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. 

 

 

   

What's great about Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur

My attempt to explain why I admire Malory's book, and why I've been rereading it since the late 1970s, is published on The Brazen Head Website. Clicking on the link below should take you there.

https://brazen-head.org/2023/06/27/thomas-malorys-civilisation-shaping-chivalry/ 

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. 

'Layamon's Last Interview': Publication in Long Poem magazine

 

'Laȝamon's last interview', published in issue Twenty Nine of Long Poem Magazine, will be the final chapter of the last book in the series that runs from A Presentment of Englishry, to A Man of Heart. (Both published by Shearsman in the UK). 

After he finished his book, what did he do next? There's no evidence he wrote another line. Was he proud of his work? Was he disappointed by its limited reception?  Was he bitter?  To contrast two very different story telling traditions,  Gwydion son of Don meets the old man who wrote the Brut, and 'interviews' him. 

Long Poem Magazine, published in the Uk, is one of the few print outlets for someone like myself who writes very long narrative poems.  So i am delighted to have work published in this edition. This is the third time this has happened, and if I ever finish this project I will owe the editors 'a debt of gratitude'. 

A short extract.....

Gwydion, stooping to enter, 

‘You’re a hard man to find.’

 

‘I didn’t know anyone was looking.’

 

The woman blocks the doorway;

her shadow and the priest, 

two darker stains on the rough wall.

 

One stool, one bed, two bowls,

two wooden spoons.

No books. No writing materials.

He can taste the damp.

 

‘She looks after me. I don’t know why.’

 

‘Because you need looking after.

Don’t wind him up, sir, please.

He’s a bugger to settle.’

 

‘The Lateran council forbade the priest his wife or concubine.

Gerald made the usual Latin puns so few could understand.

But why shouldn’t a man hold someone in the dark?

And how could I survive without her patient charity?’

 

‘They called you latimer, not priest.’

 

‘I translate at those sad times 

m’lord shouts at his tenants

and they need to understand

or when he’s feeling threatened 

by the written word. 

 

You’re Welsh? Kyuarwydd? 
A professional storyteller.

Trained in the tradition. 

Valued. Honoured.

How very easy for you. 

How very lucrative.’

 

‘You know as well as I,

no one stands on the summit

who hasn’t sweated the slopes. 

I read your history. 

I liked it very much.’

 

‘You must be the only man who has.’

 

‘You wrote in English. 

Did you expect an audience to rival Monmouth’s?’

 

The woman interrupts.

‘They feed us; bread, cheese, honey. 

Sometimes meat and wine if he’s been useful.

I’d offer you some but there’s nothing in the pot.’  

Bonfire Books' Anthology of Australian Verse. Publication.

 I have three poems in this Anthology of Australian Poetry, published by Bonfire Books.  One of them is this one. 

The book is available from https://bonfirebooks.org/product/anthology-of-australian-verse-2023/

Testimony of One of Sir John Franklin’s Officers

 

When I was a child I was promised the ocean:
a trip to the coast, so we rode down to Hastings.
The clouds sagged like a dirty tarpaulin. 
The waves rattled the shingle. The sun 
bradawled a hole though drifting grays
to spotlight the place where sea became sky.

Nanny’s screams were baffled by the wind
but shifting pebbles under stubby legs 
betrayed me to strong hands before the water’s edge. 
Not safe, not saved, restrained. Returned 
to Nanny where I howled. Her voice: 
You big girl’s blouse: big boys don’t cry.

I have forgotten much; first this, first that;
things I should remember. But I do not forget
the sea and the sky and the line where they met;
or that need to stand where the light fell
and peer over the edge of the world. 

The winner of this year's national poetry competition (UK 2023).

You can read the poem here.

 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/29/poem-of-beauty-wit-and-grace-about-fathers-and-sons-wins-national-poetry-competition

 

The headline reads: Poem of ‘beauty, wit and grace’ about fathers and sons wins National Poetry Competition” and continues:  Ex-New York cab driver Lee Stockdale wins £5,000 after My Dead Father’s General Store in the Middle of a Desert beat 17,000 other poems ‘

 

Poetry competitions are a lottery. In the absence of a stated criteria it must be very difficult to distinguish between 17,000 poems. The thought of having to read 17,000 poems is frightening. How could you pay each one the attention a poem requires? How easy would it be to miss subtlety? 

