Classic Welsh Myths and Legends for Readers

What the Mabinogion actually is

The Mabinogion is not a single book by one hand. It is a gathering of eleven medieval Welsh prose tales, preserved mainly in two fourteenth-century manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest. The name is a Victorian convenience, popularised by Lady Charlotte Guest's translations in the 1830s and 1840s, and it probably rests on a misunderstanding of mabynnogyon, a word that appears once in the text and likely just means "tales of the Mabinogi". Knowing that helps: these stories were never designed as a set, and they survive because somebody thought them worth copying out by hand.

The language is Middle Welsh, and it rewards a good modern translation. Pronunciation is less frightening once you know three rules: ll is a breathy sound made by placing your tongue as if to say "l" and blowing; dd is the "th" in "the"; and f is a "v". So Pwyll is roughly "poo-ill", Rhiannon "hree-ANN-on", and Bendigeidfran "ben-i-GAYD-vran".

The Four Branches of the Mabinogi

Four of the eleven tales form a linked sequence, each called a branch. They share characters — the family of Pwyll and Rhiannon, and their son Pryderi — and they move between the human world and Annwn, the Otherworld.

• Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed — a bargain with Arawn, King of Annwn, and a year spent wearing another man's face.
• Branwen, Daughter of Llŷr — a marriage alliance with Ireland that ends in catastrophe.
• Manawydan, Son of Llŷr — an enchantment that empties Dyfed of every living soul but four.
• Math, Son of Mathonwy — magic, betrayal, and two brothers made from flowers.

Notice the pattern. A wrong is done, often casually, and the rest of the story deals with the cost. These are not tidy fairy tales.

Pwyll, Rhiannon and the rules of Annwn

The first branch opens with a hunt and a bad decision. Pwyll drives a stag away from Arawn's pack, and to repair the insult he agrees to swap places with the King of the Otherworld for a year and a day — and, at the end of it, to strike one single blow against Arawn's enemy. He keeps to the letter of the bargain and gains a lasting friendship. The lesson is quietly practical: keep your word exactly, no more and no less.

Rhiannon arrives later, riding a horse nobody can catch, however hard they gallop. She is accused of murdering her infant son; the child is taken in the night and a smear of blood left on her face. She accepts her penance without complaint, carrying visitors on her back at the gate like a horse. The recovery of the boy, Pryderi, is where the branches begin to knot together.

Bendigeidfran and Branwen: a war that should never have happened

Bendigeidfran, son of Llŷr, is a king so large that no house can contain him. When his sister Branwen is married to the King of Ireland and then humiliated, the giant wades across the Irish Sea because no ship could carry him. The war that follows destroys both sides. Struck by a poisoned spear, Bendigeidfran orders his own head cut off and carried to London to be buried facing France, where it is said to guard the island against invasion. His men feast with that head for eighty years, and later, the tales say, it was dug up because a king did not want to owe his safety to anyone.

Efnisien, whose careless cruelty started the disaster, dies putting it right. Branwen dies of grief. Seven men survive, and from them, the story claims, the land was repeopled. It is one of the great war stories in Welsh, and it is fundamentally about what pride costs.

Arthur before the romances: Culhwch and Olwen

Long before French romances made Arthur a courtly king, Welsh storytellers gave him a band of rough, astonishing warriors. In Culhwch and Olwen, the oldest surviving Arthurian tale in Welsh, a young nobleman comes to court seeking help to win Olwen, daughter of the giant Ysbaddaden Bencawr. She is named for the white trefoil flowers that spring up wherever she walks.

Ysbaddaden sets some forty impossible tasks before he will consent, and most of the tale is the satisfying business of completing them, from hunting the great boar Twrch Trwyth to fetching a comb and shears from between his ears. Arthur's men are wonderfully specific: Cei, who can hold his breath under water for nine days and grow as tall as the tallest tree when it suits him. Read it for the pace and the mischief as much as the heroics.

Magical creatures and moral lessons

The Mabinogion is only part of the inheritance. Welsh folk tradition is full of creatures tied to particular places, and knowing the place is half the pleasure.

• The Tylwyth Teg — the "fair family", who dance in rings on the hillsides and take a dim view of being watched.
• The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach — a lake maiden who marries a farmer on the condition that he never strike her three times. He manages it, and loses everything.
• The Ceffyl Dŵr — a water horse that invites a rider up and then dissolves into mist.
• The Afanc — a lake beast said to have been coaxed from its pool by a maiden's song before it was chained and dragged away by oxen.
• Gelert — the hound killed by his master after saving a child, the story behind Beddgelert, and a blunt warning about acting on assumption.

If you are starting out, read the Four Branches first in a modern scholarly translation rather than a Victorian retelling; the older versions are lovely but soften the edges. Keep a map of Wales nearby — Dyfed, Gwynedd and Anglesey are not background scenery but the whole point. Then read a passage aloud. These tales were made for the ear, and they still work best that way.