In Our Time - The Mabinogion

Episode Date: May 10, 2018

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the eleven stories of Celtic mythology and Arthurian romance known as The Mabinogion, most of which were told and retold for generations before being written down in C14th. Among them are stories of Pwyll and Rhiannon and their son Pryderi, of Culhwch and Olwen, of the dream of the Emperor Macsen, of Lludd and Llefelys, of magic and giants and imagined history. With common themes but no single author, they project an image of the Island of Britain before the Anglo-Saxons and Normans and before Edward I's conquest of Wales. They came to new prominence, worldwide, from C19th with the translation into English by Lady Charlotte Guest aided by William Owen Pughe.The image above is of Cynon ap Clydno approaching the Castle of Maidens from the tale of Owain, or the Lady of the FountainWith Sioned Davies Professor in the School of Welsh at Cardiff UniversityHelen Fulton Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of BristolAndJuliette Wood Associate Lecturer in the School of Welsh at Cardiff UniversityProducer: Simon Tillotson.

This is the BBC. Thanks for down learning this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programmes if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programmes. Hello, English soldiers killed Llewellyn, the last sovereign Prince of Wales, in 1282. The Mabinogian were written down in the century that followed under English rule. These 11 stories told of great adventures of Welsh heroes in a past enhanced with myth and magic.

before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons when the Welsh were the people of all Britain. Generations of bards had been telling some, such as those of Killock and Olwen, Pruderi and his mother Riannon, of giants and battles, while others were borrowing some French. And the tales found new audiences worldwide

after the 19th century when Lady Charlotte Guest translated them into English. With me to discuss the Mavinojian, Shonad Davis, Professor in the School of Welsh at Cardiff University, Helen Fulton, Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Bristol and Juliet Wood, Associate Lecturer in the School of Welsh, Chicago University. Helen Fulton, what was changing in Wales when these stories were written down?

We don't know the exact dates when the stories were written down. They obviously took shape before 1282, and then the versions we have post-date, 1282. 1282 was an enormous watershed in Welsh history. Before 1282 it was the Normans who'd settled Wales. After 1066, when they conquered England, they also settled extensively in Wales. William the Conqueror gave many of his knights and nobleman vast tracts of land on the borders of Wales and England. They settled on the borders. Chester, Shrewsbury, Hereford, all those big city castles were set up by Normans.

And then they stretched around into Cardiff, Swansea, further west, right out to Comptory. Marthen Pembrokeshire, that sort of area. So from the 11th century, there were extensive Norman settlements in those parts of Wales that now called the March of Wales. Is it because of that settlement that they reached back further in some of these tales, some of these stories, do you think?

I think the tales were, in many ways, a response to that colonisation and a sense of wanting to retrieve or commemorate some kind of Welsh history or some imagined British history. So some of the tales do commemorate and earlier pre-Norman, even a pre-Saxon, Welsh history. Can you give this some idea of the nature and number of courts in Wales before Edward's conquest?

Edward conquered Wales, well, North Wales, anyway, in 1282. So before then there were native Welsh princes who had courts in North Wales and South Wales. So Harlech was a big centre. Aberfrau on Anglesey was another princely court. they were courts in Pembrokeshire and Camarthen, all round Wales really. They were princely courts where the princes of the native Welsh dynasties had storytellers and poets coming to the court to entertain the princes and their families. And can you give us some idea of the economy?

Well, before 1282 it was mostly a plunder economy. They were sort of fighting with each other as well as with the Normans. There was a very sort of embryonic urban economy around the Norman castles, which had small towns attached to them. But the urban economy really only got going after 1282 when Edward I began to settle these enormous English borough towns, especially in the north-east. The big castles like Flint and Carnarvan, Conwy, they were all Edwardian castles built after 1282. Were they rich these princes? society? In its own terms it was, yeah, they were rich from agriculture, cattle trading, plunder, they were rich in terms of land. So compared to the great courts of England and France,

probably not terribly wealthy, but certainly wealthy enough to afford luxury commodities, fabrics, textiles, jewels, all these things are mentioned in the stories of the Mabinogion. When you say plunder, were they plundering each other or were they going to England and Ireland? No, they fought against each other, particularly the North Wales princes and the South Wales princes were often fighting each other. And then sometimes they'd make alliances with the Normans against each other. Sometimes they'd ally with each other in order to fight the Normans. There was a constant sort of shifting in the power struggles. And do we have any idea of the population of, let's call it words at that time?

