anyway just a reminder for the myth lovers out there
king arthur was welsh. merlin was welsh. camelot was in wales. the lady and the lake she pops out of; welsh. excalibur; magic inanimate welsh object. etc.
on the way to see family, i drive past a lake that in which is welsh legend, is the last resting place of excalibur.
iām just saying in my experience a lot of these legends had been so anglo-fied in the past and itās like, all this cool shit is celtic welsh legend.
Arthurās wife was called Gwenhwyfar first.
Like the kraken I emerge, summoned by the English theft of Arthur
Arthur is a Welsh name. It means ābearā. Heās likely derived from a Gaulish bear god
In the form of King Arthur, he is an anti-Saxon mythological WELSH figure, representing the native Brythonic people of Britain against the Anglo-Saxon invaders, dating from the 500s AD
The version appropriated by the English in the 1100s is the shitty boring sanitised version - they did it because they were trying to compete with the romance tradition on the continent at the time but didnāt have anything of their own to romanticise
Merlin is called Myrddin
Percival is Peredur
Kay is Cei, and also was subject to enormous character assassination in the English version - in the Welsh version heās much closer to Arthurās right hand man
Guinevere is Gwenhwyfar
There is no Lancelot, no Galahad, no tedious affair story
There is no Camelot. Arthurās seat was Caerllion - modern Caerleon, putting him into both the region of the Silures (one of the most fearsome and warlike of the British tribes, modern South East Wales) and the old Roman fortress, which would have been an impossibly huge Palace for a warlord at the time.
They all have super powers and get up to wacky hijinks involving hair care, giants, strange giant wildlife, spectral revolving/glass fortresses in the Celtic sea, and a really fucking weird chess match. Also a cloak made out of beards.
What the fuck is the round table
Anyway itās particularly irritating because traditional Welsh culture and beliefs have been so thoroughly stripped away and destroyed by England over the centuries, and Arthurian legend is one of the few surviving fragments we have left to preserve. And heās specifically an anti-English figure. So the ubiquity of the boring and appropriative English Arthur across the whole fucking world isā¦ Well, itās not great.
This is so interesting! Does anyone know a good source/reading material where one could get more of the original Welsh versions of the stories?
The Mabinogion, translated by Sioned Davies is your best bet! Itās got a bunch of big-ass Welsh myths in, but most relevantly it includes Culhwch ac Olwen, which is a full-on Arthurian text (plus a couple of interesting ones).
Thereās a whole bunch more thatās survived in fragments, but theyāre all in Old Welsh - fully readable if you speak Welsh, but obviously not much use if you donāt (I donāt know if you do or not but from context Iām guessing not lol).
Trioedd Ynys Prydain (literally āthe Triads of the Island of Britainā, though in English theyāre usually called āthe Welsh Triadsā) are a huge collection of lists of three things from Welsh lore, including a lot of Arthurian lore. Theyāre not stories, but they contain fascinating allusions to stories, to whole strains of the Arthurian tradition, that we may or may not have elsewhere.
Keep reading
Absolutely fantastic addition, yes, Rachel Bronwichās Triads are glorious.
