Crug Mawr

Crug Mawr (Banc y Warren) near Cardigan - Gorsedd Arberth?


The usual location assigned to Gorsedd Arberth where Pwyll encountered Rhiannon in the First Branch of Y Mabinogi and from where they witnessed the mist descend casting the enchantment on Dyfed in the Third Branch, is Camp Hill near the town of Narberth in Pembrokeshire, as discussed on the earliest post on this web log. Another location that has been suggested is Crug Mawr near the town of Aberteifi (Cardigan). Although there is a stream called Nant Arberth near Crug Mawr there are objections to this location if we are to make geographical sense of Pwyll’s progression to Glyn Cuch at the beginning of the tale. It might be objected that geography does not apply to magical mounds, but the physical locations of many places mentioned in these tales are consistent with locations that can still be identified today.

‘Crug’ often signifies a mound or tumulus of prehistoric origin. This particular tumulus is also mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis, writing at about the same time as the manuscripts of Y Mabinogi. He gives an account of passing it as his progression leaves Aberteifi for Pont Steffan (Lampeter):

A tumulus is to be seen on the summit of the aforesaid hill, and the inhabitants affirm that it will adapt itself to persons of all stature and that if any armour is left there entire in the evening, it will be found, according to vulgar tradition, broken to pieces in the morning.

This supplies an interesting extra dimension to the magical nature of the mound, though Gerald uses the name Cruc Mawr and makes no mention of Gorsedd Arberth. The sites of marvels, transforming mists and portals to the Otherworld, it seems, shift just as we get sight of them.

Melerius

Giraldus Cambrensis

Considering further the theme of prophecy from the last post, one of the many scraps of information relayed by Giraldus Cambrensis in the asides to his twelfth century Itinerary of a Journey Through Wales is the story of Melerius who, we are told, loved a woman. One evening while he was with her, she turned in his arms from a young woman into a rough, hairy and hideous creature which experience deprived him of his senses so that he became mad. He was eventually restored to his senses but had attained the ability to converse with spirits and was able to gain information from them which gave him the ability to prophesy the future.

These spirits, Giraldus tells us, appeared to him equipped as hunters with horns, but their prey was not wild animals but souls. He mixes up his story with much pious matter and references to the evil purposes of demons, but the core of the tale has various elements in common with tales of other prophets and picks up other thematic threads such as the encounter with the 'Loathly Lady' as a test or transition to the Spirit World or an altered state of consciousness. Giraldus observes: " ... it appears to me most wonderful that he saw those spirits so plainly with his carnal eyes, because spirits cannot be discerned by the eyes of mortals, unless they assume a bodily substance; but if they do, how could they remain unperceived by other persons who were present?"

He can only offer the explanation that they were seen as in a vision for which he suggests a biblical parallel. As often in his writings, he introduces such stories without details of a source and - as here - with more of a moralizing purpose than one which is informative and so leaves the reader on a tantalising trail that doesn't seem to go anywhere.

But the story of the beautiful woman turning into an ugly hag is one that does have parallels elsewhere, fairly precisely in the case of the Scottish prophet Thomas of Erceldoune who has just the same experience and is carried off by the 'Loathly Lady' under a hill to an Otherworld location before returning with the gift of prophecy. The appearance of the motif in medieval literature, such as Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, and its identification in other contexts as initiatory or characteristic of a sovereignty myth, does offer other ways of approaching the story, but ultimately, as with the utterances of prophecy, it may be difficult to discern things clearly. There are many accounts of prophets that told the truth, but not quite the whole truth, and so misled those who asked for information about coming events. And others where the truth was told, but a different context was supplied by the hearer. Here Giraldus sets his tale in the context of the dangers of consorting with 'unclean spirits' (often a synonym for fairies) but leaves the nature of the un-named woman unexplained.

But she has been creatively re-imagined HERE.

Prophecies of the Bards

“This prophesy Merlin will make for I live before his time”.

