The tasks in Culhwch and Olwen. When is repetition excessive in a poem?

The Anoethau in Culhwch and Olwen[i]

 

This is the second problem sequence I’m working through.  (See previous post for the first.)

 

In Culhwch ac Olwen, the Giant Ysbaddaden gives Culhwch forty impossible tasks which are referred to by the editors and within the text as Anoethau[ii]

 

After Ysbaddaden stipulates the first task, Culhwch replies:

 

Hawd yw gennyf gaffel hynny, yd tybyckych na bo hawd. 

It is easy for me to get that, though you may think it is not easy.

 

Ysbaddaden responds:

 

Kyt Kkffych hynny, yssit ny cheffych.

Though you may get that, there is something you will not get. 

( translations here are Sioned Davies'. )

 

Each subsequent task is wrapped by these lines. So both phrases are repeated approximately forty times, which is repetition driven to excess. Would it be too much to ask of a modern reader? 

If anyone knows of a poem that repeats the same 2 lines forty times or more, I’d like to read it. 

I was tempted to cut the list of tasks down to only those which are actually performed in the story, roughly ten of them.

 

However. 

 

Perhaps anachronistically, we can see the dialogue that develops in dramatic terms. It is a clash between two characters who have irreconcilable objectives. As a result of this exchange, one of them must die.  

 

Culhwch knows he will never marry anyone except Olwen. He’s been told several times that most men who come on the quest to marry her have been killed. 

 

During their brief meeting, Olwen gave him some advice. Ask for my hand in marriage. Whatever he asks in return, promise you’ll get it. But if he has cause to doubt you, me you won’t get and you’ll be lucky to escape with your life. 

 

Both Culhwch and Ysbaddaden know the latter will die when his daughter gets married. He is understandably inhospitable to any suitor. For unstated reasons, he seems compelled to enter into a contract with the suitor and offer him the opportunity to complete an impossible task. If the suitor flinches or fails, the giant can kill him.

 

So there is obvious conflict. It’s a ‘high stakes’ confrontation. 

 

The dialogue begins with Ysbaddaden stating an obvious impossibility. He wants a field cleared, ploughed, sown and the resultant crop reaped all in one day. Instead of protesting, Culhwch, says: It is easy for me to get that, though you may think it is not easy. 

 

Perhaps wondering if the boy has understood, the giant then explains why it is impossible: you need this man to prepare the field, he won’t do it of his own free will, and you can’t make him. Culhwch repeats his phrase. You also need this man to fix the plough and he won’t come and you can’t make him. And Culhwch, like a naked man in a hailstorm, refusing to flinch, repeats: It is easy for me….

 

And so on. Things needed for the wedding feast; things needed to prepare and shave his beard; dogs, people, horses and things needed to hunt the Twrch Trwyth.

 

Ysbadadden keeps going, waiting for the boy to crack, and Culhwch stands his ground and repeats the same response. He’s hiding behind it because, of course, he can’t  achieve any of these things. He's just a pretty rich boy with bad manners and shiney tools.

 

As the boy refuses to crack, Ysbaddaden must see his own death coming towards him like a slow train on a very straight track over a very flat landscape 

 

He plays his final card. It’s obvious the boy can’t do any of these things on his own. 

You need Arthur and his men to hunt the great boar. And he won’t come, because he’s my man. (The phrase  is ‘he’s in my hand’). 

 

But Culhwch still refuses to flinch, still repeats his mantra. The giant, running out of ideas,  reaches for absurdity, a desperate explosion of nonsense. He’s been pounding away, and now he must realise that he’s been punching the side of a mountain. 

 

Though you get all that, there’s something you won’t get. 

The Twrch Trwyth will never be hunted unless you obtain 

Defective, Perfected and Completed, 

sons of Broken Sword, grandsons of Perfect Sword

Three shining whites their shields

Three stabbing piercers their spears

Three keen carvers their swords

Their three dogs: Silver, Salmon and Smoky

Their three horses: Sharp, Speedy and Steed

Their three wives: Late Bearer, Ill Bearer and Full bearer

Their three crones: Alas, Scream and Shriek

Their three serving girls: Bad, Worse and Worst of all.

These three men will sound their horns, 

And all the others will cry out,

so no one will care if the sky falls in. 

I can get that easily enough, although you seem to think I can’t.

 (My translation. As are what follows.)

Ysbaddaden makes one final attempt, saying what they both know:

 

Sleeplessness without rest you will get in seeking these things, 

and you won’t get them, and you won’t get my daughter.  

 

But Culhwch, who has already shown he’s not the most tactful or polite of young men, now sticks the boot in:

 

Horses and hounds I will get. 

And Arthur, 

my Lord and Kinsman, 

will get everything for me. 

And I will have your daughter, 

and you shall lose your life.

 

 

I’m becoming very pro-giant. 

I think the dialogue has a structural coherence and a dramatic context, but whether that underlying drama is strong enough to carry a modern reader through the repetition  remains to be seen. 

 

 

---

[i] (When I started working through the Tasks I read this  essay, which seems to suggest a similar approach. Dehghani, Fiona. “The Anoetheu Dialogue in Culhwch Ac Olwen.” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, vol. 26/27, 2006, pp. 291–305. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40732062.)

