The Mabinogion by Unknown

The Mabinogion Reviews

• 
  Mary Jones

  I'm splitting the difference between my love of the medieval collection (i.e. Y Mabinogi and 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 want
  
  a.) a literal translation: in that case, go with the Jones and Jones translation of the 1950s (IIRC), offered by Everyman
  
  b.) 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.
• 
  Jan-Maat

  The Mabinogion is a collection of Welsh stories preserved in manuscripts from the fourteenth century, but it's assumed that the stories are older than that, they have been translated into English since the eighteenth century and this collection is in that tradition.
  
  The odd thing about collections like this is the need to drop any idea of an original version of the stories. Stories are told and changed, always in flux until they are caught between the pages of a book. Then a version is set in ink, the way that maybe one person told them in one place and at one time. For instance some of the stories have digressions giving spurious reasons for the names of places. It is easy to imagine a storyteller changing those as they went from place to place to set their heroes in the immediate local landscape.
  
  Some of the stories in this collection lead into, or are on the other fringes of, the Arthurian tradition, others have pagan echoes even while God and his mother are frequently evoked. Evocative and frequently strange.
• 
  7jane

  "On the bank of the river he saw a tall tree: from roots to crown one half was aflame and the other green with leaves."
  
  Here is 11 Welsh stories with myth, folklore and history shining through. In a way, they are escapist stories, but real history grounds them. They were mostly written down from oral stories (from storytelling bards) around 13th century, and happen in the forest and valleys of Wales, and the shadowy otherworld connected to it. Each story has its own introduction; there is also a writing on the pronunciation of certain words, plus a map of Wales. The title of the book was established only around 1849, but is actually quite suitable (and short)
  
  People with interest in Arthurian legends will find some familiar stories here, especially towards the end. I didn't find it quite clear if they were influenced by the French collection of stories of Arthur, or the other way around. Most of the stories have some patchwork in making each a story, but really they are easy to follow, though some inconsistencies exist. In my own reading experience, only "Peredur Son Of Evrawg" was clangingly clearly taped-together, and its ending wasn't quite smooth.
  The stories have had newer stuff (and values) multilayered over the original, French appearing over Celtic, but some common themes still shine through. Some characters, who appear briefly or in minor character might have had bigger roles and their own stories in the past. Some historical people appear, sometimes under Welsh-name versions.
  
  The stories vary in length. There are some bizarre-amusing etc. elements that stand out, like a Loki-like character, other dimensions of the same place just with no people, vanishing fortresses, people taking mice-forms, guarding virginity by keeping your feet in the maiden's lap, two men as an animal couple (and not just one kind of animal!), a dragon in Oxford, people like a person who
  "were he buried seven fathoms in the earth he would hear an ant stirring from its bed in the morning fifty miles away"
  donkeys from Greece, having a lion as a friend, a woman described in a way Snow White is usually described - but in this case the cheeks have the red, not the lips - and guaranteed luck in winning against other knights, and plenty of saving maids ::)
  
  Sometimes the repetition in the story was a little boring, but I've read worse. The one story with a pages-long list of companions accompanying one person was bizarre, but sometimes having amusing comments like that ant-quote above.
  
  A strange experience, reading this book. Requiring some patience, but the introduction was well done, and smoothed the experience, improving it and explaning pretty well. A good reading experience with some through-provoking, funny details.
• 
  Beth

  I'm reading the Mabinogion after a childhood spent reading books that were based on these Welsh myths: The Chronicles of Prydain, The Dark is Rising, The Owl Service... I recall that those retellings/recyclings were a bit more user-friendly, but what I love about mythology is the concentrated nature of it. These are oral traditions boiled down to their essence--the versions finally set to paper are meant to communicate what was really important to someone nearly 1000 years ago, from stories that are much, much older. I don't know what amazes me more: that the stories seem as old as the hills, or that a good translator can easily make them comprehensible today, with some touches of the original wit and charm left intact.
• 
  nastya

  Not being a Brit, I stumbled upon this collection quite randomly. Never heard of it before, but, they turned out to be the earliest prose stories of Britain. Collection itself felt arbitrary, not very cohesive, maybe because Lady Charlotte Guest just decided it is, the writing itself has little in common, only that the stories are quite old and written in Welsh, that's all.
  
  So it's no wonder my enjoyment varied quite a lot. My least favorite were definitely Arthurian stories and romances. They are just so boring repetitive, every story is about a knight on a quest finding a castle, a beautiful maiden he falls in love with, a knight, often in black, he needs to fight to the death, then moving to another location and repeating everything again.
  
  My favorite stories were The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, especially the fourth one, maybe because of my love for Ovid's The Metamorphoses.
  
  In it people are transformed into eagles, owls, maidens are created from flowers, but my favorite one must be when Math punished brothers Gwydion son of Dôn and Gilfaethwy son of Dôn for raping the virgin Goewin by transforming them first into hind and stag for the year, then into wild boar and a wild sow, and finally into a wolf and she-wolf and making them procreate with each other. To be fair, Math fostered all resulting children.
  
