The Mabinogion

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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... In the Robin of Sherwood story "The King's Fool" (1984), Rhiannon's Wheel is the name of a stone circle where Herne the Hunter appears to the characters. [15] 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.

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?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. bw): Cedric Gibbons, Malcolm F. Brown, Edwin B. Willis, F. Keogh Gleason / (c): Lyle R. Wheeler, John DeCuir, Walter M. Scott, Paul S. Fox

Accomplished linguist Lady Charlotte Guest translated medieval Welsh tales into English, and in doing helped to create the Mabinogion that exists today. 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.

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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. 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. Films (conseptual designer and lead concept artist): The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Legend, Erik the Viking, King Kong, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe;