Ancient Legends Retold: The Legend of Pryderi E-Book

Fiona Collins

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Ancient Legends Retold
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 123

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The Four Branches of the Mabinogion are a rich treasure trove of tales. These magical, quintessentially Welsh stories are confusing, but it would be hard to match their splendid strangeness. The Four Branches tell of the kings and queens of Wales in the time of' 'Once upon a time'. Only one character appears in all Four Branches. He is Pryderi, and the story of his life journey is told in this book. Pryderi is brave and bold: sometimes foolhardy, always fiercely loyal. The stories of two beautiful, powerful women entwine with his: Rhiannon of the Birds, his mother, and Cigfa, his wife. Both accompany him on his life path. But, at the last, Pryderi must go on alone. Here, for the first time, his tale is told from beginning to end.

Leseprobe

I Marian. Bydded i’r adar gyd-ganu yn gerddgar i ti

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Ancient Legends Retold: An Introduction to the Series

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Names in the Story

The Legend of Pryderi

Some recommended versions of The Four Branches of the Mabinogion

Copyright

Ancient Legends Retold: An Introduction to the Series

This book represents a new and exciting collaboration between publishers and storytellers. It is part of a series in which each book contains an ancient legend, reworked for the page by a storyteller who has lived with and told the story for a long time.

Storytelling is the art of sharing spoken versions of traditional tales. Today’s storytellers are the carriers of a rich oral culture, which is flourishing across Britain in storytelling clubs, theatres, cafés, bars and meeting places, both indoors and out. These storytellers, members of the storytelling revival, draw on books of traditional tales for much of their repertoire.

The partnership between The History Press and professional storytellers is introducing a new and important dimension to the storytelling revival. Some of the best contemporary storytellers are creating definitive versions of the tales they love for this series. In this way, stories first found on the page, but shaped ‘on the wind’ of a storyteller’s breath, are once more appearing in written form, imbued with new life and energy.

My thanks go first to Nicola Guy, a commissioning editor at The History Press, who has championed the series, and secondly to my friends and fellow storytellers, who have dared to be part of something new.

Fiona Collins, Series Originator, 2013

Acknowledgements

My thanks first to my partner Ed Fisher: for his beautiful illustrations to the story, for living through the whole process of writing and telling Pryderi’s story with me, and for his love and support.

Next I would like to thank these friends and fellow storytellers, who have advised and supported me during my journey: Ronnie Aaronson, Katy Cawkwell, Wendy Dacre, Amy Douglas, Fiona Eadie and June Peters.

My thanks to Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival, the Spirit Horse Foundation and Stroud Storytelling Circle for opportunities to tell Pryderi’s story, and to the musician Jem Hammond who worked on it with me in performance.

I first published a written version of the story of Rhiannon’s meeting with Pwyll as a short story, ‘Rhiannon: Lady of the Horse People’, which appeared in the anthology A Stone for Remembrance, published by Y Lolfa. Some material from that version is reworked here, with the publisher’s permission.

I am grateful to my friends and fellow Welsh learners, the tutor Maria Haines and the poet Peter Jones for help with the section on pronunciation, to the team at Network News for generously offering me the chance to begin writing Pryderi, and most of all to my editor at The History Press, Nicola Guy, whose enthusiasm and commitment brought this series of Ancient Legends Retold into being.

Finally, my thanks to my friend Robin Aaronson, who chose to dedicate this book to the memory of his mother Marian, in support of the Forest of Dreams, a noble cause to which he, I and our friends have long been committed. The Forest of Dreams is a charity set up to care for a beautiful valley in mid-Wales and to preserve it as a place of sanctuary for humans and the wild.

www.forestofdreams.org.uk

Introduction

Storytelling is a vital part of the way we humans make sense of the world and, as such, it has existed since the earliest times. The stories known as The Four Branches of the Mabinogion, from which ‘The Legend of Pryderi’ is drawn, come from an ancient and authentic source. The oldest surviving versions of these tales are found in two fourteenth-century Welsh language manuscripts: the White Book of Rhydderch, written about 1350, and the Red Book of Hergest, dated between 1382 and 1410. The first is in the care of the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, the second in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and both can be consulted online.

The Four Branches first came to the attention of a modern audience when Lady Charlotte Guest published them, together with eight other tales from the manuscripts, in a scholarly, bilingual work, which she brought out in seven volumes between 1838 and 1849. New versions continue to be published today, in Welsh, English and other languages.

It is clear, from their structure and form, that the medieval manuscripts are written forms of oral tales. As such, the stories may be much older than the versions in the Red and White Books.