  P.S. I read the recent translation by Sioned Davies and it was very readable and engrossing.
• 
  Julian Worker

  Where does the title 'Mabinogion' come from? Its use for this collection of tales dates from the 19th Century when Lady Charlotte Guest's version of these 11 myths appeared in book form.
  
  However, Mabinogion is not even a Welsh word. Mabinogi is a Welsh word, but in these texts only appears in the first four of these stories. The real title should be 'The Mabinogi and Other Early Welsh Tales'.
  
  I thought I'd clear that up as I've always wondered where the title came from.
  
  These stories were not written or even created by a single author. They evolved over centuries passed down from storyteller to storyteller through the ages and so were altered, distorted, and expanded.
  
  The stories drew on folklore, myths, and some history from Wales and other parts of Britain of the time just after the Romans left. Add in magic, dreams, and other worldliness and you have a heady mix of romance, violence, and manners.
  
  The three stories that end the collection are similar to Arthurian legends that people may be familiar with. Heroic knights seeing off those who oppose them in huge numbers whilst being admired for their exploits.
  
  These stories are easy to read. I marvel at how any storyteller could remember all the names in some of the stories, especially in "How Culhwch Won Olwen" when Culhwch invokes Olwen to most of the knights in Arthur's company.
• 
  Nathanimal

  I like mythological and I like medieval but this book is much more than that. There’s a dreaminess to these tales I find so surprising, seductive, and mysterious. They intoxicate me with dream and weird my imagination in wonderful ways.
  
  That said, it’s a very uneven book. The first four “branches” are really where the sauce is. The tales that follow, mostly chivalric Arthurian adventures, can be dry (though interesting for predating any round tables or swanky grails). I’ll make an exception for the tale of Cuhlwch whose mad crush on Olwen leads uncle Arthur into an epically misguided hunt for a divine boar, which, for some reason, has a comb and a razor and a pair of sheers all caught in the tuft of hair between its ears. The hunt is such an ordeal it kills off nearly every last Briton (which is a shame since the author went to such great lengths to name all of them [phew!]). But Cuhlwch gets the girl in the end, so . . . alls well that ends well?
  
  Anyway. Here’s a list of some of my favorite dream imagery from the book, mostly from the four branches:
  
  - You’re hunting alone in the forest and encounter a stag being chased by brilliant white hounds with blood-red ears. Seeing no one around, you chase the hounds off and let your own dogs feed on the kill. But out of the forest appears the king of the Otherworld who says the stag was his and claims offense. The only way make amends, he says, will be to trade places with him for a year—he will become you and you will become him.
  
  - On the mounting block at the entrance of the castle you meet a woman with beautiful long hair. As you tie up your horse she tells you that to fulfill her punishment she must confess to you all her sins as she carries you up to the royal court on her back.
  
  - There emerges from the lake a giant, hideous-looking man with a cauldron humped on his back. After him emerges his wife who is twice as big and twice as hideous-looking. Someone once tried to kill them in a fire but failed.
  
  - The cauldron has a special power. Leave your dead in it overnight and in the morning they will have returned to life but with one defect: they will have lost the ability to speak.
  
  - The king is enormous. Sometimes he’s too big to fit in his hall, at other times he’s so big he can wade right across the Irish Sea with his navy in his wake. When mortally injured in battle, he tells his men to cut his head from his body and carry it back home. This turns into a long, difficult quest where the men are seduced into magic castles and waste many years at a time in hypnotic trances. But the whole time the head of their king remains alive and the best of company.
  
  - The only way the hero can be killed, he says, is if he’s standing with one foot on the edge of the bath with his other foot on the back of a goat and someone chucks a spear at him. When such a billygoat bathtub* is eventually contrived and the spear strikes him, he dies by transforming into a decaying eagle and flying up into a tree. Every time the eagle ruffles its feathers, rotting eagle meat falls to the ground.
  
  - To punish the two criminals for raping the virgin who cradled the king’s feet in court, the king transformed them into deer, male and female, who were forced by their animal natures to mate with each other. And so after a year they had a fawn, which the king made human and baptized. And then the two were transformed into wild pigs, male and female, and they had a piglet who the king made human and baptized. And the year after that they were transformed into wolves, m & f, and had a cub, who the king made human and baptized. And after three years of that the king transformed them back into their human selves and commanded them to go have a bath.
  
  - Often there are deafening noises that come roaring out of nowhere and seem to cue some intrusion from the Otherworld. It’s not uncommon after such a noise to find the landscape completely devoid of people or to suddenly find oneself standing in front of a vast army of horses and men with banners whipping in the wind.
  
  * Because of this story my spouse and I have begun calling any precarious, death-inducing contraption a “billygoat bathtub.” We invite you to begin using this expression.
• 
  Christine

  I have read several versions of The Mabinogion, but would love to track down this edition. Illustrations by Alan Lee: what could be better? He names certain of his influences as Arthur Rackham, Edward Dulac, and the Pre-Raphaelites, on his 'author' page here.
• 
  J.C.

