Caer Gwydion
"His
residence was among the stars and called Caer Gwydion".i
There is an intriguing note to Lady Charlotte Guest's 1846 translation of Math
the son of Mathonwy regarding the character of Gwydion, arguably the lead character in the Fourth Branch. This note
was the starting point to this inquiry. She wrote as follows:
Gwydion ... He
was...a great astronomer, and as such was classed with Gwynn ab Nudd,
and Idris. The Milky Way is after him termed Caer Gwydion: similar
honours indeed appear to have been paid to the whole family of Don.
Himself (sic), gave his name to the constellation of
Cassiopeia, in Welsh, Llys Don, the Court of Don; and Caer Arianrod,
Corona Borealis, is so called after his daughter Arianrod, one of the
heroines of the present Tale.ii
What were Lady
Guest's sources, where does this material originate, most
importantly, did the author of Math have these celestial
associations in mind, did he equate the Milky Way with Gwydion,
Cassiopeia with Don, Corona Borealis with Aranrhod? Is it legitimate
to ask whether he may have associated other characters in the Fourth
Branch with other constellations? Math and Geowin, Pryderi, Llew and
Gronw Pebr; did these characters belong to an astronomical scheme
too?
Without doubt, Lady Guest's initial reference is to the infamous
'third series' of Triads penned by Iolo Morgannwg and published in Y
Myvyrian Archaiology
in 1807:
89. The
Three Renowned Astronomers of the Isle of Britain:
Idris the Giant;
Gwydion son of
Dôn;
And Gwyn son of
Nudd.
Such was their
knowledge of the stars, their natures and qualities, that they could
prognosticate whatever was wished to be known until the day of doom.iii
Through her
friendship with Taliesin Williams, Iolo's son, she also would have
had access to the list of 37 constellations which gives, according to Iolo, the original Welsh names for the constellations, later to be contained
within Volume I of Y Barddas also by Iolo Morgannwg, edited by
J. Williams Ab Ithel and published in 1862:
Caer Gwydion,
The Circle of Gwydion;
The son of Don; one of "the
three sublime astronomers of the Isle of Britain."
Tr. 89, third
Series. The Galaxy.iv
However spurious the
context of Triad 89 it is certain that these celestial
associations had been handed down from an earlier period. Fifty years
before the publication of the Iolo Manuscripts Lewis
Morris (1701–1765) recorded in his Celtic Remains
(completed in 1757, though it remained unpublished until 1878) the
following:
Gwydion or Gwdion,
Son of Don, Lord or Prince of Arvon. This Gwdion was a great
philosopher and astronomer, and from the Via Lactea, or Milky
Way, or Galaxy, in the heavens is called Caer Gwdion. His great
learning made the vulgar call him a conjuror and necromancer; and
there was a story feigned that when he travelled through the heavens
in search of ...'s [sic] wife that eloped, he left this tract
of stars behind him.v
One hundred and
fifty years before Morris's entry, John Jones of
Gelli Lyvdy, 'noted in a MS. written
by him before 1619':
Gwraig Huan ap
Gwydion, a vu un o ladd ei gwr, ag a ddyfod ei fyned
ef i hely oddi
gartref, ai dad ef Gwdion brenhin Gwynedd y gerddis bob tir yw
amofyn, ac or diwedd y gwnaeth ef Gaergwdion (sef: via lactua) sy yn
yr awyr yw geissio: ag yn y nef y cafas ei chwedyl , lle yr oedd ei
enaid: am hynny y troes y wraig iefanc yn ederyn, a ffo rhag ei thad
yn y gyfraith, ag a elwir er hynny hyd heddiw Twyll huan.vi
The wife of Huanvii
ap Gwydion was one in a plot to kill her husband, and said that he
had gone away hunting, and his father Gwydion, King of Gwynedd,
travelled every country to seek him and at last he made Caergwydion,
(that is, via lactua [sic]), which is in the sky, to
find him: and in heaven, he had news of him, where his soul was.
Therefore he changed the young woman into a bird, and she fled from
her father-in-law, and she is called from that day to this Huan's
Deceiving (Twyll Huan).viii
Of these two related
episodes that John Jones is alluding to here the first is, very
obviously, where Blodeuedd and Gronw Pebyr had previously colluded in
the attempted murder of Lleu Llaw Gyffes (Huan), but on receiving the
wound from Gronw's magically prepared spear, Lleu had flown away in
the form of an eagle and Gwydion had set out in search for him.
It is important to emphasise at this point that W.J. Gruffydd, in his
seminal study of the Fourth Branch, uses this John Jones 'variant' on
two occasions to 'prove' his point that in an earlier
version of Math,
(i.e. than the White Book redaction)
Gwydion was the father, (and not merely the uncle) by incest with
Arianrhod, of Lleu.ix
Gryffudd however makes no comment at all on the astronomical nature
of the rest of the passage though presumably he accepted this aspect
as an integral part of this ‘earlier version‘. This is how Jones
and Jones translated the relevant passage from The White Book of
Rhydderch:
Then
the tidings reached Math son of Mathonwy. Heaviness and grief Math felt within him, and Gwydion more than he by far. 'Lord,' said Gwydion, 'I shall never rest till I have tidings of my nephew.' 'Aye,' said Math, may God be thy strength.' And then he set out and began to go his way, and Gwynedd he traversed, and the length and breadth of Powys. When he had traversed every part, he came to Arfon, and came to the House of a villein in Maenawr Bennardd. He alighted at the house and stayed there that night.x
Has John Jones's
apparently extraneous material been omitted or even 'censored' from
the extant tale, or contrary to Gryffudd's opinion, is it a later
embellishment unrelated to the intentions of the author of Math?
There are several points of interest here. First, the tradition,
which John Jones recorded in the early seventeenth century, supplies
an alibi or 'cover story' for Blodeuedd and Gronw's treacherous act.
In order to explain Lleu's disappearance Blodeuedd must have told
Gwydion that Lleu 'had gone away hunting' with the
implication that he
had not returned.
This detail, which might be thought of as necessary to the flow of
the narrative, is strangely lacking in Math,
we are only told that, 'Then the tidings reached Math son of
Mathonwy'. We
are not told what tidings, neither is there any suggestion that
either Math or Gwydion knew of the true fate of Lleu. Furthermore,
the actions of Gwydion were not, at this juncture in the tale,
directed in the least against Blodeuedd and Gronw. Even when Gwydion
does finally find Lleu in the topmost branches of the 'world tree',
it only occurs
to him that the eagle is Lleu, but he doesn't know
that it is. It may be inferred from this therefore, because we cannot
otherwise explain the actions of Gwydion, that the 'cover story'
given by Blodeuedd, (according to Jones) i.e. Lleu
'had gone away hunting',
was at one time included in 'Math' and was, for whatever reason,
omitted from the extant redactions contained in the Red and White
Books.
It is possible to
detect further striking evidence that this seemingly late and
isolated story fragment once formed an integral part of the Mabinogi
of Math. Consider the uncanny similarity of language of the
Fourth Branch compared with the 'Jones fragment', Math has it that
Gwydion 'traversed every part', and
Jones relates that he 'travelled
every country'. In addition, the Mabinogi has Gwydion say: 'I
shall never rest till I have tidings
of my nephew.' And the Jones' tradition supplies:
'and in heaven, he had news of him, where his
soul was'. Is this where and how Gwydion learnt that a sow would
lead him to Lleu? In the extant Mabinogi, Gwydion's arrival at
the pig farm reads like an amazing stroke of luck. Once more the
‘Jones fragment’ supplies a rational narrative explanation for
Gwydion's, otherwise unexplained, good fortune.