[ii] GPC offers: wonderful thing, wonder, jewel, treasure; something difficult to obtain or achieve, feat, exploit; wondrous, wonderful, strange, unusual, ?difficult. 

The Court List in Culhwch ac Olwen. What is relevance?

Translating the Court List.

 

(Quotations from the story are from Will Parker’s Translation: http://www.culhwch.info/index.html)

 

 

When I began translating Culhwch and Olwen into verse, I knew that my three biggest challenges would be the Court List, the List of Tasks, and the Great Boar Hunt. My problem is to find a way to overcome the challenges they will present to my ‘Model Reader’ who doesn’t read Medieval or Modern Welsh. 

 

My initial idea was to shorten the Tasks to only those which occur in the story, cut the Court List altogether and keep the hunt to a minimum.

I’m changing my mind about all three.

 

The Court List: 

 

Reasons to cut it.

 

The temptation to cut the list is strong. It’s essentially a list of names, with attributes attached to some of them. It runs for four pages or two hundred lines in the Bromwich and Evans edition I’m using. The editors count ‘about 260’ names. It begins like this:

 

he invoked his boon [in the name of] Cai and Bedwyr and Greidol Gallddofyd and Gwythyr son of Greidol and Graid son of Eri and Cynddylig Gyfarwydd and Tathal Twyll Golau and Maelwys son of Baeddan and Cnychwr son of Nes and Cubert son of Daere and Ffercos map Poch and Lluber Beuthach and Corfill Berfach.

 

If you can’t read Welsh, the obvious problem is pronunciation. 260+/- names that look as though someone spilt alphabet spaghetti on the page. But not only might the pronunciation of Sucgyn mab Sucnedut trip you up, unless you know it means Suck son of Sucker, the humour of the list is lost. 

 

Bromwich and Evans, discussing the list, suggest. ’But if the whole series of names between lines 175-373 is excised, the tale runs on with greater clarity and smoothness: line 174 being followed immediately by line 374.’ They are right,  of course:

 

"[The boon] I name is for you to get me Olwen, daughter of Yspaddaden Bencawr, and I invoke it [in the name of] your warriors."

[Delete 200 lines of text]

‘Arthur said "O Chieftain, I have never heard about the maiden of whom you speak, nor her parents. I will send out messengers to search for her gladly." 

Reasons to Include the List:

 Plot isn’t everything. Deciding on what is relevant to a story is not a straight forward process regardless of what your editor claims. Relevant to your reading or mine or to a possible reading neither of us have made? James Joyce and Umberto Eco would have loved it. So what might it add to the story?

 

The court list demonstrates the extent of Arthur’s power. It contain men from France, Ireland, Brittany and the Uplands of Hell, as well as bishops, kings and the sons of kings. It contains historical figures, euhemerised characters from earlier myth,  and figures from other story cycles. 

 

Arthur’s court might be impressive, but we know it falls and the list forcibly reminds us of this by referring to the battle of Camlan. We meet one of the nine men who planned the battle,  and the three men who escaped and Arthur isn’t one of them. Even the mention of Gwyhenever and her sister alludes to the fact that, according to the Triad, Camlan was the result of her sister hitting the queen. There is also the man who will kill Kei, who Arthur will kill in revenge.

 

The absurd qualities of some of the heroes are exaggerated exaggerations: the kind I‘d heard growing up: he could eat you out of house and home; he drinks so much his legs must be hollow; he can talk the hind legs off a donkey. So they don’t feel as alien as they might and I enjoy them. But the fact that so many of these names have special skills or qualities, even when the skills and qualities are absurd, emphasises the fact that Culhwch has nothing going for him other than his fine horse, his shiny weapons, and his bad manners. He is out of his depth even before Ysbaddaden stipulates 40 Impossible Tasks. 

 

The list also reinforces the fact that neither Culhwch nor reader, nor the original audience, are in familiar territory anymore. Once Culhwch has been greeted by the porter we’ve entered a very strange version of the world. There will be giants and witches and talking animals, as well as people who God transformed into animals for their sins. By the time you get to the end of the court list, the relative sanity of the opening of the story with its folk tale style familiarity is easily forgotten. The list acts as a portal that normalises the rest of the story. Once we've passed through it, nothing that follows seems strange. 

 

You can also feel the story teller working the audience. As he launches into the list, the audience would tense. How long will this go on for? But they will never know what comes next, if it’s serious or ludicrous, and the variation carries them through the surging rhythms of the list. It’s an essential part of the performance that is this story. 

 

The ‘silly names’ in the list also remind of us of two things. Firstly, there was a time when names did mean something. In this context, making up names has a currency. Secondly, real people had names that to us sound strange. To just take a random example from a book on Medieval Hunting (by John Cummings):  Jehan Corneprise’ (John blow the death), Jehan Ievre (John Hallo-the-hare) and Huelguillot le Mastiner (Guillot the mastiff man.) (the translations are Cumming's).

 

A similar list of names in Apollonius of Tyre’s poem on the Argonauts is a dull catalogue. The list in Culhwch is varied, entertaining and if not laugh out loud funny often amusingly demented

 

Given it does so much according to my reading of the text, it seems worth the risk that is might alienate my non Welsh speaking Model Reader. The Court List stays. Whether in slightly abbreviated form or in full remains to be seen.