’s court (
pp. 184–9
), is highly alliterative and descends into farce at times,
with the rhetorical effect taking on more importance than the personalities themselves. Inserted in the list, too, are tantalizing fragments of narrative—the triad of the three men who escaped from the battle of Camlan, for example, or Teithi the Old whose lands were submerged by the sea—challenging the listeners’ knowledge of traditional narrative. The second list is placed within a formulaic dialogue between Ysbaddaden and Culhwch (
pp. 195–200
), where the giant challenges Culhwch to perform forty seemingly impossible tasks in return for the hand of Olwen, his daughter. Upon hearing each task, Culhwch replies, ‘It is easy for me to get that, though
you
may think it’s not easy’, to which the giant retorts, ‘Though you may get that, there is something you will not get’, and proceeds to describe the next challenge. The formulae therefore act as a chorus of sorts between the naming of each task, easing the listing, and also the listening, process.

This is the milieu, therefore, in which the
Mabinogion
developed before they were committed to writing. Although the tales appear in the fourteenth-century Red and White Book manuscripts, fragments of individual tales occur in manuscripts earlier by a hundred years or so. It is unclear whether the texts represent the earliest attempts at recording narrative prose in the Welsh language, or whether they are merely the earliest surviving examples. The dating and chronology of the tales are also problematic, which complicates issues concerning the relationship between individual texts. However, we can probably assume that they were written down sometime between the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, against a background of vast change in the history of Wales.
⁵
During this period the Welsh struggled to retain their independence in the face of the Anglo-Norman conquest which ultimately transformed the society, economy, and church of Wales. Wales was divided into four major kingdoms—Gwynedd in the north-west; Powys, which stretched from the borders of Mercia into central Wales; Deheubarth in the south-west; and Morgannwg or Glamorgan in the south-east. These were further divided into smaller units ruled by independent princes who vied with each other for supremacy. There was, therefore, no central unity, largely due to the difficulties imposed by physical geography, so that Wales did not develop into a single kingdom or kingship. With the erosion of Welsh authority in the south of the country, together with the establishment of the rule of the Anglo-Norman barons along the Welsh–English border, known as the March, there was an attempt to create a single Welsh principality under the leadership of the native princes of Gwynedd, figures such as Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (otherwise known as Llywelyn the Great, who was married to Joan, illegitimate daughter of King John), and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, whose death at the hands of the English in 1282 brought any hopes of Welsh independence to an end. But even without the emergence of a common polity, Wales had an identity of its own, as exemplified by its language, culture, customs, and laws. Moreover, the Welsh had a shared sense of the past, and pride in a common descent from the Britons, the rightful owners of the Island of Britain.