So The Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear. Prophesy was an important medium of both magical and political rhetoric in the Middle Ages. Consider the case of Thomas of Erceldoune. He is mainly remembered today as Thomas the Rhymer who was carried off by the Queen of Faery and returned from her realm with "a tongue that could never lie". Robert Graves represented him as a true poet and his truth telling tongue as one which was gifted with the power of poetic utterance. But as the 14th century romance which appears to be the source of the later and much better known ballad about him makes clear, he also returns with power to transmit prophetic wisdom, in this case predicting the course of conflicts between England and Scotland.

If one role of the surviving druidic functions in Welsh society was that of the bard, or poet, another was that of prophet. Gerald of Wales has his awenyddion uttering divinations in their inspired poetic outpourings as they come out of a trance. The verses ascribed to Myrddin in The Black Book of Carmarthen and to Taliesin in The Book of Taliesin include prophecies, often of events supposedly predicted before they happened. It is thought that these were often the work of bards who are identified by their real names in their court poetry but who adopted personas of earlier legendary bardic figures to engage in prophecy or other inspired poetic activities. It is as if practising their craft as poets in their own names was one thing, but speaking while under the spell of the awen required their transformation into a magical alter ego.

These thoughts are occasioned by the publication of Marged Haycock's Prophecies from the Book of Taliesin. This sequel to the earlier Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin focuses not so much on the utterances of the personality of a super bard but more purely on the business of prophesying the fate of the Britons in the face of invading Saxons, as if the voice were that of an early Briton foretelling those things related in the history of Gildas. As the editor points out, this is a view of the future that has the social function of history. Many are poems which hope for deliverance from adversity, often expressing a wish that refuge from enemies will be found and portraying the social breakdown that is experienced as a disruption of the natural ordering of things. They remind us that prophesy was a medium of social and political debate as much as of magical practice. These bards spoke for and from within their communities.

Taliesin and the AWEN /|\

What can we say about the three-fold nature of AWEN?

In The Book of Taliesin each of the three divisions of Awen are referred to as ‘ogyrwen’, although the word is also used specifically to refer to ‘poetry’ or ‘inspiration reflected in poetry’. In a number of the Taliesin poems the source of poetry is identified as a cauldron, most often identified as the Cauldron of Ceridwen. But in one poem there is a quite dense poetic construction in which the word for cauldron (peir) can also mean ‘sovereign’ which is often used as a metonym for God. So the words
“pan doeth o peir / ogyrwen awen teir”
can be translated

“when there came from the cauldron / the ogyrwen of three-fold inspiration”,
or they could equally be translated as

“when there came from the Sovereign (God) / the three aspects of inspiration”.
In the most recent scholarly edition of these poems[1] Marged Haycock describes this as “a nicely calculated ambiguity”, indicating that both meanings are intended here. The Book of Taliesin is a difficult text to interpret even for scholars and the poem from which these lines come - Kadeir Teÿrnon - has been described as bewildering and unintelligible. So any interpretations are provisional.But from its use here and elsewhere it is clear that ‘ogyrwen’ is the name of at least one of the three divisions of Awen, or it is a term describing all three ( so, ‘the three ogyrwen of awen’). But what is clear is that the poem deliberately conflates the cauldron and God (as the Trinity) as its source. We might regard this as a neat bit of theology or an example of clever bardic word-wizardry of the sort the Taliesin figure often boasts about.

This reference is, in fact, just one example of a debate about the nature of AWEN among the early Welsh bards. In a discussion of this issue Patrick Ford[2] cites an exchange between the bards Rhys Goch and Llywelyn ap Moel about the source of AWEN as to whether is comes from the “Holy Spirit” or from “The Cauldron of Ceridwen” and also cites a line from another medieval Welsh bard, called Prydydd y Moch, who conflates the two options, though less cleverly than in the example above from Taliesin, with the line “The Lord God gives me sweet awen , as from the cauldron of Ceridwen”.

