The Cross and the Sword, by Evangeline Walton: Analysis

       People may know that Evangeline Walton is one of my favorite authors.  I set out some time ago to write analyses of the four volumes of the Mabinogion Tetralogy and so far I've succeeded in covering only Prince of Annwn, the First Branch.  Now I've read a book of Walton's that I had missed earlier, The Cross and the Sword, a historical novel that deals with the conflicts between the English and the Norsemen in the 10th and 11th centuries -- events leading up to the reign of the Danish King Knut. It was a tempestuous period, when Christianity was trying to establish itself in the world of Odin-men, feeling its way along a tentative path and not doing such a good job of living up to its own principles. 
 

       This tale is every bit as powerful as Island of the Mighty, but it's far less well known.  I was puzzled to find a whole slew of 3-star rankings on Goodreads (and even one 2-star) because I can't imagine giving it less than 4 and of course personally I give it 5.  However, I think that's because this isn't an easy book.  People may buy it expecting it to be light bedtime reading or popular entertainment -- airheaded sword-and-sorcery with romanticized, plastic heroes and heroines, simplistic villains, and maybe even knights fighting dragons.  If that's your preference in reading matter, don't bother with this book.
 

       In fact, it's a dark, meaty tale that requires the reader's full attention.  It's fraught with profound themes, its style is strenuous, and its diction is not easy.  It has enough violence to please the most calloused aficionado of barbaric battle tales, but underlying the brutality is a question:  Why does such violence have to exist?
 

       One thing that makes reading this book difficult is the names.  There is a plethora of characters and most of their names begin with the letter "E"!  The author had no control over this -- she's writing about real historical figures, and all the English kings and warriors of the period had names like Edmund, Edgar, Edwy, Ethelred, Edric, Edward -- and women ... Edith, Elfgiva, Emma, Elfryth ... well, you get the point.  Then there are the Danes.  There are two different Sweyns -- our protaganist Sweyn Haraldsson and Sweyn Forkbeard, the Danish King -- and at least two different Olafs.   Even the surnames can be confusing --  Sweyn Forkbeard and Harald Firebeard, for example.

      Fortunately, the author provides a genealogical table of the English Kings and also a list of characters at the beginning of each of the three sections of the book.  Prepare to consult these frequently!  This is a surmountable difficulty, however, and shouldn't deter you from relishing the book.
 

        A second problem the casual reader might encounter is the pithy style.  The dialogue is written in a semi-archaic, slightly formalized style that could be off-putting if you aren't prepared to pay attention.  Personally, I found it highly effective.  I get annoyed at period fiction or high fantasy where the characters talk in 21st-century colloquialisms, and I think by adjusting word order and attending to diction Walton achieves an appropriate archaic effect.  Let me give an example.
      
       " 'And so he is enraging them by raising up kinless men like this duke Leofsy of Essex?  Stirring up trouble in his own house while I am knocking at the door?'  Forkbeard yawned.  'The more fool he.  When I am King of the English I will love those great lords like brothers until the land is quiet -- then each will find himself a head shorter.'
       " 'Glad I am to have only the love you give a foster-brother, King!'  Palli laughed shortly."  (p. 146 of the Ryerson hardback edition)

       One additional word concerning language, something I generally think about.  The languages being spoken in this book are never discussed -- everyone speaks the same.  Actually, the English have to be speaking Anglo-Saxon and the Norsemen Old Norse or some variation thereof.  I really don't know what lingua franca the Norseman and the English used to communicate during the period of invasion -- surely not Latin -- but Walton chooses not to make it an issue.  I agree with that -- such pedantry would have merely been a distraction from the serious intent of the book.