  This Penguin Classic translated by Jeffrey Gantz (not the same illustration as pictured here) is the third translation of The Mabinogion I have read, and it’s by far the best. The title is misleading, stemming from Lady Charlotte Guest’s use of it in her nineteenth century translation, but it’s now ”established and convenient”. In his introduction Gantz explains the misuse in detail.
  
  The collection comprises eleven medieval Welsh folk tales, or, as I think of them, fragments, transcribed orally down the centuries and with consequent distortion. It must be that the significance of many of the details has been lost, details, and repetition of detail, that would have been expected and eagerly listened for as the tales were recited. Those clearest to understand are the three final tales, which are Arthurian, and are different versions of the tales in Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain, Perceval, and Erec and Enide, the last of which I have reviewed separately on GR. The Welsh equivalents of the heroes' names are Owein, Peredur and Geraint. “Peredur” is likened by Jeffrey Gantz to “Pryderi” in an earlier Welsh tale in the same volume, forming part of the first ‘branch’ of the tales. There are four branches, from South Wales, North Wales, tales from broader sources, and Arthurian. There are connections to and counterparts with early Irish tales, and even, in The Dream of Maxen, with Rome. The geography of the tales is fluid, which again reflects the borrowed or common elements.
  
  Of course, there is magic and mystery, and later, with the Arthurian tales, chivalry. Jeffrey Gantz regrets that “as a repository of myth and history The Mabinogion is highly corrupt” but celebrates that “the tales preserve, albeit in garbled form, much of the primitive, fantastic, fascinating world of Celtic myth, and they exemplify the heroic, romantic, idealistic world of Celtic literature. If the beginnings of The Mabinogion remain a mystery, its continued appeal does not.”
  
  This is what Gantz chooses, from Peredur, to tempt us with as he opens his introduction:
  
  “On the bank of the river he saw a tall tree: from roots to crown one half was aflame and the other green with leaves”. . . .
  
  “the green leaves symbolizing the rich and concrete beauty of the mortal world, the flames symbolizing the flickering shadowy uncertainty of the otherworld, and the whole emblematic of the tension and mystery which characterise all forms of Celtic art.”
  
  It is not only this introduction, but Gantz’s brief explanations prefacing each story, that bring to life the tales and illuminate the actions of the characters, which are far from being plot-driven. In Math, Son of Mathonwy, Lleu is given for wife Blodeuedd, a girl conjured up from flowers. Her betrayal of her husband, whom she has been forced to marry, brings this comment from Gantz:
  
  “The love of Blodeuedd (from blodeu, ‘flowers’) blooms and fades and has not the constancy of mortal feeling”.
  
  You’re probably picking up that Jeffrey Gantz’s notes interested me more than the tales themselves, which I had already read, of course, but without much understanding. For me they were important because they are all we have of early Welsh literature. But coming to such a broad view of the interconnection of Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Breton and French medieval tales was something of a revelation for me as they reflect a society where the travelling story-tellers enabled a common foundation of belief and values, as well as facilitating the spread of trade, commerce and the arts, all of which flourished despite successive invasions of foreign peoples. Thus it is that the Celtic languages and culture have survived into the twenty-first century despite the dominance of English (I know, the language in which I am writing this review!). England does feature in The Mabinogion – Peredur, for instance, is a son of Earl Evrawg (York, from the Latin Eboracum) - and, in Branwen Daughter of Llŷr, even London comes into the story. Scotland would have come under “Northern Britain”, which it did until recent times. (My father had a brass whisky tumbler he had picked up in London, which had “Ben Nevis, Northern Britain” inscribed on it). But, to quote again from the introduction,
  
  “Set largely within the British Isles, the tales (nonetheless) create a dream-like atmosphere by telescoping Saxon- and Norman-dominated present into the misty Celtic past of has been and never was.”
  
  But still real to Celts, dream or not? Is not a dream real, in so far as it creates a myth that partakes of reality, that becomes reality? Is this not the true nature of the Celt, and thus the fascination of these mabinogi?
• 
  Mark Adderley

  This is an excellent translation of the Mabinogion. Unlike Gantz, Davies uses familiar spellings of names, which I like; unlike Jones and Jones, she divides dialogue up into paragraphs--a conversation can be pretty confusing when it's printed as a single paragraph. Above all, though, Davies translates for oral performance--they're wonderful stories to read aloud. Occasionally, when the action is getting intense, Davies will switch to the present tense, as the Welsh originals do. It makes the narrative more direct.
  
  The tales themselves are wonderful. It's a blend of Welsh legend, mythology, and Arthurian romance.
  
  Welsh names can be hard to pronounce, but Davies provides an excellent pronunciation guide.
• 
  Nicky

  Supervisor wanted me to use a different translation to my old one (the Everyman 1993 edition). So I had to get this one. It's supposed to be more accurate -- I don't know about that, but it does seem a bit more immediate and colourful than the old Everyman edition. The little I know suggests it is a good translation, and it's certainly readable, and has a full complement of explanatory notes, introduction, etc, which is more than I can say for the Everyman edition. Slightly odd order of tales, not sure what she's organising them by -- certainly not date, as Culhwch and Olwen is almost the last.
  