I don't think we do know exactly, but it would have been very small and very dispersed. So around the March areas, the borders and the south coast, it would have been more populated than the north and the northwest, which would have been very sparsely populated. Shedd Davis, we have 11 stories here. How are they, presumably they started orally, can you tell us how they started and how they were preserved? Well, today they preserved in two major manuscripts,

Lyviguin Rhyderch, which is the white book of Rhyderch and Lyvrch-Korch-Hergest, the Red Book of Hergest. The Lefgwin, Gwynne, because it had, originally we think it had white binding, and it was probably written for somebody called Rhyderch, who lived in Ceredigion, and he was a patron of poets and of prose writers. And that manuscript is dated to about 1350. And that manuscript today is in the National Library in Aberystwyth, the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth,

and you can see a digitised version online, if you so wish. The Red Book of Hergest, again read because of it. of the colour of its binding. Hergest, named after the Hergeskort, where it was preserved from the 15th century onwards. And this is dated between about 1382 and 1410. So this is where we have the 11 tales, or all but one, Arundi Lyftly, Gwynne, in the white book.

Ronabwe's dream is in the red book only. But we have parts of these stories as well. In manuscripts, we have fragments of them in manuscripts earlier by about 100 years or so. so we assume that they were certainly written down by about 1250, most of them by about 1250. Of course, before that, as Helen said, it's difficult to know how old they are. Probably the versions that we have in the red and the white book, they are copies of earlier manuscripts, but how much early we don't know, and the exact relationship between the manuscript texts

and oral versions of the stories is unclear, and I suppose we'll never know that, unless we, well, unless somebody finds another manuscript in their attic, and we all live in hope. This is written, he's written that around about the time of Chaucer when he stepped forth and was a father at being the literature, although not much later Swift said that nobody could read him. And is there a sense in which the Welsh in which they were written is very distance from the Welsh spoken today?

Oh no, it's quite easy to understand. It's a matter of orthography, really, of spelling. For example, if you read out these tales, allowed with modern day orthography, then my students, for example, find it quite easy, if you think of the beginning of the first branch of the Mabinoggi,

Pouill Pindev dived, o'ergluid, was an arduid seven-aith, a threigal wiser, it was an arberth privalis, it's either, and to bethewld, any, anybody who's listening, who speaks modern-day,

Welsh, I assume, could understand that. We can see them nodding away. But perhaps you also heard there, daith in a frid and needle, whether, the alliteration there. And this is what points, I think, to the oral versions that preceded the written tales. Insofar as you get a lot of oral techniques that survive in these written tales. So you get things like repetition, you get alliteration, you get rhythm, repetition three times with something different happening the third time.

Why did it always three? I think, well, it's something that we find in general in European literature. If I think correctly, I think it's four in Japanese literature, for example. example. But it's a way of reminding the audience what's going on because if you're listening, then you can't flick back a few pages. You've got to be just listening to the story. So what's great about storytelling, you've got to make sure that your listeners are understanding what you're saying. So if you see somebody looking a bit puzzled, then you might repeat it, etc. But also with the three, and you find this very often in fairy tales, the third time something different will happen. So it also helps to build up some sort of attention. You know something else is going to happen, something different. but what it actually is, we don't know. But of course, once these were written down, they would still be read out aloud to a listening public. So there was still this communal feel to listening to the Mabinogian tales

because very few people could read in medieval times. Do we know who wrote them down? We don't know. And of course it's not one person because all these 11 tales are written by different people. Probably, I would say, the four branches were written by one person. But certainly the rest were written. were written by different people.

They belong to different... They have to all half different dates. They talk about different locations. They belong to different parts of the country. So we know, for example, the Leibgwin was probably written down in Stratflir, in Strathe, in Strathe, Florida, in West Wales,

that many of the tales perhaps were composed in North Wales. Juliet Wood, for those unfamiliar with the stories, can you give us a taste of, let's say, the first four books in the collection, which seemed to be the only fault that have a coherence. The pedicank mind, what is going to be missing is the beauty of the sort of the detail

and the dynamic of the story. Well, just try to cram it in. It starts with a prince who's not really very experienced. And he makes an alliance first with someone from the other world. He marries an other world woman. He begins to mature. They have a child, that child. What is the other world?

What distinguishing is. The other world is Anun. Nothing distinguishes it from the real world, except that somehow you know, because of the colors of the character, the fact that the dogs that he meets have red ears, there are sort of little symbols that would indicate to the audience

that we are leaving the real world of whales, of Dovet, and we're going into the other world. And that an audience would know. You have to explain it to a modern audience, but an audience at the time would know. So he's constantly moving into the other world, and as he goes to the other world, his character changes. So the other world becomes a place for him to learn things.

The child is taken away. The wife seems to be alienated, and the child is stolen by this bizarre other world claw, eventually returned to the mother, and they kind of live happily ever after. They're reunited as a family in a kind of perfect court. It goes on in the second one. You again have a woman married to a kid.

that marriage doesn't go very well at all. The husband is not loyal, as Pridary in the first tale is loyal. There is a huge battle. Her brothers, one of whom is a giant, come and rescue her. The child is killed. She dies. It's a much more tragic story. Then you go on to another story, which takes in Friannon, who is now a widow.