       So now we get to the heart of the book, its themes and purpose.  It is a study in the Christianity and culture of the time, and to some extent a commentary on the Christianity and culture of today.  But it's also a study in what it means to be human, revealed through the main character and narrator, the Norwegian Sweyn Haraldsson.  Walton took a few terse references from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and weaves a credible fictional tale around these bare-bones remarks, building a fully developed character who fits seamlessly into the larger context.  We follow Sweyn on a quest from his beginnings as the son of Harald Firebeard in a culture of Odin-worship, which could be brutal and violent but which was honest, true to its beliefs, and decent to its own people, if not to others.   We follow him to England where he encounters Christianity and isn't impressed, especially by the doctrine that dooms all men to burn in hell if they don't accept Christ.  The Christianity of the time was fraught with hypocrisy and had not yet learned how to live what it preached.  Sweyn converts (becoming Edwy the Dark) but not with any spiritual conviction -- it is merely that if he wants to marry the woman he has fallen in love with, he has to have been baptized.  We see the results of Christian hypocrisy when some of the few Christians who are sincere in their beliefs in loving and caring for their fellow human beings are brutally murdered in the St. Brice's Day Massacre.  Afterwards, Sweyn becomes Black Thrym, one of the worst marauders and slaughterers of the English, even while hating himself for his own dark deeds.  He sees those deeds as the only means to gain vengeance on the man who perpetrated the massacre.  Ultimately, an act of sacrifice -- the martyrdom of Elfeah -- causes him to experience an almost miraculous revelation of what God is really all about.

       "This man was good, so goodness was.  He was dying as he said his Master had died, to save others.  Such goodness could be.  It was.  No mistake in men's minds, that were too small to understand it, no doctrine, or folly or ugliness, could cloud it.  What were mistakes, or suffering, in the goodness that was eternity?  For eternity must be, because goodness was, and therefore justice must be." (p.281)

       It's interesting to contrast the presentation of Christianity in this book with that in Prince of Annwn.  In both books the consignment to hell of anyone who does not profess faith in the Christian god forms a major discussion point.  But where the treatment of Christianity flounders in Prince of Annwn and keeps being restated as if the author is never quite satisfied with her rendition, the pithy style of The Cross and the Sword serves the subject well.  Frequent striking, almost aphoristic remarks encapsulate the attitude toward Christianity, and character development serves to give the depiction flesh.

       I must say a word about Chapters 10 and 11, which present what has got to be one of the most mesmerizing descriptions of horrific slaughter ever written.  When you read about Evangeline Walton, she seems like such a mannerly, sensitive, kind, and compliant person and yet she was able to write about such visceral violence with only the barest modicum of sentimentality, never pulling any punches.   It's an absolute tour-de-force.  We see the destruction of the characters whom I consider to be the true heroes of the piece, as they live out a brutal affirmation of their beliefs.

       Unfortunately, this book is out-of-print, but maybe that's a good thing.  I have occasional correspondence with Douglas Anderson, the current editor of Evangeline Walton's works (she left a quantity of unpublished manuscripts) and he told me that The Cross and the Sword was hacked up by the publisher, who chopped out whole paragraphs and pages.  The publisher also changed the author's title, substituting this generic phrase The Cross and the Sword that could fit anything from a Roman gladiator tale to a Crusader novel to a story of the Knights Templar.  (Why publishers insist on doing that is beyond me!)  A new edition is in the works and it likely  will appear under the author's chosen title: Dark Runs the Road.  That phrase appears near the end of the book, as part of a cautionary statement:

       "I have nothing to complain of.  I have lived my life; known goodness as well as evil, joy as well as sorrow.  I wish for nothing save that I might have made the world a little better place before I left it.  Such a world as men like Elfeah and Eric might have built.  But it is the Knuts and the Olafs and the Ethelreds who get to be rulers of men.  Dark runs the road ahead of mankind and womankind that are yet to be; dark as it ran before me." (p.300)

       If in its present garbled state this book is still such a treasure, imagine how great it will be when it can be read the way the author intended it!
 

Prince of Annwn, by Evangeline Walton: Analysis, Pt. 4

This is the fourth in a series of posts in which
I will examine Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion Tetralogy

and how she adapts the original myths.

Prince of Annwn is the first volume of the work,

retelling the First Branch of the Mabinogion.



