Ian Brinton reviews 'How Culhwch won Olwen' in Long Poem Magazine.

 

The imaginative absurdity of this early Arthurian romance is caught by Guilar with both humour and music and this is presented to the reader, or the listener, from the moment of Culhwch’s arrival at the king’s court and is greeted by the gatekeeper:

 

      The boy asked, ‘Is there a porter?’

 

      ‘There is and may your head not be your own for asking.

      I am Arthur’s porter on the 1st of January,

      for the rest of the year my deputies are Goodhearer,

      Littlemeatman, Slowstep, and Penpingpong,

      who goes upon his head to save his feet,

      neither earthwards nor heavenwards,

      but like a rolling stone on the floor of the court.’

 

As Guilar’s note to this tells us these names (Huandaw, Gogigwr, Llaeskemyn, Penpingyon in Welsh) are an abrupt indication that the hero accompanied by us as readers is about to enter ‘a different version of the world.’ 

You can read the whole review here:

https://longpoemmagazine.org.uk/reviews/how-culhwch-won-olwen-by-liam-guilar-shearsman-books-2026-and-in-the-shadow-of-the-yew-by-john-barnie-cinnamon-press-2026/

Warriors of the Wasteland. Fake news from prehistory.

 

Warning: Opinionating in progress

 

I think books like this are dangerous. They are the historical version of fake news and they are predatory, presenting themselves as research, but full of fake scholarship, and preying on gullible readers who want to believe.

If you read this as a fictional story about a man who sets out on an impossible quest and travels vast distances across time and space in search of his answer, it’s a breathless and sometimes entertaining version of a medieval quest story.

It would also work as a relentless parody of the type of pseudo-historical investigation which seem so popular.

But it is impossible to take seriously as an investigation into the ‘truth’ behind the Grail story. There was no single grail story. There is no single ‘truth’ to find. 

The underlying assumption is that no medieval writer ever invented anything. Any story, or more importantly, episode or character in a story ripped out of context, must have its origin in a prehistoric source which is always sacred or ritualistic or both. And these sources can be traced by the simple process of finding things that look similar.

The method throughout is associative. Parodied long ago as: X rides a chariot, the Sun God rides a chariot, therefore X must be a Sun God. The author charges ever onwards, collecting disparate pieces of ‘evidence’. Things that look similar to him are treated as though they are identical and related despite the vast geographical and temporal distances separating them.

It’s a dizzying process. The effect of the breathless onward rush may not be calculated, but  it would take a reader with abnormal amounts of dedication and time to critically follow the argument, let alone check to see what has distorted or misrepresented.  

But it’s in the details that the argument unravels and where the methodology is exposed.

3 examples

Throughout, stories are selectively read, their contents blurred and any remote similarity treated as more important than substantial differences. 

‘Much as Branwen, Blodeuwedd and Blathnat betray their husbands, Rome is betrayed by a maiden named Tarpeia who is in love with a Gallic warrior’(p.59).

The only links here are the fact the characters are female, and the verb Betray,

Blodeuwedd commits adultery with a passing stranger and after three nights together the lovers decide to murder her husband. Everyone would agree she betrays her husband. 

Branwen, the sister of Bran, King of Britain, is married to Matholwch, the King of Ireland. For no fault of hers, after a year of marriage, he drives her from his chambers and consigns her to work in the kitchen, where every day, the butcher, after cutting up meat, strikes her a blow on the ear. Branwen trains a small bird to take a message to her brother telling him of her plight 

There is an obsolete meaning of ‘betray’ ‘To give up to or expose to punishment’ which could be used to describe Branwen’s actions, but the motives and actions of the two women have nothing in common and betrayal seems the wrong word in the context of the story. In what way is either of these examples similar to someone 'betraying' a city beyond a wrenched use of the verb?

Sources:

There is little attempt to explain how stories and motifs might have been transmitted across time and geographical distances.

It’s long been noted that the poem Gawain and the Green Knight tells a story that is similar to several others. Grigsby plumps for the Irish Bircrui’s Feast as its source. But the difference between stating the obvious: that these stories are similar, is blurred into the statement that the Irish story is the source of the English one, ‘What’s more, the Gawain poet gives away his source when in one line he describes the Green Knight, instead of bearing his axe, as clutching his club where he stands (a club being Bachlach’s usual weapon)’ p.33. However, the two stories also have striking differences as well. In Grigsby’s world, these cannot be due to the English writer’s intentions or imagination, they must have another source, so the Gawain poet has  ‘gleaned [the plotline] from another Irish tale.’