It would seem from
this that what we have here is not an excerpt from a variant
tradition, or a later imaginative re-rendering of Math but a
fragment of an earlier literary version from which the extant
text must have been derived. Did John Jones have access to this, now
lost, version? Perhaps. With this tentative conclusion in mind, it is
now worth placing side by side the following passage containing the
astronomical allusions, from the tradition preserved by John Jones
with the relevant passage from Math, as translated by Jones
and Jones:
[Gwydion] travelled
every country to seek him and at last he made Caergwydion, (that is,
via lactea), which is in the sky, to find him: and in
heaven, he had news of him, where his soul was. (Jones)
When he [Gwydion]
had traversed every part, he came to Arfon, and came to the House of
a villein in Maenawr Bennardd. He alighted at the house and
stayed there that night. (Jones & Jones)
I want to focus now
on the word 'alighted'. In the White Book of Rhydderch, the
Welsh word used is diskynnu. Ford gives the following meaning:
diskynnu - 'come upon; alight'.xi
The Red Book of Hergest has dysgynnu the same as modern Welsh
- dysgynnu - which is defined in Y Geiriadur Mawr,xii
as 'to descend'. The Oxford Paperback Dictionaryxiii
defines 'alight' thus: 'to descend and settle' and gives the
following example of usage: the bird alighted on a branch. It
would be amiss not to acknowledge that this word diskynnu/dysgynnu
also carries the meaning 'to dismount', as from a horse, as does
the English word 'alight' and this is how it has been interpreted by
several translators including Gruffydd, Gantz, Bollard and Davies.
Even those translators who have elected to use the word 'alighted',
who include Lady Guest, Ford and Parker, most likely understood this
word in the context of 'dismounting a horse'. But why should this be
so? Jones and Jones certainly understood 'alighted' in the context of
a bird coming to rest, for they use it in this sense, shortly after
the instance under consideration, to describe Lleu's descent in eagle
form:
And he let himself
down till he was on the lowest branch of the tree...And he alighted
on Gwydion's knee.xiv
Nowhere, in the
relevant part of the text of Math, is there any mention of a horse
from which Gwydion could dismount. The fact is that the only other
version of this episode that we possess is the one preserved by John
Jones which insists that Gwydion searched for Lleu in the Milky Way,
'which is in the sky'. The presence in Math of the word
'alighted', (diskynnu/dysgynnu)xv
with it’s connotation of a bird coming to land, is
therefore a matter of great interest because it too argues for the
inclusion of the John Jones version of events in an earlier
redaction. Leaving aside the question of Lleu's parentage, a more
complete and harmonious version may now be
reconstructed as follows:
Blodeuedd, the wife
of Llew Llaw Gyffes, said that he had gone away hunting, and had not
returned. Then these tidings
reached Math son of Mathonwy. Heaviness and grief Math felt within
him, and Gwydion more than he by far. 'Lord,' said Gwydion, 'I shall
never rest till I have tidings
of my nephew.' 'Aye,' said Math, may God be thy
strength.' And then he set out and began to go his way, and Gwynedd
he traversed, and the length and breadth of Powys. When he had
traversed every part, and travelled every country to seek him
he made Caergwydion, which is in the sky, to find him: and in heaven,
he had news of him, where
his soul was. At last he came to Arfon, and came
to the House of a villein in Maenawr Bennardd. He alighted at the
house and stayed there that night.
A further episode is
mentioned, almost in the same breath, by John Jones, which we can
recognise from the extant version of Math. This
time the reference is to Gwydion's search for and transformation of
Blodeuedd. Significantly, as has been mentioned, Lewis
Morris, in the eighteenth century, related a version that has this
action taking place in, or more specifically, resulting in the
formation of, the Milky Way. Unfortunately, he appears not to
have remembered the names of the charactersxvi
and there is more than a suggestion here that he has heard,
rather than read the story, although he attributes it to David Johns
(fl. 1573-87)xvii:
...and there was a
story feigned that when he (Gwydion) travelled through the heavens in
search of ...'s [sic] wife that eloped, he left this tract of
stars behind him.