Gwawl in the Bag (if that's Pwyll, he is disguised as an old man!)
From More Celtic Fairy Tales,
selected and edited by Joseph Jacobs
Illus. by John D. Batten
New York, Putnam's Sons, 1895
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34453/34453-h/34453-h.htm#Page_26

 

       Evangeline Walton sets up a history for the "Island of the Mighty" in Prince of Annwn as early as the second chapter of the book.  We learn of the Old and the New Tribes and later we learn that the New Tribes invaded from Ireland and colonized the region called Dyved while forcing the Old Tribes to retreat into Gwynedd.  (See Kingdom of Dyfed in Wikipedia, where it's stated that that area consisted of Irish tribal lands.)  Hence, Pwyll is of the New Tribes. The High King Beli rules over both areas and he has kept the peace, but he is aging and, because he is of the Old Tribes, he will be succeeded by his sister's son Bran, one of the Children of Llyr (the title of Walton's retelling of the Second Branch, by the way).  The Old Tribes retain their ancient Goddess-centered beliefs; they are matrilineal and they don't recognize the role of the father in child-bearing.  The New Tribes do recognize it and generally scorn the Old Tribes as troglodytes, in spite of their many mysterious powers.  Beli has a son named Caswallon, who wants to follow the new rules and seize the throne in his own right.  Thus a war is brewing. 

       Pwyll may be of the New Tribes, but he isn't completely comfortable with their practices.  At the beginning of the story, he thinks he wants to support Caswallon and he also practices the droit du seigneur, sleeping with many of his kingdom's brides on their wedding night, but he refused to mate with a white mare when he took the throne, a ritual that is supposed to ensure the fertility of the King.  When he first meets Rhiannon in the apple orchard, she assures him that if he had performed that act, she would never have sought him out.  "The mare would have been as defiled as you!" she tells him.  "Only your druids of the New Tribes could have devised such sacrilege, they who reject the Ancient Harmonies and twist what little wisdom they can gain into foul foolishness -- seeking their own ends!"  At first Pwyll is offended at this insult to his people, but then he acknowledges that he won his kingdom through the support of his warriors while only one of his Druids stood by him, a young kinsman named Pendaran Dyved.

       Now this prepares the way for the plot development in the final section of the book.  Pendaran Dyved is the only Druid to be named in the First Branch of Mabinogion itself, but he plays no major role there.  Walton introduces other Druids, especially an unnamed Chief Druid whose purpose is simply to embody the evil forces at work in the land.  It's he who goads Pwyll into sleeping on the dangerous mound of Gorsedd Arberth.

       In an important sequence in Part II, Chapter 10, the evil Druid lectures Pendaran Dyved in the realities of present-day life. 

       "Boy, under the Oldest Tribes Queens alone reigned in Dyved, and all of them were the Shadows She [i.e., Modron] cast among men.  When Kings came, they were Her sons at first, and later, when a new people came, Her husbands.  Even among us of the New Tribes, no King may yet reign in his own right; he must always wed the old Goddess of the land."

       And now comes a clue -- a remark I just noticed -- that may help explain the point about how Rhiannon was raped by a forefather of Pwyll.  Pendaran says, "My forefather and Pwyll's seized the last Queen, but she bore him no girl-child.  A pity."  And the evil Druid responds, "It is no pity, but a blessing that that time of witches came to an end.  To make men stronger and women weaker we druids devised the Bridal with the White Mare.  In her name we wield the Queens' ancient power. ... There is no more of Her in the White Mare than in any other she-beast. ... Sometimes it is needful for the wise to deceive common men.  ...  If the people lose the White Mare too soon, the power of women may wax again."  And then he coldly informs Pendaran, "We serve the Man-Gods.  ...  The day of the Mother is done."  In other words, they serve Havgan, the same destructive force that Pwyll has just fought so hard to eliminate.

       Interestingly, the evil Druid goes on to announce that "a day will come when men will fly higher than birds, when they will fare deeper undersea than the fish.  When the lightning shall be shut up in little boxes, and serve them like a slave.  And all these wonders will be worked by the hands and wits of men.  Woman -- she who only receives our seed and carries it while it shapes itself in her darkness -- how can she claim then to be a creator?"

