Urien Rheged: Searching for a Legend
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The bards once told of Urien of Rheged, but the stories have mostly been lost. However, from the many references that remain, I have done my best to find his story again.
8.5" x 5.5"
25 pages
This is neither a work of fact, nor of fiction. It is likely that once the story of Urien Rheged was told by bards. If so, that story has been lost but there are many references to Urien and his kindred in surviving texts. From these, I have pieced this story together, doing my best to avoid filling in the gaps with flights of fancy, the way a historical novelist might. My aim is to come close to the story of Urien as it existed in the centuries immediately following his life, so I have kept things simple. If the result has something of the uneven gait of a medieval text, I will take that as a sign that I did something right.
Information on Yr Hen Ogledd (The Old North) is so scant and undependable that it is impossible to know what “really” happened.
While serious historians quite rightly stand on the sidelines and shout ‘Not proven!’ my choice is to tell the story that can be told. The one that has survived in ancient poetry, in questionable genealogies and saints’ lives, in folklore and place names, and in the Welsh triads, with a little help from Nennius and friends. This has been an attempt to reweave the tradition of Urien, rather than to answer historical questions. That said, it has been 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.
This book is a recreation of the Urien legend in prose, interspersed with my own original poetry as well as paraphrases of poetry from Urien's time, and beyond. The book includes an annotated map of The Old North, and six pages of notes and bibliographical information, for those who enjoy that side of things.
Information on Yr Hen Ogledd (The Old North) is so scant and undependable that it is impossible to know what “really” happened.
While serious historians quite rightly stand on the sidelines and shout ‘Not proven!’ my choice is to tell the story that can be told. The one that has survived in ancient poetry, in questionable genealogies and saints’ lives, in folklore and place names, and in the Welsh triads, with a little help from Nennius and friends. This has been an attempt to reweave the tradition of Urien, rather than to answer historical questions. That said, it has been 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.
This book is a recreation of the Urien legend in prose, interspersed with my own original poetry as well as paraphrases of poetry from Urien's time, and beyond. The book includes an annotated map of The Old North, and six pages of notes and bibliographical information, for those who enjoy that side of things.
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