The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends (54 page)

“Is it an insult that you give me?” demanded the rider, a hand on his own sword.

“It is a warning that I give you. You ride near Arthur and have splashed him with mud from your horse.”

“Then no insult has been made to me,” said the man, thrusting his half-drawn sword back into his scabbard.

“That is March ap Meirchion,” Iddawg told Rhonabwy, indicating the youth. “He is first cousin to Arthur.”

Then a third troop of warriors arrived on horseback and they were clad all in black.

“Those troops are led by Edern ap Nudd,” confided Iddawg.

Now a great army was around them and one of the warriors said it was marvellous to see the host of the Britons gathered in such a narrow place. His name was Caradoc.

“Remember at the battle of Badon, how each one of us swore an oath that we would meet here when we were needed?” went on Caradoc. “Now the host of the Saxons have taken over
the fair land of the Britons and great is the need of our people.”

“This is truly spoken,” agreed Arthur. “And now we are gathered, it is time to march forth and challenge our enemies once more.”

Iddawg took Rhonabwy and his companions with him and the whole host set off in the direction of Cefn Digoll.

At the entrance to a large plain, the army had halted to arrange its positions. Suddenly, a great uproar broke out in the centre of the army and there came riding through the
ranks a tall man in silver armour with a white cloak and a red plume. It looked to Rhonabwy that the ranks of Arthur’s army were splitting asunder to allow this single man
through.

“What is it?” he demanded of Iddawg. “Are the warriors of Arthur fleeing?”

“Rhonabwy,” Iddawg replied, “Arthur and his men have never yielded a foot of our sacred soil to the Saxons. If your remark had reached other ears, it would have doomed you to a
traitor’s death.”

“For that I am sorry. Truly, I merely wanted to know what was happening.”

“The horseman in silver and white is none other than Cai, son of Cynyr, the most handsome and fierce warrior in all Arthur’s court. Cai is the best rider, the best warrior, the best
champion. The men are making way for him and then closing in around him.”

As the tumult grew, Cador of Cornwall was called for, because he was the bearer of Arthur’s mighty sword. He appeared and raised it so all could see it. He held the magic sword Caladfwlch,
“the hard dinter”, up in its scabbard. The sword then leapt from the scabbard and whirled around like a tongue of flame and so terrifying was it that it quelled the tumult and all
became quiet among Arthur’s men.

Then Rhonabwy heard the named of Eiryn called. He was Arthur’s servant and a big, red-headed and ugly fellow he was. He came forward and unpacked a golden chair, along with a coverlet of
brocaded silk, which he spread over the chair. A table was set before it and another chair was placed there. On the table he laid out a board and gaming pieces known as Gwyddbwyll or “wooden
wisdom”.

“Owain, son of Urien, come forward,” Arthur called.

A handsome young warrior came forward. “I am here, lord.”

“Does it please you to pass an hour playing wooden wisdom with me?”

Owain smiled. “That would please me fine, lord Arthur.”

So they stretched themselves on each side of the board and began to play in earnest. It was clear to Rhonabwy that Owain was an excellent player but needed to concentrate
more carefully on his game to overcome Arthur. Now it happened, and no man knows why, that Cenferchyn had given Owain three hundred night-black ravens to follow him in battle.
Whenever these ravens followed Owain, he became invincible in combat.

At a crucial point of the game, Owain’s servant came running forward to him and saluted.

“What is this distraction?” muttered Arthur.

“He is my servant, lord.”

“Then bid him speak.”

The servant stood hesitating. Then he said, “Lord Owain, the king’s servants are molesting your ravens.”

Owain ap Urien was upset and said to Arthur, “Lord, if this be true, please call off your servants and do not harm my ravens of battle.”

Arthur did not reply directly, but simply said, “It is your move in this game.”

The servant was sent off and the game continued.

A little while later, the same servant came running forward to Owain.

“Lord Owain,” he cried out, “is it with your permission that the king’s servants are wounding and killing your ravens?”