No attempt is made to explain how the anonymous author of the Gawain poem could have accessed a copy of the Irish story, or read it. Saying he might have done so is not the same as proving he did or even could. 

History.

 ‘History’ is an irrelevance that can be ignored when it’s inconvenient. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth tells the story of Vortigern and the war between the Saxons and Britons. ‘I couldn’t help but read between the lines and see this whole drama as nothing less than a memory of the war between Twin and Man, with the Britons playing the role of the defeated aboriginals and the Saxons that of the Arya, (with their totemic horse)…’ And so it goes on… ‘Nothing less than a memory of..’ You can ‘read between the lines’ and make something into anything you like. But there were Britons and Saxons who fought for dominance in Britain, and Geoffrey and his readers knew this. How is an historical conflict a memory of a story?   

I suspect there are two reasons why this kind of argument is popular. The first is a very human interest in the distant, prehistoric past. In his essay ‘The Anthropological Approach’, C.S.Lewis described the feeling that Gawain and the Green Knight or the Grail stories evoke, a sense of muted wonder and the thought that something more is happening here than is stated, leading to a natural desire to explore them.

The other attraction lies in the fact that everyone can join in. As a reader you’re not being asked to deal with an argument that requires any kind of knowledge or expertise on your behalf. You’re certainly not expected to have read the Grail stories, even in the readily available modern translations. All  the work has been done for you. You don’t need to struggle with scholarly discussions of Indo-European languages, or know anything about Medieval History or Literature, or the histories of prehistoric Britain.  Grigbsy will tell you all you need to know. 

When he confidently writes ‘In the Welsh language the sound ‘m’ is often mutated to ‘v’ so the names Avebury and Amesbury …are clearly related’ you can file it away as something to dazzle your like-minded friends. Whether or not he’s right about v and m when they are preceded by a vowel seems less important than the fact that both place names are derived from Old English, not Welsh and their welsh pronunciation would be irrelevant. 

If you only had the energy and stamina you too could discover the truth behind the Grail, the identity of Arthur, the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant or the true meaning of any story you chose. Spot ‘similarities’, sprinkle your work with a bit of Joseph Campbell and/or Carl Jung and you could write a book like this. Though if you had studied at Bangor university some readers might wonder why you’re quoting Robert Graves’ version of ‘The Battle of the Trees’.

If you want to believe Grigsby’s argument, nothing I’ve written here will stop you. Facts, the rules of evidence, the meaning of the words on the page, are all irrelevant.  As the publisher knows, people will believe what they want to and they can feed them any amount of sludge if they  present it as ‘researched’.  

According to his website Mr. Grigsby has also written a book about ‘The true meaning of Beowulf’. 

 

 

A Presentment of Englishry, A Man of Heart, The Fabled Third

I started writing these ten years ago and now they are finished and I can hear the Grateful Dead singing; 'What a long strange trip it's been'.

Narrative poetry, or Historical fiction, or historical fiction in verse. I think of it as storytelling, 

From a prehistoric tin trader visiting the island to the struggle for power at the end of Roman Britain and the coming of the English.

The stories of Locrin, Gwendoline and Aestrild; Vortigern and Rowena; and Uther and Ygrayne are taken from Laȝamon‘s late twelfth century version of the legendary history of Britain. The Fabled Third also contains versions of three stories from The Mabinogion. 

Laȝamon‘s own story is sketched in A Presentment of Englishry and he returns to close the books at the end of The Fabled Third in Laȝamon‘s Last Interview. 

Information and samples on Shearsman UK’s website, Information, Samples and background at  www.liamguilar.com.    

Nu biddeð Laȝamon alcne æðele mon;

for þene almiten Godd.

þet þeos boc rede; & leornia þeos runan.

þat he þeos soðfeste word; segge to-sumne.

for his fader saule; þa hine forð brouhte.

& for his moder saule; þa hine to monne iber.

& for his awene saule; þat hire þe selre beo. Amen

John Masefield's versions of the story of Arthur's conception.

