Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (35 page)
Read Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) Online
Authors: James MacKillop
In their early literature, the Welsh people describe themselves as living on
Ynys Prydain
, the Isle of Britain. It was not simply that the Cambrian Peninsula containing the principality of Wales was a part of the island of Britain. Instead, the early Welsh correctly perceived that they were the cultural and linguistic descendants of the ancient Britons who were conquered and colonized by the Romans. Their literary purview extended in pre-modern times to regions of Great Britain that we today do not think of as ‘Wales’. The lengthy early poem
Y Gododdin
, attributed to Aneirin of the sixth and seventh centuries, begins near what is today Edinburgh and continues into northern Yorkshire. Large areas of the Lowlands of Scotland, especially in the southwest, remained Welsh-speaking for many centuries into the Middle Ages. The later, almost wistful name for these lost provinces is ‘the Old North’.
The word ‘Wales’ derives from the Old English
wealh, wealas
(pl.) meaning ‘foreigner’ or ‘not a Saxon’. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who arrived in Great Britain from the middle of the fifth century, brutalized the native population and showed scant interest in learning the British language. Pushed to the western periphery of the island, the ancient British language survived in Wales, Cornwall and, after some delay, Brittany. Wales came to be thought of as a separate entity before the time the eighth-century King Offa of Mercia ordered construction of the long earthwork, Offa’s Dyke, separating native Celtic speakers from the Germanic Angles and Saxons. Earthwork remains still lie a bit east of the modern border of Wales. Eventually the Welsh came to
refer to themselves as
Cymry
and their principality as
Cymru
, from the earlier
com-brogos
, compatriots.
The Welsh are culturally but not ethnically distinct from the rest of Britain. Genome studies beginning in the mid-1990s confirm what anthropologists had long thought. Genes of the ancient Britons survive in many inhabitants of Britain, whether they think of themselves as Welsh, English or Scottish. There was no fifth-century ethnic cleansing. Many of the Britons, for whatever reason, learned English and blended in with the invaders. Neither should the centuries-old link between ancient British or Brythonic and Modern Welsh coax us into emphasizing a widespread survival of pagan religion and worldview in Welsh tradition. Such a view was highly seductive in the early decades of nineteenth-century Celtic scholarship but has been severely discredited since. The Welsh Dôn certainly appears to share the same roots as the Irish Danu, but they are hardly identical. The children of Dôn who appear in the
Mabinogi
, Gwydion, Gilfaethwy, Gofannon, etc., do not have Irish counterparts. Similarly, Modron, the mother of the abducted child Mabon in the eleventh-century
Culhwch and Olwen
, derives from the ancient goddess Matrona, eponym of the Marne River in Gaul, just as Mabon derives from Maponos [divine youth], a god of Roman-occupied Britain and Gaul linked to Apollo. The fascinating presence of these very old names in medieval stories may intrigue the reader, but it does not mean that the literary products of Christianized Wales are actually pagan. A modern analogy can be seen in the many culturally archaic artefacts of Christmas. Mistletoe (of druidic origin), the yule log and the decorated conifer known as the Christmas tree are, to the learned observer, unmistakably of extra-Christian origin. To most people decorating a Christmas tree, its exotic origin is merely incidental, not a sign that the household with the tree has returned to ancient worship.
Writing in the Welsh language began after the advent of writing in Irish and survives in smaller bulk. Although the literary tradition extends from about the middle of the sixth century to the present, most pre-Norman work (i.e. before 1094), with two or three exceptions, survives in twelfth-to fifteenth-century manuscripts. The Latin
Historia Brittonum
(
c
.800) alludes to Welsh poets who sang in the sixth century, works attributed to two of whom, Taliesin and Aneirin,
survive. Fanciful lore associated with such poets, recounted in the next section, testifies to their early renown but undercuts their claim to historicity.
