In my study of the four branches of the Mabinogi one of the things that fascinates me is the repeated measuring of time by years in the story of Pywll and Rhiannon in the first branch.

This story begins with Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, and his courtiers going to the mysterious hill, or gorsedd, of Arberth, where legend has it that they are likely to see a wonder. The wonder they see is a woman riding sedately past, but who proves impossible to overtake. They try on three successive days to catch up with her, and even the great Pwyll, himself, is unable to do so. He finally manages to persuade her to stop and talk to him by shouting after her, and in the conversation which ensues, she proposes marriage to him, and invites him to come to her father’s kingdom “one year from now” for their marriage feast.

At the feast, things go terribly wrong when a previous suitor of Rhiannon’s turns up during the feast and manages to claim her. However, Rhiannon manages to put him off until “one year from now”. She and Pwyll then hatch a plan to trick the unwanted suitor, and at the second wedding feast their plan succeeds, and they are finally wed.

The couple then return to Pwyll’s kingdom of Dyfed, where they reign “that year and the next” but “in the third year” Pwyll’s advisors begin to complain that Rhiannon has not produced an heir. They want Pwyll to choose another wife, but he persuades them to meet him again “a year from now”, and if Rhiannon has not produced a child, then he will consider it. However, before the end of that year Rhiannon bears a son, who then mysteriously disappears on the night of his birth.

The action of the story then shifts from Dyfed to Gwent, where a landholder called Teyrnon has a fine mare who foals every May eve, but the next day the foal has always mysteriously disappeared. This time, Teyrnon vows to keep watch, so he takes the mare into his house for the night, arms himself, and sits up with her. The mare gives birth and soon a great clawed arm reaches through the window and grabs the foal, but Teyrnon manages to draw his sword and sever it, saving the foal. He runs outside to see what monster the arm belongs to but can find nothing. However, when he returns to the house, he finds that an infant has been left in the doorway.

Teyrnon and his wife decide to raise this child as their own, and in a familiar formula for young heroes the child grows at a prodigious rate. At a year old he is like a child of three, at two he is like a child of six, and so on. At four years of age, he is given the colt to ride, and it is at this time that Teyrnon hears of all that has happened in Dyfed, and realises that the boy is Pwyll’s son, and returns him to his parents.
While May-eve is only mentioned once in the story, at the foaling of Teyrnon’s mare, I feel that there is a strong implication that other major events in the story also take place at Calan Mai. This time of the thinning veil would make sense for Pwyll to go out with the hope of “seeing a wonder”. It is at the beginning of the tale that the language is most explicit that the timings of the wedding feasts are at intervals of exactly one year from the meeting of Pwyll and Rhiannon. This establishes a rhythm of exact years for the subsequent parts of the tale, even though the timing of events might be a little less definite. Perhaps we are expected to get the idea after the first few times.
It seems likely that the birth of Rhiannon’s child happens on May eve, the same night that he is delivered to Teyrnon. If we work back, then we have Rhiannon’s first appearance on the May eve five years earlier, and the return of the child four years later, possibly also at Calan Mai. This motif of years isn’t pronounced in the rest of the Mabinogi, suggesting that it is being emphasised intentionally.
The character of the youthful goddess Rhiannon arriving on her magical white horse is certainly one which feels like spring or early summer, and I don’t think it is hard to envision Her as a May Queen, come to bring good things to the land. It feels very appropriate to me to honour Rhiannon, and Teyrnon as well, at this time of year.

Maybe, (or maybe not) connected, are three May horse mumming traditions from southwest England, which once had a language and culture strongly connected to the Welsh-speaking home of the Mabinogi. You may be aware of the famous celebrations at Padstow, where the town has a long history of an all-day festival of stylised singing and dancing, involving their unique ‘obby ‘oss, pictured above. The tradition is at least two hundred years old, but like so many folk customs is likely much older, although we lack proof. At Minehead, in Somerset, there is also a hobby horse tradition, with some similarities and some notable differences to the one in Padstow. In Combe Martin, North Devon, a little later in May comes a festival called “Hunting the Earl of Rone”, which involves another hobby horse of the Padstow type, as well as a live donkey (which seems to be treated very well).

All three of these events are community festivals involving hundreds of local people as active participants, supporters, and spectators. Like the winter horse mumming customs, I wrote about here, here, and here, these customs went through a period of being considered survivals from pre-Christian times, but this certainly can’t be proven, however much it feels like it. One thing I find beautiful and wonderful about these traditions is their tenacity. The people within these small towns seem driven to keep the customs alive and to participate in them. They allow things to morph and grow to suit the times, yet still manage to treat them with a certain reverence. Alongside that respect, however, exists a certain wildness of spirit which can’t be denied when the horses take to the streets, accompanied by ranks of drummers and musicians.  Could this be the wild ebullience of a horse goddess?

