Introduction to Welsh Mythology
celticscholar ♦ January 28, 2010 ♦ 9 Comments
At the beginning let me say that my knowledge of Welsh mythology is very limited. I’ve always had more affinity for Ireland (as this is the land of my father’s ancestors) and have always concentrated on it. Writing about Welsh mythology is more about general knowledge than actual interest in study. So the aim of this essay is to take a general look at what we mean when we say Welsh Mythology. (A full list of Welsh Mythology Texts)
As soon as anyone says the words Welsh Mythology everyone automatically thinks of two things, first, The Mabinogian, and second The Barddas. However, are they all there is to Welsh Mythology? My answer (after a bit of research) would an emphatic NO!
From my previous essay on Celtic Mythology, we know that none of the Welsh writings from the first millennium survived intact. There are fragments in Old Welsh that date to the ninth and tenth century CE. And the medieval manuscripts that survived when looked at linguistically can also be dated to the oral traditions of the ninth and tenth century CE. [1] Most of the Welsh mythology though came to us in the form of Middle Welsh manuscripts. The manuscripts are: The Book of Aneurin, The Book of Taliesin, The Black Book of Carmarthen, The White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Hergest. Other sources include the ninth century Latin text History of the Britons, Geoffrey Monmouth’s twelfth century Latin text History of the Kings of Britain and later works of folklore like the Welsh Fairy Book by W. Jenkyn Thomas written in 1908. There are also mnemonic list-texts like the Welsh Triads and the Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain. [2]
I’m going to begin by taking a closer look at the manuscripts.
The White Book of Hergest, to be distinguished from the Red Book of Hergest, dates from the mid-fifteenth century CE and was destroyed by a five in the nineteenth century. Among its contents were the laws of King Hywel Dda.
A great collection of medieval Welsh prose, the White Book of Rhydderch was copied on parchment around 1325 CE. It contains versions of the Mabinogi and all other narratives including the Mabinogion (except The Dream of Rhonabwy) and many religious texts. [3]
The Red Book of Hergest dates to around 1382-1410 CE, and is considered one of the most important of all the medieval Welsh manuscripts. It contains texts of the Mabinogi and the seven other narratives usually included in the Mabinogion. The Red Book also has poetry of the Godynfeirdd (poets of the twelfth to early fourteenth century CE), histories, grammars, and proverbs, but not religious works or laws. [4]
The Book of Aneirin was transcribed in the middle of the thirteenth century. Twenty percent of the manuscript can be dated linguistically to the ninth and tenth century CE. The manuscript contains the poem Gododdin. [5]
Compiled in the fourteenth century CE, the Book of Taliesin contains more than sixty poems attributed to the sixth century Taliesin. Of these sixty only twelve were really thought to be his. The manuscript also includes Prophecy of Britain, attributed to Myrddin (Merlin) and Cad Goddeu. [6]
The Black Book of Carmarthen is considered to be the earliest complete manuscript of Welsh poetry. It was transcribed around 1250 CE. The manuscript includes a large number of poems datable from the ninth to the end of the twelfth centuries. Many of the poems were about heroes and some were in the voice of Myrddin. [7]
Now I’m going to talk a little about the more famous myths of the Welsh mythology and that is the two texts of the Mabinogian and the Barddas.
The Barddas of Iolo Morganweg is a visionary reconstruction of the Druidic and Bardic tradition, which had and still has a huge influence on the modern Celtic and neo-Pagan revival, or a notorious forgery. Actually both statements are very true… Iolo Morganwg, who was born Edward Williams, was a native speaker of both English and Welsh. He spent his entire life collecting and transcribing medieval Welsh documents, as well as writing poetry under his own byline. He was also a first-rate literary forger of ancient Welsh; some have commented that his forgeries were as good or better than the real thing. It is also true that he wrote much of the Barddas under the influence of laudanum (an opium-based medication which he took for asthma). [8] No one can deny though that even though almost everyone knows it is a forgery the Barddas is now considered a part of Welsh mythology by a lot of Neo-pagans and Neo-Druids.
