At some point, things that people accepted as real pass into their stories, and survive only as ‘something that can happen in a story’. The idea that human beings could transform, or be transformed, into other humans or other animals, seems to have been almost universal. But gradually the idea passes into the world of the storyteller.
This doesn’t happen at a specific time in a culture’s history. And it happens at different times for different groups and different individuals within the same culture. If you are one of those who believe in the ‘contextualising of texts’ to identify ‘values and attitudes and beliefs’ this should make you reconsider what you’re doing.
The stories in The Mabinogion were written down in the 14th century.
in 2023 Amazon is selling books of magic spells, and if the reviews are anything to go by, people not only buy them but expect them to work. ('Where am I supposed to get wolves teeth?' asks one reviewer.)
A very tentative google search reveals that on Fiverr I can hire a powerful practitioner of black magic (his sales pitch) to cast a transformation spell for less than ten dollars. For fifty dollars, another expert will transform anyone into a physical beauty.
Astrology is still popular, not just in the free versions that turn up in most papers, or online, but in versions that require payment for a horoscope. Tarot readers flourish.
So before tracking ‘contemporary’ attitudes to magic and transformation, and puzzling over what it means to ‘believe a story’, it’s worth pointing out that while the stories in the Mabinogion were written down in the 14th century, a belief in magic is not something that disappeared from our society at some vague point in the past.