In this recent post I looked at some common pitfalls when reading The Four Branches of the Mabinogi (and other Celtic myth). This is the other side of the coin. Some tips about what’s worth noticing and thinking about as you read The Four Branches.

About the Four Branches
Although the Mabinogi manuscripts that have survived date to the 14th century, dating the stories themselves, is a lot harder. In the form that we find them, they probably go back a couple of centuries before that, but it’s much harder to date the material they came from. There are enough common themes that are shared with Irish material several centuries older to suggest some common ancestry. There are enough common themes with Indo-European myth, generally, to suggest that these stories have very long roots.

The “Mab” in Mabinogi means son, or boy and there are a couple of Celtic deities with related +names: Maponnos, and Mabon ap Modron. (Here’s a link to an in depth look at these deities.) Mabon ap Modron (divine son of the divine mother) has associations in Welsh-language lore with being a divine prisoner, and he is an important character in Culhwch and Olwen, which is in the wider collection of The Mabinogi.

The stories have a theme of mothers and sons and one theory is that many of these stories were originally stories about Mabon/Maponnos. It has also been suggested that “Mabinogi” might imply that these are stories for the instruction of boys – specifically for young noblemen who would have been taught by bards, and who would have been expected to learn about the responsibilities and dangers of leadership. I believe that both these ideas have a lot of merit, and there is no reason that they can’t both be true. Probably, the more deeply mythic themes of motherhood, male youth, and kingship represent an older layer.  This may have been developed, over time, into stories which would require young men to think deeply about honour, marriage, and leadership. I think it is important to keep these ideas in mind, when reading the Four Branches.

Women’s themes
Recent commentators have noticed that women’s themes play a big part in The Four Branches. There is quite a bit of mistreatment of women, and there is also some extremely assertive behaviour by some of the females characters. For the most part, the females don’t sit in towers waiting to be rescued, nor do their lives revolve entirely around producing heirs for their mates. A theory which has not been widely accepted is that the “author” of The Mabinogi was a woman. The reasons for discarding that theory have less to do with disbelief that a medieval woman could be the author, and more to do with the lack of evidence in this case, and the general consensus that The Mabinogi doesn’t exactly have an author. It almost certainly came down through the oral tradition, and how much responsibility any one individual had for the form in which we know it, is difficult to discern, although its likely that one individual was responsible for pulling The Four Branches together into the version we know. Still, referring to that person as “editor” or “redactor” is probably more accurate than “author”.

The way women are portrayed has caused some students to feel that the “true” stories of some of the female characters must have been altered by medieval patriarchal forces. That’s difficult to prove or disprove. While it’s true that the female characters are not always “good”, neither are the male characters. The motivations for the actions of Arianrhod and Blodeuedd, in particular, are left to the reader to think about for themselves. Characters in The Four Branches are surprisingly three dimensional, and it’s a mistake to assume that only good (or bad) behaviour is being modelled. A more useful approach is to look for cause and effect, or to consider that the choices open to some characters are limited. What we can be certain of, is that as Celtic myths, or medieval stories go, The Four Branches seems unusually concerned with the treatment of women and the issues they face.

Overarching themes
Although The Four Branches forms a loosely chronological narrative, it is worthwhile to compare the branches to one another, and perhaps track a progression of ideas as the cycle progresses, rather than just look at them as some kind of saga. There are a number of themes which recur, including: weddings; motherhood; mothers losing their sons; large, futile battles; honour; magic; and deception. It’s worth noting how each of these themes is approached.

To take one example, there is a wedding in every branch, but they are each very different.

In The First Branch, Rhiannon appears in Pwyll’s kingdom and proposes marriage to him. They encounter some difficulties on the way to becoming man and wife, but work together to achieve it. Their relationship encounters more problems, but Pwyll remains essentially loyal, if sometimes a bit ineffective.

Just this one theme of weddings and marriages offers quite a bit of insight into The Four Branches. The degree of agency shown by Rhiannon at the beginning of her relationship to Pwyll, is dramatically different that Branwen’s situation, or Blodeuedd’s. A similar trend can also be seen when looking at other themes, like honour. Generally, the trajectory from First Branch to Fourth is not a positive one. So, as well as there being lessons within each story, perhaps we can begin to see bigger philosophical questions being tackled, if we make the effort. To some extent, this may be a commentary on the state of society in which The Four Branches found its form, but I believe that there are also much earlier religious and cultural forces underlying these themes.

I’m always encouraging people to read The Mabinogi – and Celtic myths in general. But I’m aware that not everyone gets a lot out of them. I put these thoughts together for a talk I gave recently, so before I forget it all, I thought I’d write it down. It’s safe to say that this advice works pretty well for reading most Celtic myth, not just The Mabinogi.

