#mabinogion

The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, central stories in the collection now known as the Mabinogion, largely focus on the fortunes and failures of several intertwined mythological Welsh families, mostly notably the House of Dôn and the House of Llyr.

The illustration here shows their most dramatic collision: the warrior-wizard Gwydion striking down Pryderi, King of Dyfed, in a dispute over a herd of magical pigs!

The genealogies of the two families are often ambiguous, and at times contradictory. By one reckoning, Pryderi could be considered the step-grandson of Llyr, through his mother Rhiannon and step-father Manawydan.

Left: George Frederic Watts, She Shall Be Called Woman, c. 1875–92, oil on canvas, Tate Britain."

This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

— Genesis 2:23 (King James Version).

Right: Christopher Williams, Blodeuwedd (Flower Face), c. 1925–30, oil on canvas, Newport Museum and Art Gallery.

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. And they baptized her in the way they did at that time, and named her Blodeuedd.

'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.