  As for the tales, they are always a thing of unchanging delight, for me. Especially nice to reread them after reading Seren's New Stories from the Mabinogion series.
• 
  Cynthia

  This is a group of 12 Welsh legends that feature King Arthur along with other kings. They are stories passed down orally and have mnemonic devices imbedded in them to aide in the telling so they sometimes sound odd to our modern ears. There is so much here that appears in current day literature. There are magical creatures and wells and rocks and carpets, shape shifting, giants, fierce warriors, fair maidens, unbelievably delicious food, and chesslike games, etc. everything that appears in modern day fairy stories and science fiction. The knights are always handsome, unless they're the bad knights and then of course they're hideous, the women are each more beautiful than the next. Decisions made quickly often have far reaching implications. There is a sense of immediacy. Anyone could die at any time or make a life long alliance. Magic, War, Love, that's what these stories are made of.
  
  I alternated between this new translation of Davies and Charlotte Guest's Victorian one and enjoyed both however Davies gives a wealth of background information that I found very helpful.
• 
  saïd

  I’ve read previously Charlotte Guest’s edition (which, dating back to the early 19th century, excised various more ‘explicit’ scenes), Gantz’s edition (which is truer to the original Welsh, albeit a bit dated, since it’s from the 1970s), and now Sioned Davies’s edition, from 2008, which is my favourite by a long shot. Davies includes footnotes, a lengthy introduction including both historical context and content analysis, and appendices; she’s a scholar who knows her field well, and it shows. The language is reminiscent of the original Welsh, specifically in regards to rhythm and syntax, as well as the choice to use Welsh names rather than their English equivalents. Davies’s edition reads like a performance, which is delightful.
• 
  Eddie Watkins

  A wonderfully curious collection of old Welsh tales. Not exactly literature, not exactly folktales, not exactly mythology. Like folk tales and mythology it’s the expression of a collective mindset, yet it’s also the product of individual (now anonymous) authors elaborating upon or distilling long existent oral tales, more than likely preserved across centuries by highly skilled bards. The introduction refers to them as Wondertales, actually an official subset of Folktales. Sounds wonderful to me.
  
  This collection dates in manuscript from the 14th century, but speculation takes their origins back another 400 years or more. Suffice it to say that these are old stories, with beginnings shrouded in obscurity. They also happen to contain some of the very earliest elaborations of the Arthurian legends.
  
  The style of storytelling is very different from our common present day style. While the language and sentence construction is fairly basic, the narrative threads themselves are very compressed, with less emphasis on the slow rise and fall of dramatic tensions and more simply abrupt happenings and endings. In this regard I found similarities between it and many of the Old Testament tales. It’s as if much more was left up to the reader (or listener), more room given for the play of the receivers’ imaginations, less pre-digested if you will. It took just a little while for me to get accustomed to this, and once I did I was gripped and transported to another time, another mindset; a mindset shrouded in obscurity but definitely still vibrantly alive; a mindset where journeys to and from the Otherworld, talking owls, and ferocious giants come as naturally as meat and drink and a maiden's pale thigh.
  
  There is much debate and speculation about who “owns the rights” to the Arthurian legends. Much of what we know today about them, and HOW we know them, are due to Chretien de Troyes who was writing in the 12th century. From him we got the more courtly and refined Arthurian images expressed in a very literate way, orderly and well-constructed. But (according to many scholars) The Mabinogion predates his works and (according to me and many scholars) presents a set of stories much more robust and rustic, somewhat sketchy and rough-hewn, yet still somehow sophisticated, like a Wildman bedecked with emeralds, much more Grimm than H. C. Andersen.
  
  
  
• 
  Judith Johnson

  Sioned Davies translated this version of The Mabinogion, published in hardback by the Oxford University Press, and wrote its introduction. She is Chair of Welsh at Cardiff University.
  
  I have a clipping from the Guardian from February 2007 tucked into my copy - a review by the estimable Kevin Cr0ssley-Holland, who 'welcomes an illuminating and relaxed translation of the Mabinogion that revives the zest and drama of the original spoken tales'. He concludes:
  
  "The Mabinogion are the cornerstone of medieval Welsh literature, They are gloriously inventive, highly dramatic, sometimes ferocious, sometimes lyrical, often witty, and ultimately profound in their understanding and revelation of human nature. In my estimate, Sioned Davies has done them and her modern readers proud. Hers is not the last word -but that is the lot of all translators, even the most vaunted ones."
  
  As a Welsh learner, I'd love to read the tales in their original Welsh one day!
• 
  Mark

  The contents of this book are:
  The Mabinogion “proper” (its four branches, Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan, and Math), The Dream of Macsen Wledig, Lludd and Llefelys, Culhwch and Olwen, The Dream of Rhonabwy, The Lady of the Fountain, Peredur, and Gereint, Son of Ervin.
  