Thinking it’s damaged goods
This takes two forms:
1. The Christians wrecked it!
Yes, most medieval texts were copied out in monasteries. As modern people, we tend to assume that if someone entered a monastery, then they must have been almost fanatical in their religious views, but there’s no evidence for this. Sure, if you were a religious fanatic a monastery might be where you ended up, but people were there for all sorts of other reasons. Some were given to the church by their parents as children, some were attracted by the access to books and learning, and It’s quite possible that for others it was seen as a path not that different from becoming a Druid. There is a line of thinking that some Druids were sort of “underground” in monasteries, although I’m not sure we should take it all that seriously.

Most of the monks were local, or had grown up in the culture that preserved the stories which became what we think of as The Mabinogi. There is every evidence that their main motivation for putting these tales on paper was to preserve them. It was because they believed that the stories had value. I think they were prompted by the same urge to preserve lore that sustained the bards and other lore keepers who had existed for millennia.

There is little, if any, Christianisation of the stories in The Mabinogi. There is some Christianised language salted through the dialogue. This may have just been a reflection of how people spoke at the time, or an effort to put a few “key words” into the text, so that it couldn’t be called completely ungodly. You certainly see this with a lot of early bardic poetry, where most of the Christian references are in the opening few lines, or sometimes the last few lines. As if a nod to Him Upstairs would keep any disapproving bishops off the scent. The stories themselves do not feel like Christian stories – the feel closer to pre-Christian myth.

I can’t deny that many Celtic myths feel a little fragmented. Sometimes you sense that the story you’re getting must have been part of a bigger story. Other times, a text will refer to a story that we just don’t have anymore. I think it’s important not to get too hung up on this. Often, studying lesser known sources like The Triads and The Book of Taliesin will help fill in some gaps, but not always. Sometimes I do feel very angry at the Romans, the Saxons, and the Anglicised aristocracy, for destroying so much Celtic lore. Equally, I feel extremely proud and awestruck at how much was saved in spite of the cultural trauma being inflicted. I choose to celebrate that.
 
Reading it as fiction
We live in a society that consumes a lot of fiction in the form of books and films. We tend to plough through large books or multi-episode films with an enormous appetite. There’s an analogy there with a glutton stuffing themselves, but not really tasting their food very much.
Medieval texts are usually very economical with words. Some of that came from the need to be economical with ink and vellum, not to mention the human effort required to hand write them. So, The Mabinogi moves very fast. Almost every sentence is meaningful. Major action happens on every page. You can easily read The Four Branches in a day. But can you digest it?

Another habit we have from consuming fiction is reading mostly for identification. Notice how you read books and watch films. Most of us identify primarily with one character. Successful fiction is often constructed to encourage that. We feel we have a lot in common with the anti-hero or the oppressed female character. Or we long to be beautiful and engaged in romantic intrigue, or to be on a great quest or adventure.

Of course, myth can draw you into all of that, too, but keep your wits about you and you will get more out of it. Rather than wanting to be like one of the characters, or sort of falling in love with a character because you think you have a lot in common, pay attention to what’s going on in the story as a whole and you will find a much more interesting set of layers.

And finally
I believe this is good advice:
Take your time. Read a paragraph, think about it, repeat if necessary. Or read a story, sleep on it, or go for a nice walk and think about it. Then read it again.

Get above the trees and look down a the forest. What is going on in the story as a whole? Can you see causes and effects? What’s the cause behind the cause (behind the cause….).

Prepare for ambiguity and deep thinking. There are messages in myths. I believe that there are layers of messages that reveal themselves as we need them. But they are not black and white morality tales. Deep thinking will reveal surprising insights about justice, cosmology, and honourable behaviour. Those insights won’t be simple, or cut and dried. They will be nuanced. Don’t try to reduce them to some kind of Ten Commandments”.

Old gods like Bel, or Belenos, who may or may not be Beli Mawr, have no story left at all. It sounds like a good bet to honour Him at Beltane, but that is only a guess. Like Don, and Lir, and Anu, there is nothing remaining of their stories. They are merely the first in lists. A distant point of origin. So how is it that we can still sometimes feel them?

Lugh, who was once Lugos in Gaul and Iberia, but it is in Ireland that His story is so rich. Hero, foster-son. Son of both the Tuatha De Danann and the Fomorians. Lugh, who killed his own grandfather in battle. The many-skilled one, leader of a skilled people. He returned to father Cú Chulainn in a dream, and returned again to confirm the sovereignty of Conn of the Hundred Battles. Or so they say. He may somehow be Lleu. Their stories are different but nothing is impossible here.