Storytellers living in Wales, and of Welsh descent everywhere, have reason to be proud of these stories, though nothing can be known of their earliest tellers. Some scholars have suggested that they were composed for, or even by, the Welsh princess Gwenllian at her court in Deheubarth in south-west Wales, during the early twelfth century. They are unique in the oral corpus of the islands of Britain, and still intrigue us today.

Only one character appears in all Four Branches. He is Pryderi, the hero of this book. My interest in Pryderi comes from long exploration of the material of the Four Branches and from my work as a storyteller, retelling the tales in my own words, first in English, and more recently in Welsh, to people of all ages. I have always searched for ways to make this material speak clearly to modern listeners. I have also explored the connections of the Four Branches with the landscape of Wales. I have done this by walking the land, returning again and again to places associated with the stories, and also by taking part, during the late 1990s, in some of the courses on ‘Storytelling and the Mythological Landscape’, which are still run annually by my fellow storytellers Hugh Lupton and Eric Maddern at Ty Newydd Writers’ Centre in north-west Wales.

In 2008, I had the good fortune to be invited to write for Network News, a monthly publication which the editors call a ‘guide to inspiring events in North Wales’. They had been thinking, for some time, of including a story in the magazine, to run as a serial over twelve months. They kindly agreed to let me choose my own subject matter, and so, thanks to them, I was able to explore Pryderi’s story in depth over an extended period, tracing it through all Four Branches. This was the genesis of my performance work with the story and, eventually, this book.

Following Pryderi from Branch to Branch has enabled me to make many important connections which are not obvious in the Branches themselves, for though Pryderi is a principal character in both the First and the Third Branches, the parts he plays in the other two are much smaller. I found that focusing on his role shed new light on events and characters throughout the stories. For example, the first time that the Birds of Rhiannon are mentioned is in the Second Branch, when they are heard singing at Harlech by the seven warriors who are the sole survivors of a war in Ireland: when I realised that one of the seven was Pryderi, Rhiannon’s son, the song of her birds took on a whole new resonance, which I decided to foreground in my version.

I have tried to draw out the themes which speak to me in Pryderi’s story, which I tell as a hero’s journey. In my version we accompany him on the life-journey which we all must make: the journey from birth to death. Pryderi is a child lost and found; he gains temporal power and then true love; he proves himself as a warrior, yet experiences the suffering caused by war; he wins a companion and mentor; he faces the confusions of magic and enchantment. In each major episode I believe he has a lesson to learn and an aspect of true humanity to earn.

Entwined with Pryderi’s story we find strong women living out their life-journeys too: Rhiannon, his mother, whose own story is so encompassing that it threatened at times to eclipse Pryderi’s in the writing; and Cigfa, his wife and heart’s companion, who rules while he is at war and holds faith for him while he is under enchantment. This story can speak to us all, as any good story does, in our quest to call up and consider our true nature.

I hope you will be as inspired by the ‘Legend of Pryderi’ as I am. If you are moved by this version, find your own way to share it, in whatever form you choose. If it does not speak to you, please do not give up on this extraordinary story, but go back to a translation of the Four Branches and make your own meaning from what you find there. The old stories have much to offer to those who care to listen.

The Names in the Story

SOME GENERAL ADVICE ON WELSH PRONUNCIATION

Welsh is a rhythmic and strongly stressed language, which is one of the things that makes it so musical. Putting the stress on the right syllable in a word is a huge step towards pronouncing it correctly. The stress almost always falls on the last syllable but one. The stressed syllable is indicated in the guide below by bold italic. If a syllable is added to a word, for instance to make it plural, the stress moves accordingly (e.g. cantref, but cantrefi).

Welsh is written almost phonetically, but some sounds are difficult to make with an ‘English mouth’.

DD is a soft ‘th’ sound, created by letting your tongue protrude slightly between your teeth and blowing over it (like the sound of ‘th’ in ‘this’ or ‘that’).

FF is the sound ‘f’ in English (e.g. in ‘if’). F in Welsh makes the sound ‘v’ (e.g. in ‘of’).

G is always pronounced as in English ‘go’, never as in ‘giraffe’.

LL is a different ‘th’ sound, this time created by putting your tongue behind your top teeth, as if to start the word ‘Liverpool’, and blowing gently out of the sides of your mouth without making any sound in your throat.

R should be rolled a little if possible.

RH is not really heard in English: the nearest sound would be in ‘perhaps’ when it is pronounced ‘p’raps’, with something of a trill to the R.

Y has two sounds: in a word like ‘Pryderi’ it is unstressed and sounds almost like ‘uh’: (think of the first sound in ‘under’). However, in Pryderi’s father’s name, Pwyll, the ‘y’ sounds like the ‘i’ in ‘with’. Aberystwyth contains both pronunciations of ‘y’ in one word, though you won’t find it in this book. The first ‘y’ is ‘uh’ (and carries the stress, as it’s in the last syllable but one). The second ‘y’ makes the ‘i’ sound of ‘with’. So: ‘Aber-ust-with’.