The most mythological stories contained in the Mabinogion collection are collectively titled The Four Branches of the Mabinogi. The Mabinogi is all about the life of the hero Pryderi. He is conceived, born and named in the first Branch, fights for Bendigeidfran in Ireland in the second, loses and regains his kingdom in the third, and dies in the fourth. He was probably originally central to all four Branches, and remains so in the first and third, but is reduced to a passing mention in the second and fourth, which concentrate on the children of Llyr and the children of Dôn, two clans of characters who were probably once gods. [9]
Two of the most famous poems of the Welsh mythology are Cad Goddeu or The Battle of the Trees and Y Goddodin. The Battle of the Trees talks about how the legendary enchanter Gwydion animates the trees of the forest to fight as his army [10], while the Goddodin is a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth. [11]
I hope this short introduction to Welsh mythology is a helpful one to all who want to study it and find it a guide to where to start.
ENDNOTES:
[1] “Welsh Texts” Access Date: January 27, 2010 http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/index_welsh.html
[2] “Welsh Mythology” November 2, 2009. Access date: January 27, 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_mythology
[3] James Mackillop. Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) p.428
[4] Ibid, p. 371
[5] Ibid, p. 47
[6] Ibid, p. 49
[7] Ibid, p. 43
[8] “Iolo Morganwg” January 12, 2010. Acess date: January 28, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iolo_Morganwg
[9] “Mabinogion” January 27, 2010. Access date: January 28, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabinogion
[10] “Cad Goddeu” December 29, 2009. Access Date: January 28, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cad_Goddeu
[11] “Y Gododdin” January 27, 2010. Access Date: January 28, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gododdin
From Jenn MacCormack at DruidicDawn.org:
Excellent overview, Maya. The heroic poetry may not contain much mythology so to speak but it does provide (some of it, especially the Gododdin) some context from the pagan era within which we can read things like the Mabinogi. Indeed most of what we call Welsh today probably originated in Scotland with the Brythonic ppl who lived there before the … See MoreGaels and Germanic ppl kicked them out. There is a lot of proof that the 2nd branch of the Mabinogi carries direct word for word correlations to Icelandic stories (in welsh of course) and that at least the 2nd and 4th branches were probably more Brythonic and ancient in origin. The 1st and 3rd branches, which are set in Dyfed, are decidedly Gaelic. This is not surprising that one of the biggest and longest Irish settlements in Wales after the Romans left (yes the Irish saw a chance to exploit) was in Dyfed. I therefore am not sure I agree with Gruffydd in his analysis that the mabinogi was really originally about Pryderi. This is hotly debated. Great work, Maya. Just adding my two-sense.
From Jenn MacCormack at druiddawn.org:
I love discussing this sort of thing. I do think that Irish studies is incomplete without studying the Welsh and Scottish sides of history because the Irish were intrinsically caught up with them. The same is even more true for the Welsh student. Because we have less material from the Welsh past than the Irish do, it is important to do solid groundwork in Irish and Scottish, and also Anglo-Saxon history and culture because one’s neighbours always contribute to providing context and a bigger picture. I have found this endlessly helpful.
I tend to agree, which is why I also read Scottish and Welsh History, the mythology though is a different story lol. I keep feeling like Scottish mythology is just another way of reading Irish Stories, and the welsh mythology is more about poetry, I’ve already read the Mabinogian.
More From Jenn:
Well no there really isn’t an evident mythology in Welsh materials. Wales became Christian so much sooner than Ireland. I believe St Patrick was Welsh. So what mythology that we know there must have been is embedded in the cultural psyche and in their poetry and stories. To approach Welsh mythology, you have to put aside your ideas of mythology and instead embrace the whole experience. Then the hidden qualities and characters can begin to emerge, providing you with insights into the divine as perceived by the Cymric people and their ancestors. I am sure that the Proto-Welsh (as true Wales did not begin to emerge until circa 600, give or take a few centuries, lol) were polytheistic but I also see strong senses of animistic understandings of those deities. To be truly accurate, it should thus be called Brythonic mythology. This is where the Welsh stories and poetry have their roots. Technically there would be no “Welsh” mythology as by the time Cymru emerged as a nation, they were already ardently being converted to Christianity. But that is nitpicking. When Ireland was in their mythic era, Wales or rather the Brythonic ppls who eventually were forced into Wales, covered much of Britain, including vast portions of Scotland. Wales is made up of a number of exiled peoples, forced to leave their native lands and band together, only to be labelled as “foreigners” by the Saxons in their own lands. I think this is why the Welsh gave us the word “hiraeth”. This is a huge cultural scar, one that Celtic pagans have little awareness of. I think it is one of the cultural wounds that helped shape Wales as a nation, even today.