She marries a character from the second branch, a man named Manna Whitten. Again, there is an other world character who comes in and re-reaching. a terrible vengeance. He makes the whole of Dovered Baron. There are adventures in the other world. Manawydden outsmarts the other world king, very neatly, indeed. And that resolves itself. The fourth branch also concerns a family, and there you have a magician, very complicated magician, who's very loyal to a younger brother, so much so that he arranges a battle and a rape to satisfy his young brother. Both of them are punished by the uncle. And then there is a resolution.

And then he becomes attached to a nephew, who is the illegitimate son of his sister, who says the nephew will never have a name or arms or a wife. And Gwyddy and the magician manages to sort out the name and the arms. The wife is more difficult. They create one out of flowers, and she is unfaithful. And eventually she's turned into an owl. And at the end of this tale, although there's a resolution,

Leu, the nephew, is now king, but he has no wife and no heir. So there's something slightly poignant about the fourth, about the fourth tale. And that sort of is the structure, the kind of basic structure of the first four tales. Bravo for getting all that here. Yeah. And it's told in, thanks to your translation, it's told in very brisk prose and very brisk sentences. And the new translation, we have a new translator sitting on it. Yes.

The floweriness has been taken out because, of course, the people wouldn't have seen that language as ye oldy language. It would have been the current language. So it does give a sense of how the language would have moved. It is really well told. I mean, there's not a lot of wasted time. There's not a lot of wasted words.

And although they're complicated stories, I mean, I've left out a lot, you don't have a sense of kind of what's going on. the narrator really, really keeps your nose to the grindstone and keeps you going. They constantly saying to each other, I will meet you on this spot in one year's time, next sentence. The next year he turned up, sort of thing, or she turned up. How did these four, before we were, differ? Can you tell us how these four differ from the other, what's four from a seven in the board?

These four, well, for a start, there's a kind of unity, not a perfect unity, but a pretty good unity. And of course, the names in these, the characters in these are the ones that are most often related to Welsh mythology or to Celtic mythology. So some of the names do seem to have this element. They draw on folk narrative, the structures of traditional narrative very, very strongly.

All of the tales do. But these, you can almost plot what's going on. If you're a folklorist, you can kind of see that this is this motif and that is that motif. And that's interesting that the narrator had such control out of this traditional grammar,

if you want to call it. Helen, Helen Fulton, you touched on it in your opening marks, but can you give us a little more about the range locations for these stories? They're located throughout the lengths and breadth of Wales, really. I'm a better question, though. Is it easy to identify from the text

where they are in today's world? Indeed, in many cases, you can pretty much plot the action on a map, The places are still there and the place names are still there. There are one or two that are clearly made up in order to invent a place name because an invented place is attached to a particular element of the story. But by and large, the places are all real places that still exist today. So there are obviously big towns like Carlyon and Cardiff, which are mentioned.

But there are also topographical features, lakes, mountains and so on that are still there today. They are fantastical stories but there's also a reality in them and the knights challenge each other and they get knocked off horses and so on were they supposed to have a relation to the real world in the sense that we know that man, we know that night

we know that women, there's a lot of strong women in these things we know these are she is like our was that supposed to be like that? I don't think so I don't think you can map the stories onto particular characters in that way but I think they do show the kind of preoccupations and concerns of a native Welsh aristocracy at the time. And those concerns were to do with how to survive in battle,

how to conduct diplomatic affairs between rulers, how to make good marriages so that you produce heirs to inherit the property. All those preoccupations are there in the stories. And I would describe the style as naturalist rather than realist, as a kind of naturalism to them rather than realistic. So with naturalism, you don't have a dominant narrator who's telling you what to think or how to follow the story. You're simply presented with what's happened. And the characters speak to us through a lot of dialogue, very excellent dialogue.

And it's through that dialogue that you get a sense of what the characters are thinking and feeling and what we're supposed to deduce from their actions and their behaviour, rather than having a dominant narrative voice telling us all the time. Can I just go there for one second? Can you tell us a little bit more about this other world? The real world and the other world? Is the other world the place where the only place where magic happens, where a woman turns into a horse,

where a man turns into a bridge, that sort of thing? No, what's interesting is that these worlds sort of intertwined so that, for example, in the fourth branch of the Mabinogi, there's no mention of the other world as such, but yet two men, two brothers are changed into animals, male and female, and they give birth because they've raped the virgin footholder, and so the punishment, if you like, fits the crime. There's a woman who's created out of flowers, but this is part of everyday life. Where you do get the other world is, as Juliet mentioned, in the first branch of the Mabinoggi, where Puyll goes to Anuven, and Anovn means the In-World or the underworld. He seems to cross a river to get there, but there's no description of the other world has been.