Nothing is impossible and nothing is forgotten, as they say. It’s just a bit kaleidoscopic. Fragmenting and re-forming into beautiful, light shattered images, which your soul immediately recognises, while your mind rebels at the strangeness, and you reach out for something solid to hold onto.

These were the first deities I knew, and they were hard to know, partly because I had no point of reference. No sense of how or where to read their stories or not-stories, I went forward, mostly blindly, for years. It’s a wonder I didn’t lose interest completely, but even the thread of their names, an occasional sense of their presence was something.

They are woven gently through the landscape of their homelands. Don’t only look for them in the stone circles and under dolmens – you can find them all over. Go to any path that follows running water. Between two hills with beautiful curves, or in a hazel copse. Tread the same path repeatedly, and the very energy raised by your footsteps will awaken them. Or so it was for me.
 
These are the gods who went into the hollow hills. They receded into the very atoms of the hollows of nature. They are in the here-not-here. They are right beside you.

And their stories are a thread along which they travel. Along which so much is communicated, is transmitted.  A thread along which they feel their way toward us – into our time, and along which we find our way through the dark to Them. When we speak their names and tell their stories – when we think about them, they glow a little brighter, become more solidly here. They have more agency in our world again.

I began to find their stories. Mostly the tangled web of Irish stories, and from this emerged Manannán mac Lir, the beautiful, wise, generous god of the sea. He may be named for the Isle of Man or the island may be named for Him. He must, somehow, be one with Manawydan fab Llyr – son of Beli Mawr, second husband of Rhiannon. It’s just that we don’t know how they are one.

Do not enter the realm of the Celtic gods if you want black and white answers. There are no certainties here. They are mist. They are sunbeams. They will not get their stories straight in order to reassure you. It’s all hide and seek through a maze of texts, manuscripts, and recensions. Genealogies that go in circles, and cognates that don’t quite work. Ducks that don’t walk like ducks, and swans that may be princesses.

Don’t get me wrong. Scholarship is rewarding here. Just temper it with patience, and with mysticism. Allow imagination. Give it all time. You can’t know it quickly, no matter how high an achiever you think you are.

The next I encountered was Epona. Having been shepherded along for years by the three or four I’ve mentioned, I was playing it pretty casual. Epona began to show up, letting me know this was real. Glorious Epona, horse goddess.

When I was pointed to Rhiannon, I knew they were not the same. Rhiannon, who they say, linguistically, might once have been Rigantona, if there ever was a Rigantona. And Teyron – who may have been Tigernonos. But Rhiannon and Teyrnon are enough, surely? But, oh, the Mabinogi! I have learned so much, keeping that under my pillow – a copy in every room of my house.

So much makes sense now. I can almost lay the cards out straight sometimes. Almost. I think back to that encounter I had with Mabon. I get in touch with Maponos. “Divine sons of divine mothers,” they say to me in slightly out-of-synch stereo. I’m fine with that. I’ve been under the earth, seen the prison. I understand the healing there, and the importance of setting it free.

I hear from Macha. Macha of the many Machas. Queens, warrior women, land goddesses – swift, shining ones. Macha of the triple Morrigan (although exactly which three of the four …). Macha, horse goddess, who is not Rhiannon, who is not Epona. I see them travelling together more and more, these days. Herd mothers. Mare mothers. Horse queens.

Macha is looking over my shoulder. Reminding me that we have things to do. Mabon wants us to unblock the healing springs. To unblock the dammed up door to the gods. The door of myth. There is help, and healing, and wisdom behind that door!

There is always more. Ogmios. Who, they say, linguistically, cannot quite have become Ogma. God of poetry and eloquence. God of strength and writing, and a sunny countenance. He leads his followers by silver chains from his golden tongue to their enchanted ears. They follow him willingly, as I follow this misty path – preferring beauty to logic, every time.

I’m hardly the first person to honour Macha at Lughnasadh, but the reasons behind that might not be clear to everyone. First, honouring Macha does not mean that I am rejecting the tradition of honouring Lugh and Tailtiu at this time. I think Lughnasadh has room for all of them, and more deities, besides, if you want to bring them in.

According to old Irish texts, Lughnasadh was instituted by the god Lugh to honour his foster mother, Tailtiu, who died clearing land for agriculture. The agricultural aspect, particularly harvesting grain, would make sense for a festival at this time of year. Lughnasadh/Lammas was a time of important agricultural fairs all over Britain and Ireland until the mid-20th century. Once the grain was harvested, rents had to be paid, agricultural workers might look for a new position, marriage bargains were often struck, and people were looking for a bit of fun, too.

In Ireland, Lughnasadh fairs, or óenacha, might also include athletic games or horse racing. Two of the most famous of these fairs were held at Emain Macha, near Armagh, in Ulster, and at Teltown, County Meath. The fair at Teltown (Irish Tailtin) is the one said to have been instituted by Lugh in honour of Tailtiu.