  I used this collection of Welsh tales to gain key insight into connections with the English language by comparing the names of characters and locations to their English counterparts.
  Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed is the first tale collected here. I only took one King Arthur oriented class in college, and we didn’t have to read this one there. All the other instances of Arthurian literature I read on my own time.
  I don’t think many people majored in Arthurian studies or German or French to get a better grip on the story. No one has anything to say on them and mentioning one over the other is more than a game of favorites.
  This is the book that has Peredur, Son of Efrawg (Efrawg is York, and also Eouerwic, from the Old English Eoforwicceastre), which is the Welsh version of Perceval, the Grail Romance. There’s also Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, which fleshes out extra detail that the German bard added. Pwyll isn’t mentioned anywhere else in later Arthurian stories. His story is just a starting point for oral stories being written down for the beginnings of the literature tradition. There’s usually a difference between oral and written communication.
  Another related book is the Black Book of Carmarthen, which contains poems by Taliesin. As revealed through this text, the types of activities we’re familiar with today were familiar to our ancestors associated with English, but that’s beside the point. There isn’t much confusion about anything these days, but there used to be some misunderstanding over the French-German-English Arthurian standing. However, it’s just that the French Orlando chivalric romances were before the English Arthur adventures.
• 
  Philip of Macedon

  What we call the Mabinogion today is a collection of eleven stories from the Red Book of Hergest, one of the Four Ancient Books of Wales, and the White Book of Rhydderch, another medieval Welsh manuscript.
  
  Four of these mythical stories end with a vague allusion to being one of four branches of “the Mabinogi”, giving the collection its name, and the others are hero quests, Arthurian romances, spectacular and chemerical pseudo-historical sagas, which might or might not be related to the first four. The four “branch” tales do not seem to relate to one another except for “Manawyden, The Son of Llyr” being a sequel to, and sharing characters with “Branwen, the Daughter of Llyr”. Otherwise, some common names or places are all that link these branches. Pryderi Son of Pwyll is the common figure, appearing in each of these tales, but usually with a minor part. For the most part, each enchanting tale seems to be independent from the rest, riddled with mysteries deepened through the ages and brought to life by towering imaginations.
  
  The Red Book was written down in the late 14th century, and the White book in the middle of the same century, but like all Celtic lore and myth, the stories are from centuries earlier, developed through traditions of oral telling and legend-blending through the generations, performed by bards and storytellers.
  
  I’ve been looking forward to reading this for years. It exceeded my expectations, and is a treasure house of strange, marvelous, alluring, surreal and fantastic medieval Welsh myth and legend. Its people and its stories are so distant from the familiar and rational world that they take on a superb, dreamlike quality. Is this dreamlike sense intentional? Considering that two of the tales are directly about events occurring within dreams — “The Dream of Maxen” and “The Dream of Rhonabwy” — I am inclined to say yes. But no one can be certain.
  
  Yet, they are sufficiently grounded in a world of folklore, history, and shared traditions and culture that they also exhibit unexpected emotional realism, behavioral depth, and personal insight. None of the book can be summarized in a way that does it justice, or can be explained easily.
  
  Each story is unique and stands alone, but some share themes or events, like epic quests, chivalry and knightly honor, mysteries of dark age lore, deceptive magic or powerful creatures and faraway dangers, powerful artifacts, invasions, wars, unexplainable occurrences, while some acknowledge the events or characters of other tales. Rebirth is a theme explored more than once in the Mabinogion. So is revenge. These are served together in the brilliant tale of “Math, Son of Mathonwy”. Through sorcery, a wife is made of flowers, who later deceives her husband and lets him be killed, before the husband is resurrected to seek revenge.
  
  In the Arthurian tales, we see recurring characters even, like Arthur, Peredur, Gwalchmei son of Gwyar, Glewlwyd Strong Grip, Kei, Peredur, Gwrhyr Interpreter of Languages, and mighty heroes whose capabilities and exploits are a match for those of the Irish heroes across the sea, like Cu Chulainn and Finn Mac Cumhal.
  
  There are a lot of things here reminiscent of Irish myth. In the sprawling saga “How Culhwch Won Olwen,” a tale about the nobleman Culhwch son of Kilydd son of the ruler Kelyddon, also cousin of Arthur, attempting to win the daughter of a giant, we are introduced to many pages of knights in Arthur’s court, some with their bizarre or amazing gifts described or their infamous traits explained. Quite a few of these names are obvious nods to Irish counterparts: Cnychwr Son of Ness = Conchubar Son of Ness; Cubert Son of Dáire = Cu Roi son of Dáire; Fercos son of Poch = Fergus Son of Roech; Corvil Bervach = Conall Cearnach.
  
  In this story we see something else familiar from Irish myth. Chief Giant Ysbaddaden assigns an enormous list of seemingly impossible tasks and quests to Culhwch in order for the latter to get the hand of his daughter. Arthur and his men end up accomplishing these tasks for Culhwch, making up a magnificent saga. A similar thing happens in the Irish tale “The Quest of the Sons of Tuireann”, in which Lugh, son of a chieftain murdered by Tuireann’s sons, orders the sons to undertake a sequence of quests seeking nearly impossible artifacts to do penance for their crime. Unlike the Irish tale, however, Culhwch’s does not end in grief and despair and death.
  