this fantastic place. It's just better than anywhere he's seen on earth. But what's more interesting, in the second branch of the Mabinoggi, where the giant Bendi Gadevran, he's ordered his men to cut his head off because he's been wounded in his foot, and he tells them to bring his head back

to the island of Britain in that particular... I can't let it. No, come on, come on, be fair. He still held his men to cut his head off because he's been wounded in his foot. You'll have to do something about that. Well, there's been a massive... battle between Ireland

between the Irish and the British and Bender Giedfran the giant he's been wounded and obviously he doesn't want to die in pain I assume he doesn't give an explanation he just tells his men to chop off his head and bring it back to Britain he tells them to go to feast in Harlech

for seven years and then to go on to the island of Gales of Grassholm which is actually an island of St. David's in West Wales and so they do this and again this is linked to the art of the storyteller because you're reminded then he gives instructions

then his men carry out the instructions so this is always focused in the listeners' mind so they go to Harlech with this head they feast there and then they go to the island of Gwaless of Grasome and he's told them you can stay there for as long as you don't open the door that faces Cornwall now that place isn't called Anilvon the other world but it certainly is an other world

place because as soon as they arrive, they forget everything horrible that's ever happened to them. They forget the horrible things that have been happening in Ireland. Time doesn't count. So when they look at each other, no one gets any older. It's a wonderful place to be. It's a paradise. But, of course, you know that one day one of them is going to open the door that faces Cornwall. And indeed, Hylin one day, says, I won't go to open the door to see if it's true what Bendig Adrian said. And as soon as he opens the door that faces Cornwall, then all the memories come flooding back, to them and they remember the things that have happened, they realise that the Bendergadran's head is with them

and they take his head according to his instructions and they bury it in London. Right. It goes quite a pace, doesn't it? Julia, you wanted to come in earlier. It actually follows on with Sean and said. It doesn't matter how bizarre the stories are and there are really some of other bizarre things in these stories. They're just so well structured that you follow it along.

I mean, it's a wonderful exercise in willing suspension of disbelief. You don't really question. what is going on here. It's just, you know, the events seem to flow one from the other. Now, it has to be said not all of the Mabinogian stories are really as well plotted as Pedret Kink. But a number of them are. I mean, you know, on the whole, it's a good selection

with, you know, good storytelling values all the way through. But those opening four, I mean, I've read about four of the others, but those opening four are particularly brisk, and you begin to think it's a bit of, like the Old Testament, then you think, no, it isn't. It's faster. And the speed of movement is very enjoyable. And this flitting in and out of one world to the other.

I think because the complexity of the story, you really have to keep going. Because if you stop, people will sort of say, well, does this make sense? And then you start asking questions that unravel. Whereas because the storyteller keeps going. And it's beautifully interlaced as well, the way the episodes follow on with one another.

that you just kind of think, right, next episode, next episode, next episode. But I think perhaps in the court or wherever these would have been narrated, it probably would have been one episode at a time. And they needn't necessarily following chronological order because people might have known what the general story was, as we know the story of Christ or something. And then people would be able to slot that episode into the general whole, if you like, so that you'd have the story of Puyl and Rhyano

one evening, you'd have the story of Branwen, part of the story of Branwen, another evening. You do find that the four branches in particular, and the story of the first four stories, and the story of how Kilochuan-olwen, that they tend to divide some of them into segments of pretty much the same length. Although we have to bear in mind

if these were told at court, it's not everybody sitting very comfortably with their arms folded. There would have been a lot of drinking and carousing and a lot of enjoyment. Yes, and music. Can I just ask, come back to you, Judith. King Arthur features in some of the stories.

He does. He features in five stories. That's right. Three of them are loosely called romances, I think for lack of any really other name. And then there's the Killock story and then there's the dream of Renabwe in which Arthur is quite different. But in the romances,

Arthur is very much centred on the court of Kellian. And in this way, they're different from me. the French romances, even though the romances, the titles of the romances, parallel the titles in Cretien de Troyes. There's a grail romance, Percival. There's O'Ein, the Lady of the Well, which is Yvain, and there's Gereinth, which is Gerein' and in it. So we know that there are parallels here. But the Welsh tales, it certainly seems, with my reading, that you get less psychological development than you do in Cretien, with the result that it's very much

Creetienne de Troat, meaning the French ones, that it's very much a world. Because will they borrow from him, perhaps, adapted? Well, it's, this is a problem as who's adapting from who. Undoubtedly, the three romances are close in some ways, some of them are closer than others.

But Cretien must have got the stories, not in France, but eventually the stories must have come in some way from Britain, whether through translators, through Brittany, we just don't know. That was Chaucer's first bestseller as well, wasn't it? Yeah. It was.

So you have these things kind of moving back and forth, and I think one point to make before talking about Arthur is that for so long I think we've tended to think of anything Welsh as Celtic and somehow ring-fenced as if it exists in this kind of unchanging world. And what we know now is that the Welsh courts are very outward-looking look. and that people looked into the Welsh court. So you've got things moving back and forth. But I think that's why the author in these three romances

is particularly interesting, because he's almost equated with the Karelian. He's not so much, I think, a passive figure, although he's not active the way he is in the other two tales, but he kind of embodies everything about the court. And this is where you get this notion of honor. The young knights go out. They have adventures.

They learn things. They bring back a bride. They forget the bride. They have to go get the bride again. Again, draws very, very strongly on traditional narrative patterns, but they always come back to Arthur's court. That's the dominant way. Helen, can we develop the idea of influences? I mean, Juliet, there's more than touch on it, but is that more to say? I think there is, yes. Those three, what are called the three Welsh romances, are the most obvious example of a very clear pattern of influence. Those three stories are very closely related to the three 12th century French poetic romances by Cretienne de Trois.

And some kind of influence must have come from Welsh material into France because Cretien has got the names and some of the incidents from somewhere, so they must have come from Wales. But then he fashioned these wonderful medieval poetic romances in a great deal of detail, a much more realistic style compared to the naturalism of the Welsh tales. And those stories would have gone back into England and Wales, probably through Norman influence of some kind. And Geoffrey de Monmouth was an influence. Geoffrey was another kind of influence.

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric writing in the sort of early 12th century. His magnum opus is his story of Regul and Britanniae, the history of the Kings of Britain, which presented a whole British history before the coming of the Saxons featured Arthur very strongly. Clearly, Jeffrey was drawing on some kind of Welsh material as well. We don't know exactly what, but he knew quite a lot about Welsh legend and myth. And one of the stories in the Mabinogion collection, the one called Lhithe at Levelyss, the adventure of L'Eith and Lavellis, is found in a manuscript that also contains a Welsh translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, which was written in Latin, and it was translated into many

different vernaculars, including Welsh. And in one of the Welsh translations, the story of Clith Atlevelis appears, because that story is set in a kind of pre-Saxon Roman Britain. So clearly storytellers had access to Geoffrey's history of Britain

and it tied in very much with their own origin myth about the British people and their history before the coming of the Saxons. Shannad, can you tell us about the story of Killick and Orwin? And can you give us some idea of the flavour of it? I've said, Lots of times they're saying, you come back here in one year, and they come back in one year, and that's the next sentence.

It moves very, and lots of times, it's the most immeasurably beautiful woman I ever sell, and the greatest night, the biggest giant, there's exaggerations, or maybe that was really like that. Anyway, who knows, going on. Can you just give us more of a flavour? Yes, the tale of how Kila Chuan-Lolwyn is very different to the four branches, and the characters tend to be very stereotyped. it's based on two very common folklore themes the jealous stepmother and the giant's daughter so it begins with Kiluk's stepmother putting a curse on him that he shall marry no one save Olwen all well and good but Olwin happens to be the daughter of Aspathaden

a spadden chief giant and as soon as he hears this Kiluk falls in love with Olwen although he's never seen her again a common international motif so off he goes to King Arthur's court and Arthur happens to be his cousin. And when he goes to King Arthur's court, he asks Arthur for a request, namely, will he help him to find Olwen? And he asks this in the name

of all of Arthur's men. And we have a long, long list, 230 of Arthur's men. And that's a fabulous list. It is extraordinary, isn't it? I could pronounce about three of them. I've read the tale aloud, the translation allowed on several occasions. And there are many tongue twisters, bulchen, kivulch and sevulch. and, oh, you know, you really have to get your tongue going around some of those names.

Anyway, you have to get your gut rolls in shape as well. So Arthur, who's presented as head of the Printers of Britain, so Britain is seen as one, as unified, Arthur helps him, and eventually, with the help of, I think it's six or seven, of Arthur's men, then Killuch finds Spadad in the Giant. The men, of course, who go with him, and again, this is quite similar to, Jason and the Argonauts, for example, to that theme. The men who go with him are people who have special attributes,

such as Clisvab Clisvainid. He can hear very well, such as Gurir, Guarstout Yeithoid, Gurir, the interpreter of tongues, and he can talk to all the animals, etc. So anyway, they go to Aspathadden. Aspathadden said, you may marry my daughter,

but these are 40 tasks you must complete, and eventually he complete. all these tasks and Kailuk gets his girl. But of course the exciting bit are the tasks and a lot of the tasks are to do with hunting the Turch Troith, the wild boar and behind the wild boar's ears there's a comb and scissors and shears and Asperthadin wants these

so that he can trim his beard and his hair for the night of the wedding. And eventually the Turch, the wild boar is chased from Ireland all along South Wales with all these place names as Helen was saying coming into view. You can actually follow the Turthruith's route Is there a wild boar walk?