The early Welsh and Britons, as mentioned before, never perceived that they formed a community with the Irish, Manx or Scottish Gaels. The unity of the Celts was not defined until the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Welsh and the Irish were certainly aware of one another and each made frequent raids on the other, often returning with captive slaves. They also settled on each other’s territories and integrated themselves into the native social fabric. It would be a mistake, nonetheless, to overplay linguistic and narrative parallels. They do not conclusively demonstrate that there was a long-lost common origin for the literatures of Wales and Ireland, as there is for the two languages. The issue is elusive and contentious, with learned opinion divided between accepting and rejecting the single-origin theory. A fuller discussion would require more space and specialized terminology than would be appropriate here, but a few examples can define the problem. The name of the Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhaill finds a cognate in the name of the Welsh figure Gwynn ap Nudd;
gwyn
also means fair or white, and Fionn is of the family of Nuadu. But within their traditions Fionn and Gwynn are far from identical, having differing statures and contrasting careers. Gwynn is first ruler of the otherworld and dwindles down until he is merely king of the fairies. A similar discontinuity can be seen with Manawydan fab Llŷr, the title character and protagonist of the Third Branch of the
Mabinogi
(see
pp. 277–80
, below), and Manannán mac Lir. Despite his skill with magic and certain crafts, Manawydan lacks the divine capabilities of the Irish sea god. In still other instances the points of comparison are internal rather than linguistic. The wild man of the woods, Myrddin Wyllt, goes mad at the sight of a battle and gains the gift of prophecy. Narratives about him invite comparison with the Irish Suibne Geilt as well as with the Scottish figure Lailoken. But all three, Myrddin, Suibne and Lailoken, are examples of the Wild Man of the Woods theme found elsewhere in early European tradition, and Myrddin contributes to the persona of the celebrated Arthurian magician Merlin.
As in Ireland, Welsh heroic prose narrative draws on much earlier oral tradition, whose existence is easily inferred. Early readers
evidently recognized resonant characters at their first introduction. The vividness and succulence of innocent Rhiannon or guilty Blodeuedd are Welsh gifts to Western literature. The earliest surviving Welsh narrative,
Culhwch and Olwen
(
c
.1100), may be late compared to Irish examples but it still predates most of the development of prose narrative elsewhere in Europe.
Culhwch
also contains an early portrait of King Arthur with a roll-call of his companions and appears before such often-cited Arthurian texts as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
Historia Regnum Britanniae
(
c
.1135), Wace’s
Roman de Brut
(1155 ) or Chrétien de Troyes’
Lancelot
(
c
. 1178).
Eleven anonymous tales redacted in Norman times are found in
The White Book of Rhyderch
(
c
.1325) and
The Red Book of Hergest
(
c
. 13 82–1410). During the nineteenth century Lady Charlotte Guest recovered and translated them in three volumes (1838–49), along with the story of Taliesin of later provenance, to make an even dozen. She called the collection
Mabinogion
, an anglicization of
mabynnogyon
. The title was once thought to mean ‘tales of youth’, comparable to the French
enfances
. More recent scholarship suggests it may be translated as the ‘stories of the divine Maponos/Mabon’. The term appears only once in early texts and has long been recognized as a scribal error or ghost-word, a presumed plural for
Mabinogi
. Lady Guest’s term has wide currency and was endorsed by the esteemed translation by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones (1910–72), but the more authentic term
Mabinogi
used in Patrick K. Ford’s translation (1977) is preferred here. While the eleven medieval tales are still often bound together, the term
Mabinogi
should only apply to the four interconnected stories:
Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed; Branwen, Daughter of Llŷr; Manawydan, Son of Llŷr;
and
Math, Son of Mathonwy
. Together these are known in Welsh as
Pedair Cainc y Mabinogi
or the Four Branches of the Mabinogi and are summarized on
pp. 271–83, below
. ‘Branch’ is preferred to ‘chapter’ or ‘book’ because it does not imply a linear continuum.
Taliesin is one of the three best-known names from early Wales, along with Dylan and Rhiannon, even among people who pay little attention to anything Welsh. An examination of what little is known about the life of Taliesin [W. radiant brow], or even of the resplendent stories that later attached themselves to him, does not explain why his name should be so familiar. The reason is that diverse forces have popularized him both in the United Kingdom and in North America. The Anglo-Welsh fantasy fiction writer Charles Williams (1886–1945) greatly expanded Taliesin’s characterization, based on Welsh originals, in a series of popular novels. From there Taliesin entered the food-chain of fantasy fiction, making his way eventually to role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Travelling in more elevated artistic circles, the Welsh-American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (18 69–1959) made Taliesin a personal culture hero and built two estates named for him, one in Wisconsin and the second in Arizona. The second compound, Taliesin West, has since become a teaching centre accepting only select, highly qualified students. The effect has been to give the name ‘Taliesin’ connotations of innovation and excellence.
The historical Taliesin, if he existed at all, may have been a native of the central Welsh mini-kingdom of Powys who spent much of his adult life in the Old North praising the merits of several patron princes. He is, with Aneirin, one of the two surviving
cynfeirdd
[oldest poets]. Nearly 800 years after his lifetime, scribes assembled sixty poems linked to him in the
Book of Taliesin
. Of these, twelve have been ascribed to a sixth-century author by the modern scholar Sir Ifor Williams. Despite their antiquity, the dozen do not include the kinds of works that generations of Welsh schoolchildren might have been obliged to memorize, shaping their sense of idiom and style. Six are eulogies to Taliesin’s prince, Urien Rheged, and to the prince’s son, Owain ap Urien, figures of verifiable historicity. Two of the eulogies include intercessions with the patron after a period of estrangement. Of the remaining six poems, two are graphic descriptions of battles fought by Urien and Owain with the Angles and Picts, and yet others are praise poems for more remote Welsh rulers.