IMPORTANT PERSONAL NAMES IN THE STORY AND HOW TO PRONOUNCE THEM

Bran, giant King of Gwynedd: braan (long ‘a’ as in ‘arm’, not as in English word ‘bran’).

Cigfa, Pryderi’s wife: keeg-va (‘va’ to rhyme with ‘ha’, not ‘far’).

Efnisien, half-brother to Bran, Branwen, and Manawydan: ev-niss-yan.

Gilfaethwy, brother to Gwydion the sorcerer: gil-vay-th’-wee (‘gil’ as in ‘give’ not as in ‘giraffe’).

Gwawl, Rhiannon’s thwarted suitor from the Otherworld: goo-owl (‘goo’ as in ‘good’).

Gwri, Pryderi’s child-name: goo-ri (‘goo’ as in ‘good’, ‘ri’ as in ‘Richard’).

Gwydion, sorcerer from North Wales, brother to Gilfaethwy: goo-wid-yon (‘goo’ as in ‘good’, ‘wid’ as in ‘widow’).

Heilyn, one of the seven survivors of the war in Ireland: hay-lin.

Llwyd, Rhiannon’s enemy from the Otherworld: loo-wid (see note on ‘ll’).

Manawydan, Bran’s brother, Pryderi’s friend, and later Rhiannon’s second husband: man-ah-wid-an (‘man’ with long ‘a’, as in English word ‘man’, ‘ah’ as in ‘arm’, not as in English word ‘bran’).

Pryderi, hero of this story: pruh-der-ee (see notes on ‘y’ and on rolling ‘r’).

Pwyll, Pryderi’s father: poo-wi-l (see notes on ‘y’ and ‘ll’).

Rhiannon, Pryderi’s mother: rhi-yan-on (see note on ‘rh’, ‘i’ as in ‘with’).

Teyrnon, Pryderi’s foster-father: tayr-nun (‘ay’ as in ‘navy’, see note above on rolling ‘r’).

IMPORTANT PLACE NAMES IN THE STORY AND HOW TO PRONOUNCE THEM

Dyfed: Dove-ed.

Gorsedd Arberth: gorse-eth ar-birth (see note on ‘dd’).

Gwales: goo-wa-les (‘goo’ hardly pronounced at all, ‘wa’ with long ‘a’ as in first syllable of ‘artificial’, ‘les’ like the shortened form of ‘Leslie’).

Gwent-is-Coed: goo-went-iss-koyd (‘goo’ as in ‘good’, ‘iss’ to rhyme with ‘hiss’, not ‘his’, ‘oy’ as in ‘boy’).

Gwynedd: goo-win-eth (‘goo’ as in ‘good’, see note on ‘dd’).

Lloegr: loy-grr (see note on ‘ll’, ‘oy’ as in ‘boy’, ‘grr’ as in the noise a tiger makes, see note on ‘r’).

Maentwrog: mine-tour-og (‘tour’ as in French pronunciation of ‘Tour de France’, ‘og’ as in ‘hog’).

OTHER IMPORTANT WELSH WORDS USED IN THE STORY

Cantrefi, the plural of cantref, literally meaning ‘one hundred town’, the medieval word for a division of land: kan-trev-ee.

Hiraeth, Welsh for a melancholic nostalgic longing, an emotion for which there is no exact word in English: here-ay-th (‘ay’ as in the personal pronoun ‘I’, ‘th’ as at the beginning of ‘thing’).

Pryder, meaning ‘trouble’, ‘worry’, or care’, the key word in Rhiannon’s exclamation when she was reunited with her son, from which Pwyll, his father, decreed Pryderi’s name: pruh-dare (‘uh’ as in ‘under’).

Tynged, meaning a fate, duty or obligation: tongue-ed.

The Legend of Pryderi

The story begins here: a pitched roof, earthen walls, a wooden door with its upper half ajar in the gathering dusk, lantern light slanting out through the slats of the door, a smell of hay and harness and horses …

Here is a mare: she is a warm chestnut in colour, with a sheen upon her sweating flanks. She is shaggy-maned, taut-bellied, her head low and legs trembling with the strain, as she pushes out her foal into the world.

Picture the foal she gives birth to there: a fine young creature, wobbling to his feet, turning his head this way and that, eager to see his brave new world. He has a white blaze on his forehead and white socks on his front legs. His coat is dark at first sight, but it lightens as the mare cleans him, until he shines as she does, and she is content.