Well, do you know what? That is one ambition of mine is to have a long walk like Offersdike coming from north to south and the wild boar walk from west to east. Part of the wild boar walk has been opened. I've walked part of that. But anyway, so they eventually get the wild boar. But it's a tale that's full of magic

and as Juliet was saying, suspension of disbelief. And it's very performance-oriented and very vocal. Julia, back to you, Christianity had been in Wales since the Romans. And there are the famous Celtic monks of the 6th and 7th centuries. It doesn't seem to feature much in these stories. No, I think...

Hardly at all, nothing like as big as magic. Occasionally, you have them sort of say, and they baptised them at the baptism in their time. But it isn't a pagan world. I mean, unless you're got it. They keep saying between me and God, don't they? They do. Does that mean, you've got to believe me, or I swear on my oath. I keep saying it between me and God.

It's a very common oath. It's a very common oath. But it's not particularly religious. And I think unless you're God and goddess hunting in these texts, which unfortunately people do, they're not really pagan. It's clear that some of them are in non-Norman societies, particularly the Pederd-Kinck. But it was a society that, you know, later people would have recognized. The Arthurian tales, I mean, Arthur, if he existed, is certainly set in a Christian. context. Up in Norseus to England in

Mayor Cumberland. So people say. So people say. So you get that, but it's not as if it's intrusive and you don't get the sense that the monks were trying to Christianise these tales, assuming they were monkish authors that wrote

them. And again, that's a big assumption. Whoever the authors were, they don't seem to have had a religious agenda. I think what comes across of these tales is the importance of what we would call civic society. the court society, honour is very important. But honour is not quite the same as the Christian morality, the salvific morality.

Helen, can you tell us, let's concentrate on Riannon, give the listeners a portrait of Riannon. She is one of the stars of the first of the four branches. And she is the woman from the other world who marries Puyil, the prince of Dauvet in South Wales. So Puyle first meets her or sees her riding on a white horse And he tries to catch up with her But however fast he rides, Even though she looks as though she's ambling along on the horse, However fast he rides, he can't catch up with her.

So there's clearly something magical about her from the beginning. She's also someone who effectively chooses her own husband Because she decides that she wants to marry Pouil, that he is the destined husband for her. So she brings it about that they get married by seeing off a former suitor that she doesn't want to marry and she has a plan to get rid of the former suitor. So she's very determined, but she also has enormous courage and dignity. Her son is stolen from her when she has just given birth to the son and heir, who is a pretty

theme through all these European tales, isn't it? The contaminated wife theme, that's what I read, isn't it? Yes, yes, yes, the wife falsely accused. Yes, that's right. Yes, exactly. So there's a lot of international folk tale motifs that are given a particular flavour in the four branches. So she's falsely accused of having murdered her son. And she responds with enormous courage and dignity. And I think she's a very heroic character. But there are some very interesting female characters in all of the four branches, actually. Shannan, you're the translator.

Was there anything to surprise you when you translated? Were you surprised at the vivacity of the prose? or did you make the prose verbacious? Is it based on a literal translation of your own? What I decided to do because of my interest in performance and in the narrative techniques, the style of the tales, I try to make the translation very much with performance in mind so that it was easily read out aloud.

And I hope that this comes across so that, for example, where you have rhythmic passages, I'm thinking of Kilukhoing off to King Arthur's Court. Mened Aorig Ema, Barreweith, Penchlihluid, Pedwar Gaea, you can hear the horse's hoofs there. And I've tried to get that into my rhythm in the English translation. It's not quite the same rhythm, but there is a rhythm there. So it was very much with performance in mind.

Now, some other translators, and it's been translated several times before mine in, well, originally 2007, they've decided to leave out all the conjunctive, and this happened, and that, and that, which is something that you do in oral story. telling. I decided to keep those in, to keep all the he said, she said, which to some is repetitive, but if you say these out aloud, then they don't draw attention to themselves, such phrases as those. I think what surprised me, more than anything, I had to look at other translations as well, but what surprised me more than anything, perhaps, was the fluidity of Charlotte Guest's translation. Charlotte Guest, in the middle of the 19th century, a very rich woman,

great linguist, married a Welsh industrialist, took up with the Welsh language, translated it, put it together, and that gave it, made it a best sell it. It had been underground for about 400 years until she got hold of it. Yes, it had been, but poets, some poets refer to the tales, but really refer to characters

and to events rather than to the tales as a whole. And really, she's the one who popularised this idea of the Mabinogion, because it is a misnomer and it's only a numberola term. So it does lead people to leave, to believe that all these tales were written by one person at one time, but that's not the case, as we've been saying. Juliet, are there any consistent moral themes in these stories?