(King Uther and Igraine after Gorlois's death, from Uther and Igraine by Warwick Deeping, illustration by Władysław T. Benda, 1903)

Now that I’ve finished writing about Uther, I have been reading other people’s versions. 

 

The story in its early medieval versions operates on the ugly edges of desire, where obsession lurks and destroys both the object of desire and the person doing the desiring. If ever there was as story to illustrate the idea that identity is fluid, and if desire is desire for the desire of the other and we are willing to transform ourselves to become the object of that desire, this is it. 

 

In ‘Midsummer Night And Other Tales In Verse’ (1928) John Masefield (1878-1967) provides an example of the problem caused by rewriting a story to make it acceptable for ‘modern’ sensibilities. Interestingly, he tells the story twice. 

 

 In ‘The Begetting of Arthur’, the longer of the two versions, there is no magic, no Merlin there is no transformation, there is no deception of the woman, and the lovers are married before they consummate their relationship (ain’t euphemisms lovely?).  

 

In this version, Uther is trying to unite Britain. He goes to Cornwall to try and talk the King, Melchyon, into joining him. Melchyon is ‘aged savage mean and grim’ and baron Breuse the Heartless ‘of all men the worst’ lives with him. The king dismisses Uther. As he’s about to leave, he meets Ygern, the King’s daughter, and they fall instantly in love. Uther turns around and goes back to ask the king for her hand. Her father refuses his request, thinking Uther’s simply trying to ‘win my power through a bride’. As Uther and his two companions ride away, Ygern’s sister catches up with them, and tells him that Ygern is to be married that night to Breuse the Heartless. 

 

To save her, Uther concocts a plan to sneak back to Tintagel, wearing a disguise of  ‘crown and scarlet and a sheep-wool beard.’knowing the Porter is old and will be half asleep. He gets in, finds a waiting Ygerne, they immediately escape to the old Hermit (Bran the Blest) who immediately marries them. 

 

They flee Cornwall, riding day and night, until out of Merchyon’s land,  before consummating their marriage in a suitably romantic outdoor spot ‘in this orchard of the fairy queen’ but  Merchyon and Breuse  catch up with them and murder Uther while he’s sleeping. Ygern is taken back to Tintagel to await the birth of her son.

 

Give Masefield his dues, it enjoyable, he was an a skilful narrative poet. It reads like a literary version of a ballad. It’s reminiscent of The Eve of Saint Agnes as the lovers creep out of the castle and make their escape, except it’s more dramatic than Keats’ poem. 

 

But the story itself, stripped of magic and made decent for the moral reader, is as dead as Uther’s fake woollen beard. He is heroic and moral and utterly forgettable. 

 

In the same collection, Masefield tells another version of the same story. ‘The Old Tale of the Begetting’.  He introduced the poem: The men of old who told the tale for us/Declare that Uther begat Arthur thus’.

 

It’s much shorter, 10 rhyming couplets with a final stanza of three lines,  against seven pages of ‘The Begetting of Arthur’. This is the familiar version, with Merlin and magic, deception of the woman, and it ends with Uther crowing and Ygrain distraught ;

 

Uther drinks and boasts at his board,

Ygrain sings for her dead lord:

‘Would I were pierced though with a sword’.   

 

It’s possible Masefield was trying to mimic a ballad in ‘popular form’, and thought this sounded like the story if it had been told by someone uneducated or at least ‘non-literary’.   But whatever the intention, it isn’t a version of the story that can be taken seriously.  Remember, this is the man who wrote ‘Cargoes’.

 

His rhyming couplets and diction undermine any seriousness the story might have had. 

 

‘Uther saw Ygrain the Bright/His heart went pit-pat at the sight’.

or

‘He said to Merlin, ‘Make her mine/Or you’ll be hog’s meat for my swine’.

 

An uncharacteristically awkward syntax also spoils the story.

 

‘As he climbed into the Queen’s bed/Ygrain’s Duke on the moors fell dead’.

 

 

‘The Begetting of Arthur’, if you don’t know the usual version of the story, makes sense, but as a version of the story, it’s like watching an earnest, well-made film that somehow misses the point. ‘The Old tale of the Begetting’ puts the usual version at a distance, and manages to simultaneously  tell the story and mock it. 

 

Cleaning up a medieval story so it’s acceptable usually means killing whatever made the story hold its readers’ attention for centuries. 

Who was King Arthur's mother? Laȝamon’s version.3/3

Laȝamon’s version.