  In “Branwen, the Daughter of Llyr” there is a cauldron from Ireland that can bring the dead back to life, though they are mute. This cauldron, or one like it, appears in a few other tales, and is thought to have been an early form of the Grail myth. The lore of the cauldron involves people trapped in a burning iron house, which is seen also in a few tales from Irish myth.
  
  In what is perhaps the most outright heroic of all the heroic sagas, “Peredur Son of Evrawg”, an adventure-after-adventure series of spellbinding quests and battles and jousts and feats, Peredur, the peerless hero, far away from the woman he loves, takes a moment to reflect on her beauty. Shortly after defeating some hags in battle, who ask for mercy and agree to teach him about horsemanship in exchange for their lives, Peredur gazes at a dead duck in the snow, with ravens devouring it. The black of the ravens reminds him of his love’s hair; the white of the snow reminds him of the paleness of her skin; the red blood oozing through the snow reminds him of her red cheeks.
  
  A scene very much like this one appears in the Irish myth of Dierdre, in which a snowscape of ravens feasting on the dead gets Dierdre thinking about the appearance of the man she loves. Artful contrasts and vivid imagery like this abound in the Mabinogion.
  
  As Peredur pauses in meditation, he is approached by knight after knight from Arthur’s court, each hoping to speak with him. Wishing to instead remain in his meditation, he defeats these men in combat, until Gwalchmei rouses him from his trance with friendly words, and a welcoming demeanor.
  
  “The Dream of Maxen” also shares some similarity with an Irish tale, “The Dream of Oengus.” In both, the man dreams of a beautiful girl who, upon awakening to her absence, leaves him depressed and nearly paralyzed with heartache until he can find her in the waking world. Each tale sees its subsequent quest play out in contrasting ways. Transformation into animals is another recurring element of both Irish and Welsh lore, and so is the theme of rebirth through this metamorphosis.
  
  Despite many of the surface similarities between Welsh and some Irish tales, they are just that: surface. The Welsh tales go in vastly different directions, have singular and unique progressions and ideas that set them apart from stories that might have shared similar origins long ago.
  
  The people in these stories come from all over Celtic history and folklore, and some are pure products of the imagination of those sharing these tales. Others are more ambiguous, being possibly based on real people or the fusion of multiple legendary people into a single character. In the epic “Owein, or the Countess of the Fountain”, one of the members of Arthur’s court is Kynan, a man also mentioned in Y Gododdin, said to be at the Battle of Catraeth. In this same tale, Owein is said to be the son of Urien, historical king of Reghed, who appears as the subject of many old Welsh poems.
  
  The Three Romances of the Mabinogion are the three final tales, which have parallels in later Arthurian lore, particularly in the works of French poet Chrétien de Troyes whose romances popularized many of the major concepts in Arthurian legend. These are the stories of Owein, Peredur, and Gereint. This last character is also immortalized in a few elegies from Llywarch Hen and the Black Book of Carmarthen, although he is thought to not have really existed.
  
  No attempt at characterizing these stories together or individually would do them justice. There is a marvelous, epic atmosphere to each of them, a feel of adventure and magic and peculiarity. They often span a huge geography, taking place not only all across Wales, but in England, Cornwall, Ireland, Rome, and the Otherworld.
  
  Violence and death and battle are frequent movers in the stories, as are voyages to distant lands, the solitude and power of nature, strange fortresses deep in the woods, cryptic occurrences and odd imagery, ruthless oppressors and warlords, mystic knights, and bewildering sequences of events that gradually grow into forms more confounding than they seemed at first.
  
  Many concepts not only in fantasy literature but in the broader realm of fiction that were popularized over the later centuries seem to have been introduced in these stories. One that first springs to mind is the mysterious wall of fog that Gereint meets toward the end of his saga. He knows something challenging awaits him on the other side, but is unsure what. Outside the fog wall poles are lined up with the heads of slain men who have come before. He enters the fog and is soon met with an enormous warrior he must defeat. Only after he is victorious does the fog disappear so that he may leave.
  
  Anyone who’s played Dark Souls will recognize in this the origins of the game’s iconic fog walls, shrouding a mysterious boss from the player. The fog is only cleared by defeating the boss. On that note, there are dozens of things that I’ve noticed video games like this have taken from medieval literature, although I suspect they were inspired instead by derivative sources instead of the original source. Still, it’s cool to see where many of these ideas are born, and in the varying different ways they manifest.
  
  The Mabinogion is the supreme piece of Welsh prose mythology. A country whose major medieval literary output was its amazing poetry also had this unmatched body of work. It evokes visions and realms and sensations that are the rare product of the grandest literary works. Its authors are unknown, and the origins of each tale reach far into an age of iron and mist and mountains, an age where storytelling was a high art.
• 
  Jeffrey

  How does a person even presume to review a book that has survived 700 years, containing stories that survived close to their current form without anyone writing them down for a further 300 years?
  