       In his heart Pendaran Dyved does not buy this mechanistic definition of creator, but the evil Druid persists, even thinking to himself afterward, "To keep order always has been hard, but it will be ten thousand times harder when men's hands are filled with marvels.  They will be like children, playing with earth-rending toys.  We rulers will talk much of freedom but in the name of freedom, we must destroy freedom.  Questions can be more dangerous than swords."

       So, taking advantage of the old belief that those who mount the Gorsedd Arberth will either see a wonder or meet their deaths, the Druid, armed with his golden sickle, follows Pwyll onto the mound with murder in his heart.

       The plot structure at this point becomes confusing.  Pwyll actually remains asleep on the mound for almost the entire remainder of the story; everything he experiences during this part is a dream or a series of illusions, during which he meets Rhiannon, enters the mound, spars with the skeleton of Heveydd, participates in two wedding feasts, and travels back and forth to Dyved between these episodes. All this appears to take several years.  But the reader is not immediately clued into the fact that this is all taking place in a world of dream, so at first it's confusing.  The story keeps cutting back to the top of the mound where the Druid, who can discern what is happening in Pwyll's otherworldly quest, waits to kill Pwyll as soon as he fails one of the trials. Only when you get to the end of the book and think about what has happened do you fully understand. I consider this lack of clarity to be one of the book's flaws.

       However, Walton's underlying theme in this book (and in the other Branches) has surely become clear by now.  Since Prince of Annwn was finished last, she may have seen it as an opportunity to summarize her views concerning the oppression of women.  The loss of the recognition of the creative power of the Mother and the rise of a male-dominated society are situations that have persisted into modern times. Walton presents them as largely responsible for much of the tyranny and destructive behavior toward not only our fellow human beings but also toward the environment of the planet on which we live.  Walton is not relating just another sword-and-sorcery tale -- she is using her fantasy talents to spearhead the women's movement. 

       I can't conclude without a few notes dealing with the two wedding feasts.  I think Walton was uncomfortable with these sequences.  Fantasy worlds are supposed to be motivated by magic, but Walton's approach is a little different.  I would say her world is motivated by the supernatural -- by the forces of deity, which can't be equated with magic.  The final wedding scene is strictly a fairy-tale-like magic construction, with its introduction of a magic bag that can't be filled up.  This results in a demonstration of torture -- a mean parlor trick with nothing epic or heroic about it -- childlishly inconsistent with the themes that animate the rest of the book.  Walton tries to make the best of this.  At one point, as Rhiannon is instructing Pwyll on what to do with the bag, she says, "Great will be the sacrilege.  Perhaps, if I were a whole Goddess, instead of a mere aspect of one, I could think of a better way.  But I cannot, and I am not altogether sorry."  Clearly, Rhiannon is also not comfortable with the bag solution.

       Walton strives to give depth to these sequences by introducing the Grey Man (the death-giving god) of the Bright World, who, it develops, is also in league with the Man-Gods.  Therefore, he wants to keep Rhiannon from returning to Earth and perpetuating the Ancient Harmonies of the Mother, so he supports Gwawl son of Clud, Rhiannon's unwanted suitor.  Walton makes Gwawl reminiscent of Havgan, with his golden-haired beauty and sky-blue eyes.  Thus she manages to elevate the motivation in this episode to the supernatural level.  It's not merely that a fairy princess has taken a whim to marry a mortal and so wants to rid herself of an unwanted suitor through humiliating torture.

      

       Walton's purpose of promoting her views on the position of women in our culture causes this book to become a bit long-winded and sententious.  There are many scenes where one character lectures another about the situation with the Mother and the Man-Gods -- two scenes where Arawn talks to Pwyll, the conversation among the heads at the Gate where the Bird waits to devour the will, the scene between the evil Druid and Pendaran Dyved, Rhiannon's discussions with Pwyll, and the scene where she spars with the Grey Man and her father.  These scenes confer gravitas, but they do impede the narrative flow.  Perhaps they could have been condensed because they are quite diffuse and embedded in a way that makes it difficult to extract the salient points.  I wouldn't even begin to say how she could have accomplished this, however.