 

It’s a relief to move from texts written in Latin, a language I can’t read, to two texts written in languages I can; Anglo-Norman and Early Middle English. 

 

Laȝamon’s early middle English version is the most dramatic of the four. As was his practice, while closely following Wace, he expands incidents and adds speeches. He removes Wace’s criticisms of Uther, while consistently adding comments which emphasise Ygærne’s innocence. 

 

In places you can almost see how he had visualised what he read and then, in translating, added small but significant detail. However, he also possessed a limited vocabulary of praise and an apparent lack of interest in ‘motivation’. Some terms in French which would later enter English, seem to have had no equivalent in his version of English.  

 

Ygærne is introduced by her social role, as most of Laȝamon's characters are. Gorlois ‘sat with his gracious wife’, ‘the fair Ygærne the wife of Earl Gorlois, the fairest of all women’. Wace’s ‘Courteous and wise’ disappear, but Laȝamon seems to have had trouble translating ‘curteise’ (courteous) which may account for its absence here. (Later in the story he translates ‘Curteise’ as ‘of tuhtle swipe gode’ (Which Barron and W translate as ‘refined in bearing’ and more literally ‘of very good manners’)

 

Wace’s ambiguous ‘Ygærne behaved in such a way as neither to consent nor refuse’, leaves his translator confused: ‘He looked at her often, flashing glances from his eyes, often sent his cup-bearer to her table, smiled at her and eyed her often; and she looked kindly upon him-but whether she loved him I do not know!’  

 

Laȝamon makes her more than just the object of Uther’s lust. When Gorlois sends her to Tintagel he writes: ‘To Tintagel he sent his beloved, gentle wife, called Ygærne, the fairest of women, and shut her up securely in the castle, Ygærne was sorrowful and sad at heart that so many men for her sake should lose their lives there.‘

 

For Laȝamon, Uther’s problem is not the impregnability of Tintagel, but Ygraene’s character. To Wace’s Ulfin he adds: ‘If you think to win Ygærne  with such violence , then she will behave as no woman ever does, feeling in extreme fear the sweetness of love. But if you love Ygærne you should keep it secret, and quickly send her gold and silver and woo her with cunning and with fair promises. Even so it would be doubtful whether you could possess her, for Ygærne is a good and very faithful woman as her mother was and others of that family. 

 

In Wace and Geoffrey, Merlin is sent for. In Laȝamon he has to be found. He is staying with a hermit. Merlin tells the hermit: ‘Uther is filled with longing for the lovely Ygraene, greatly besotted with the wife of Gorlois. But it will never happen, as long as time shall last, that he shall win her save by my magic skill: for there is no truer woman in this mortal world.’

 

By dramatizing Uther’s arrival at Tintagel, Laȝamon reinforces the success of the deception. ‘They came to the gate of the castle and called out in a  familiar manner: Undo the bar of this gate, the earl is come here, the lord Gorlois’. But instead of the gates being thrown open, soldiers come to the wall and speak with Gorlois ‘and recognised him clearly’. 

 

He gives Ygærne the only lines of direct speech in the four versions:

‘Welcome my lord, dearest one; and Jurdan and Brutael are welcome too. Did you escape from the king without harm?’

 

Neither Geoffrey nor Wace give much space to what actually happened in Tintagel. But Laȝamon describes the scene. It contains perhaps the quietest moment in The Brut:

 

Ygærne beh to bure; & lætte bed him makien.

wes þat kine-wurðe bed; al mid palle ouer-bræd. 

Þe king hit wel bihedde; & eode to his bedde.

and Ygærne læi adun; bi Uðere Pendragun. 

 

He insists that Ygaerne is unaware she’s in bed with Uther. 

 

‘Now Ygerne truly believed that it was Gorlois; in no way whatsoever did she recognise Uther the king. The king went unto her as a man should to a woman and his way with the woman most dear to him and he begot on her a marvellous man, the boldest king who ever was born; and he was called Arthur..(9513) 'Ygerne knew not who lay in her arms, for all the time she fully believed that it was the earl Gorlois.' 