What is going on here? Patrick Ford comments; “It seems appropriate that the persona of Taliesin, as representative of the old native tradition, should insist on the magical origins of awen and its use as a vehicle for traditional kinds of knowledge.” But he also refers to the view of Marged Haycock[3] that the medieval Welsh bards were also working within the context of Christianity and the person of Taliesin also had to function within this world view rather than as a “druid desperately making a last stand for paganism”. He looked both ways, expressing current Christian thinking about God conceived of as a Trinity, locking this into the concept of the threefold nature of AWEN, but also maintaining his status as one who had links back to the older world.

So Taliesin denounces the other bards not as Gildas had done for their ungodliness, but because they have lost touch with the real roots of poetry, with the authentic AWEN. Though at the same time he ensures that he cannot himself be accused of being ungodly. Patrick Ford sees the story of Gwion being swallowed by Ceridwen and cast into the waters in a leathern bag to emerge as Taliesin as a death and rebirth theme, still being retold in the sixteenth century in the version known as Ystoria Taliesin. The poet sacrificing himself to his muse, to be compared therefore with mythological figures such as Odin sacrificing himself to himself. But alongside this older notion AWEN is a developing concept during the Middle Ages and its divine nature necessarily takes on the prevalent Christian sense of divinity.

References: [1] Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin ed. Marged Haycock (CMCS, 2007). [2] Ystoria Taliesin Patrick Ford (Cardiff, 1992) [3] Preiddeu Annwn and the Figure of Taliesin in Studia Celtica18/19, as cited by Ford, though since this article was published Marged Haycock has developed her ideas in greater detail in the work cited at [1] above.

The Horse and the Mother as an Archetype

Image by Thalia Took

The psychologist C G Jung links the Mother archetype with the Horse:

'Mother' is an archetype and refers to the place of origin, to nature … to substance and matter, to materiality and the womb

It also means the unconscious, our natural and instinctive life, the physiological realm, the body in which we dwell

'Horse' is an archetype that is widely current in mythology and folklore. As an animal it represents the non-human psyche, the subhuman, animal side, the unconscious. That is why horses in folklore sometimes see visions, hear voices, and speak. As a beast of burden it is related to the 'mother' archetype

It is evident, then, that 'horse' is an equivalent of 'mother' with a slight shift of meaning.

(from The Practical Use of Dream Analysis)

The identification here with the 'mother' archetype and the 'horse' as a beast of burden has a particular resonance in the context of the passage in the first of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi where Rhiannon takes the role of a beast of burden after being accused of killing her son:

This is the punishment that was put upon her - to be in that court in Arberth until the end of seven years - and there was a mounting block beside the gate - to sit beside that every day, and to tell to all who might come, whom she supposed might not know it, the whole tale; and whoever might allow her to carry him, to offer to carry the guest or stranger on her back to the court. But scarcely would anyone allow her to carry him.

Here, though no-one will take her up on her offer, she has to offer herself for this task that, in the Jungian typology, is linked to motherhood. She has to do this until Teyrnon returns her child to her:

As they approached the court, they could see Rhiannon sitting beside the mounting block. As they came to her, "Ah chieftain", she said "I will carry each of you to the court" ….

"Ah gentle lady" said Teyrnon, "I do not imagine any one of us will go on your back".
[…..]
"And behold there your son, and whoever spoke a lie against you did you wrong".

In Jungian terms, the re-uniting of the mother and child makes things whole so the 'horse' and the 'mother' become an integrated archetype once more and there is no longer a need for one of the elements to be foregrounded as separate from the other.

ANNWN - Otherworld or Netherworld?

It has been observed that Celtic otherworlds take three forms: in caves or under the hills, beneath lakes or seas, or on far-away islands. In a recent article about the Welsh name for the Otherworld, Bernard Mees and Nick Nicholas remark that "only the Welsh name Annwfn ... suggests an etymological notion of an otherworld" [*]. Suggested Brythonic orgins of the name are *an-dubnos ('not-world' or 'not-deep'[deep-notness?]) or *ande-dubnos ('underworld' or 'under-deep'). Also discussed is a Gaulish word antumnos, used in calling upon Dis or Prosperpine and therefore suggesting a nether world of darkness rather than a paradisal parallel realm.