Lady
Charlotte Guest‘s translation of this episode, (from the Red Book
of Hergest) is as follows :
Then they called
together the whole of Gwynedd, and set forth to Ardudwy. And Gwydion
went on before and proceeded to Mur y Castell. And when Blodeuwedd
heard that he was coming, she
took her maidens with her, and fled to the mountain. And
they passed through the river Cynvael, and went towards a court that
there was upon the mountain, and through fear they could not proceed
except with their faces looking backwards, so that unawares they fell
into the lake. And they were all drowned except Blodeuwedd herself,
and her Gwydion overtook. And he said unto her,
“I will not slay thee, but I will do unto thee worse
than that. For I will turn thee into a bird; and because of the
shame thou hast done unto Llew Llaw Gyffes, thou shalt never show
thy face in the light of day henceforth; and that through fear of all
the other birds. For it shall be their nature to attack thee, and to
chase thee from wheresoever they may find thee... and that thou shalt
not lose thy name, but that thou be forever called Blodeuwedd... And
the owl (tylluan)xviii
is still called Blodeuweddxix.
Unlike Morris's
version, John Jones's account omits to tell whether these events
should be seen as taking place in the Milky Way, but they do follow
on immediately after Gwydion's celestial adventure in search of Huan
(Lleu) and like this episode, despite the obvious name changes and
the back to front structure, the language of Gwydion’s
transformation of Twyll Huan again has strong echoes of the White
Book redaction:
The wife of Huan ap
Gwydion was one in a plot to kill her husband.
Therefore he
(Gwydion) changed the young woman into a bird...
and she fled from
her father-in-law...
and she is called
from that day to this Twyll Huan.
When the
corresponding text from Math is combined with the narrative structure
of the Jones fragment, a very close relationship is revealed:
...because of the
shame thou hast done unto Llew Llaw Gyffes...
he (Gwydion) said
unto her I will turn thee into a bird...
she... fled to the
mountain and her Gwydion overtook...
And the owl is still
called Blodeuwedd.
Note the change of
name from Blodeuedd (Flowers) to Blodeuwedd, (Flowerface).
A similar onomastic twist is also implied in Jones's version: 'she is
called from that day to this Twyll Huan' (Huan's Deceiving),
the Welsh word for owl is Tylluan. There is a curious
persistence here, in both cases a change in the spelling of
the name of the wife results in a homonym signifying 'owl' and one is
given the strong impression, once again, that Jones's source is a
literary one. Moreover, one that is demonstrably closely related to
the extant tale of Math in the White and Red Books.
'Thus, after the
manner of the Greeks, the Britons formerly treated their stories and
tales in order to keep them in memory'.
In this way does John Jones conclude his account of Gwydion's
search for Huan (Lleu) in the Milky Way and of the punishment of
Twyll Huan (Blodeuwedd), though it is not made clear just where this
mnemonic quality lies, or how it relates to the tales of the Greeks.
How curious an echo this is of Jones’ contemporary and friend Dr
John Davies's scrawled Latin note at the end of the Mabinogi of Math
in the manuscript White Book of Rhydderch, 'This author strives,
with his creations, to outdo the Chimera, or whatever monstrous
creature all of Greece has to offer'.xx
Daniel Huws has
described John Jones of Gellilyfdy as 'the most heroic of all
transcribers of Welsh literature'xxi.
He was certainly no Iolo Morgannwg and has never been accused of
'invention'. However, the fact that Jones may have had access to the
White Book at about the time (1619) that he made this notexxii,
might lead one to suspect that his source was in fact the White Book
itself and that the extra, astronomical details were added in by him
from some other, perhaps more recent, source. I do not believe this
for a moment, John Jones was an honest man. J.
