The Book: The Mabinogion
The Author: Various bards of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
This text: etext of a 1906 translation by Lady Charlotte Guest
Price: $2.48 (Dover Thrift Editions. There's also a free version at Project Gutenberg, but the stories are in a different order.)
The second part of the Mabinogion gets a bit mythic. The Mab as a whole tends toward fairy tale imagery crossed with Arthuriana, but this bit is kinda weird.
Mabinogion II: Branwen, Daughter of Llyr
So Matholwch, King of Ireland, comes to London to make a treaty: he wants to marry Branwen, the sister of Bendigeid Vran, King of the Isle of the Mighty. This meets everyone's approval so they set up tents at Aberffraw.
The tents are because Bendigeid Vran is bloody huge, and he doesn't fit into actual buildings.
In addition to the King, Branwen has a number of other brothers. Included in their number are two half-brothers on her mother's side. Nissyen is the nicest guy in the world; Evnissyen is a real dick.
Evnissyen the Dickish decides, belatedly, that he doesn't actually approve of his sister's marriage, so he disfigures Matholwych's horses by cutting off their noses and lips. Matholwych takes offense at the insult and makes to leave. Bendigeid Vran points out that this was the act of, well, a dick. A blood relation, sure, but still a dick. There is some complicated dishonour negotiation where it is decided that Bedigeid Vran has been the more dishonoured, but Matholwych has nevertheless been insulted and the insult won't go away just like that. Bedigeid Vran sees the point and offers to replace all the horses, along with a staff of silver and a plate of gold and, because this reward was kind of small to his mind, he throws in a magic cauldron that restores the dead to life.
This cauldron had been brought to Britain by a pair of giants, exiled from Ireland for various crimes, including Grand Theft: Magic Cauldron. But they had been reformed and were considered model British citizens as far as Bendigeid Vran was concerned, usefully populating the Island with big, healthy, productive children. Matholwch takes his wife and cauldron and horses and goes home.
Back in Ireland, it turns out that while Matholwch was pretty ok with the whole "mortal insult" thing, especially with his shiny new cauldton, his foster brothers are rather less so. They kick up a fuss and take this out on Branwen, separating her from Matholwch and making her cook dinner every day and authorising the butcher to hit her on the side of the head. Understandably miffed, Branwen trains a starling to fly to Britain and tell her Brother what's going on. Suddenly, there's a forest of masts off the Irish coast.
"So, wife, the shepherds are talking about a forest where there wasn't one before, and a moving mountain. You understand weird shit, what's going on?"So there's war, and Matholwych soon discoveres that burning your bridges doesn't actually halt the enemy's advance if he can lie in a river and let his troops cross over his back. Matholwych surrenders, and builds a big pavilion to recieve Bendigeid Vran. But Matholwych has not capitulated as thoroughly as it looks: on every one of the hundred pillars holding up the pavilion has a leather bag, and in each of these bags is an enemy soldier. Evnissyen the Dickish asks what's in the bags and is told that they contain meal. He pokes one and finds that it feels suspiciously like a head, so he squeezes it until it pops. Because it's the kind of methodical psychopath he is, the Dickish One goes round squeezing each bag of meal to death.
"Oh, that's the British navy come to avenge the wrongs that have been done me. The mountain's my brother, you remember? He's probably pretty pissed off, on account of the wrongs that have been done me."
"I might...surrender and abdicate. A bit."
Absent the secret army of treacherous treachery, the capitulation ceremony goes on according to its original program, and Matholwych and Branwen's son is named King of Ireland. Evnissyen the Dickish, for reasons of his own, decides to throw the boy into the fire. Branwen leaps onto the fire after him, but is rescued by Bendigeid Vran. The boy is not so lucky. The Irish spontaneously revolt, and the British discover that the callous murder of a hundred soldiers is less of a setback than you'd expect if your enemy has a magic cauldron that can bring back the dead.
The story recounts that Evnissyen has a pang of conscience that he's brought his brother to this terrible strait and sacrifices himself, diving into the boiling cauldron and sundering it from within. But even so, the British do not getting the best of this exchange, especially when Bendigeid Vran is shot in the foot with a poison dart.
"What happened to Evnissyen?"And here it gets weird. Weirder than giant kings being a literal bridge to their people.
"He sacrificed himself by throwing himself into the cauldron and destroying it from within."
"That doesn't sound like him."
"Well, he got thrown into the cauldron and it broke. Who's to say what really happened?"
Seven of what we shall loosely call our heroes escape, including Pryderi from the previous story. Bendigeid Vran tells them to chop off his head and carry it with them, promising to be as sparkling a companion as he's ever been. He tells them to bury it in London, but there's no hurry, they'll probably spend eighty years or so getting there. Most of this time is spent camped out in Gwales, near a door that doesn't go anywhere.
"Right, so, I want you to go to London, and bury my head so that it faces France."Branwen dies of grief, feeling responsible for the destruction of two kingdoms, even though it was Evnissyen who was responsible for the destruction of two kingdoms.
"Guys, is it weird that the boss's giant decapitated head is still talking to us?"
"But first, you should go to Gwales, where you can stay as long as you want and not get old."
"Guys?"
"Just don't open the magic door that doesn't go anywhere, because then you'll have to leave."
"Guys, the boss's giant decapitated head is giving us creepy mystical instructions. This is weeeeird!"
Eighty years later, the unaged heroes open the door that doesn't go anywhere and Bendigeid Vran's head is buried in London as instructed, where it protects the Island from invasion until it is disinterred some time in the distant future. Ireland, meanwhile, repopulates itself from the five pregnant women who survived the war by hiding in a cave.
Thus ends this portion of the Mabinogion.
Next: Of mice and Manawyddan.
No comments:
Post a Comment