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Mabinogion
The Mabinogion (Welsh pronunciation: [mabɪˈnɔɡjɔn] ⓘ) is a collection of the earliest Welsh prose stories, compiled in Middle Welsh in the 12th–13th centuries from earlier oral traditions. There are two main source manuscripts, created c. 1350–1410, as well as a few earlier fragments. Often included in the broader mythologies described as the Matter of Britain, the Mabinogion consists of eleven stories of widely different types, offering drama, philosophy, romance, tragedy, fantasy and humour. Strictly speaking, the Four Branches of the Mabinogi are the main sequence of related tales, but seven others include a classic hero quest, "Culhwch and Olwen"; a historic legend, complete with glimpses of a far off age, in "Lludd and Llefelys"; and other tales portraying a very different King Arthur from the later popular versions.
The stories were created and amended by various narrators over a very long period of time, and scholars beginning from the 18th century predominantly viewed the tales as fragmentary pre-Christian Celtic mythology, or folklore. Since the 1970s, an investigation of the common plot structures, characterisation, and language styles, especially in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, has led to an understanding of the integrity of the tales, and they are now seen as a sophisticated narrative tradition, both oral and written, with ancestral construction from oral storytelling, and overlay from Anglo-French influences.
The first modern publications of the stories were English translations by William Owen Pughe of several tales in journals in 1795, 1821, and 1829, which introduced usage of the name "Mabinogion". In 1838–45, Lady Charlotte Guest first published the full collection we know today, bilingually in Welsh and English, which popularised the name. The later Guest translation of 1877 in one volume has been widely influential and remains actively read today.
The tales continue to inspire new fiction, dramatic retellings, visual artwork, music and research, from early reinterpretations by Evangeline Walton in 1936, to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, to the 1975 song "Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac, to the 2009–2014 series of books commissioned by Welsh independent publisher Seren Books.
The name first appears in 1795 in William Owen Pughe's translation of Pwyll in the journal Cambrian Register under the title "The Mabinogion, or Juvenile Amusements, being Ancient Welsh Romances". The name appears to have been current among Welsh scholars of the London-Welsh Societies and the regional eisteddfodau in Wales. It was inherited as the title by the first publisher of the complete collection, Lady Charlotte Guest.
The form mabynnogyon occurs once at the end of the first of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi in one manuscript. It is now generally agreed that this one instance was a mediaeval scribal error which assumed 'mabinogion' was the plural of 'mabinogi', which is already a Welsh plural occurring correctly at the end of the remaining three branches.
The word mabinogi itself is something of a puzzle, although clearly derived from the Welsh mab, which means "son, boy, young person". As early as 1632 the lexicographer John Davies quotes a sentence from Math fab Mathonwy with the notation "Mabin" in his Antiquae linguae Britannicae ... dictionarium duplex, article "Hob". Eric P. Hamp, of the earlier school traditions in mythology, found a suggestive connection with Maponos, "the Divine Son", a Gaulish deity.
Sioned Davies suggests the title Mabinogi properly applies only to the Four Branches, which is a tightly organised quartet very likely by one author, where the other seven stories are very diverse. Each of these four tales ends with the colophon "thus ends this branch of the Mabinogi" (in various spellings), hence the name.
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Mabinogion
The Mabinogion (Welsh pronunciation: [mabɪˈnɔɡjɔn] ⓘ) is a collection of the earliest Welsh prose stories, compiled in Middle Welsh in the 12th–13th centuries from earlier oral traditions. There are two main source manuscripts, created c. 1350–1410, as well as a few earlier fragments. Often included in the broader mythologies described as the Matter of Britain, the Mabinogion consists of eleven stories of widely different types, offering drama, philosophy, romance, tragedy, fantasy and humour. Strictly speaking, the Four Branches of the Mabinogi are the main sequence of related tales, but seven others include a classic hero quest, "Culhwch and Olwen"; a historic legend, complete with glimpses of a far off age, in "Lludd and Llefelys"; and other tales portraying a very different King Arthur from the later popular versions.
The stories were created and amended by various narrators over a very long period of time, and scholars beginning from the 18th century predominantly viewed the tales as fragmentary pre-Christian Celtic mythology, or folklore. Since the 1970s, an investigation of the common plot structures, characterisation, and language styles, especially in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, has led to an understanding of the integrity of the tales, and they are now seen as a sophisticated narrative tradition, both oral and written, with ancestral construction from oral storytelling, and overlay from Anglo-French influences.
The first modern publications of the stories were English translations by William Owen Pughe of several tales in journals in 1795, 1821, and 1829, which introduced usage of the name "Mabinogion". In 1838–45, Lady Charlotte Guest first published the full collection we know today, bilingually in Welsh and English, which popularised the name. The later Guest translation of 1877 in one volume has been widely influential and remains actively read today.
The tales continue to inspire new fiction, dramatic retellings, visual artwork, music and research, from early reinterpretations by Evangeline Walton in 1936, to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, to the 1975 song "Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac, to the 2009–2014 series of books commissioned by Welsh independent publisher Seren Books.
The name first appears in 1795 in William Owen Pughe's translation of Pwyll in the journal Cambrian Register under the title "The Mabinogion, or Juvenile Amusements, being Ancient Welsh Romances". The name appears to have been current among Welsh scholars of the London-Welsh Societies and the regional eisteddfodau in Wales. It was inherited as the title by the first publisher of the complete collection, Lady Charlotte Guest.
The form mabynnogyon occurs once at the end of the first of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi in one manuscript. It is now generally agreed that this one instance was a mediaeval scribal error which assumed 'mabinogion' was the plural of 'mabinogi', which is already a Welsh plural occurring correctly at the end of the remaining three branches.
The word mabinogi itself is something of a puzzle, although clearly derived from the Welsh mab, which means "son, boy, young person". As early as 1632 the lexicographer John Davies quotes a sentence from Math fab Mathonwy with the notation "Mabin" in his Antiquae linguae Britannicae ... dictionarium duplex, article "Hob". Eric P. Hamp, of the earlier school traditions in mythology, found a suggestive connection with Maponos, "the Divine Son", a Gaulish deity.
Sioned Davies suggests the title Mabinogi properly applies only to the Four Branches, which is a tightly organised quartet very likely by one author, where the other seven stories are very diverse. Each of these four tales ends with the colophon "thus ends this branch of the Mabinogi" (in various spellings), hence the name.