Owain was shocked. “It is against my will that anyone should do so.” He turned to Arthur. “Lord, if these are your servants that are killing my ravens, please call them
off.”

Arthur did not reply directly but, turning to Owain, said, “It is your move in this game.”

The servant was sent away.

After a little while, the same servant came running back and called out, “Lord Owain, your favourite among the ravens has been killed, and many of the rest that have not been killed are so
badly hurt that they cannot lift their wings again. It is the king’s men who have done this terrible deed.”

Owain ap Urien was greatly upset. “Lord Arthur, what does this mean?”

Arthur did not reply directly but, turning to Owain, said simply, “It is your move in this game.”

Then Owain turned to his servant. “Go to where the battle
is hardest fought and raise my standard as high as possible. Then call the ravens and those that are able
will go there.”

The servant disappeared to do this bidding.

Some distance away, the battle was raging and it was seen that the bright standard of Owain ap Urien was raised on a hill. With rage and passion the ravens, seeing Owain’s standard in the
thick of the battle, went berserk and rose in the air, higher and higher, wounded and dying and dead as well. Down they came tearing into the battle; flesh and bone and hair were torn from those
beneath their talons. Croaking with exultation, the ravens drove the enemy from the ground.

The board game between Owain and Arthur resumed in peace.

Then one of Arthur’s servants came running forward and bowed to the king. “Lord king, Owain’s ravens are now attacking your warriors.”

Arthur looked in annoyance at Owain. “If this is so, call off your ravens.”

“It is your move in this game,” observed Owain, not replying directly.

The servant went off and, a short time later, returned. “Lord king, Owain’s ravens are wounding and killing your men.”

“If this be so, tell your ravens to stop.”

Owain took no notice of the king but said, “It is your move in this game.”

A third time, the servant came running back. “Lord king, now your warriors are slain and the greatest sons of the Island of the Mighty are no more.”

Then Arthur said again, “Call off your ravens, Owain ap Urien.”

“Lord, it is your move,” replied Owain stoically.

The messenger finally said to Arthur, “The ravens have destroyed your whole war-band, lord Arthur, and left all Britain to the mercy of the Saxon army.”

Arthur sprang up then and, taking the gaming pieces on the board, he crushed them in his hands until they were dust. Only then did Owain ap Urien order his battle-banner to be lowered.

At that moment, there came envoys from the commander of the Saxons, Osla Big-Knife, and he sought peace from Arthur. Surprised, Arthur summoned his counsellors – Cai,
Bedwyr, Gwalchmai and Trystan and Peredur and Gwrhyr, Menw and March and they all considered what should be done. It was finally agreed that a truce be made and that there would be peace in the
land.

Cai then rose up and said, “Let every man who wishes to follow Arthur be with him tonight in the kingdom of Kernow.”

As they departed, Rhonabwy turned to Iddawg. “I do not understand, Iddawg. Can you tell me the meaning of the game of ‘wooden wisdom’ between Arthur and Owain? What was the
meaning of the battle between Arthur’s warriors and Owain’s ravens? Why did Cenferchyn give those three hundred battle-ravens to Owain in the first place?”

Now the answer to these questions might have illuminated the darkness in Rhonabwy’s mind. But, as Iddawg was about to speak, Rhonabwy’s eyes flitted open and he found himself lying
on the ox skin in the burnt-out shell of a hall. Alongside him were his companions. It was his men who had come to find their general who awakened them. They told them that they had actually slept
for three days and three nights and nothing they could do would waken them.

Rhonabwy told them all about his dream and his companions said that they, too, had shared the dream but none could offer a satisfactory interpretation.

That there was an interpretation, it was obvious, but no one could offer it.

So Rhonabwy and his men continued in their search to find the rebellious lord Iorwerth, brother of the King of Powys. It is not recorded what happened, whether he found Iorwerth or not, nor what
further adventures Rhonabwy had. All we know is that, at some time, Rhonabwy told a bard his dream and that dream was recorded: but who knows what its meaning is?

