#y mabinogion

[gingersnaptaff]

POLL TIME 2 ☺️☺️

Some background for each!

Gwalchmai: The OG Gawain, slayer of giants in Welsh myth, besties with Owain and Peredur. He's known for his gold/silver tongue and is literally like The Best Boi. I am enamoured with him. Tells Cai to do one when Peredur gives him a broken arm. Also this passage single-handedly convinced me that Peredur and Gwalchmai are a couple: 'And Peredur and Gwalchmai went to Gwalchmai's pavilion to take off their armour. And Peredur put on the same kind of garment that Gwalchmai wore. And they went hand in hand to where Arthur was, and greeted him.' Thank u, Sioned Davies.

Branwen: Is the only woman in the Mabinogi to have a branch named after her. Literally the sweetest woman ever. Her dad is the sea God, Llŷr, and her brothers are Bendigeidfran and Manawydan. Trained a starling to send messages to Bendigeidfran to say she was being abused by the Irish court in an absolutely amazing move. Sadly she passes away once she's made it back to Wales alongside Manawydan, Pryderi, and five other men (and Bendigeidfran's severed head!) '"Oh son of God," she said, "woe that I was even born. Two good islands have been laid waste because of me!" She gives a mighty sigh and her heart breaks. And they make a four-sided grave for her and bury her there on the banks of the Alaw.'

Cai: OG Kay. Depending on what u read he is either the most renowned warrior ever - 'Prince of plunder/The unrelenting warrior to his enemy' as Pa Gur yv y Porthaur says - the possession of the most fuckin batshit magical powers as Culhwch ac Olwen relates: 'Cai had magical qualities. For nine days and nine nights, he could hold his breath under water. For nine nights and nine days, he could go without sleep. A wound from Cai's sword no physician could heal.' And so it goes on. Or he is literally the most grumpo to have ever grumped and I respect him hugely.

Blodeuwedd: OWL WOMAN. FLOWER-FACE. 'Then they took the flowers of the oak, and the flowers of the broom, and the flowers of the meadowsweet, and from those they conjured up the fairest and most beautiful maiden that anyone had ever seen.' She is literally stupidly beautiful AND SHE PLOTS TO KILL HER HUSBAND, LLEU, WHO QUITE FRANKLY DESERVED IT. A fuckin queen. She fucked over Gwydion's bb boi in one fell swoop, I simply MUST Stan.

Finally, RHIANNON: HORSE WOMAN. QUEEN OF DYFED. LITERAL TYLWYTH TEG LADY. She literally says to Pwyll - who she later marries - 'Be silent for as long as you like: never has a man been more stupid than you have been.' And if a woman said that to me I WOULD PERISH. also had an amazingly fast horse and like dhdjdddj when Pwyll dies - in a, I presume, stupidity-related incident - Rhiannon marries Branwen's brother Manawydan and actually gets treated with respect instead of whatever fuckery Pwyll was pulling.

Anyways VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. Best two go through to the quarter finals. U only have 1 DAY TO VOTE SO ZOOMIES!!!!

[gingersnaptaff]

Oooh, okay, so the authorship question of the Mabinogi is tricky. I've heard various things like, for example, Gwenllian ferch Gruffudd ap Cynan wrote it as a tract to stir up rebellion in the 1100's. This has to do with the fact that much of the action within the branches takes place in Dyfed and Gwynedd. Dyfed at that time was part of Deheubarth, the kingdom into which Gwenllian married, and Gwynedd, the kingdom of which her family ruled. Andrew Breeze, if I remember correctly, is the person who postulated this.

As for the God/gods thing, like yeah, u gotta remember this text was set down by somebody who had a religious upbringing but they're building on earlier - and to them much more Pagan - stories. There is a brilliant book that talks about this - although it is fiction - but it's called 'The Assembly of the Severed Head' by Hugh Lupton. In it, a bard - who knows the stories in their Paganist entirety- tells the monks about them. The monks then copy them down, dispensing with anything that's too pagan. For example, in Branch 3 Manawydan's run-in with the clerk, the priest, and the bishop when he's trying to hang the mouse the author re-imagines the bard saying it was a storyteller, a bard, and a finely dressed lord, and the monks then immediately whacked down the aforementioned clerk, priest, and Bishop instead.

Also, you gotta remember that these stories were around for millennia. I don't think we can say for certain that it is a nuanced take, honestly. To me, it seems that Rhiannon is othered because she's a goddess or at least the remnants of one. She's punished for her supposed crime of cannibalising her son. Later, she, Manawydan, Pryderi, and Cigfa are othered when they go to England to try and make a life there cuz they're stupidly good at shoes. It's not a stretch to think it could be because in a way the authors are like 'These are still pagan gods, guys.' The connection to their original nature is are always there, you just sort of don't see it. I'm not saying you can't think there's 'no need for conflict' betwen the two but I think the text is still very much depowering these gods.

