My attempt to explain why I admire Malory's book, and why I've been rereading it since the late 1970s, is published on The Brazen Head Website. Clicking on the link below should take you there.
https://brazen-head.org/2023/06/27/thomas-malorys-civilisation-shaping-chivalry/
What is the audience being asked to believe when Uther becomes Gorlois?
The first Branch of the Mabinogion illustrates two types of change: disguise (Pwyll pretends to be a beggar) and transformation (Pwyll is Arawn for a year while still remaining Pwyll) (see previous post).
The Fourth Branch offers several examples that refine the concept of ‘transformation’.
The first of these is illusion. This is the explicit use of magic to confuse two things for effect. Gwydion offers Pryderi 12 horses and twelve hounds, with saddles and bridles and collars and leashes and golden shields. The story teller inserts the comment ‘y rei hynny a rithassei ef o’r madalch’ which Sioned Davis translates as ‘He had conjured those up out of toadstools’.
Fleeing Pryderi’s court, Gwydion tells his companions they must hurry because the magic will only last ‘until tomorrow’. Later, he creates the illusion of an invasion fleet to scare his sister. In neither case does the illusion last.
The second type is transformation as Pwyll experiences it in the First Branch. Gwydion and his brother are turned into three animals over three years. In this case they are specifically told they will have the nature of the beast they have become, but the implication is that they remain conscious they are men and they only return to human form when Math wants them to.
The most famous transformation in the story is Math and Gwydion’s taking flowers and turning them into a woman. This is not an illusion. The Flower Lady is fully human, and as she is human she has speech, and free will, and the power to choose. When Gwydion punishes her, she isn’t changed back into petals, but transformed into an owl.
So a suitably threefold division.
Disguise (without magic)
Genuine transformation, permanent. (With Magic)
Illusion ( A Magic trick.)
What this allows us to do is now is to look at what people seemed to have believed about transformation at the time these stories were circulating. It's not at all straightforward. And it should eventually bring us back to Laȝamon and Uther.
The story of Arthur’s conception may have been Geoffrey of Monmouth’s invention. (See previous posts about how was King Arthur's father.)
Uther, love sick for Ygraene, and at war with her husband, Gorlois, is transformed by Merlin into Gorlois and as Gorlois, Uther is able to enter Tintagel castle and spend the night with Ygaerne.
The story opens Malory’s 15th Century version. There are classical, biblical, mythological and folk tale examples that might have inspired Geoffrey, but most academic commentators seem to note the parallels, discuss possible sources, or how it fixes Arthur into ‘The Hero Paradigm’ and then move one.
But the longevity of the conception story obscures how bizarre it is. It’s worth stopping and considering just how bizarre.
Looking at another literary example makes explicit what the audience is being asked to believe.
In the First Branch of the Mabinogion, the story of Pwyll consists of three episodes. In the first two, Pwyll adopts a disguise.
In the first episode, Pwyll becomes Arawn, and lives as him for a year.
In the second, he arrives at the wedding of Gwawl and Rhiannon in disguise.
The second is an example of ‘being disguised’ that most people would accept as credible.
Someone acts a role, altering appearance superficially to avoid recognition. At a time when even Kings would not have been recognised outside the limited circle of their close acquaintances, Pwyll can easily hide his identify by wearing a disguise (rags) which he can throw off. He is playing at being something else. The charade is made easier because he’s playing ‘generic beggar’. This disguise hides his real appearance without in anyway altering who he is. Pwyll is not a beggar, but a Prince pretending to be one.
The first transformation, however, is much more complicated.
Pwyll doesn’t just take on Arawn’s appearance and pretend to be him. This would be impossible. There would be so much he couldn’t know.
Before they change places, Arawn reassures Pwyll that he will have the fairest woman he’s ever seen (Arawn’s wife) to sleep with every night, and neither she, nor the chamberlains, nor the officers of the court, nor anyone of his retinue, will know it’s not Arawn. In other words, the people who know Arawn intimately, will not notice the deception over the course of a year.
So Pwyll becomes Arawn, not just in his appearance. He knows the court and its inhabitants, and its rituals. He must therefore have access to Arawn’s memories. Even when he acts ‘out of character’ Arawn’s wife does not suspect it’s not her husband, but that something is wrong with him.
For a year.
But he also remains Pwyll. Although Arawn has essentially given him his wife for a year, and judging by his reaction at the end of the episode he fully expected him to take that offer in all the ways it could be taken, Pwyll turns his back on her every night, and doesn’t even speak to her until the morning.
Pwyll remains Pwyll in the body of Arawn, with access to Arawn’s memories. This is the transformation that occurs when Uther becomes Gorlois so he can spend the night with Ygraene. (Euphemisms are wonderful things. )
And like all good stories, it raises interesting questions. Which will take us via the Third and Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion, to Saint Augustine and others, and then back to Uther.
'Laȝamon's last interview', published in issue Twenty Nine of Long Poem Magazine, will be the final chapter of the last book in the series that runs from A Presentment of Englishry, to A Man of Heart. (Both published by Shearsman in the UK).
After he finished his book, what did he do next? There's no evidence he wrote another line. Was he proud of his work? Was he disappointed by its limited reception? Was he bitter? To contrast two very different story telling traditions, Gwydion son of Don meets the old man who wrote the Brut, and 'interviews' him.
Long Poem Magazine, published in the Uk, is one of the few print outlets for someone like myself who writes very long narrative poems. So i am delighted to have work published in this edition. This is the third time this has happened, and if I ever finish this project I will owe the editors 'a debt of gratitude'.
A short extract.....
Gwydion, stooping to enter,
‘You’re a hard man to find.’
‘I didn’t know anyone was looking.’
The woman blocks the doorway;
her shadow and the priest,
two darker stains on the rough wall.
One stool, one bed, two bowls,
two wooden spoons.
No books. No writing materials.
He can taste the damp.
‘She looks after me. I don’t know why.’
‘Because you need looking after.
Don’t wind him up, sir, please.
He’s a bugger to settle.’
‘The Lateran council forbade the priest his wife or concubine.
Gerald made the usual Latin puns so few could understand.
But why shouldn’t a man hold someone in the dark?
And how could I survive without her patient charity?’
‘They called you latimer, not priest.’
‘I translate at those sad times
m’lord shouts at his tenants
and they need to understand
or when he’s feeling threatened
by the written word.
You’re Welsh? Kyuarwydd?
A professional storyteller.
Trained in the tradition.
Valued. Honoured.
How very easy for you.
How very lucrative.’
‘You know as well as I,
no one stands on the summit
who hasn’t sweated the slopes.
I read your history.
I liked it very much.’
‘You must be the only man who has.’
‘You wrote in English.
Did you expect an audience to rival Monmouth’s?’
The woman interrupts.
‘They feed us; bread, cheese, honey.
Sometimes meat and wine if he’s been useful.
I’d offer you some but there’s nothing in the pot.’