Cornwall (Kernow)

Cornwall: Preface

T
here is only one complete folk tale recorded in the Cornish language that has survived. This was taken down in the mid-seventeenth-century and is
called “Jowan Chy-an-Horth” which is Jowan or John of Chy-an-horth. There is some scholastic discussion as to whether this was recorded by Nicholas Boson or his son John Boson. However,
it was first printed in 1707 in
Archaeologia Britannica,
by the great Welsh scholar Edward Lhuyd (c. 1660–1709), whose work made him the most important forerunner to modern Celtic
studies.

It also survived into English oral tradition and was picked by William Bottrell in his
Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall
(1880). Robert Hunt, in
Popular Romances of
the West of England
(1871), also printed a version as “The Tinner of Chyannor”, but his source came from Thomas Tonkin’s rather poor translation of the text, as printed by
Lhuyd.

The story is in no way original to Cornwall. Versions are found in Scotland, in a story called
Na Tri Chomhairlie,
collected in John F. Campbell’s four-volume study
Popular Tales
of the West Highlands
(1860–62). The Breton scholar Roparz Hemon (d. 1978) gave a Breton version, for comparative purposes, in the Breton cultural magazine
Gwalarnn
, which he
founded and edited from 1925–44. In 1938, Professor Ludwig Muelhauser had made a study of it, in
Die Kornische Geshichte von der drei guten ratschwägen.
Indeed, variants of the
tale crop up in many European
cultures. Nevertheless, mainly because it does survive in Cornish, Cornish people are proud of it and in 1984 it was made into a short Cornish
language television film.

As Robert Morton Nance, in an undated pamphlet (
c
. 1930s, Penzance)
Folk-lore Recorded in the Cornish Language
, explained – there survives nothing else in Cornish in its
entirety as regards Cornish legends. Nance described that which did survive as splinters of a great shipwreck: snatches of songs, oblique references to stories, proverbs and the like.

The story of Tewdrig, the first in this selection, as an example, is a story that now has to be pieced together from excerpts from medieval saints’ lives in Latin, and from the only
surviving medieval saints’ play in the Cornish language,
Beuanns Meriasek
(Life of Meriadoc), the manuscript of which was written by Father Radulphus Ton, a parish priest of Crowan,
near Camborne, in 1504. The manuscript is in the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth) as Peniarth Mss 105.

The curious thing about Tewdrig (given as “Tev Dar” in the 1504 manuscript) is that, in trying to give him a suitable pagan religion, the author makes this fifth to sixth century
Cornish king a follower of Islam! Obviously, by this time, a memory of the old Celtic deities had been totally lost in Cornwall. The lines, with contractions expanded in brackets, are:

Most of the other stories given here have survived through the medium of English, some much intermixed with Cornish words, sentences and the English dialect form that displaced
the Cornish language. William Bottrell, in his three-volume collection, printed variant versions of many of them.

The versions I give differ in many respects from Bottrell and also the Hunt retellings, and this is due to commentaries given me by the late Robert Dunstone and Leonard Truran, when I was living
in Cornwall in the late 1960s. Between 1967 and 1968, my wife and I roamed the West Penwith peninsula, at the very end of Cornwall. Although we have been back to Cornwall for many visits, and I was
honoured to be inaugurated as a bard of the Cornish Gorsedd (under the name Gwas-an-Geltyon – Servant of the Celts) as a recognition for my work on Celtic history and culture, my main work on
Cornish was conducted during this period. From it, I produced
The Cornish Language and its Literature
, published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974. It was gratifying that this was
considered the definitive work on the history of the language and a standard text for the Cornish Language Board examinations.

There were also many in Cornwall who were happy to offer advice on my queries about Cornish folklore and I should record my appreciation of their help: to E.G. Retallack Hooper (Talek), to G.
Pawley White (Gunwyn) both former Grand Bards of the Cornish Gorsedd. Particularly, with regard to the story “Nos Calan Gwaf’ I would like to express my appreciation of the discussions
I had with the late L.R. Moir (Car Albanek) during the time I spent in St Ives.