Gwenogvryn Evans described his character thus:
In services to Wales
and its literature John Jones takes precedence of all his
namesakes... The Dictionary of Eminent Welshmen...informs us "that
he was an attorney in the court of the Marches of Wales, and that he
early withdrew himself because he had too much honesty to
pursue it." ...his interest in the Welsh language, and its
literature dominated his whole life. For over forty-years we find him
steadily at work making really beautiful copies of every old
manuscript he could borrow and were it not for this supreme, though
indiscriminate devotion of his pen to things Welsh, we should have
lost altogether certain texts, which no longer exist except in his
transcripts.xxiii
In any case, we can
trace Gwydion's specific association with the Milky Way to an even
earlier period, because at least seventy years before John Jones made
his careful copy of a now lost manuscript, another great renaissance
Welshman called William Salesbury, recorded in his groundbreaking
Dictionary in Englyshe and Welshe in 1547 that 'Caer Gwydion'
was the Welsh name for the Milky Way. Salesbury's stated aim, in his
preamble address to Henry VIIIth, was to educate the Welsh as to the
pronunciation of the English language and this was in line with
Henry's policy, (despite his own Welsh ancestry) of uniting England
and Wales under the aegis of English cultural hegemony. There can be
no conceivable reason, therefore, why Salesbury might have invented
this equivalence and though no history or etymology is given in his
dictionary, it might be guessed, given the conservatism of the Welsh
language, that this usage of 'Caer Gwydion' for the Milky Way was not
a recent innovation. We have now
travelled backwards in time exactly three hundred years since the
publication of Lady Guest's Mabinogion, where this enquiry
began, and it transpires that, by the middle of the sixteenth
century, Caer Gwydion was part of the common parlance of the
ordinary Welsh speaking men and women of Wales. That this was also
the case in the two previous centuries is proved by the presence, as
Mark Williams has noted, of 'Caer Gwydion' in relation to the Milky
Way
in the poetry of Lewis Glyn Cothi, writing in the
late fifteenth century, and of Gruffudd Grug writing in the late
fourteenth century. Both referred to the Milky Way using the term
'Caer Gwydion', and both poets were contemporaries of the scribes of
the extant redactions of Math vab Mathonwy. Why did these poets
choose to refer to this celestial version of Math whilst the scribes
of the Red and White books apparently chose to edit out all overt
reference it? Before attempting to answer this question it is worth
examining the extant version(s) of The Fourth Branch to see if there
are any further traces of evidence of this astronomical 'variant'.
I propose that we
can point to three further instances within The Fourth Branch,
which allude to, if only just below the narrative surface, an
astronomical explanation for Gwydion, These instances also focus on
certain avian attributes and, if this is accepted, a constellational
identity for Gwydion, within the Milky Way, appears to present
itself, the constellation in question is Cygnus the Swan.
The first instance
is when Gwydion is
disguised as the Pencerdd or 'the chief poet' at the
court of Pryderi. In order to be convincing in the part he would be
required to wear a tugen,
as was the legal privilege of the pencerdd,
this was a mantle made from the feathered pelts of various water
birds but very often described as being simply a mantle of swan
feathers.xxiv
To complete the disguise he must carry a harp, not the modern Welsh
harp but the 'crwth' of medieval Wales, the older
Welsh version of the lyre, in
other words he is disguised as a swan with a lyre. Second, in the
conversation between Pryderi and Gwydion (wearing his swan feather
mantle, idly plucking his lyre) following the evenings entertainment
at Rhuddlan Teifi, Gwydion enquires of Pryderi, 'can anyone deliver
my request to you better than I myself?' Pryderi's apparently
throwaway reply is illuminating and may well have elicited knowing
laughter from a learned audience, 'No indeed,' said Pryderi. 'Yours
is a very good tongue.'xxv
Is this an aside to an audience, a pun? Whether swans tongues were a
delicacy served at the tables of British noblemen I could not say,
certainly entire swans were served at medieval banquets. But
perhaps the more apt pun is directed towards the ancient and
widespread notion that, only the tongue of a swan was able to
separate milk from water. This idea was based on the swans'
reputation as the purest of birds, only the tongue of a swan was good
enough to separate fact from fiction. Third, the final
visit that Gwydion and Lleu make to Caer Aranrhod again emphasises
their changing appearance in order to be disguised as poets, with the
implicit invitation to the audience/readership to visualise this
transformation once more, which in all likely-hood involved Gwydion
carrying a lyre and donning a swan feathered pelt.
Another reason for
suspecting a connection between Gwydion and Cygnus and Lyra concerns
Gwydion's portrayal in the Cad Goddeu as a sort of avatar of
Orpheus, who, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses, on his return
from the Underworld animates the trees by plucking the strings of his
lyre, exactly as Gwydion does in The Battle of the Trees. Orpheus,
according to Plato was transformed upon his death into the
constellation Cygnus and placed next to Lyra.