 

After he returns to his army, all reference to Uther’s response to Gorlois’ death is removed. Uther sends messengers ‘to greet Ygærne, the noblest of women, and sent her as a sign something she had said in bed, commanding her to yield up the castle immediately-there was no other recourse for her lord was dead. Ygærne still believed the truth was that the dead earl had gone to join his troops and she firmly believed it was not true that king Uther had ever come to her. ‘ 

 

‘There and then Uther the king took Ygærne as queen: Ygærne was with child by King Uther before she was married, all through the magic of merlin.’ 

 

Laȝamon, who we know was a priest, adds one more detail to this story. IT's not in his sources. When Arthur is born:

 

Sone swa he com an eorðe; aluen hine iuengen.

heo bigolen þat child; mid galdere swiðe stronge.

heo ȝeuen him mihte; to beon bezst alre cnihten.

heo ȝeuen him an-oðer þing; þat he scolde beon riche king.

heo ȝiuen him þat þridde; þat he scolde longe libben.

heo ȝifen him þat kine-bern; custen swiðe gode.

þat he wes mete-custi; of alle quike monnen.

þis þe alue him ȝef; and al swa þat child iþæh.

 

I’ve quoted the original because Barron and Weinberg translate Aluen as fairies, but I’ve always read it as elves. The Middle English dictionary says it could be either. For a modern reader fairies might evoke the disneyfied version. Elves, especially the Old English, pre Tolkien variety, were more sinister and much less benign. The elves attend and give gifts: strength to be the best of knights; that he should be a mighty king, and they gave him long life. ‘So that he was the most liberal of living men’. 

 

 What's is a reminder that what's important to the tellers of this tale, is not Ygærne, or the twisted morality of the the story, but the fact that it leads to the birth of Arthur. 

Which should lead to Ygraene as a 12^th century lady. 

What 'they believed'. The Middle Ages and the American Election.

Looking at attitudes to magic and transformation in the Middle Ages, before the 13^th century in particular, the scholarly implication seems to be that these beliefs are discredited and therefore they can be studied as something very much in the past, cut off from us by the Enlightenment and the advances of modern scientific understanding. 

‘We’ don’t believe this stuff anymore. Those medieval figures who argued that transformation was impossible were obviously ‘well ahead of their time’.

 

The recent coverage of the American election should qualify that attitude and raise questions about who that ‘we’ excludes. What do 'we' believe?

 

(Ignore the ignorance behind the claims that we’d be better off as ‘medieval peasants’ or that there is a pure ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ethnicity.) 

 

So far, I’ve read reports in the mainstream papers that in America there are people who believe that hurricanes can be ‘weaponised’, to the point where meteorologists have received death threats. One prominent politician is reported to not only not believe in vaccines, but to believe he suffered memory loss because a worm eat part of his brain and died inside it. Another is reported to have claimed to have been attacked by a demon while he slept, and was left scratched and bleeding after the assault. 

The paper reported the last two as objective facts, without comment. 

 

This is the twenty first century. 

 

And yes, you can buy spell books on Amazon and their buyers seem to be upset if the spells don’t work. You can hire people to cast love spells for you to enchant the object of your desire. You can even pay for transformation spells.  

 

And this is the twenty first century. 

 

If there is a twenty fifth, will historians of these times, working through the archives, dismiss beliefs like these as fringe lunacy, or take it as mainstream belief? 

What will they say ‘they believed’? 

Who was King Arthur's Mother? 2/3 Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace.

The four texts are The Vulgate version of Geoffrey of Monmouth (GOM), the First Variant Version of GOM (hereafter FVV), Wace’s ‘Roman de Brut’ and Laȝamon's ‘Brut’. 

 Quotations are taken from these editions.

The Wife of Gorlois is respectively, Ygerna, Igerna, Ygerne, and Ygærne.   

 

In all four texts the story of Arthur’s conception follows the same sequence and contains the same elements that first appear in Geoffrey’s account. Only Laȝamon adds anything substantial to the account. However, each writer treats the material differently. Geoffrey relates the story. Wace is critical of Uther. Laȝamon removes the criticism of Uther and goes out of his way to emphasise Ygaerne’s innocence.

 

 

The Sequence:

 

At a feast to celebrate Uther’s recent victories, he sees the wife of Gorlois. Uther is besotted, and his behaviour outrages Gorlois who storms out. 

 

Gorlois puts his wife in the safety of Tintagel, which is impregnable, while he fortifies and occupies another castle. 