When Lugh was older, Tailtiu is said to have cleared the wood of Caill Chuan, creating a large clover-covered plain, ready for agriculture. This work was so arduous that she died from exhaustion. On her deathbed she asked that Lugh hold a fair with games in her memory, which became Lughnasadh. You can read the passages from the Irish texts which tell this story at this link.

This story is used to explain both the origin of Lughnasadh and the naming of Teltown/Tailtin, but there are two other stories in Irish texts which are uncannily similar. One refers to a shadowy goddess called Carman (or Carmun), in whose honour a fair was held every three years in Leinster, possibly at Carlow. Carman came to Ireland from Greece during the time of the Tuatha Dé Danann. She was an evil sorceress, and brought her three equally evil sons, who plundered and pillaged. The Tuatha Dé Danann drove the sons away, keeping Carman as a hostage against further invasion.

According to the Rennes Dindshenchas, “Their mother died of grief here in her hostageship, and she asked the Tuatha Dé Danann to hold her fair at her burial-place, and that the fair and the place should always bear her name. And the Tuatha Dé Danann performed this so
long as they were in Erin.”

Which brings us to Macha. While the fair at Teltown was associated with the high kings of Tara, the one at Emain Macha was associated with the Ulaidh, or kings of Ulster. The Dindshenchas associate the naming of Emain Macha with several of the different Machas we know from the Irish texts. First, Macha the wife of Nemed, who had a vision of the sorrow which was to come because of the Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley). This vision causes Macha wife of Nemed to die of sorrow, after Nemed clears twelve plains, the twelfth being Magh Macha (the Plain of Macha), where Emain Macha is located. The story seems to be eating its own tail, since it is the curse of Macha, wife of Cruinniuc, which makes things so difficult for the Ulstermen in the Tain. A curse which is delivered at the fair at Emain Macha.

The story of Macha Mong Ruadh (red-haired Macha), daughter of Aed Ruadh, is also given as a reason for the naming of Emain Macha. This Macha won and held the kingship she inherited from her father, variously killing, marrying, and enslaving those who opposed her rule. It was said that she forced the cousins she enslaved to build Emain Macha.

The video below might help you make sense of these tangled strands.

It should now be easy to see why the goddess Macha has a strong claim to be honoured at Lughnasadh. Her associations with horse racing, with Emain Macha and its fairs, have deep meaning for me. I also feel that the story of Macha, wife of Cruinniuc, provides us with much to think about as far as how we treat the goddesses of sovereignty and the land they represent. Are we showing them respect? Are we treating them well, or using them thoughtlessly?

Another name for Lughnasadh is Brón Trogain, which means something like “sorrow of the earth” and includes implications of the pain of giving birth. In each of these stories I have shared, we see sovereignty goddesses ending their time in pain, sorrow, or bondage. As hostages. As work horses. What is the real message of these tales for us today? I can’t help feeling that we are too quick to apply a story of almost Christ-like sacrifice to these goddesses of the land, who die in pain and grief so that the people can eat. Are we okay with sacrificing women’s sovereignty, nature’s sovereignty, for this? Or should we be reading these myths as cautionary tales?  

Links to most sources are in the texts, but for further reading on Brón Trogain I recommend these blog posts:

• A Dream of Lughnasadh - Morgan Daimler
• The Victory of Lugh - Blackbird Hollins

Tuatha De Danann by wildelbenreiter

This post is full of unanswered questions. I hope it might start a conversation.

I’ve been living deep in mythology for the past couple of years. I believe the Mabinogi, in particular, holds an important message for us that I hope to share before too long. I feel like this way of looking at myth is a little out of step with what the majority of other Pagan writers have to say.

The psychological approach of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell has primed us to read myth with an eye to self-analysis and personal development. Any story, old or new, can offer us inspiration and self-insight. Even characters in novels and films can influence and motivate us. That’s fine, and characters in myth, whether they are deities or mortals can do the same. But if that’s all we can gain from them, then we don’t really need myths at all, and I think that we do.
I’ve said before that I consider myth to be a deep distillation of human experience, and of our relationship with the gods. As such, it will always be open to individual interpretations. However, that isn’t the same thing as simply mining it for personal meaning or messages, valid as those may be.

We need to remember that we live in groups, in a society. We need to remember that all things are connected. It’s not all about me, and my suffering, and my dreams. It’s not all about my tribe’s happiness and survival. It’s not all about the human race, and its cultural productions and social ills. We need to consider what messages myth has for the greater us, and those of us who study myth need to be fearless in talking openly about what we think those messages are.