Finally, following
his adventure in the Milky Way, (according to the John Jones frament)
Gwydion sings three englynion to Lleu/Eagle, who is located at
the top of what most commentators agree represents the World Tree or
the Axis Mundi. The second englyn contains an interesting number:
... With that the
eagle let himself down till he was in the middle of the tree. Then
Gwydion sang another englyn:
Grows an oak between
two lakes.
Nor rain wets it,
nor heat melts;
Nine score
hardships hath he suffered
In its top, Lleu
Llaw Gyffes.
It is curious that
the eagle 'was in the middle of the tree'. but that Lleu Llaw Gyffes
was 'in its top', this apparent discrepancy disappears if it is
accepted that Llew and the eagle were intended, in the mind of the
author, to represent the constellations of Perseus and Aquila
respectively. To appreciate how neat an explanation this is, a very
useful tool is the Philips Planisphere for 51.5 degrees North, this
allows you to track the movements of the constellations over time as
they appear to an observer in Wales. This enables you to watch
Perseus/Llew set in the North while Aquila/Eagle rises in the East
and then travels 180 degrees (nine score hardships) across the sky to
set in the West, with Perseus/Llew now in the topmost branches of the
(world) tree, i.e. at Zenith. I will discuss this particular episode
in more detail later, for now it is sufficient to illustrate how the
numbers in Math lend convincing support to the idea that there is an
embedded level in the tale which can only be understood in terms of
Astronomy.
Aquila the Eagle has traversed 180 degrees or 'nine score hardships' to set in the west, Cygnus or Gwydion has also traversed 'every part' to find Lleu Llaw Gyffes or Perseus, who is is at the very top of the sky. (The chart is Schaubach's northern hemisphere).
In all of this, it
is difficult not to see the constellations of Cygnus the Swan, which
dominates the Milky Way of the northern celestial hemisphere, and of
the adjacent Lyra the Harp. To the medieval Celtic mindset the image
presented by Cygnus and Lyra would have been immediately recognisable
as a 'pencerdd', particularly so, if the narrator/performer of this
tale happened to be a similarly accoutred chief poet. Note also that
Lyra was often depicted as The Desert Falcon which like the owl is a
nocturnal predator, and in the case of Lleu Llaw Gyffes note that
Aquila the Eagle is also a constellation of the Milky Way. When this
is combined with what can be gleaned from the evidence of Lewis
Morris and John Jones, it would not be unreasonable to suppose that the author
of Math fab Mathonwy, in telling the story of Gwydion, Blodeuwedd and
Lleu, had in mind the group of constellations anciently known as the
Stymphalian Birds, Cygnus, Lyra and Aquila. In modern times, many
people are familiar with this group from their brightest or alpha
stars, respectively Deneb, Vega and Altair for which we must thank
another legendary Astronomer Patrick Moore for coining the phrase
'The Summer Triangle'.
Notes
i
(The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries.
1911. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, 152-3.)
ii
The Mabinogion, (From The Red Book of
Hergest). Translated, with notes, by Lady Charlotte
Guest. London. 1877. Facsimile edition John Jones
Cardiff Ltd. 1977. p.436
iii
From the compilation of Iolo Morganwg, published in 1807, cited
according to Y. Leitch “Gwyn”,
The Temple Publications, Wells 2007. Y
Myvyrian Archaiology in 1807.