 

Overwhelmed by desire, Uther besieges Gorlois but can’t take the castle. Sick with love, he asks Ulfin for advice.

Ulfin points out that Tintagel is impregnable, and advises him to seek Merlin.

Merlin offers to transform Uther into Gorlois so he can enter the castle and bed Ygerna.

While Uther is absent his men attack Gorlois, kill him and capture his castle.

Uther hears the news and leaves Tintagel.

He then takes Tintagel and marries Ygerna. Arthur is born. Later, a daughter,  Anna is born. 

And there is no further mention of Ygerna. 

 

The differences between the Vulgate and the First Variant are slight. 

 

Neither mention Ygerna’s reaction to Uther’s behaviour at the feast. FVV notes the David and Bathsheba parallel, with ‘Satan as the go between’, perhaps alluding to the earlier meeting of Vortigern and Rowena, also at a feast, where the devil was indeed busy. 

 

Uther is upset by the news that Gorlois is dead but in GOM ’he mourned for the death of Gorlois; but he was happy all the same, that Ygerna was freed from her marital obligations’. In FVV‘ ‘…pretending to be saddened by the death of his duke, but rejoicing not a little about Igerna’s release from her marital bond.’

 

Uther takes Tintagel and marries Y/Igerna. GOM states: ‘From that day on they lived together as equals united by their great love for each other: and they had a son and a daughter’. The First Variant ‘After their nuptials were lawfully and splendidly celebrated, the King and Queen Igerna lived together side by side. And at the time for her delivery she gave birth to that famous Arthur. Afterwards she conceived and brought forth a daughter named Anna.’  

WACE

 

As I’ve said before, the conception of Arthur was a ‘morally ambiguous’ story for a cleric writing in the 12^thCentury. Possibly far more morally ambiguous then it would have been a century later. Uther is intent on committing adultery and/or rape: Ygerne’s actions could be described as adultery, though unintentional. Later writers, Malory most notably, would make sure Gorlois was dead before Arthur was conceived, but this isn’t in Geoffrey. 

However, in all four versions, only Wace shifts the narrative so it becomes openly critical of Uther. He also adds a little to Ygerna’s character. 

 

In his version of the story, even before he’s seen her, Uther ‘had loved and desired her for she was exceedingly celebrated’. 

I don't know at what point the Church decided the intent to sin was the same as committing the sin but Mathew 5;28 is quite explicit: 'But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.' The implication in Wace is that he’s been waiting for his opportunity and he intends to make the most of it.

 

Y is introduced: ‘There was no fairer in all the land: she was courteous, beautiful and wise, and of very high rank.’ Courteous and Wise distinguish her from other dangerous beauties, like Rowena and Aestrild.  

 

While Uther is flirting with her the obvious question is ‘what was she doing?’ Geoffrey doesn’t describe her reaction. Wace adds: ‘Ygerna behaved in such a way as neither to consent nor refuse.’ Which may have been a sane policy in such a situation, but it doesn’t exonerate her either. 

 

Wace’s Ulfin becomes the voice of reason. For Geoffrey’s Ulfin, the impregnability of Tintagel is the only problem, but Wace leaves Tintagel out of Ulfin’s speech.  

 

‘These are astonishing words,‘ said Ulfin. ‘You have harassed the count with war, destroyed his lands and confined him to this castle. Do you think that that pleases his wife? You love the wife and make war on the husband! I don’t know what sort of help you need; I can’t advise you.’

 

When he learns of the death of Gorlois: Uther ‘was grieved that the count was slain, he said; that had not been his wish. He was full of regrets and compunction, and angry with his barons. He seemed distressed but there were few who believed him.’

 

‘The king, deeply in love with Ygerne, married her without delay. She had conceived a son that night and in due course bore him.’

And that’s the end of her role in the story.

In the Next Post, Laȝamon’s version.

(The arguments over whether the ‘Vulgate’ version of GOM came before or after the ‘First Variant’, or whether it’s the work of one or two writers, aren’t relevant here nor is the debate about which version Wace used, or whether or not Laȝamon had read Geoffrey.)

Who was King Arthur's mother? 1/3

(And we're back to things Arthurian.)

 

Igerna.

 

No one knows where she came from.

They say she’s of the fairy folk, 

blown in on the wind,

washed up on the strand, 

though he can’t imagine her 

surprised and shipwrecked on the beach.

