So many Celtic warriors, like Vercingetorix or Boudicca, have their public memorials, as do many legendary kings like Alfred the Great or Brian Boru. Where is Urien’s memorial? Why are his stories no longer told? It’s a sad state of affairs.

He would come to be known as one of the blessed womb-burdens of Britain. Urien and his sister Efrddyl, children of the great Cynfarch, were twins. Efrddyl went on to bear triplets.

Urien’s own eldest children, Owein and Morfydd were also twins, begotten, if was said, on Modron, the daughter of Afallach, King of Annwfn (the otherworld) when he found her washing at a ford. It's a scene uncannily reminiscent of encounters with The Morrigan in Irish myth. Ever after, Owein was associated in some mystical way with Modron’s divine son, Mabon, a deity worshipped in North Britain as Maponnos.

These were three blessed womb-burdens of Britain, according to the triads.

Where was Urien born? We don’t know. This is a phrase you hear a great deal when discussing Urien, or Rheged, or Hen Ogledd (The Old Brythonic North). We don’t know.

Urien might mean “privileged” or “exalted” birth. There are no surviving legends about him as a youth. No prodigious feats. It would be surprising it such tales hadn’t existed at some point, but even if they had, that wouldn’t make them true.

Taliesin is the closest we can find to an eyewitness. The Book of Taliesin contains many poems which are unlikely to be the work of the historical Taliesin, but it contains twelve which might be. Of those, eight concern Urien, and one is an elegy for Owein, his son.

It’s unclear whether Taliesin was of a similar age to Urien, or whether he served as Urien’s court poet for many years or just a few. My money is on him being younger. There is something in the tone of those poems. Of course it was the job of a bard to praise his patron, but Taliesin sounds as if Urien made a deep impression on him. They feel almost worshipful. A little like love poems, at times. In amongst the sabre rattling there is often tenderness, adoration, and gratitude.

Taliesin describes a few battles – one at a place called Gwen Ystrad (the white strath) that could be anywhere, another at Catraeth, almost certainly Catterick, which Urien seems to have held for a time. In The Battle of Argoed Llwyfain, Taliesin tells how Urien and Owain refuse the demand for hostages, from the Angle leader, Fflamddwyn, giving battle and defeating him, instead. Flamddwyn, meaning “flame bearer” – probably known for burning the settlements of the Britons. “The hounds of Coel’s litter would be hard-pressed indeed before they’d hand over one man as a hostage,” asserts Owein, invoking his ancestor, Coel Hen. “I shall plan a whole year for my victory song,” boasts Taliesin, at the end of the story.

All this is something of a preamble. The final chapters of Urien’s life are not told by Taliesin. Nennius takes up the tale, briefly, to give us a more Saxon viewpoint –

According to tradition, Urien was an old man by the time he finally created enough unity among the warlords of the north to drive the Angles back. The story of what that required of him as far as battle or diplomacy in unclear. Was it the work of many years? We only know that Urien seems to have grown from a powerful northwestern warlord into an irresistible unifying force in the north, only to be cut down by a jealous rival at the last moment. As is so often the case, it becomes another story of how the Celts almost won.

 Ironically, Arthur, who we hear so much of today, was probably operating in the same sphere, at around the same time, or maybe a generation before. Yet Arthur gets barely a mention from the poets and historians closest to hand, leaving me to wonder about many of the stories of a great, tragic king who nearly united the Britons. Were tales which have Arthur’s name attached to them originally inspired by the deeds of Urien of Rheged?

Half a year ago, I made a little video about Taliesin – talking both about the story of Cerridwen and the shape-shifting episode, and also about the historical Taliesin and his relationship to Urien. Something got inside me when I was working on that. I needed to know more about Urien of Rheged. There were no books about him, but a great deal of tangled conjecture on the internet.

I started reading the scholarly material, most of which referred me back to the few written resources available. Nennius, Taliesin, the Welsh Triads, genealogies, and the Llywarch Hen poems. I was amused by the honest, self-deprecating remarks of different Celticists as they introduced their topics. The consensus: we don't know.

Amusing, and very human, but a bit disheartening, too.

Increasingly, though, I knew I wanted to tell Urien’s story. Laugh, if you must, but sometimes I felt Urien looking over my shoulder, asking me to write it. But how? I’m not a fan of the historical/fantasy novel, with lots of romance, adventure, and material made-up for effect. On the other hand, I’m no historian, and by this time I had established that there wasn’t enough historical material to make a story.

Then, I remembered who I am. Someone who loves myth and poetry and legend, as well as history. I began to wonder whether there was enough material in the poets, and other sources I mentioned above, to piece together Urien’s story. Not a story of historical fact, not a fanciful story fleshing out the few facts we have, but a simple stitching together of the early texts. It worked. The old texts created a rich picture of Urien’s life, and I swear I glimpsed a nod of thanks out of the corner of my eye.

I feel like writing this changed something. Changed me. It felt like a privilege to reweave the tradition of Urien, rather than try to answer historical questions. And it was a joy to discover that far from making stuff up out of whole cloth, as the saying goes, I found a cloth that was already surprisingly whole.

Self-publishing can mean uploading files to Amazon, or it can look like this. The only thing I don’t do is my own printing, because my volume of sales doesn’t currently justify me buying a good laser printer. (Some of you have heard my moans about dealing with printers, but we won’t talk about that…)

I write the content and unfortunately do the editing, too, which isn’t ideal, but the rates I charge myself are rock-bottom! I do the layouts and prepare the files. I wrangle with the printers more often than not, and bring the pages home and do my own folding and stapling. And I might listen to something nice like Candlelit Tales Irish mythology YouTube channel while I’m doing it.

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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 may go back a couple of centuries earlier, but it’s much harder to date the material they came from. There are enough common themes and cognate names that are shared with Irish material several centuries older to suggest some common ancestry. There is enough in common with other 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: Maponos, 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 Mabinogion.

The stories have a theme of mothers and sons and one theory is that many of these stories were originally stories about Mabon/Maponos. 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
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. It's possible 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 ponder 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.