iv
Y Barddas. Volume I. Iolo Morgannwg, edited by J. Williams
Ab Ithel .published in 1862. Here is the whole list:
1. Caer Arianrod, 1.The Circle of Arianrod;
2. Yr Orsedd Wenn, 2. The White Throne;
3. Telyn Arthur, 3. Arthur's Harp;
4. Caer Gwydion, 4. The Circle of Gwydion;
5. Yr Haeddel fawr, 5. The Great Plough-tail;
6. Yr Haeddel fach, 6. The Small Plough-tail;
7. Y Llong fawr, 7. The Great Ship;
8. Y Llong foel, 8. The Bald Ship;
9 Y Llatheidan, 9. The Yard;
10. Y Twr Tewdws, 10. Theodosius's Group;
11. Y Tryfelan, 11. The Triangle;
12. Llys Don, 12. The Palace of Don;
13. Llwyn Blodeuwedd, 13. The Grove of Blodeuwedd;
14. The Chair of Teyrnon; 14. Cadair Teyrnon,
15. The Circle of Eiddionydd; 15. Caer Eiddionydd,
16. The Circle of Sidi; 16. Caer Sidi,
17. The Conjunction of a Hundred Circles; 17. Cwlwm Cancaer,
18. The Camp of Elmur; 18. Lluest Elmur,
19. The Soldier's Bow; 19. Bwa ’r Milwr,
20. The Hill of Dinan; 20. Brynn Dinan,
21. The Hen Eagle's Nest; 21. Nyth yr Eryres,
22. Bleiddyd's Lever; 22. Trosol Bleiddyd,
23. The Wind's Wing; 23. Asgell y Gwynt,
24. The Trefoil; 24. Y Feillionen,
25. The Cauldron of Ceridwen; 25. Pair Caridwen,
26. Teivi's Bend; 26. Dolen Teifi,
27. The Great Limb; 27. Yr Esgair fawr,
28. The Small Limb; 28. Yr Esgair fechan,
29. The Large-horned Oxen; 29. Yr Ychen Bannog,
30. The Great Plain; 30. Y Macs mawr,
31. The White Fork; 31. Y fforch wenn,
32. The Woodland Boar; 32. Y Baedd Coed,
33. The Muscle; 33. Llywethan,
34. The Hawk; 34. Yr Hebog,
35. The Horse of Llyr; 35. March Llyr,
36. Elffin's Chair; 36. Cadair Elffin,
37. Olwen's Hall. 37. Neuadd Olwen,
v
Celtic Remains. Lewis
Morris.1701-1765). Quoting Gruffydd.
vi
Peniarth MS 112 880-881. John Jones of Gelli
Lyvdy, noted in a MS. written by him before 1619.
Quoting Gruffydd.
vii
See Gruffydd, (Math vab Mathonwy) for an
explanation of 'Huan' for 'Lleu', in which he also notes:
'It is not
impossible that just as Mathien
means "bear born," Lougen
here is meant to mean "Lion-
born."
viii
Gruffydd's translation. Compare with this translation from
www.maryjones.:
'The wife of Huan ap Dôn was a party to the
killing of her husband, and she said that he had gone to hunt away
from home. And his father, Gwydion, the King of Gwynedd, traversed
all countries in search of him, and at last made Caer Gwydion, that
is the via lactea, which is in the sky, to seek him. And he found
him in heaven, where was his soul. And for that he turned the young
wife into a bird and she fled form her father-in-law, and is called
to this day Twyll Huan. Thus, after the manner of the Greeks, the
Britons formerly treated their stories and tales in order to keep
them in memory'.
ix
Gruffydd, Math vab Mathonwy pp. 138 & 198
x
The Mabinogion. Translated, edited and introduced by Gwyn Jones
and Thomas Jones and a preface
by John Updike. Everyman's Library. London.
2000. pp 64-65
xi
Math uab Mathonwy. Text from the Diplomatic
Edition of the White Book of Rhydderch, by J. Gwenogvryn Evans.
Edited, with Notes and Glossary by Patrick K. Ford. Ford &
Baillie, Belmont. 1999.
xii
M.A. W.O. Thomas, Y Geiriadur Mawr The Complete
Welsh-English, English-Welsh Dictionary. H. Meurig Evans, B.A.
Stephen J. Williams, M.A., D. Litt. Gomer. Lllandysul. 2007
xiii
The Oxford Paperback Dictionary Joyce M Hawkins
Third Edition. Oxford University Press 1989.
xiv
Jones & Jones p 66. However, the word here
translated is dygwydawd. Ford
gives dygwyd: vn.