We must also keep in mind that it is with this tribal uprooting and exile that the new Welsh seemed to begin adopting Christianity. It makes me wonder if Christianity made sense to them after their left their lands and thus you must remember, in one sense, they were also forced into exile from their gods who were, no doubt, connected directly to the places they left behind. Not only was this an exile from their homeland, but it became an exile from the essence of their culture, from their orientation to the cosmos, from their sense of where they fit in to the scheme of things. You can see this disillusionment in their later poetry. My heart bleeds for them when reading the sheer sorrow, the unbelievable sense of guilt and hopelessness many of them felt for having survived and seen what to them was the end of their world. Yet they have still survived as a people. Cymru am byth!!!
Wow, I love the points you made, especially about being exiled from their gods. It sort of makes sense…
That it was a “forgery” is something endlessly repeated without a shred of any evidence to back it up. I am not saying it was not forged, but what I find suspicious is the “everyone knows” without a single argument or piece of evidence presented anywhere online. If a complete investigation and rebuttal exists, in some obscure journal somewhere, why hasn’t it been widely reprinted? I do not say that something is inauthentic or forged based on hearsay, not even the hearsay of scholars, because scholars are often wrong, and I want to examine the evidence for myself. You claim some say he was so good a forger his stuff was as good or better than the originals. That sounds highly suspicious to me, the argument of someone along the line somewhere who examined the evidence and couldn’t actually detect a forgery, but who has assumed, probably on the basis of content that they don’t like and/or that doesn’t fit their pet theory, that it couldn’t be real and therefore must be a forgery. I can imagine the argument : we don’t see anything else like this content in the rest of the Welsh corpus, ergo it must be spurious. That’s sloppy historical thinking, to declare an anomaly in error simply because it doesn’t fit, instead of doing the investigatory work to explain the anomaly. I’ve already done a tad of legwork to explain how material akin to this could have gotten into Wales, from two different medieval heretical traditions, and no doubt a full time historian could trace such things further. Even an amateur could look at the material and guess some sort of Neo-Platonism picked up by Welsh bards, probably as modified through a heretical Christian source, and reworked according to their sensibilities.
So my question to you is, can you please point me towards any solid sources that will lay out in full the evidence and arguments indicating that Barddas was a forgery? Because until such time I’m going to follow my instinct upon reading the work, which is that it least has some authenticity. My instincts have proven right before.
Just because the Barddas is a forgery it does not mean that it is to be ignored. Check out what Mary Jones says about it.
http://www.maryjones.us/jce/barddas.html
http://www.maryjones.us/jce/iolo.html
You should also read the following books:
* Jenkins, Geraint (ed.) (2005), A Rattleskull Genius: the Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg. Cardiff: University of Wales Press
* Löffler, Marion (2007). The Literary and Historical Legacy of Iolo Morganwg 1826-1926. Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press. ISBN 978-0-7083-2113-3.
* Morgan, Prys (1975) Iolo Morganwg, (Writers of Wales). Cardiff: University of Wales Press
* Williams, G. J. (1956) Iolo Morganwg. Y Gyfrol Gyntaf, Cardiff: University of Wales Press
* Williams, G. J. (1926) Iolo Morganwg a Chywyddau’r Ychwanegiad. Cardiff: University of Wales Press
* Hutton, Ronald (2009) Blood and Mistletoe. Yale University Press (ISBN13: 9780300144857)
* Hutton, Ronald (2007) Druids: A History. Hambledon & London (ISBN13: 9781847252104)
Let me say that all of the well know Celtic Scholars will tell you in their books that it is a forgery, but they don’t minimize its value. As a work from at the most 16th century, it is a great piece of work. But it is not an “authentic druidic” work. You have your own ideas and that is ok, I prefer to take mine from the scholars that I have read on the subject. I hope that the books above help.
Great Introduction thank you very much,
I thought that you might like my
Taliesin’s Battle Of The Trees machinima film,
Bright Blessings By Stone and Star,
Celestial Elf ~
Thanks, I’ve already seen it before and loved it