       Another flaw is the ending.  It has no punch, nothing memorable about it.  Pwyll wakes up on the mound with Rhiannon beside him, after having consummated his marriage in the world of illusion.  He has never faltered in his quest, so the Druid had no power to kill him.  Then the action cuts back to the Druid at a period before Pwyll awakens.  The Druid is dying, killed with his own sickle by men he had planted there to help kill Pwyll but who had proved loyal to the King in the end.  The Power of the Mother has won.  But the dying Druid predicts that Pwyll will never father a son.  Strange, because we know in the omitted third part that Pwyll and Rhiannon do have a son, Pryderi.  So I find that puzzling.  It's almost as if Walton needed something striking for him to say but couldn't think of anything.  (As a writer myself, I can understand how drawing a mental blank can lead to inserting some peculiar and ineffectual elements.)  If Walton had stopped with the predictive words of the Druid, the ending would at least have created tension, but instead she allows the other Druids to discuss whether they ought to tell anybody what the Druid has said and things just sort of fade off into nothing.

       Should Walton have proceeded to add an adaptation of the third part?  Personally, I don't think so; it would be anticlimactical. She has achieved her purpose.  Furthermore, Rhiannon has been presented as an enterprising and determined Goddess/woman with strong ideals and it would be out of character for her to accept a humiliating punishment for a crime she didn't commit.  It's even more folktale-ish than the unfillable bag ploy.  As I've said, I can't remember how Pryderi gets born in the later volumes, but as I re-read them in preparation for writing posts similar to this, we'll find out!

       After Prince of Annwn was published in 1974, Walton "admitted that she was never satisfied with her version of that branch" (from p. 14 of Douglas A. Anderson's introduction to an upcoming edition of Witch House, which Mr. Anderson kindly allowed me to consult).  Possibly she would have agreed with some of these flaws that I have pointed out.  Nevertheless, there is so much in this book that makes it a great read -- the invocation of wonder, the brilliant descriptions, the convincing characterizations, the depth of the philosophy, the humor, and the kind of realistic modern style that makes the best fantasy rise above its genre.  As she always does, Evangeline Walton achieves a modern sensibility without destroying the essential sense of mythic wonder.

Prince of Annwn, by Evangeline Walton: Analysis, Pt.3

This is the third in a series of posts in which
I will examine Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion Tetralogy

and how she adapts the original myths.

Prince of Annwn is the first volume of the work,

retelling the First Branch of the Mabinogion

 

Rhiannon Circles the Mound, Pursued by Pwyll
Copied from http://www.morgain.co.uk/rhiannon/html
Artist Unknown

       The second half of the First Branch of the Mabinogion is even more skeletal in nature than the first, and again Evangeline Walton fleshes it out and makes many additions in the second half of her novel Prince of Annwn.  Pwyll mounts the mound called Gorsedd Arberth, having been warned that anyone who sits upon it will either receive blows or wounds, or else see a wonder.  He goes anyway and sees a beautiful woman riding past on a horse at an ambling pace.  Smitten, he strives over a period of days to catch up with her on his own horse, but no matter how fast he rides, she still remains ahead of him.  Finally, in despair he calls out for her to stop, and she does so willingly  (A metaphor for the way men should treat women, with courtesy rather than brutal pursuit?)  She tells him she is Rhiannon the daughter of Hefeydd the Old (his identity and the location of his kingdom are not explained) and she is about to be given in marriage to a man she doesn't favor.  She would prefer to wed Pywll and she will do that if he comes to her wedding feast in a year's time.  He agrees without any question.  However, at the feast her suitor, Gwawl ap Clud tricks Pwyll into granting him a boon, then of course asks for Rhiannon's hand.  Unfortunately, Pwyll is forced to keep his promise, but Rhiannon has a few tricks up her own sleeve.  She sets another wedding feast for a year later and gives Pwyll instructions as to what to do.  When the time comes, he enters the feast disguised as a beggar carrying a bag and begs that all he wants is to receive enough food to fill up the bag.  However, the magic bag is bottomless and can never be filled unless a man of means and dominion steps into the bag and treads down what is within.  Of course, Gwawl bites and steps into the bag , only to be closed up within it by Pwyll's men.  Afterward, everybody takes turns beating and kicking the bag until Gwawl relents, swears to give up Rhiannon, and is then released to go on his way, after which Rhiannon and Pwyll spend a blissful night together and live happily ever after (until the third section of the tale, which Walton omits from her interpretation).