The theme of honour, I think, is the strongest one. And as I say, it's a courtly honour. The idea that your actions will have consequences, and you need to strive to become honourable. And you can see this the way the characters, the characters grow, the characters who are in Arthur's Court, the Young Knights of Arthur's Court, the characters in the four branches. Even Maxine Liddick, when he looks for a wife, he dreams her,

and then he actually goes across Wales and finds her. So you do have this kind of dynamic of moving forward. You also have characters who kind of fall apart, Lodiath, for example, Fnizian, who saves himself just at the end. So there is this sense of moral behavior. But I want to stress again, it's not Christian moral behavior, it's behavior in terms of this notion of your responsibility. Well, there's a massive revenge going on.

Revenge is as well. It is. It is. I mean, Stuart, the grey man of the woods is a good example of that. I mean, he's taking a revenge for what Riannon did to one of his friends. Helen, where did the glamour come from? Every court you meet is the most splendid court in the world.

There are maidens in gold, and the jewels are everywhere lovingly described, and they sing and they sing and they carouse. That's the word you use, I can use it. The singing in they carouse for days, weeks, months on end, sometimes a couple of years on end. This is, is this, was that

a common fantasy at the time or was Wales really like that? I think there is a fantasy element to it to a certain extent, but I think the Welsh princes wanted their courts to be like the other courts of medieval Europe, of England and France in particular. They had

the evidence of the Norman courts. They mixed with Normans. They weren't completely segregated. So there were plenty of Norman courts around that had this imported French culture. French was the language of the Norman settlers and also of most of the elite classes of England at the time. So French language, French culture was hugely prized and was a mark of prestige. So I think the Welsh princes imitated the French courtly culture that they saw around them as a way of marking their own status, their own aristocratic status.

Except for giants and persons and animals, it's entirely an aristocratic society, a court society we're talking about. Were these poems, we must assume, dictated to court societies. They were written for them and they talked back to them. Yes, we're not quite sure where they would be formed. We do know from the fourth branch of the Mabinogi of a, there's a reference to a poet twice, going to a court and he's asked to tell a story.

So it seems perhaps telling stories in prose, remember, was one function of the Welsh poet. But the storyteller as such isn't mentioned as one of the 24 officers of the King's Court in medieval Welsh law. So perhaps storytelling was a secondary function. But we do find ordinary people, well, not ordinary people, the King of Ireland, for example,

he tells Ben digate, Van de Giant, a story. You're going to love you for telling him their king was an ordinary person. I just meant he was a king rather than he was Irish. The king of Ireland, Mathaloch, who's come to marry Branwen, the sister of the king of Britain, he tells Beneghijfan a story while they're having their food. So I think we've got to think of the storytelling arena as being much wider than previous. Julian, what impact of the stories had? It's a lot to ask.

But let's say since Charlotte Gess's translations in the mid-19th century. A tremendous impact. Tennyson picked up the story of Geraint and Inid from Charlotte Gess, because it wasn't in Mallory. So that really comes through the Mabinogian. Quite early on, by the beginning of the 20th century, you had people rewriting the tales,

rewriting the tales as for children, rewriting the tales as modern fantasies. And that continues to the present day. I mean, Alan Garner's The Owls Service and Gwyneth Lewis is the meat tree. There's the current revival of things. And last year, of course, was the Year of Legends in Wales,

and that gave a real boost to the Mabinogian stories. And we find the National Museum, for example, now, they're re-erecting a copy of a medieval hall in St Fagans outside Cardiff, and they're having two tapestries created, and those are being made, created based on the Branman story and the Kilochagalwen story and created by schoolchildren.

So I think these tales are being, they're being recreated all the time and storytelling itself for the last 20, 30 years, has had a new lease of life, if you like, and people are coming back to these old stories, which is a wonderful thing. And they are fantastical. One man defeats an entire army in one day, doesn't he? One by one, they're knocked off their horses.

I enjoyed a far more than I thought I would tell you the truth. It's quite tiring to read it. I love it. Well, thank you very much to Shana Davis, to Helen Fulton and Juliet Wood. Next week, The Emancipation of the Service by Alexander II in 1861. In one proclamation, over 30 million Russians gained freedom from the noble landowners. That's the way to do it. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Well, I'm sorry we didn't get to talk about the dream of Ron, have we?

