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Mabinogion

"Mabinogi" redirects here. For other uses, see Mabinogi (disambiguation).

Ceridwen by Christopher Williams (1910)

The Mabinogion (Welsh pronunciation: [mabɪˈnɔɡjɔn] ⓘ) is a collection of the earliest Welsh prose stories, compiled in Middle Welsh in the 12th–13th centuries from earlier oral traditions. There are two main source manuscripts, created c. 1350–1410, as well as a few earlier fragments. Often included in the broader mythologies described as the Matter of Britain, the Mabinogion consists of eleven stories of widely different types, offering drama, philosophy, romance, tragedy, fantasy and humour. Strictly speaking, the Four Branches of the Mabinogi are the main sequence of related tales, but seven others include a classic hero quest, "Culhwch and Olwen"; a historic legend, complete with glimpses of a far off age, in "Lludd and Llefelys"; and other tales portraying a very different King Arthur from the later popular versions.

The stories were created and amended by various narrators over a very long period of time, and scholars beginning from the 18th century predominantly viewed the tales as fragmentary pre-Christian Celtic mythology,[1] or folklore.[2] Since the 1970s,[3] an investigation of the [4] common plot structures, characterisation, and language styles, especially in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, has led to an understanding of the integrity of the tales, and they are now seen as a sophisticated narrative tradition, both oral and written, with ancestral construction from oral storytelling,[5][6] and overlay from Anglo-French influences.[7]

The first modern publications of the stories were English translations by William Owen Pughe of several tales in journals in 1795, 1821, and 1829, which introduced usage of the name "Mabinogion".[8] In 1838–45, Lady Charlotte Guest first published the full collection we know today,[9] bilingually in Welsh and English, which popularised the name.[10] The later Guest translation of 1877 in one volume has been widely influential and remains actively read today.[11]

Part of a series on
Celtic mythologies
Gaelic
Brythonic
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The opening few lines of the Mabinogi, from the Red Book of Hergest, scanned by the Bodleian Library

The most recent translation is a compact version by Sioned Davies.[12] John Bollard has published a series of volumes with his own translation, with copious photography of the sites in the stories.[13] The tales continue to inspire new fiction, dramatic retellings,[14] visual artwork, music and research,[15] from early reinterpretations by Evangeline Walton in 1936, to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, to the 1975 song "Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac, to the 2009–2014 series of books commissioned by Welsh independent publisher Seren Books.

  1. ^ Notably Matthew Arnold; William J. Gruffydd.
  2. ^ Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson. 1961. The International Popular Tale and the Early Welsh Tradition. The Gregynog Lectures. Cardiff: CUP.
  3. ^ Bollard 1974; Gantz 1978; Ford 1981.
  4. ^ John K. Bollard. "Mabinogi and Mabinogion - The Mabinogi". The Legend and Landscape of Wales Series
  5. ^ Sioned Davies. 1998. "Written Text as Performance: The Implications for Middle Welsh Prose Narratives", in: Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies, 133–148
  6. ^ Sioned Davies. 2005. "'He Was the Best Teller of Tales in the World': Performing Medieval Welsh Narrative", in: Performing Medieval Narrative, 15–26. Cambridge: Brewer.
  7. ^ Lady Charlotte Guest. The Mabinogion. A Facsimile Reproduction of the Complete 1877 Edition, Academy Press Limited Edition 1978, Chicago, Ill. p. xiii.
  8. ^ 1. William Owen Pughe. 1795. "The Mabinogion, or Juvenile Amusements, Being Ancient Welsh Romances". Cambrian Register, 177–187.
    2. William Owen Pughe. 1821. "The Tale of Pwyll". Cambro-Briton Journal 2 (18): 271–275.
    3. William Owen Pughe. 1829. "The Mabinogi: Or, the Romance of Math Ab Mathonwy". The Cambrian Quarterly Magazine and Celtic Repository 1: 170–179.
  9. ^ Guest, Lady Charlotte (2002). "The Mabinogion" (PDF). aoda.org. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04.
  10. ^ "Myths and legends – The Mabinogion". www.bbc.co.uk. BBC Wales – History –Themes. Retrieved 2017-08-01.
  11. ^ Available online since 2004. Charlotte Guest. 2004. "The Mabinogion". Gutenberg. http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=5160.
  12. ^ Sioned Davies. 2007. The Mabinogion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  13. ^ 1. John Kenneth Bollard. 2006. Legend and Landscape of Wales: The Mabinogi. Llandysul, Wales: Gomer Press.
    2. John Kenneth Bollard. 2007. Companion Tales to The Mabinogi. Llandysul, Wales: Gomer Press.
    3. John Kenneth Bollard. 2010. Tales of Arthur: Legend and Landscape of Wales. Llandysul, Wales: Gomer Press. Photography by Anthony Griffiths.
  14. ^ e.g. Robin Williams; Daniel Morden.
  15. ^ "BBC – Wales History – The Mabinogion". BBC. Retrieved 2008-07-11.
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