I sometimes hear people talking about the meaning they find in the story of Rhiannon, in the the Mabinogi. Often, in this type of discussion of deities and myths, they are finding identification with Rhiannon, and some useful motivation that helps them in their daily life. 

Of course I am pleased for them, because life is hard and if you can find something that helps you get through it, you are blessed. But in this case, I wonder whether they are necessarily blessed by the goddess Rhiannon, so much as by their own understanding of the story at a rather superficial level. (I’m basing that on how they talk about the story, not on my own assumptions.) It’s not up to me to judge someone else’s experience, but examining their interpretation is still worth doing. Especially if they are leading workshops, or publishing their thoughts.

The vast majority of the stuff which happens to female characters/deities in the Mabinogi (and to a bit lesser extent in Irish myth, too) isn’t good. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that women in 21st century developed countries are generally getting a better deal than the heroines/goddesses in these stories. If I felt I needed a figure to emulate, someone to inspire me to be a better person, I could find better models in both fiction and real life. Which brings us back to the question I asked at the start. What is mythology for?

Another question is that if the gods aren’t simply there as archetypes or examples to identify with, what are they doing in the myths at all? Are we to believe that these stories literally played out once upon a time among our gods? I admit that I struggle to believe that. I suspect that if more devotional polytheists gave this some thought, then they would also see some slight dissonance when it comes to this approach.

My best guess is that the deities came first, with certain attributes and associations, and that the myths grew up later, probably developed organically over time by the wise and the powerful, as a method of communicating certain ideas. What better way to get people to listen than to cast the gods in the starring roles of the stories? Does it make sense to first identify with a character in a story who possibly acts very badly, or at the other end of the spectrum, is pretty much a victim, and then to offer devotion to that deity as they are in their myth?

You’ll notice that this essay is riddled with unanswered questions. That’s partly because I’m thinking out loud, and also because I feel we need to question the 20th century, psychological, approach to the gods and their myths. Myths can help us to diagnose current problems, help us illustrate them to others, and help us find solutions. I also believe that reading the myths is one path to knowing the gods.

Both of these endeavours require the reading of myths at a deep level. Reading or hearing them repeatedly, not just once. Reading good translations before we go for the fanciful or romantic re-tellings. Comparing different versions of the same myth, or looking at all the stories about a specific deity. Reading them with the attention and respect due their antiquity. If you are not going to do that, then please listen to the voices of those who do, because they have worked on your behalf. And if you are delving deeply into the myths, please share what you are learning, because people need to hear it.

What is mythology?
Because I have been around mythology all my life, I sometimes forget that the first thing people think of when they hear the word myth, is probably the phrase, “That’s just a myth.” In other words, they think of a myth as something like an old wives’ tale or fake news. On the other hand, I think of something like this: Stories people have believed for many generations, which cannot be fully confirmed, usually concerning their own origins, culture and gods. These stories have a fairly high degree of stability over time. That’s a pretty standard definition of mythology. There are some important nuances, like the difference between folklore and mythology (they’re not exactly the same thing, but can overlap), or that an “urban myths” should probably be called “urban folklore”, but we’ll save that for another time!

For the purposes of Celtic Pagans, our mythology would include things like the Welsh Mabinogi and the Irish Battles of Magh Tuireadh. These are stories about gods and goddesses, and the ancestors of the Irish and Britons. They are not historically accurate, and they don’t tell us exactly what Celts anywhere believed about their gods at any given time. So, what are they? Are they just very old short stories? Maybe this will help …

The Story Shawl
Once upon a time, when there were only a few people, and every person was therefore precious to those who knew them, your grandmother’s hundred-times-back-great-grandmother made a shawl. She spun it and wove it with wool from her own sheep, and she lovingly embroidered little pictures all over it, which reminded her of her relatives. A type of flower her mother liked, a black bull of the sort her grandfather raised, a trumpet like the one her brother blew in battle, and a little girl’s dress that her own baby daughter would have worn if she’d lived. Not just these four pictures, but many more.

When she handed this shawl down to another daughter, she explained the meaning of each picture. The shawl was passed on in this way for several generations of women, until one girl, who also loved to sew, decided to add some new pictures about her relatives. On and on the shawl went from mother to daughter. If a woman died before she got a chance to explain the meanings of the pictures, an aunt or grandmother did her best. As the generations fanned out, cousins also wanted to remember the shawl so someone made a song about it.

                                                                                                                                                        
Then a famine came, and because people were hungry there was a war. Everyone’s life was in turmoil. A grandmother had the sense to pack the shawl away carefully, but in the chaos, no one knew where she put it. Much later it was found, lovingly wrapped, but people had forgotten what it was, so it was put in a trunk. Still, a few families here and there had an old bedtime song about the story shawl. It began:

A long time passed, and then one day a woman happened to open the trunk, and there was the shawl. When she unwrapped it, it was moth-eaten and faded, and a bit smelly, so she put it on the back step for the cat to sleep on.