She would have glided over the wave tops

unruffled by the tempest, using 

her drowning companions as stepping stones. 

Rumour says Ireland, or the Western Isles,

but where family is defining,

she’s no one’s daughter. No one at court

remembers when she first arrived, 

nor how. She might have been a slave. 

But she had captivated Gorlois

and that prim, moral man, 

was soon creeping to her bed at night

while his wife was sleeping solitary in his.

                                                                        From ‘The Fabled Third’ (To be published in 2025).

 

It’s perhaps significant that while ‘who was Arthur’s father’ has been the subject of scholarly dispute (see previous posts on Uther), his mother seems to have created much less interest. In R.S.Loomis’s encyclopaedic ‘Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages’ (1959) she didn’t even rate an entry in the index. Blackwell’s huge ‘Companion to Arthurian Literature’ (2009) gives her three entries but none of them is more than a passing references to her role in the story. 

 

In Culhwch and Olwen, ‘the oldest Arthurian tale’, the story turns on Arthur’s relationship with Culhwch. By inference, Arthur’s unnamed mother would seem to be a daughter of Amlawd Wledic, and she has sisters and brothers.

 

Whether Geoffrey of Monmouth knew any of this is debatable. An online search  produces various sites that confidently declare that Ygerne or Igerna is from the Welsh Eigyr.  It would take a better linguist than me to disprove this, but I’m not convinced. In the ‘Vulgate version’ of Geoffrey of Monmouth (hereafter GOM) she is Igerna. In his exhaustive study of names in GOM J.S.P Tatlock had nothing to say about her name except that it had only been found as a male name, Iger or Igner in Brittany. 

In Laȝamon's Brut there is a passing reference to her mother and others in her family, but as it’s not in his immediate source, it could just be a conventional compliment. 

Realistically, she is not a character in the modern sense. She has a narrative function: to give birth to Arthur, and that’s all you need to know. But having said that, it’s worth tracking her from Geoffrey, via Wace, to Laȝamon. It is only in the latter that she speaks. 

(IN the next post: Geoffrey tells the story and Wace blackens Uther's good name.)

Translating 'Culhwch and Olwen'. Giants, ants and perplexing verbs.

 These poems were first published in The Brazen Head

https://brazen-head.org/2024/08/19/three-translations-from-culhwch-ac-owen/

(I.m Michael Alexander)

 

 

Translating Culhwch ac Olwen.

 

In popular films the sexy treasure hunter/archaeologist

(they conflate the two, much to my trowel wielding friends’ dismay)

who’s fluent in every lost forgotten ancient language,

confronting the inscription on the recently uncovered wall,

or gazing at the long lost rediscovered legendary text,

looks, then translates, without a pause, the symbols 

into fluent, idiomatic, contemporary American.

 

The reality goes more like this:

 

Kilyd son of Kledon Wledic

Wanted a wife as noble as himself.

Here is the woman he wanted.

Goleudyt daughter of Anlawd Wledic.

 

So far so good. 

 

After they stayed together What? Gwest Ah, see note.

They spent the night together. Is that too direct?

The verb’s related to the one for copulation. 

They came together. After they were married

….bland. After they slept together,

no, the story teller could have used kysgu gan.

The cruder options? No. Not here. What follows? 

 

The country went to pray they ?might have? offspring

And they got a child/boy through the prayers of the country.

And from the hour she captured, caught? 

The next word’s definitely ‘pregnant’. Another note. 

‘Became pregnant’ though literally ‘caught pregnancy’.

As though it were an illness, perhaps better than ‘fell pregnant’

which evokes abrupt decline, or woman, falling?

Then she went wild/feral. Another note.

‘She went mad’. Mad or wild is somewhere you go to

in this case beyond the civilised boundaries.

She’s gone mad and won’t come near a building.

Wouldn’t enter a building? 

 

And from the time that she was pregnant, 

She went wild and wouldn’t enter any building.

And when her time came, she came to her good sense.

You go mad but come to your senses. The payoff’s here,  

the sudden twist estranging your own language.

You go out of your mind as though it were a car, 

and you could leave it in the car park to return to 

when finished being mad and needed it again. Anyway, 

what’s next? Pigs!? What? We’re up to line 7, only 

one thousand two hundred and thirty eight to go.

 

 

 

May I marry your daughter?

