Mabinogion III: Mice and Manawyddan

The Myth: Myths of Wales! Knights! Kings! Faeries! Giants! Princesses! Vaguely Arthurian Imagery!
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 third bit of the Mab is back in fairly solid fairy tale territory.

Mabinogion III: Manawyddan, son of Lyrr
So the seven heroes from the last story reintegrate back into society, and Manawydden realises to his sorrow that he doesn't actually have a kingdom to call his own. "Never fear," says young Pryderi, "I have my Dad's seven cantrevs of Dyved, plus like a dozen from my wife and some more of Dad's, plus some sort of obscure claim to some lands in the Underworld. You can marry my mum and rule Dyved until like you die or something."

These heroes have spent eighty years in Gwales without ageing, and Rhiannon hasn't, but there are possibilities:
(a) no time has passed in the outside world
(b) Rhiannon, being kind of magical herself, hasn't aged much either, or
(c) Rhiannon is remarkably well-preserved for her hundred or so years.

Pryderi's wife Kicva wasn't in Gwales either.

Whichever it is, Manawyddan thinks it's a good deal, and agrees. Pryderi tells his mum that he has a new dad, and she also agrees. Pointedly.

Everything goes swimmingly to begin with, as Manawyddan and Rhiannon and Pryderi and Kicva perform their feudal duties as the best of friends. But then one day, there comes a thunderous mist, and when the mist lifts, everyone in Dyved is gone.

Welsh Family Dyved takes this in their stride for a couple of years, hunting and scavenging through their lands (it's not looting if you're the Prince), but eventually they get bored and head off to Hereford in Lloegyr, where they set up as saddle makers.

Thing is, though, that although they're terribly good at it, Hereford already has saddle makers. These plot to introduce the clan to certain key aspects of Lloegyr's commercial competition policy by beating them to death. Pryderi is an enthusiastic convert to the cause and proposes a reciprocal fatal beating, but Manawyddan points out that fatal beatings are illegal if you're a craftsman and they might be up for a highly embarrassing prison sentence. The family leaves.

"Oh, come on, Manawyddan. We can take these guys."
"You want to explain it to the king? He's my cousin, dude. It'd be so embarrassing."
"I'm telling you, these guys have never fought anything bigger than a buckle!"
"No!"

They try again in a couple more towns, working as shield makers and shoemakers, but in each town they are visited by murderous representatives of the local craftsmen's collectives, and in each town Manawyddan restrains Pryderi from adopting the local industrial negotiation practices. Each town, they leave.

Eventually they find themselves back in Dyved, where they go back to hunting and looting. After about a year of this, they see a white boar and set their hounds on it. The boar runs into a mysterious castle that wasn't there before, and one of the dogs follows it. Pryderi investigates, against Manawyddan's advice.

"That's one spooky castle. Maybe we should, you know, go home."
"You scared there might be shoemakers in there?"
"It's a bad idea, dude."
"You're not my real dad!"

The castle is completely deserted, and Pryderi can't even find the boar or the dog. What he does find is a magic fountain with a golden bowl - but when he picks it up, his hands are frozen to it, his feet are frozen to the stone slab, and he finds himself struck dumb.

Manawyddan goes home. Rhiannon is distinctly unimpressed with her husband, and stalks off to rescue her son. She enters the castle, finds Pryderi stuck to the fountain, touches the bowl, and is stuck and dumb herself.

Then the castle disappears.

"Guess I could try shoemaking again."
"Good plan."    

Manawyddan and Kicva go back to Lloegyr, but Manawyddan again struggles to adapt to the local craftsman culture and is again threatened by the militant shoemaker union. Kicva recommends violence, but Manawyddan sells his shoemaking concern, buys several sacks of grain, and they return once more to Dyved.

Manawyddan sows three crofts with grain, but when the time comes to harvest the first crop, he finds someone has beaten him to it, taking the ears of grain but leaving the stalks. The same thing happens to the second. Kicva recommends a stakeout.

"Unless, you know, you're worried it's a plague of shoemakers."

Come midnight, and there's the rumble of an approaching army. Of mice. They climb the stalks and chew off the heads and scamper. Manawyddan wades into battle, but lacking an area effect weapon he's unable to do much more than flail ineffectually at them. He ends up taking a single mouse captive, because it was too slow to run away.

Manawyddan is a Prince and knows how do deal with grain thieves: he sentences the mouse to hang. He is in the process of making a tiny gibbet, when a man in tattered scholar's robes approaches. Manawyddan realises how long it's been since he last saw another person in Dyved as he hears himself lamely explain that he has sentenced a mouse to hang as a grain thief.

The scholar asks that he doesn't. He offers money. Then horses. Then more horses than he can possibly imagine. Manawyddan says that the mouse has been sentenced to hang, and it's damn well going to hang. The scholar asks if there's anything that he wants, at all, ever. Manawyddan muses that he wouldn't mind seeing the curse lifted from Dyved. The scholar agrees, on account of it was him that put it there. He is Llwyd, son of Kilcoed, and was a friend of Gwawl, son of Clud. He is taking unofficial revenge on Rhiannon and Pryderi for the whole badger-in-the-bag thing.

Manawyddan says that he is a duly appointed legal lord of the land, and he has a sentence to carry out. What, he asks, is this mouse to you? The scholar says that it's his wife. His pregnant wife. Who sometimes likes to be a mouse. And could you please put her down, my lord?

Manawyddan drives a hard bargain: restore Dvyd to how it was. And its people. And Rhiannon. And Pryderi. And no sneaky taking revenge later for holding his mousewife to ransom. Llwyd agrees, noting that the last clause was pretty damn clever because he was totally going to take revenge. Only when Rhiannon and Pryderi are back at his side and the land is restored to his satisfaction does he give Llwyd his mouse back. And it turns out that she's pretty cute, when she's returned to human form.

All is once again well in Dvyd.

Thus ends this portion of the Mabinogion.

Next: Largely concerned with pigs.