The Mabinogion

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Before Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain or the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes, there was The Mabinogion, the extraordinary collection of ancient Welsh mythology and legend regarded by many as Britain's earliest known prose literary work. Alan Lee draws a lot of inspiration from nature around in which he lives - he lives and works on the edge of Dartmoor, in Devon, England. I don’t think many people majored in Arthurian studies or German or French to get a better grip on the story. No one has anything to say on them and mentioning one over the other is more than a game of favorites.

I enjoy spending time studying Lee's paintings, discovering new details that I hadn't noticed before and observing his watercolor techniques in general. Chesley Nominees List". The Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards. Archived from the original on 4 November 2011 . Retrieved 7 January 2012. Here is 11 Welsh stories with myth, folklore and history shining through. In a way, they are escapist stories, but real history grounds them. They were mostly written down from oral stories (from storytelling bards) around 13th century, and happen in the forest and valleys of Wales, and the shadowy otherworld connected to it. Each story has its own introduction; there is also a writing on the pronunciation of certain words, plus a map of Wales. The title of the book was established only around 1849, but is actually quite suitable (and short) Sullivan, Charles William III. "Conscientious Use: Welsh Celtic Myth and Legend in Fantastic Fiction.” Celtic Cultural Studies, 2004. See here Froud, Brian; Lee, Alan (1979). David Larkin (ed.). Faeries. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. ISBN 9780553346343.A fascinating mixture of high drama, philosophy, romance, tragedy, fantasy, humor, and unique vision of ancient British history, the tales preserved in The Mabinogion represent a treasure of ancient Celtic myth as set down in the medieval age by unknown Welsh authors with groundbreaking literary skills. These stories were not written or even created by a single author. They evolved over centuries passed down from storyteller to storyteller through the ages and so were altered, distorted, and expanded.

What we call the Mabinogion today is a collection of eleven stories from the Red Book of Hergest, one of the Four Ancient Books of Wales, and the White Book of Rhydderch, another medieval Welsh manuscript. A scene very much like this one appears in the Irish myth of Dierdre, in which a snowscape of ravens feasting on the dead gets Dierdre thinking about the appearance of the man she loves. Artful contrasts and vivid imagery like this abound in the Mabinogion. Lee made cover paintings for the 1983 Penguin edition of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. [2] [3] He also did the artwork for Alive!, a 2007 CD by the Dutch band Omnia, released during the Castlefest festival. [3] Lee worked as a conceptual designer on the films Legend, Erik the Viking, King Kong and the television mini-series Merlin. [5] The art book Faeries, produced in collaboration with Brian Froud, was the basis of a 1981 animated feature of the same name. [9] [10] I enjoyed it and will probably read it again some time. It got me wanting to read Le Morte D'Arthur (I have a copy somewhere) and to play GwyddbwyllI'm splitting the difference between my love of the medieval collection (i.e. Y Mabinogi and other Welsh tales) and Lady Charlotte Guest's sometimes-bowdlerized, romanticized, nineteenth-century (and I mean that in the worst possible way) translation (which would garner at best two stars, because I'm feeling generous). The real advantage of this book is if you're interested in the history of how the Mabinogion has been treated in the English language; otherwise, you should decide if you want

This translation is the most comprehensive that I've read so far. But , translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones was first edition that was quite understandable for me, for at first I read translation by Lady Charlotte Guest which was very confusing and unsorted, and those translators organized stories into three parts, when all pieces of understanding came together. In it people are transformed into eagles, owls, maidens are created from flowers, but my favorite one must be when Math punished brothers Gwydion son of Dôn and Gilfaethwy son of Dôn for raping the virgin Goewin by transforming them first into hind and stag for the year, then into wild boar and a wild sow, and finally into a wolf and she-wolf and making them procreate with each other. To be fair, Math fostered all resulting children. Manawydan now becomes the lead character in the Third Branch, and it is commonly named after him. With Rhiannon, Pryderi and Cigfa, he sits on the Gorsedd Arberth as Pwyll had once done. But this time disaster ensues. Thunder and magical mist descend on the land leaving it empty of all domesticated animals and all humans apart from the four protagonists.Rhiannon is a major figure in Welsh mythology, appearing in the First Branch of the Mabinogi, and again in the Third Branch. Ronald Hutton called her "one of the great female personalities in World literature", adding that "there is in fact, nobody quite like her in previous human literature". [1] In the Mabinogi, Rhiannon is a strong-minded Otherworld woman, who chooses Pwyll, prince of Dyfed (west Wales), as her consort, in preference to another man to whom she has already been betrothed. She is intelligent, politically strategic, beautiful, and famed for her wealth and generosity. With Pwyll she has a son, the hero Pryderi, who later inherits the lordship of Dyfed. She endures tragedy when her newborn child is abducted, and she is accused of infanticide. As a widow she marries Manawydan of the British royal family, and has further adventures involving enchantments. The people in these stories come from all over Celtic history and folklore, and some are pure products of the imagination of those sharing these tales. Others are more ambiguous, being possibly based on real people or the fusion of multiple legendary people into a single character. In the epic “Owein, or the Countess of the Fountain”, one of the members of Arthur’s court is Kynan, a man also mentioned in Y Gododdin, said to be at the Battle of Catraeth. In this same tale, Owein is said to be the son of Urien, historical king of Reghed, who appears as the subject of many old Welsh poems. The Red Book was written down in the late 14th century, and the White book in the middle of the same century, but like all Celtic lore and myth, the stories are from centuries earlier, developed through traditions of oral telling and legend-blending through the generations, performed by bards and storytellers.