 

(The giant Ysbaddaden Pencawr knows he will die when Olwen, his beautiful daughter, marries. Understandably, he doesn’t welcome her suitors. But Culhwch has been told that if he doesn’t marry Olwen, he will never marry anyone. He and his six companions set out to ask the giant for her hand in marriage.What isn’t stated but becomes obvious is that the giant can’t be killed until his daughter is married. )

 

 

They killed the nine gatekeepers, 

and not a man cried out.

They killed their nine huge mastiffs;

not one so much as squealed.

And so they came into the hall.

 

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr! Greetings

in the name of God and man!’

 

‘You, where are you going?’

 

‘We seek your daughter, Olwen,

for Culhwch son of Kilyd.’

 

‘Where are those rascal servants?

Where are those ruffians of mine?

Raise up the forks under my eyelids

so I can see my future son in law.’

 

This they did. ‘Come back tomorrow 

I’ll have an answer for you then.’

 

He had three stone spears beside him,

each tipped with poison.

As they turned to go he seized one 

and flung it after them.

Bedwyr caught it and hurled it back,

piercing the giant through his knee cap.

 

‘Cursed savage son in law! 

It will be worse for me when I go downhill.

Like the sting of a gadfly, 

the poisoned iron has hurt me.

Cursed be the smith who made it 

and the anvil on which it was forged.‘                  

 

They stayed that night at Custennin’s house.

And on the second day, they set out to the hall, 

in majesty, with fine combs in their hair.

 

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr, 

give us your daughter.

In return for her dowry and marriage fee 

to you and her two kinswomen.

And if we don’t get her from you;

you’ll get your death from us.’

 

‘Her four great-grandmothers 

and her four great-grandfathers 

are still alive. I must consult them.’ 

 

‘You do that. We’ll go eat.’

 

He took the second spear 

and hurled it after them.

Menw mab Teirgwaedd 

caught it and threw it back. 

It pierced the centre of his chest 

and sprung out the small of his back.

 

‘Cursed savage son in law.

The pain of this hard iron

is like the sting of a horse-leech. 

Cursed be the forge wherein it was heated.

Now, when I go uphill, 

there will be a tightness in my chest,

stomach aches and frequent nausea.’  

 

They went to their food.

 

On the third day they came to the court.

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr, 

stop throwing spears at us.

Do not wish hurt and harm 

and death upon yourself.’

 

‘My eyelids have fallen over my eyeballs-

Where are my servants, raise up the forks

so I may look on my future son in law.’

 

They arose, and as they rose,

he took the third spear

and hurled it at them. This time, 

Culhwch caught it and threw it back,

and as he wished, it pierced the eyeball 

went through and out the back of his neck.

 

‘Cursed savage son in law.

As long as I live the sight in one eye 

will be worse than the other.

Whenever I walk in the wind it will water.

I’ll have headaches and giddiness 

at the start of each moon.

Cursed be the forge that heated it. 

Worse than the bite of a mad dog 

is the sting of its poisoned iron.’

 

Next day they came to the court.

‘Don’t attack us anymore.

You’ll bring hurt and harm 

and martyrdom to yourself.

Give us your daughter.’

 

‘Which one of you was told to seek her?’

‘Me, Culhwch, son of Kilyd.’

‘Come here so I can see you.’ 

A chair was placed under him, 

so they could be face to face.

 

‘Is it you who seeks my daughter?’

‘I do.’ ‘Give me your word 

that you’ll be just?’ ‘I give it.’

‘When you give me what I name, 

then you will have my daughter.’ 

‘Name what you want.’

 

-------------- 

 

(Ysbaddaden gives Culhwch forty impossible tasks. This next poem tells how one of them is achieved. Gwythyr is one of Culhwch’s companions.)

 

The Lame Ant

 

As Gwythyr mab Greidawl 

was crossing a mountain, 

he heard lamentations:

a most bitter wailing.

 

Dreadful this noise.

He rushed towards it

drawing his sword, 

cutting the anthill 

off at the ground

saving the ants from

the blistering flames.

 

‘God’s blessing and ours upon you,’

they said to him.

‘And that which no man can recover

we will recover for thee.’

 

These were the ants 

who collected the flax,

all the nine hestors

Ysbaddaden demanded.

 

But one seed was missing.

Until just before sunset.

it was finally brought in

by the last, limping ant.