       One of the many additions to this tale that Walton supplies is the reason Pwyll agrees to  mount the mound: his reluctance to marry according to given rituals, which include mating with a sacred white mare (considered a stand-in for the Mother).  He agrees to submit to the Druids' demands if he succeeds in returning from the mound alive and if he has potent dreams there.  The mound turns out to be an access point to the Bright World, which is an alternate dimension of the dead similar to Arawn's Twilight World but also comparable to Faerie.  In lore such burial mounds are often seen as places where Faerie and Earth connect.  In the original, the journey to Heveydd's kingdom takes one sentence.  In the retelling, Heveydd is explained as the first King of Dyved and after Pwyll and his men ride through a magical opening in the mound, we meet the dead King's bones, set as a guard to the entrance to the Bright World.  It's a memorable scene, worth excerpting here.

       "They came out at last into a great chamber, and in the center of it stood a man in golden armor, in a golden chariot.  But the steeds that had drawn that chariot were long dead, their bones shone white in their harness, and their Lord too was dead.  His head almost had been won by his enemies; they could see the cracked, hewed neck bones beneath his white skill. ... His beard had grown after death; like a great silver coverlet, spun from moonbeams, it reached to his feet.  ...

      "And then they all screamed, for the skeleton was moving in its chariot!  And of a sudden all their torches went out, as if blown out by a great wind. ...

      "Then a fiery light filled the chamber, and they saw that the skeleton was about to step down from the chariot.  It faced toward Pwyll, the eyeless sockets in its skull seemed to hold black flames that glared at him.  And what had been its right hand was lifted, and in it gleamed a great sword from which the light came, a sword that blazed like lightning.  ...

       "[Pwyll's] fingers closed round those bones that once had been housed by fingers.  He spoke again ...

       " 'You have gone to a world where none lifts hand against another, King Heveydd.  You have no more need of this sword.  Give it to me who am King in Dyved now, and will be your daughter's man.'

      "Gently he took the sword from those skeleton fingers, and though it looked like flame it did not burn him.  Gently he set the skeleton down again, in its ancient place.  He smoothed out the great silver beard, so that those poor bones were covered again.

       "Then he straightened and held up the sword.  And under its light the mighty stone that he faced quivered like a wave of the sea.  ...  Grey stone became grey mist, a solid barrier no longer.  Pwyll walked into it as before he had walked into the darkness.  Once again all his men followed him."

 

       This is a good place to insert an example of how Walton utilizes the Celtic love of color that was mentioned in the previous post.  Here is how Pwyll and his men are introduced to the world into which they emerge:

       "Fair indeed is the Bright World.  None can say which is fairer: the blue of the sky that covers it, or the deep blue of the sea that rings it round.  None can say which is more delicate and lovely: the white clouds with their great purity or the many-colored clouds, gold-shot glories that gleam with every hue from dawn pink to sunset red.  Lovely too is the crystal foam that makes manes for the blue-green sea horses, they that play upon the silvery sands forever, born of a stormless sea."

       I have to say, I find that a ravishing piece of description!  And it forms a wonderful contrast with the gloom and terror of the interior of the mound.

      We will see the living Heveydd at the wedding feast, so we will understand that we have entered a world of the dead.  We will even meet the Grey Man of this world, a figure far more ominous and more deceitful than Arawn.  So if everyone in that land is dead, what is Rhiannon?

      On a prosaic level, her name probably derives from Rigantona, another name for the Celtic Great Goddess, and she is often equated with Epona, the Celtic horse goddess.  But she becomes much more complex in the Mabinogion and particularly in Walton's adaptation of it.  Here is what she herself tells Pwyll after he has called to her to stop her amble around the mound.  "I am Rhiannon of the Birds, Rhiannon of the Steeds, and I have come from my world to yours." 

