Gwydion and Uther's stories. from The Fabled Third

 

Gwydion the storyteller 

steps into a version of himself.

The smoky hall lined with iron men,

bright, shiny, awkward,

dreaming a glorious future: 

fame in battle, marriage 

their own estates and children. 

Or rusting to the benches. 

Bent, battle scratched, 

stale veterans going sour 

watching their time leaking away 

like spilt ale down a long hill, 

no longer believing in a future, 

their chances fading like their hair. 

Don’t patronise them.

We are born into stories we did not write.

Happy the men and women at home in theirs.

 

Uther Pendragon, at the high table,

surrounded by his court officials,

attendant lords, and a woman 

with hair the colour of midnight in a cave

laughing with the man beside her.

 

Uther comes towards him,

with the shambling swagger

of a horseman after an epic ride,

shouldering his way through an imagined crowd.

He stops in front of Gwydion,

toe to toe, inspecting him. 

‘I need a bard. Heard you’re good.

Had the last one thrown off the roof.’

 

He smiles, his head to one side,

‘I like that. You didn’t ask me why.

Because you know I’m going to tell you.

He told a story about the House of Brutus,

how The Thin Man had my father killed

then manipulated my brother’s bodyguard

into killing him as well.’[1]

 

He turns towards the muttering faces. 

They’ve all heard that story.

‘Well that’s utter bollocks init.‘[2]

His hands throwing words across the room.

‘A disgruntled servant knifed my dad.

I made enquiries.’ Four syllables, loitering

unpleasantly. Something to be avoided. 

 

‘I fought with Huns. I mean with them 

and against them. Allans, Goths, Lombards. 

I know tribal warriors. These aren’t Romans

who switch loyalties faster than you refill your cups.

It would take some kind of deviant Christ

to pull that miracle; to make 

a tribesman turn on his ring giver.’[3]

 

He saunters back to Gwydion.

‘My court needs a bard. Tell me three stories: 

one now, here, for the drinkers at the benches;

one for my officers in my room;

one for my lady in her chamber. 

Job’s yours if they’re good. If they ain’t, 

we’ll throw you off the roof 

for claiming to be someone you’re not.’ 

 

The storyteller bows. 

 

‘But first, I’ll tell you one.’

 

The drinkers at the benches settle.

The night loses its edge.

Pendragon, chief of warriors;

they admire, respect, adore

although he terrifies them all.[4]

 

‘My brother, the King of Britain,

by right of conquest and inheritance,

decided the British Lords

who’d died on Salisbury plain

deserved a fitting monument.

 

So he holds a great council,

and everyone chips in. 

 

Like all councils, no one can agree.

 

Merlin walks in. The fiend himself.

I’ll get you a monument, he says.

It will stand for eternity.

 

Where is it, asks my brother.

In Ireland, says Merlin 

and we all laughed at him.

 

Except the king, who sends me,

with an army, to get this Giant’s Ring.

The locals pissed themselves 

when they heard why we’d arrived.

They thought it was the best joke, ever.

So we taught them not to laugh at us

and finally arrived on this god-forsaken,

wind-raked hill in the middle of a great green nowhere.

There’s stones. Huge, upright stones.

And we just stood and stared at them.

 

Try moving them, says Merlin.

We dug and pulled and pushed all day. 

The stones stayed put.

Then Merlin mumbles some words 

and did that thing with his hands,

like he’s tying knots in the air.

 

Try now, he says, so to humour him, 

we pushed a stone, and it fell over.

Stone turned to feather!

We hauled them to the coast,

watched by the astonished locals,

then sailed and dragged them

all the way to where you see them now.

A monument to British lords

slaughtered by Hengist and their own stupidity.

 

Now,’ he says to Gwydion, ‘top that.’

 

 

3

 

 

He will not try, 

not knowing how Uther may react

to being beaten here, in this game. 

They will not ask, why this story?

He can only throw the pebble in the pond

He can’t predict how far the ripples run. 

 

‘After The Great Slaughter,[5]

when the tribes were broken 

and the Great Queen died in despair, 

a prince was struggling home. 

 

He’d lost his weapons, 

retainers and horse.

Hadn’t eaten for days.

He stumbled along the valleys,

staggering up and over the hills.

His life could only get worse. 

 

He knows the Romans will steal his cattle 

burn his farm, enslave his kin.

If he gets home, he can’t stop them;

if they find him there, they’ll kill him.

But he keeps on: beaten, not broken.‘

 

Rumbling approval betrays their interest.

Been there; done that.

 

‘It was a dark night, no moon, no stars,

and he’s stumbling along through the trees 

in the valley below Maen Llwyd. 