The probable Greek origin of antumnos also suggests a dark, underworld location. The authors of the article find it unlikely that the supposed Brythonic term *an-dubnos was used without knowledge of its associations with the Greek Underworld. This may imply that its later associations with the 'Hell' of Christian tradition is not entirely a later overlay. Rather, as Mees and Nicholas suggest "... the entrance of the term to early Brythonic might even be plausibly connected with the development of the dual nature of the Insular Otherworld and Graeco-Roman influence: paradisaical and ageless on the one hand, sinister and Stygian on the other."

In this view, it seems that the Brythonic Celts wanted it both ways, not wishing to abandon the idea of a blissful parallel dimension to their own world but also paradoxically seeing it as a dark Underworld where the souls of the dead reside. If the fabric of these alternatives appear to have little in common with each other is this because, for us, ancestors and other-beings seem to require differently imagined locations?

Could we imagine otherwise?

___________________________
* Studia Celtica XLVI (2012) pp.23->

Charles Williams in Logres

Shouldering shapes through the skies rise and run,

through town and time; Merlin beheld

the beasts of Broceliande, the fish of Nimue,

hierarchic, republican, the glory of Logres,

patterns of the Logos in the depth of the sun.

Taliessin in the crowd beheld the compelled brutes,
wildness formalized, images of mathematics,

star and moon, dolphin and pelican,

lion and leopard, changing their measure.
Over the mob's noise rose gushing the sound of the flutes.

Gawaine's thistle, Bedivere's rose, drew near:
flutes infiltrating the light of candles.

Through the magical sound of the fire-strewn air,
spirit, burning to sweetness of body,
exposed in the midst of its bloom the young queen Guinevere.

So Charles Williams, a poet largely forgotten now, but one who attempted a re-drafting of the Arthurian cycle for his own times (1886-1945) entirely as a conjuration of his own imagination rather than as a summary of existing knowledge, though he was steeped in such knowledge. His Taliesin inhabits the land of Logres as a fully realised inhabitant of a visionary realm, but note above the echo of Logres in Logos - a place where the spoken word gives rise to a world of myth. If he tended to weave spells out of abstractions, he also knew when to draw them into concrete images. Out of the maze of symbols that 'sound of flutes' wafts through the air and the candles flames burn 'to sweetness of body'. If Logres is realised through visions of Byzantium it nevertheless is realised as a place the imagination can inhabit. Like John Cowper Powys (who in some ways he is utterly unlike) he made the place his own. As we each of us must if we wish to spend time in such places.

'XV Kalendas Ianuarius Eponae'

(Fifteen days [before] the beginning of January - Epona's Day)

- a stone inscription from northern Italy -

*

Earthlight glistens
on the ivy leaf

Sunlight falls on the holly bough

The red fire stirs in the kindling

We count three days to the longest night

Three more till the glimmer of a longer day

Then seven to the eve of New Year Calends

These days we count from the feast of Epona

First festival of the year's turning. 

The Treasures of Arthur

"You shall receive the gift that your mouth and tongue speak, as far as wind dries, as far as rain wets, as far as sun reaches, as far as sea stretches, as far as the earth is -

except for
my ship
my cloak
Caledfwlch, my sword
Rhongomyniad, my spear
Wyneb Gwrthucher, my shield
Carnwennan, my knife
and Gwenhwyvar, my wife."  

His ship is Prydwen, in which he sailed to the Otherworld (Annwfn) to get the cauldron of rebirth;
His cloak made the wearer invisible;
His sword's name suggests it cuts a breach in battle;
His spear's name means 'spear-striker';
His shield is the face of evening;
His knife's name signifies his fondness for its white haft;
… and his Wife
her name means 'White Enchantress'.

Such things he reserved for himself.
Anything else, had Culhwch named it, his generosity would bestow it.

(from Culhwch and Olwen)

Midsummer

The Sun sails high in a never dark sky
And Mabon rides the tide of Summer


Tall are the grasses grown in the field
And the Breeze sighs through them singing of Summer


The Forest's adorned with a crown of green
And beneath plays the God in the glades of Summer


The harp of Maponos vibrates the air
And late, in the twilight, still it's Summer.