       And indeed Rhiannon is at least an aspect of the Goddess.  After Pwyll has proved his honor in the bed of Arawn's Queen, this Queen herself is shown to be Modron, the Brenhines-y-nef (which I believe means "Queen of Heaven").  She speaks to the birds that roof the palace of Arawn.  "Rhiannon shapes you, but she too is born of me."

       So what are these birds?  Rhiannon is always associated with birds.  Her birds are mentioned in the Third Branch of the Mabinogion, and also in the tale "Culhwch and Olwen" where they are described as "they that wake the dead and lull the living to sleep."  And when Pwyll first encounters Rhiannon between his two trials in Annwn, she is sitting in her apple orchard (reminiscent of Robert Graves' "Apple Island" and Aphrodite's apples -- apples are frequently associated with the Goddess) whittling birds from apple wood, animating them, and setting them free to circle above her head.  Walton makes extended use of Rhiannon's birds.  As I mentioned, Arawn's palace is roofed with birds and when Rhiannon appears on her horse at Gorsedd Arberth, the birds flying with her are the first thing to carch Pwyll's attention.

       Of course, Pwyll is instantly in love and willingly accepts Rhiannon's choice of him to be her man.  When Pwyll questions her as to whether her status as Goddess might restrict her from taking a mortal husband, she assures him, "I am woman enough to wed."  And later, during the wedding feast when Pwyll is stupefied on drugged wine, she and her father and the Grey Man of the Bright World spar about the wisdom of her choice of mate. 

       Rhiannon has lived on Earth before; she is truly the daughter of the first King of Dyved. Walton makes some strange, ambiguous, and rather troubling remarks in Chapter 6 of Book II (p. 142 of the Collier Books edition).  These seem to suggest that Rhiannon came to the Bright World because she was raped and killed, perhaps by her own father or it could be by a brother ("raped by the forefather of that fool who lolls drunken beside you!")  

       The Grey Man questions her desire to return to earth and become the wife of a mortal man.  "If you go back to earth, you will learn what corruption is, woman.  ...  Age will wither your youth and beauty."  And Rhiannon answers him, "All those ills I know.  I have borne them many times before.  ...  Is the Great Going-Forward a ladder up which we can climb straight to the top?  Those who have climbed high may turn back to help those below. ...  I can do something.  I can keep Old Tribes and New from rending each other.  Pwyll does have a foolish love of fighting -- he might back Caswallon against Bran when Beli dies.  But with me beside him his word will be for peace. ...  Poets will make songs of Pwyll and me, and of how we loved each other, and some of the men and women who hear those songs may seek finer things in each other.  Many things -- little things; it is from these that great things spring at last."

        And those last words epitomize the philosophy that I myself have promulgated as a key to the renaissance of the Earth after the Second Dark Age -- the philosophy of the Mythmakers.

 

       I have to give up -- this book seems to require yet another post, because I desperately want to discuss Walton's philosophy in more detail and doing it justice here will make this post hopelessly long.  The philosophy is so intertwined with the plot that it's hard to extract one from the other and consider them separately.  So expect a fourth post on this topic soon, which will begin by discussing the history of the Island of the Mighty and those names Caswallon, Bran, and Beli mentioned above.

Read earlier posts on this topic: Part 1 and Part 2

      

 

Prince of Annwn, by Evangeline Walton: Analysis, Pt. 2

This is the second in a series of posts in which
I will examine Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion Tetralogy

and how she adapts the original myths.

Prince of Annwn is the first volume of the work,

retelling the First Branch of the Mabinogion.

The Tarasque de Noves
[Photos by Jacqueline Poggi, used under the following license:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en More of Jacqueline Poggi's photos may be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacqueline_poggi/with/8407913475/#photo_8407913475]

        At the end of my first post on this subject, I stated that I intended to write a follow-up where I would discuss elements that Walton omits from and adds to her retelling.  I also want to talk about the social and philosophical ideas which run through all the books but which are particularly prominent in Prince of Annwn. She does have a didactic purpose, setting forth views of the feminine that fit in well with our modern outlook.