One day, Grandma was visiting, and she went out back to sit in the sun. She saw this old piece of needlework and began to really look at it. Wasn’t that an old battle trumpet? And a black bull? She began to sing scraps of the bedtime song over to herself, and she remembered a few old lines that seemed to fit with some of the other pictures she could still make out.

She folded the shawl up and took it around the village, showing it to the oldest women she knew. One said someone must have made it in their mother’s time, perhaps for a child who liked the bedtime song. Others spread it out on their kitchen tables, and wrinkled their brows, and tried to reach back into their memories for something they couldn’t quite touch.

A noblewoman who came to the house to buy butter got sight of the shawl, where the old women were looking it over. She said she thought it was ancient and VERY IMPORTANT. Granny handed it over in lieu of five years’ rent.

The lady took it back to her house, and she and her waiting women got to work making as exact a copy as they could. When they came to missing bits, or pictures they couldn’t make sense of, they just put in something that would look nice and enhance the overall piece. Then they put it in a glass case in the library. Once a year during the village festival, the local children were all paraded past it and told, “That’s your heritage. Now get back to your sums and your Latin verbs and stop acting like peasants.”

When the noblewoman died, and her grandchildren decided to downsize, the old shawl went out with the boxes of junk. The shawl in the glass case went to a museum where it began to generate a great deal of interest. Young women began to bring their children to see it. They would sing them snatches of the bedtime song, and as they looked at the shawl, they seemed to remember more verses than they thought they knew. Their children gazed not at the shawl, but at their singing mothers, with great, round, wondering eyes. Old women came and pressed their hands and faces against the glass and wept, but no one could tell whether it was for joy or sadness – not even the old women themselves. Such was the power of the picture shawl.

No one knows what became of the old shawl. Some say it never actually existed, and that people just get hysterical over the slightest thing these days. Other people say it was witchcraft, and that somehow the old shawl was made new again. Some people have started a new custom of singing the bedtime song (all fourteen verses) with their children, as they dance around their Midsummer fires. And on winter evenings, women in houses throughout the land can be seen embroidering shawls and humming, while their men wash the supper dishes.

Wait! What just happened?
This little story is intended to show how something may be handed down for a very long time, and although parts of it are lost, and other parts misunderstood, that which survives still has tremendous value and meaning. Like mythology, the shawl carried information and connection to the ancestors, but ultimately it awoke that connection within the people themselves. While the shawl in the story was only concerned with cultural and ancestral meaning, the myths have a third function for us as Pagans. They connect us to the gods. Their stories may have become a little fragmented here and confused there, yet the gods still underpin the myths. We can still listen for the old song that’s buried deep, and allow ourselves to sing the new song that arises,

 St John's Eve Bonfire on Skagen's Beach - Peder Severin Kroyer

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In a recent piece on getting started with Celtic mythology, I touched briefly on how to approach reading myths. In that post there are a few suggestions about finding accessible, inexpensive translations of the Mabinogi and the Irish cycles. Let's now talk more about looking for meaning in the myths.

If you are the kind of person who puts a book down in mid-chapter and picks it up again when you have time, I suggest you take a different approach with myths. Try to read a whole story, or at least a clearly defined episode, in a single sitting. For example, we could divide the first branch of The Mabinogi into two stories. There is the story of Pwyll's adventures in the otherworld, and there is the story of Pwyll and Rhiannon. The second story could be divided further as: 1) Pwyll and Rhiannon's courtship; 2) the two wedding feasts; 3) the loss of Rhainnon's child and her punishment; and 4) Teyrnon's story.  These four episodes can't stand alone in the same way that the two overarching tales do, but they might provide you with reasonable landmarks. If you do get interrupted while reading, it is worth going back to a point that feels like the beginning of an episode, and starting there.

As you read mythology you will probably meet ideas that cause a strong response. Your response might be awe or aversion, an epiphany or curiosity. A good storyteller knows these points in a tale, and will pause, perhaps even repeat a phrase, or explain something. When we read myth, we act as both teller and listener, so please show honour to both yourself and the story by sitting for a moment to feel or think, or even going back over something that stands out.

Every time I read this passage I mourn.

However, let's finish the tale:
Naturally, at this point in the story Matholwch is offended and angry, but Bran manages to patch things up with gifts and apologies. However, as the story unfolds we find that the repercussions from Efnisien's actions have barely begun.

Back in Ireland, Branwen bears a son, called Gwern, but resentment against the Welsh over the mutilation of the horses resurfaces, and in retaliation Matholwch forces Branwen to live as a mistreated kitchen slave. When she manages to send to Wales for help, Bran raises a huge army and invades Ireland.