'fall'
xv
There are at least two other instances in the Mabinogi where
'alight' has been used to describe a
bird descending and settling - for example, Lady
Guest and W.J.Gruffydd translate the crucial
incident in the naming of Llew Llaw Gyffes in
almost identical fashion "And thereupon, lo,
a wren
alighting/alighted
on board the ship". Ac ar hynny llyma y dryw yn
seuyll ar vwrd y llog. (but Ford
gives: seuyll - 'stand'. modern Welsh =
sefyll - 'to stand'.) And in 'Branwen Uerch Llyr' in the
episode in which Branwen sends a starling with
the message tied around its leg, to Bran the
Blessed, the identical sense is given...
"It alighted
on his shoulders and ruffled its feathers until the
letter could be seen, and it was realised that
the bird was reared among dwellings", 'A
diskynnu
ar e
yscwyd, a
garwhau y phluf, yny arganuuwyt y llythyr, ac adnabot meithryn yr
ederyn yg kyuanned'.
(Branwen Uerch
Llyr. Derick S. Thomson. The Dublin Institute For Advanced Studies).
There are two instances in Cilhwch and Olwen;
Both Menw son of Teirgwaedd and Gwyrhyr
Interpreter of Tongues changed themselves into
bird form and both alighted above the lair of
Twrch Trwyth. In all of these cases the author
was thinking of Corvus the Crow - Welsh Bran.
xvi
Gruffydd considers the omission down to Silvan Evans, the editor
of Celtic Remains, who 'has
failed to read the husband's name.'
xvii
Bodleian Add, MS 14,886, f. 129r. See P.C. Bartrum, A Welsh
Classical Dictionary. Aberystwyth,
1993. p. 369. Source: Mark Williams. Fiery
Shapes. Oxford 2010. p. 91
xviii
My italics and my parenthesis.
xx
‘Hic auctor certat fictis superare Chimaerum / Vel quicquid
monstri Graecia tota refert.
xxi
Daniel Huws. Medieval Welsh Manuscripts. University of Wales Press
and The National Library of
Wales. 2000. p 261
xxii
According to Robert Vaughan, The White Book after 1614 was in the
possession of one John
Wynn of Twr, a close neighbour of John Jones. It is
not known for certain when it came in to
his care but by c. 1634 The White Book was
definitely ‘with John Jones’. See Huws
pp 260-261
xxiii
The Second Portion of the Welsh Manuscripts at Peniarth, Tywyn,
Merioneth. J. Gwenogvryn
Evans. Historical Manuscripts Commission. 1905.
xxiv
Cormac's Glossary. TUGEN: 'covering (tuige) of birds (én),
for it is of skins of birds white and
many-coloured that the poets' toga is made from
their girdle downwards, and of mallards' necks
and of their crests from the girdle upwards to their
neck'.
The following quote from 'The
Siege of Druim Damhghaire' concerning the
druid Mogruith is
explicit in it's description of the ability of
druids to fly to 'the heavens', which here must mean the
starry firmament “Mogruith’s
skin of the bull was brought to him and also his enchennach (bird-
dress) with it’s
flying-wings. Then he rose up, in company with the fire of the
earth and flew into
the air and the heavens.”
Admittedly, I have not been
able to find the provenance for the many claims such as: 'Gwydion's
stars are the constellation known as The Northern
Cross or Cygnus' Christine O’Keeffe.
Copyright 1997 And: 'Like shamans in other countries,
Irish poets wore feathered cloaks called
tugen. Some say that these were of swan
feathers; others describe them as multi-coloured or
containing mallard feathers.' Anna Franklin.
And: 'Swans are also sacred to Bards, and their skin
and feathers were used to make the tugen, the
ceremonial Bardic Cloak'. Susa Morgan Black, FSA
Scot. Etc.
xxv
It is possible that this whole vignette was intended to be
amusing and self referential; potentially, we
may picture an actual scene, where during a
performance of Math, a swan feathered, lyre carrying
chief poet may have told this story, about a swan
feathered, lyre carrying chief poet who is telling
stories to a Welsh chieftain, to a Welsh
chieftain!