 

When you read the article, the events behind the poem, and the author’s comments on the poem, come before it and that will inevitably colour your judgement.  But the judges were reading without these, and every poem should stand on its own, without any external information about the writer. 

 

Apparently this poem exhibits: ‘beauty wit and grace’. 

 

As a description this is vague, if not practically meaningless. It’s the kind of thing people say about poems when they have nothing specific to say. How would you quantify those qualities? How would you explain how one poem has more ‘beauty’ than another? How would you make your draft more ‘graceful’? 

And when you read the poem you’re going to wonder how any of those words apply to it, especially ‘wit’.

 

As an occasional editor, my very rough way of assessing any poem is to start with the basic idea that writing a poem offers the author the possibility of manipulating diction, syntax and line endings for effect. Content can be put to one side. 

 

This is not a precise criteria. If you read a lot of poetry you will have your own but it’s flexible enough to accommodate the many different kinds of poem that are in circulation today. It’s possible to look at any poem, in any style, and ask what does the writer achieve with these three possibilities. Their interactions will, in skilful hands, bring about the effects that can be associated with good poetry and deliver the pleasures that only a good poem can. 

 

I see little happening in this poem with any of these three.

 

There is a possibility that the diction is being deliberately used to blur the age of the speaker. 'Bullshit’ sounds like a contemporary adult, 'mean to me' like  an eight year old, 'a dear sweet man' like a stereotypical maiden aunt. But it’s not consistent and it doesn’t tie in with the rest of the piece. 

 

‘The judges called My Dead Father’s General Store in the Middle of a Desert a “remarkable” poem that “caught and held our attention from first reading”.

 

Think of the great opening lines you know. Your choice, not mine. You’re reading 17,000 poems, and you read:

 

It has gas pumps with red horses and wings,
but is not merely a gas station, your father is not my father,
standing over me with a clipboard, checking off things done and left undone.

How does it measure against your gold standard? Why is the poet telling me his father is not my father? What purpose is served by the abrupt pauses in the 2^nd and 3^rd line? What is gained by setting the lines out like this and not:

 

It has gas pumps with red horses and wings,
but is not merely a gas station, 
your father is not my father,
standing over me with a clipboard, 
checking off things done and left undone

Unless it’s to keep under the 40 line limit?

Think of the great lines you remember, and the images that stick in your head even if you can’t remember them word for word. 

 

Now read this:

 

I begin to see what a dear, sweet man he is. Is this because he is dead?
I wish he were alive again.
I don’t think he killed himself to be mean to me personally.

The first line sounds very clumsy to me and the abrupt break in the middle calls into question why it’s such a long line. The is/Is is awkward. You’re forced to stop after one to pronounce the next one calling into question the unity of the line. The third line jangles to be/to me/personally with the second half hanging off the first. Word choice? Do you need ‘personally’? Isn’t that implied in ‘mean to me’? Is there a meaningful difference between ‘I wish he were alive again’ and ‘I wish he were alive’? 

 

Would these lines lose anything written like this:

 

I begin to see what a dear, sweet man he is. Is this because he is dead? I wish he were alive again. I don’t think he killed himself to be mean to me personally.

 

Is this even good prose? 

 

Arrange the lines like this, 

 

I begin to see what 

a dear, sweet man he is. 

Is this because he is dead?
I wish he were alive again.
I don’t think he killed himself 

to be mean to me personally.

The first two are a guess but the others follow the abrupt breaks in the long line There’s nothing wrong with declarative statements in a poem, or a conversational diction, but these staccato statements of the obvious would not be out of place on a post card. 

 

In the article, the poem is placed after the poet’s biography. And we realise this writer experienced an horrific trauma as a child when his father committed suicide. But while we must sympathise with the writer, it doesn’t redeem the writing. It would be grossly inappropriate to perform acts of literary criticism on a poem written for a funeral or a wedding, or written as a private way of coming to terms with a trauma. But once that poem is offered for publication, or entered into a competition, then the writer is claiming this poem is worthy of a stranger’s interest, and inviting critical scrutiny. 

 

15,000 entrants must be wondering in what way this poem is better than theirs.

 

(For the record I did not enter this competition and I have no desire to be a judge. And last year's competition winner seems so much the better poem.)