At the point where the path forks,

he sees in front of him a darkness, 

darker than darkness, and as he watches 

it grows even darker, a shimmering shimmering, 

and the Devil on horseback blocking his path.

 

Down on your luck warrior?

No luck left to be down on. 

Well, says the Devil, 

offering him bread from his bag,

 

I do deals on nights like this, 

with desperate men like you. 

I have nothing to bargain with says our man.

But my friend, says the devil, you do.

 

Seven good years without effort or pain,

safe from your enemy’s eyes, 

wife and children growing old 

with the comforts that money can buy.

 

At the end of those years, 

bring a beast from your farm, 

if I name it, you serve me in hell.

if I can’t, you won’t be harmed, 

and you’ll have been richer as well.’ 

 

He pauses, to let them consider 

if they’d take such an offer.

Even if the devil speaks English

how could he lose?

 

Seven years of pleasure

for an eternity in hell?

The muttering subsides.

They’re waiting to see 

what this warrior will choose. 

 

‘He’d seen the sacred groves in flames.

The druids and their people slaughtered,

the tribes broken on that red, Roman line.

How could Hell be any worse? 

 

So he agreed. Home to his wife. 

They watched the Roman army trooping past. 

 

Seven years to the day, as the sun was setting, 

he said goodbye to his daughters and sons.

What’s ails you husband, have you gone mad?  

She nagged him ‘til he confessed what he’d done. 

 

What an idiot’s bet, but leave it to me,  

the Devil’s a man and men can be fooled.

Put your life in the hands of God and your wife

as every sane husband should do.

 

Bring me bird lime, as much as we’ve got 

and the feathers we pulled from the birds. 

 

Stripped naked, they smeared her with stickiness 

‘til she was covered from navel to head. 

Then she tipped out the feathers all over the floor 

and she rolled and she rolled ‘til she’d covered herself.

Now lead me to your devil with a halter round my neck.

 

At the place where the path splits

the Devil was waiting, 

a gloating darkness. 

He looked at the beast: 

a daughter of Eve 

from her navel on down, 

but the strangest of fowl 

from her navel on up.

 

By my tail, he said, what a terrible sight!

What perverted mating produced such a bird?
I'll be damned if I know what it is. 

Thank you. I’ll take it to hell.

 

That wasn’t our deal!

 

What I said, and I quote:

If I name it, you serve me in hell.

If I can’t, you won’t be harmed, 

and you’ll have been richer as well. 

 

I didn’t mention the beast.

Or your family. Or your farm. 

She’ll make a fine addition 

to the freak shows of hell.

 

The halter was gone from his hand.

 

That sound on the breeze?

It’s my favourite tune.

A Roman patrol, 

with your daughters and sons.

 

Before he could scream, 

take me instead,

he was alone on the road

with the flames of his farm

lighting the way home.’

 

After the silence that followed

Uther is calling his name.

‘This ring is yours.

If the other two are as good

I will be honoured to have you as my bard.’

 

‘My Lord is very generous. 

It would be my honour to serve,

if, at the end of my service,

you will grant me one request.’

 

‘As long as it is in my power,

does not diminish that power,

compromise my honour

or endanger my life or those near to me. 

And that is my promise 

in the hearing of these witnesses.’

 

He can only throw pebbles in the pond.

 

The Fabled Third is published by Shearman and available from online booksellers. Samples, background information and signed copies can be found at www.liamguilar.com

Clicking on the link will open a new window, 

---

[1] The Thin Man is Vortigern. 

[2] Geoffrey, Wace and Laȝamon narrate the murder of Uther’s father by a disgruntled servant. Pages or lines later, all three have Aurelius state, as a fact, that Vortigern murdered him. 

[3] Throughout this book, Uther’s knowledge of late Imperial history is ‘uneven’ by modern standards. He also seems to know some stray facts and sayings from earlier Greek and Persian times.  

[4] Geoffrey of Monmouth seems to have misunderstood Pendragon and linked the name to a dragon banner made in imitation of a comet. It’s more likely that Pendragon meant chief or first warrior. The story Uther tells is Geoffrey’s explanation of how and why Stonehenge was built. 

[5] This story was suggested by Martin Carthy’s singing of ‘The Devil and the feathery wife’. I’ve changed everything except the terms of the deal and the wife’s solution. The ‘Great Slaughter’: defeat of Boudica’s rebellion at least four hundred years before this story takes place.

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? 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.)

Lost Realms by Thomas Williams puzzling over value: style

 

Lost Realms by Thomas Williams (William Collins, 2022) 

Warning: Opinionating in progress.

Lost Realms  is a book with much to recommend it. The basic approach, ‘histories’ rather than ‘history’ is the only one that can deal with the ways in which Roman Britain became something else.  