But these are just my thoughts. Hope this helped or made everybody at least 90% more confused.

It's a shame that grounded and gritty adaptations of Arthur like The Mists of Avalon and The Warlord Chronicles always portray Christians and Pagans in conflict when the theology of the actual early texts like the Mabinogion is much more nuanced and interesting. Like you have these ancient Celtic deities living in otherworldly realms and wading across oceans deferring to an almighty singular God. There's no need for conflict between the old gods and Christianity because the old gods themselves are Christians. They baptise their infants and everything. Small g gods worshipping a capital G God.

[wildbasil]

hello tumblr, can our next mass hyperfixation be welsh myths please 🥺

[gailyinthedark]

How Culhwch won Olwen is officially one of my favourite things. So far it has

Pages and pages of personal names with more pages of endnotes explaining their significance

Stubbornness listed as a magical quality:

Letting the reader put two and two together about Cai's parentage which makes us feel so smart

The most adorable throwaway line ever

Torc mention!!!

This delightful tidbit in the notes

And I'm not even done reading it...

[wilderbas]

rhiannon | arawn | mallt-y-nos a cŵn annwn | pwyll

[camlannpod]

it does actually look really nice!! in the end all thanks to you for helping me find the version::3 excited to read it finally!! and ofc thanks for your amazing podcast

Yay!!! I appreciate that they picked Blodeuwedd to reference, what a queen. And WE appreciate all your support! <3

[ihearhercalling]

𝔐𝔶 𝔇𝔢𝔦𝔱𝔦𝔢𝔰 || Branwen

origin // cymru, y mabinogi domains // grief, motherhood, resilience, family ties, sovereignty, peace, guardianship of the land, emotion, resourcefulness, messages, compassion, infants, comfort for mothers who have lost children symbols // ravens (particularly white), the colour white, starlings, cauldron or chalice, standing stones & mounds

[margridarnauds]

RIP Blodeuedd, you'd have loved Poor Things (2023)

[cipher-the-sidhe]

Fighting for my life to get the pronunciation of these Welsh names right

[oespiritocelta]

Y Mabinogi (Y Mabinogi ou Otherworld)

Y Mabinogi é um filme galês baseado em uma série de contos do País de Gales. É um filme animado, embora as sequências inicial e final sejam de live action. A história segue três personagens principais que se deslocam de seu mundo no oeste do País de Gales para o cenário dos contos da mitologia galesa conhecidos como os Quatro Ramos do Mabinogi, de onde deriva o título do filme.

[finnlongman]

Tumblr, I am looking for good art of the Fourth Branch (Math uab Mathonwy). Do you have any for me?

[gingersnaptaff]

Bulk buying these and fuckin shooting them out of a t-shirt cannon at my moots.

[ihearhercalling]

What she said ^

It’s extremely odd to me to suggest that there’s no conflict because the pagan gods worship the Christian god when like… the fact that pagan gods were demoted to fairy beings worshipping the Christian god was because the pagan religion had to be subdued and Christianised to begin with. Not because everyone just collectively decided the Christian god was the best one. You have to take the historical context of the text and the biases of the Christian monks who wrote them into account rather than taking the text as gospel.

It's a shame that grounded and gritty adaptations of Arthur like The Mists of Avalon and The Warlord Chronicles always portray Christians and Pagans in conflict when the theology of the actual early texts like the Mabinogion is much more nuanced and interesting. Like you have these ancient Celtic deities living in otherworldly realms and wading across oceans deferring to an almighty singular God. There's no need for conflict between the old gods and Christianity because the old gods themselves are Christians. They baptise their infants and everything. Small g gods worshipping a capital G God.

[wildbasil]

group therapy (they make each other worse)

[gailyinthedark]

History of the Holy Grail: I know how freaky this sounds but it's actually deeply religiously symbolic and I'm going to spend three pages telling you why

Le Morte d'Arthur: We can't know there was actual sex involved is all I'm saying. I wasn't there, you weren't there, shut up Lancelot nobody asked you

Y Mabinogi: Sometimes you have to change your nephews into deer and make them fuck, it's fine they deserved it

[camlannpod]

coming back with an update!!

got it!!

again thanks a lot for recommending the translation

Oh my god it's so prettyyyyyyyyy!!!! I love it and hope you do too!!!