#mabinogion

'Cynghanedd' is a unique system of poetic stress and sound-arrangement that originated in Welsh-language poetry around a thousand years ago. Despite it's ancient origins, it's still often used in contemporary Welsh poetry today.

Arawn is Lord of the Welsh Otherworld of Annwn, and master of the red-eared, ghost-white hounds known as the Cŵn Annwn.

He first appears when Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, interrupts a stag hunt. Pwyll's hounds chase off the Cŵn Annwn, claiming their kill in an insult to Arawn.

When Arawn returns, he demands service of Pwyll in redress for this insult, starting the events of the First Branch of the Mabinogi.

In the Mabinogion's tale of Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain, our eponymous hero rescues a lion from a venomous serpent. In return, the beast becomes his loyal companion, hunting for him and fighting by his side.

It's a story that closely parallels Chrétien de Troyes' poem Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion, although scholars debate whether the Mabinogion version is based directly on this, or if both derive from an even older shared original.

Described as "one of the great female personalities in World literature", Rhiannon is a powerful and magical figure in the Mabinogion.

She has a strong association with horses, from her first appearance riding an enchanted steed, to her transformation into a figurative beast-of-burden as punishment for crimes that she was falsely accused of.

Along the path to the Breton castle of Fort-la-Latte is the Menhir of La Latte, reputedly the finger of a fallen giant.

Legend tells of the Korrigan, the fairy-folk of the Bretons, roughly analagous to the Welsh Tylwyth Teg. The humans and Korrigan of the area were being terrorised by giants, until the two joined forces to defeat their oppressors. The humans lured the giants into a massive pit, where they were buried by the Korrigan.

It's a fun image, the final middle finger of a fallen giant emerging from the ground in spite, as the victors bury him and his kind for eternity!

I guess the closest Welsh linguistic cognate for 'Korrigan' would be 'corrach', which occasionally gets translated as 'elf' or 'gnome'.

The Mabinogion is set in a society of courts, hunts, feasts, and obligations. But it rarely explains them, assuming a medieval audience already familiar with its customs.

Instead, the stories' values are revealed through its heroes' actions: honour, kinship, justice, and duty.

The Third Branch of the Mabinogi sees a mysterious cursed fog descend across the land of Dyfed, leaving it desolate and lifeless.

I wonder if perhaps the story was inspired by the spectacular cloud inversions that sometimes descend across the mountains and valleys of Wales?