  I originally picked up the book because
  Lloyd Alexander's
  Chronicles of Prydain is based on Welsh myth, Mabinogion is _the_ collection of Welsh myth, and is even acknowledged by the author as one of his sources. Who would want to read some of the proto-stories that gave us the Black Cauldron, and Arwan, and Fflewddur Fflam (how can you not love that name), and Taran.
  
  So the question you lazy ones want answered is, "How much did he borrow?" so you don't have to read it yourself. Well, lets see here. Arwan is definitely a character in the Mabinogion (a Greek Hades equivalent with his own Persephone story (Rhiannon)). There is a story involving a cauldron that can bring people back to life (without the capability of speech) and even a vaguely similar destruction myth (living hero inside bursting the cauldron). There are stories about people from Llyr, there is a couple stories of wallets that can always contain more food. If you wanted a quick overview, it is clear that he took parts of the stories and crafted something new that in many cases would fit with the old.
  
  I enjoyed it and will probably read it again some time. It got me wanting to read
  Le Morte D'Arthur (I have a copy somewhere) and to play
  Gwyddbwyll
  
  Just to mention, I love love love this edition. It is pocket sized, hard bound with a bound in bookmark ribbon. The paper and font is very readable (as is the translation).
• 
  Morgan

  I guess this was a good book to read for awhile while sick.
  
  While I like the stories, this edition is the reason I'm giving this three stars. NO GLOSSARY? They had a brief how translate the words in the beginning, but I think it was needed at the end with all the characters mentioned. Got confusing and the Welsh names don't help.
  
  What I liked best was this version's of Arthur. Not the best Arthurian book, but it was interesting he was already a hero and just a king at this point. He's not the main focus of the stories either. I would have some prior knowledge of earlier takes of Arthur before reading this book though.
  
  If you can, I would find a better edition than Penguins if it out there. I usually like Penguins books, but this one lacks some stuff that would have been helpful.
• 
  emma

  i will never get my fix of arthurian literature. this was quite good but i want to read the childrens story book ‘the mab’ and them revisit a few of the stories.
• 
  Hilary "Fox"

  
  The Mabinogion is a collection of medieval Welsh tales that makes up a rich mythological tradition. The tales themselves are only tangentially related - only one character, Pryderi, appears in all four branches. Nevertheless the tales are fascinating, rich and varied in their interpretation. This translation,
  Sioned Davies, was recommended to me as a good starting point so I happily took it. I'll likely try out other translations as the year goes on.
  
  Not being too thoroughly versed in Welsh culture, I found it fascinating. Small clutches of mythical symbolism and characters can be seen. Glimpses of British, of Irish, of Gaul - small swaths of Orkadian creatures and belief. There's King Arthur there, there's the cult of a head, there's a cauldron of plenty. The myths are rich and strange. Here are the original versions of some characters that later got bastardized into something else. Arawn comes to mind for that one...
  
  All in all, it's great. This edition also carries within its a wonderful version of Parzifal that I'd highly recommend to anyone who enjoys that story.
• 
  Marko Vasić

  This translation is the most comprehensive that I've read so far. But
  , translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones was first edition that was quite understandable for me, for at first I read translation by Lady Charlotte Guest which was very confusing and unsorted, and those translators organized stories into three parts, when all pieces of understanding came together.
  This book is on my very favourite list of titles, and along with Silmarillion and Dante's Inferno left very strong impression on me. First part with four branches of Mabinogi is real onomastic turmoil, but I got use to that type of literature after I read Silmarillion and instantly fell in love with that book. I like that medieval style of writing that is very different from modern one, and is based on factual thread that goes one after another and where you can expect some illogical parts to pop-up from nowhere and change the story line. Second and third part are like other medieval epopee type of stories where different adventures of noblemen, fair ladies and king Arthur are woven and explained. Definitely, after first reading, I put this book on my TO-RE-READ-MORE-THAN-ONCE-PER-YEAR list.
• 
  Barnaby Thieme

  I cannot say why I resonate with some cultures and times more than others - why, for example, I love the literature of Sumer but not Egypt. I can say that I am grateful that we have the Mabinogion to puzzle over, to study, and to treasure as an invaluable source of information about the literature and history of the Welsh, even if I do not deeply respond to it on an artistic level to the same degree as, say, The Book of Invasions, with which it was approximately contemporaneous.
  
  Tales of uneven quality fill these pages, and some are more dull than enlivening, choked with a bramble of oral tropes and devices that confound the inner ear, such as formulaic repetitions, very long lists of names, stereotyped dialog, or parades of knights who differ only by superficial attributes.
  
  I had hoped for more signs of the imagination and spirit that were vibrantly on display at certain dazzling moments, such as the appearance of a tree, one half of which was green and growing, while the other half smoldered in flame. More often I got fairly standard warrior adventures, boasts, challenges, battles, and quests, with periodic bouts of dank misogyny.
• 
  Nicky

  (Sixth book/seventh text in the
  readathon.)
  