Taliesin includes Christian elements in the poems, beginning and ending with prayers for the soul, for example, but his exaltation of the warrior-leader feels pagan. His ideal ruler, Urien Rheged, protects his people by his personal bravery and his ferocity in battle, yet he is generous and magnanimous in peace. He is not unlike Fionn mac Cumhaill. In all the poems Taliesin is an upholder of the received social order and a conscientious craftsman.
Such a sober figure fired the Welsh imagination. He is assigned a minor role in
Branwen
, the second branch of the
Mabinogi
. Later, poems were attributed to him that he could not possibly have written, depicting encounters with predatory, supernatural beasts, the
cŵn annwfn
[dogs of the otherworld] and with Annwfn, the otherworld itself. A comparable impulse led to Taliesin’s role in the magical origin of poetic inspiration, the
Hanes Taliesin
[Story of Taliesin], sometimes known as
Ystoria Taliesin
[History of Taliesin], with some episodes found in parallel fragments. Elements in the tale may date from as early as the ninth or tenth centuries, but the surviving narrative was compiled in early modern times by Llywelyn Siôn (1540–
c
.1615).
During the reign of the historical Maelgwn Gwynedd (sixth century) in north Wales, Ceridwen, a shapeshifting goddess, lives at the bottom of Bala Lake with her husband Tegid Foel [
teg
, beautiful;
foel
, bald]. He is alluded to in what is still the Welsh name for the lake, Llyn Tegid. All day she brews in a magic cauldron named Amen, whose contents she intends for her own ugly son Morfran [sea crow] so that he might be gifted. With a lack of kindness the text also refers to Morfran as
Afagddu
[utter darkness], an unworthy beneficiary of his mother’s attentions. Her intentions are thwarted when her servant Gwion Bach [little Gwion] snatches three drops from the cauldron on his thumb and forefingers and immediately jams them into his mouth, giving himself the gift of poetry. Blazing with fury, Ceridwen sets after Gwion Bach and each of them undergoes a series of metamorphoses of prey and hunter. Gwion Bach becomes a hare, and Ceridwen a greyhound. He a salmon, and she an otter; lastly, he a grain of wheat and she a hen who swallows him. In the particular magic of Celtic myth, this grain impregnates Ceridwen. The entity that had been Gwion Bach is reborn from her womb as an infant of such stunning loveliness that she cannot bring herself to butcher him and so casts
him adrift on the sea. The baby drifts to the weir, near Aberystwyth, of the mythical ruler Gwyddno Garanhir, whose feckless son Elphin finds him on Calan Mai [May Day]. When the young man opens the blanket he exclaims, ‘
Dyma dâl iesin!
’ [what a beautiful forehead]. To which the child, only three days old, replies, ‘
Taliesin bid
’ [let it be Taliesin]. Gwyddno takes him as a fosterson.
As the boy grows older, he forms a bond with the bumbling Elphin, often advancing the fortunes of his foster-father. In a telling episode, Taliesin accompanies Elphin to the court of Maelgwn Gwynedd at Deganwy (near the mouth of the Conwy River, north Wales), where he employs magic and his superior poetic powers to overcome the household poets. As he is the adult, Elphin gains more from this contest than the poet does. Puffed up in vanity, Elphin boasts to Maelgwn’s court that his (unnamed) wife is the fairest in the land, his horses the swiftest, and his bard (Taliesin) the wisest. For this hubris Maelgwn imprisons Elphin and sends the royal son Rhun [grand, awful], an irresistible seducer, to test Elphin’s wife’s virtue. In each instance, Taliesin proves a resourceful aide to his foster-father. He substitutes a female servant in disguise for Elphin’s wife, and the helpless girl succumbs to Rhun’s predatory charm. Later, when Rhun cuts a finger from the unfortunate servant to prove his conquest, Elphin is able to prove that his wife, with all fingers intact, is innocent. Taliesin next frees Elphin from Maelgwn’s chains by singing a magnificent song on his own origin from the time of Lucifer’s fall. Lastly, Elphin’s horses defeat Maelgwn’s, and, following Taliesin’s instructions, a jockey drops his cap, revealing a cauldron of gold that repays the foster-father’s generosity in rescuing the infant poet from the weir.