Seeing himself greatly outnumbered, Matholwch swears to give Gwern sovereignty over Ireland in order to make peace. Bran says this isn't enough, so the Irish offer to build a giant feasting hall, large enough to accommodate him. This is accepted, but turns out to be a trap. The Irish warriors are lying in wait, hiding in supposed flour sacks. Efnisien systematically crushes their skulls with his bare hands, unknown to Matholwch.

At the feast, Efnisien throws Branwen's child, Gwern, into the fire, killing him. More fighting ensues, with great losses on both sides. Efnisien dies by breaking a magical cauldron, Branwen dies of a broken heart, and Bran is mortally wounded by a poisoned spear. In the end, only seven of Bran's army return alive, including Manawydan, Taliesin, and Pryderi - the son of Rhiannon.

This is a very brief synopsis, but I have tried to mention everything, and add nothing. Whether one looks at my short re-telling, or the story as it stands in the second branch, every event, every nuance is open to many interpretations. That is the nature of myth, and I can only tell you what I am thinking at the moment.

Horses, the land. queens and sovereignty are closely bound together in the Mabinogi, and to some extent in Irish texts, too. Exactly how this thinking evolved through time is impossible to say. I suspect that it runs all the way back to a time when humans developed some kind of spiritual or magical relationship with horses as prey. This evolved as horses were gradually domesticated first for meat, and then were both ennobled and enslaved for warfare and heavy work.

Humans are adaptable and innovative, but paradoxically their societies are remarkably resistant to change. If the wild, swift and free horses who were hunted for food were venerated in some meaningful way, how did people feel about taking that freedom away? What stories did they create to make this acceptable, and who within these societies was driving these changes? Was the mare already a kind of earth mother deity? Did the changing status of the domesticated mare mirror, or alter the balance of power between male and female in human society?

I can't help feeling that Celtic stories carry some coded message for us. A distant echo, if you like, of how humans came to terms with or even excused, their changing relationship to nature. Did we change an association between the horse and the earth mother into an association between the horse and our new ideas about owning them, and holding territory for them to graze on?

These gradual adaptations must have brought spiritual or religious adjustments with them. Perhaps during times of change there was a sense that humans might be transgressing natural/sacred laws, or at least that they must be careful to continue to show respect for what had been sacred under the old system. The need to conflate the sacred earth and the sacred feminine (equine and human) and with the holding of territory would have been a philosophical balancing act. One which introduced the need for a more concrete idea of sovereignty.

So how is this echoed in the Mabinogi? In the first branch we have the well-known story of Rhiannon, who is more insulted than abused. Pwyll, although rather inept, makes some attempt to show respect for her, and things are resolved to bring about a happy ending to the story.  

When we come to the second branch things shift. While there is a similar tale of the mistreatment of a woman who should be an honoured bringer of sovereignty, she is no longer directly associated with horses. The suffering of these divine queens following their marriages is bad enough, but pales in comparison to Efnisien's mutilation of the horses and the catastrophic events that follow. In the first branch, the insults to the sovereignty bringer, Rhiannon,  are the result of Pwyll's foolishness, and while painful for her, impact only her. Efnisien's actions, however, are cruel and show a deep disregard for the sovereign earth mother in the form of Matholwch's horses. It is no wonder that the destruction which follows is also on a different scale.

Although the narration of the Mabinogi concentrates on the insult to Matholwch, and the rendering useless of his horses, this emphasis probably has its roots in  legal preoccupations and  Christian theology. However, the visceral and highly specific description of Efnisien's crime carries a deep sense of wrongdoing against nature and beauty. Perhaps this hearkens back to an atavistic taboo from our earliest beliefs. The pain and terror inflicted on these horses is an immediate shock to anyone who hears the story. Perhaps we should look into this wound, rather than turning away to focus on the romantic tragedy of Branwen.

It's as if the second branch is saying to us, "Listen. I don't think you fully comprehend the importance of the lesson of the first branch. Let me show you again, more vividly. Let me remind you that there are limits." Efnisien has overstepped the limits of both intention and severity. In the first branch, Rhiannon upbraids Pwyll for unfairly spurring his horse, a crime that shrinks in comparison to Efnisien's bloody rampage.

It is no wonder that none of the characters in this story are able to fix things. Neither sweet Branwen with her tame starling, nor two kings alternating between war and placation, nor Efnision's last minute attempts at heroism can alter the outcome. Men, horses, kings, heirs and kingdoms, the precious cauldron of rebirth and the divine queen herself are lost. At this time in history when those in power seem to have lost all sense of the sacredness of nature, but are leading us to destruction while they squabble over riches and insults, this is a story we need to revisit.