  It's been a long time since I read this in its entirety, if I ever did. I picked it up since I seemed to be on a role with Arthurian stuff, and was surprised to find how many of the stories do have some Arthurian aspect. I was under the impression it was only one or two.
  
  I like the Joneses translation, although the 'thou'ing gets a little irritating and hard to read at times -- perhaps mostly once it's 8am and you haven't slept that night.
  
  Interesting that the three prose romances at the end are pretty much copies of Chrétien de Troyes' romances. Obviously, they're rather later than 'Culhwch and Olwen'.
  
  I was always fond of 'The Dream of Macsen Wledig', for some reason, but now I am probably most fond of 'Culhwch and Olwen'.
• 
  Suzannah

  I've always been extremely fond of the Mabinogion, and it was delightful to reread these stories (in Gwyn Jones's translation). Manawydan the son of Llyr and The Lady of the Fountain are two favourites, and I love the distinctive Welshness of these stories.
• 
  Terese

  Such a fun read (though the names were a challenge - ”Gwlwlwyd”!?) with some great stories. I thought the Four branches were the best part of it, the Arthurian adventures were ok (especially ”Owein/The countess of the fountain”) but they also show a shift in tone with knightly valor (and more solo adventures) and courtly love. As I find heroes like Peredur a real snore these stories were less interesting to me and harder to get through.
  
  There are a lot of recurring themes and formulaic patterns that are very interesting to study (if you like that sort of thing).
  
  I’ll be re-reading the stories of Branwen, Pwyll, and Manawydan soon I think!
• 
  Lady Selene

  From my notes:
  
  1. Mabinogi is a scribal error, derived from the Welsh word mab meaning ‘boy, son’. As a result, mabinogi are tales for the young, stories for youth.
  2. Llyma dechreu mabinogi - this is the beginning of a mabinogi.
  3. He who is leader, let him be a bridge - Welsh proverb, here taken quite literally.
  4. Englyn - is one of the oldest Welsh strict-metre forms, here an early three-lined type (four lined is the norm today), written in a complex system involving the repetition on consonants and internal rhyme.
  5. Shame on my beard - the beard was a symbol of manhood in medieval Wales. This is reflected in Welsh law, where wishing a blemish on the beard of one’s husband was a beatable offence.
  6. Cyfarwydd - storyteller
  7. Gwenhwyfar - old spelling for Guinevere, the first element of the name means fair and the second a spirit, fairy.
  8. Caerllion - location of Arthur’s court, older traditional stories place him in Celli Wig in Cornwall.
  9. Gwyddbwyll - literally ‘wood-sense’, a chess-like game popular in medieval Wales.
  10. Caerfyrddin - old spelling for Carmarthen. Geoffrey of Monmouth locates the fatherless boy Myrddin (Ambrosius Merlinus) here, indeed the personal name has been derived from the place-name.
  11. Llydaw - Brittany, which is also described as llid-taw, half-silent.
  12. Caer Ludd, later Caer Lundain - an onomastic explanation as to how London was renamed due to Lludd rebuilding the city, caer means fort.
  13. Dragons: according to the young Ambrosius Merlinus, Vortigern’s collapsing fortress in Snowdonia is due to two dragons, one red and one white, symbolising the native Welsh and the Saxon invaders. The Red defeats the White, leading to the prophecy that Saxons will eventually be thrown out of Brittany.
  14. Prydwen - the name of Arthur’s ship.
  15. Llamrei - the name of Arthur’s mare, meaning Grey or Swift Leaper.
  16. Cwn - fairy dogs or hell hounds.
  17. Cerddin - rowan tree or mountain ash.
  18. Llwch Tawy - old name for Llyn Y Fan Fawr.
  19. Gwig - forest
  20. Fisher King - present as a grey-haired lame man, there might be an association between him and Bran (of the second Branch) who was wounded through the foot with a spear, the Fisher King is sometimes called Bron and has been wounded through the thigh.
• 
  Debra

  For those who are serious about understanding the roots of all storytelling, this is definitely a must-read. This book definitely helps you understand where the most common formulas for storylines come from, consisting of common uses such as the magic number of 3, fairies and the otherworld, and the connections to and from both parallel worlds. This is definitely one of the ultimate classics of European languages. This book is a great collection and documentation of the oral practices of storytelling, which relied on formulaic structure for easier memorization during the pre-literate times. Of course, if you are looking for a purely entertaining read, this may not be for you. Since these short stories are documented from the fairly early stages of storytelling, the stories definitely will not be as intricate as a more modern book written by only one author. Folklore is the orally passed stories from many people to many others, and in the process, these stories are of course altered many times by the story tellers. These are orally passed on stories that were later documented (think: the Odyssey). At times, the stories may be somewhat funny in the silly sense, and of course their explanation and reasoning may be somewhat hard to believe for us modern folk who have a better understanding of science and the way things work. Nevertheless, this book has greatly expanded my understanding and fluency in modern literature, as well as many other forms of story writing. Reading this book definitely helps you grow a keener eye for tropes, and a grounded understanding for where they stem from.