Yes. Which is one of my favourite stories in the whole collection. now because several million people get this podcast and it'll be a bigger audience than you've talked to. So what was about that that you wanted to? The Welsh title is Brave with Tron Aboui, and it means the dream of Fron Aboui, and it's one of the Arthurian stories,

but very unlike the others, it's not one of the three romances. It's actually a satire, and it's very funny. It's got a lot of witty things in it. But we don't know what it's satirizing doing. We don't quite know what it's satirizing, though Arthur doesn't come out of it too well, does he?

No, no. It's not a heroic Arthur. he's a silly author he's an author who's leading this huge army and he's surrounded with a panoply of accoutrements and courtiers and knights and armies hugely powerful but he's like a child he loses his temper yes he loses temper and he can't lead his men and in the end he just makes a truth

he was such a hero great heroes and people flock to his court they flocked to his court in stories in this book why do you think people want to have a go to him like that Well, he has a negative characteristic in a lot of the saints' lives as well. So there is this tradition of Arthur as the greatest hero, but Arthur as the hero who can be marked as well as the sort of... I think perhaps the author was trying to tell something about people's love of these stories about the past.

But, you know, the past wasn't really as great as all that. But you've done work, hell in yourself, on how... Because, again, we're not sure of the date. actually there is a reference to Meredith at the beginning of Bredernerdha, Meredi, and we can actually date him so we know roughly perhaps what date this story relates to. But you've tried to relate to North Wales.

Yes, it's clearly a satire on this massively overstated medieval kingship where these hugely powerful kings surround themselves with sycophants and armies and often aren't very effective. Perhaps that's another thing that's common to all of them, is especially the four branches, is the nature of kingship. What makes a good king, what makes a bad king. Going back to the story of Branwen, Bendi Gidevran,

oh, again, I'm going to put my foot in it. But Bendecaidvran, the king of the British, of the island of Britain, seems to be very good king, whereas Motholuch, the king of the Irish, is a very weak king, and he allows himself to be ruled by his men. So although the author doesn't come out and say, right, this is what you should do and this is what you mustn't do, It's just underlying really what messages have been given out. Yes, and the princes in all of the stories really

are very much influenced by contemporary European thinking about how to be a good king. All those sort of speculums, those mirrors of princes where they're instructed on how to be a good king. They were very contemporary at their time. So they're very keen on... It's something I think that which has changed in our perception because not so long ago, the tales were long. looked at as remnants of mythology, and you kind of picked out little bits, and you

reconstructed the original myths and made all sorts of speculations about that. Whereas now we're beginning to look at the tales as being situated in a particular time, even though we can't date them, we can see the reflections of contemporary court thinking, contemporary sort of civic thinking, of contemporary legal thinking. And it fits beautifully with all of this wonderful fantasy material, which says something about the nature of international traditional story-telling. The way in which they enjoy themselves is quite repetitive. It's carousing and drinking, isn't it?

Carousing and drinking and carousing, it's what you know. This is a formula and again, I think this is related to performance. You find it in other cultures. Whereas I've tried to argue that the storytellers are perhaps drawing on a stock of common formulae. So, for example, you'd start a story fairy tale by sing once upon a time, and you find a similar sort of story, a similar sort of phrase

beginning many of the episodes in the Mabinoggi on stories. It's a signal really one day, one afternoon so you know that we're having another episode. It signals to the audience as much as anything else. It both gives the storyteller a framework to kind of take a breath

to go into what, as you have said, very complicated episodes very often. But there are also signals to the audience that, right, here is the beginning of an episode, right, here is a point of the episode, here is something that's going to shift. So it's a kind of shared sense of storytelling conventions almost. Yes, like the triple scenes that you refer to before,

the way in which events often happen in a series of three. So you get something happening and then it happens again. And then the third time it happens, there's something different. The plot changes and it moves on. And that's another way of keeping the audience involved and following the story. But I think having said that, we have to remember these haven't been dictated.

by a storyteller that would have been impossible. So these are re-workings of earlier versions. But as I said earlier, I think because the audience would still be a reading, a listening audience to a large extent, then these techniques are still important.

And I think that's what I tried to get over when I was translating. At that time, most of poetry was read aloud, wasn't it? Yes. And if you look at illustrations, illustrated manuscripts, French and English ones, you'll find any illustrations of reading, somebody's reading to a group of people.

Now, unfortunately, the Lyf Gwyn Rhyderch and Lyfkoukh-Hergh, the two earliest Welsh manuscripts, they don't have any illustrations because Wales is a poor country couldn't afford this wonderful gold leaf, etc. So we don't get illustrations and we get very few references,

some references in the poetry of the period, to reading. But yes, it would have been reading aloud to a group. But I think memory is also very important and linked to these techniques too, because of course if a story isn't memorable, then it won't survive. I think the producers, itching to get in. Do you want to carouse with teal coffee?

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