Tale
Y Mabinogi
Anonymous · 1350
Synopsis
Four linked tales. Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, exchanges his place and his face for a year with a king from the other world; his wife Rhiannon, accused of having killed her child, must carry visitors on her back like a horse. Branwen, married to the king of Ireland, is relegated to the kitchens and sends a message by a starling; her brother wades across the sea to avenge her. Manawydan sees a country empty out all at once. Math turns two nephews into beasts, and makes a woman out of flowers.
Context
The four branches are preserved in two fourteenth-century manuscripts and were composed at least two centuries earlier: their language is older than that of the copyists. They feature characters who were gods without ever saying so, and it is on this account that the catalogue places them among the tales. The usual title by which they are known in French comes from an error: a word of the text, misread in the nineteenth century by the first English translator, was taken for a plural and applied to the whole.
Who it is for
Four tales of about thirty pages each, translated into French. The names resemble one another and it is best to keep a list of the characters within reach.
Prizes and reception
The oldest body of narrative prose in the British Isles, and the foundation of all Welsh literature.