The Conception of King Arthur. Transformation, magic, belief. 2/3

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.