What intrigues me most is two aspects of William’s style. He can write very well; evoke the landscape of post Roman Britain; negotiate the tangle of evidence and contending theories that characterise the period in clear and unambiguous prose. But so much of the book relies on the reader not paying attention. 

 

The following is a characteristic example of general style, and it illustrates two problems. The author is remembering climbing the steps to Tintagel as a child:

 

It felt endless that stairway-like the steps that ascended to the pass of Cirith Ungol from the Morgul Vale in Tolkien’s The Two Towers. (p.146)

 

You could delete everything from the dash to the full stop and the information would be conveyed successfully: 

 

It felt endless, that stairway.

 

It’s a common experience, especially for children. The author can rely on most readers  to understand his point (even if his intrusion of the memory into the narrative adds nothing especially relevant to the subject at hand). What follows the dash is superfluous in terms of information and is an attempt at ‘style’ but it's a strange thing to find in a history book. 

 

If this were a personal memoire of reading Tolkien, then the comparison would be at home if it were reversed. ‘When I read about the steps that ascended to the pass of Cirith Ungol from the Morgul Vale in Tolkien’s The Two Towers I remembered the steps that lead to Tintagel.’ p.146

 

This would be the normal movement, illuminating the fictional by comparing it with a real, repeatable experience that is not unique to the individual. Williams consistently goes the opposite way, trying to illuminate the historical by comparing it to the fictional. (More about this in the next post.)

 

But what happens to the reader (me, for example) who has no idea what Morgul Vale or Cirith Ungol are? That question points to an underlying assumption, and an impossible one: the assumption that the reader shares the writer’s fictional knowledge and his attitudes. Williams’ range of reference is eclectic: The Wicker Man, the Shining, Star Wars, the complete works of Tolkien. But no concession is being made to the reader. At one point rather than rewrite an unimportant but obviously obscure reference, he would rather add a footnote to explain his explanation. 

 

…that will embody an oddly retro-futuristic aesthetic, like the neo-Byzantine fantasies of the Trigon Empire…(p178)

 

The overall impression is that the author is not making an effort to communicate, rather, he is putting on a performance, and the performance assumes the reader shares his references, his fascination with his own memories, and his opinions. Which effectively means the Model Reader of this book can only be a model Thomas Williams. 

 

Sometimes this positioning is insidious: an anecdote will be introduced as ‘comic’ or ‘blackly comic’ rather than simply left to stand alone. Sometimes it’s unintentionally funny.

 

The story of Uther and Ygerna is, for modern readers, an uncomfortable read.

 

Stop. Which modern readers? All modern readers? Are we expected to believe that those who watched Vikings and Game of Thrones, or read Fifty Shades of Grey are disturbed by this? Some modern readers? Students in universities who are told to feel uncomfortable? 

 

But our author confesses:

 

I remember finding it troubling as a child and it stills leaves me feeling queasy. Not I think because the tale is in itself unusually unsettling (there are many, far more violent sentiments expressed in older Welsh and English poetry) but more for the horny relish with which Geoffrey tells it and the enormous appeal he clearly expected it to have for its intended audience…p146

 

I must admit I laughed aloud at this. The thought of Geoffrey writing 12^th century erotica is almost as funny as thinking that what he wrote could have aroused your average clerical reader or titillated his ‘aristocratic’ listeners.  

 

Leaving aside the thought that horny relish sounds like a strange kind of novelty pickle, I wonder how many people reading this have read Geoffrey, or how recently or how carefully Williams has? If you’re reading this and have a copy of Geoffrey handy, stop now and read what Geoffrey wrote about Uther in Tintagel. It’s only a few lines. Does this sound like ‘horny relish’?  Then go back and read Vortigern’s meeting with Rowena: it’s not long either. Then remember what Geoffrey did in his day job. 'Deceived' is not a positive term.

 

But most people won’t stop and read Geoffrey. They won’t wonder which readers are disturbed, or whether horny relish is an accurate description. It sounds good. It sticks in the memory. The book, like many recent ones, relies on the reader never stopping to consider what the words on the page mean. The glib references aren’t meant to be examined, or even given any thought. The author is entertaining himself and scattering his references with no real interest in ‘meaning’. If the reader isn't meant to think too deeply about this; did the author? 

 

This might sound like I’m being over critical about trivial detail, but it leads to a discussion of how the material is presented and understood, for which see next post. 

Transformation, magic, the conception of Arthur, a digression.

 

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 14^th 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 14^th century, a belief in magic is not something that disappeared from our society at some vague point in the past. 

 

 

   

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)

Illusion ( A Magic trick.)

Genuine transformation, permanent. (With Magic)

 

 

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 Conception of King Arthur. Transformation, magic and belief.1/3

  

 

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 15^th 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.