       The First Branch of the Mabinogion falls into three parts.   In the first, Pwyll changes bodies with Arawn the King of Annwn in order to take his place and fight an invader of his realm.  In the second, Pwyll mounts the mound called Gorsedd Arberth, a place where wonders manifest themselves, and meets his bride Rhiannon, whom he is forced to win through trickery.  In the third, Rhiannon gives birth to Pyderi, but when the baby is stolen by some type of monster, Rhiannon is accused of murdering him and is forced to do public penance, after which the child is found and restored to his heritage.

       Walton cuts out the entire third part.   In the "Introduction" to the original text, Gwyn Jones emphasizes that the Mabinogion is really the story of Pryderi, who is the only character to appear in every branch.  But Pryderi does not even appear in Walton's Prince of Annwn.  I can't recall if the birth of Pryderi is recounted in one of the later novels; I still have to reread those volumes before I can write about them.  I think she cuts this part because it doesn't really fit with her tone or some of her themes and would be difficult to integrate with the earlier sections.

       However, Walton also adds a great deal to the book.  The original is a lot like an outline -- it tells you what happens but not why or even how in many cases.  She provides more of a cultural setting and she gives the characters motivations. 

       For example, why is it that the god Arawn needs a human to slay his foe Havgan, who came back to life after Arawn killed him in an earlier battle?  Pyll asks that very question and Arawn tells him, "Against him I no longer have any power, and no champion of mine can do what I cannot.  All the might of Annwn is powerless against him now.  But you are called a bull of battle and a woe to your enemies -- the savage, rough strength of earth may do what we cannot."  And in one of those bathetic descents, Pwyll remarks, "There is certainly one good thing about earth.  When you kill a man there he stays dead. You have no more trouble with him, though his friends and kin may try to make some."  But Arawn emphasizes that none may kill Havgan a second time.  However, even with this, Walton doesn't make it clear why this is true.  It's one of those supernatural things in fantasy and myth that you have to accept.

       And why is it so important to kill Havgan, who is striving to seize control of the Twilight World of Annwn?  In the original his nature is never discussed . Arawn says only that "there is a man whose domain is opposite to mine forever warring against me" and Pwyll never questions him further.

      In Walton's interpretation Arawn tells Pwyll that every plane of existence has its Grey Man, its Death, and that Havgan is also a Lord of Death.  "There are Beings who cast shadows in many worlds. We Grey Men may all be shadows of One beyond your imagining; Havgan may be one of the Shadows of Another."   Oddly, his name means "Summer-White," which would make him appear to be benevolent.  But Walton presents him as the Sumerian god Nergal, mentioning in her "Sources" note: "We do know that the ancient Sumerians identified their blazing summer sun with Death himself, and worshipped him so at their temple in Cuthah."

       A brief sortie into Wikipedia produces the following: Nergal "refers to a deity in Babylon with the main seat of his cult at Cuthah. ... Nergal actually seems to be in part a solar deity, ... but only a representative of a certain phase of the sun. Portrayed in hymns and myths as a god of war and pestilence, Nergal seems to represent the sun of noontime and of the summer solstice that brings destruction, high summer being the dead season in the Mesopotamian annual cycle.  Nergal was also the deity who presides over the netherworld, and who stands at the head of the special pantheon assigned to the government of the dead (supposed to be gathered in a large subterranean cave known as Aralu or Irkalla). In this capacity he has associated with him a goddess Allatu or Ereshkigal."

       [I wrote about Ereshkigal here.   And see Nergal and Kutha in Wikipedia for more information.]

       Therefore, Walton makes Havgan a beautiful Eastern Sun-God who has come to invade the Western realms of the Great Goddess.  This  warlike god will destroy the Twilight Realm of Annwn (the Celtic Underworld, depicted as a peaceful place, one of the many stops for souls as they make their eternal round of existence).   However, Havgan will then move on to decimate Earth, the realm of humans, which makes it only fitting that Pwyll, a human, should help out Arawn in his struggle.

       But for me the intrusion of this warmongering Eastern god also suggests the invasion of Christianity, another Eastern religion that sought to subdue the worship of the Mother and the supremacy of the female principle and substitute a male god as the chief (or sole) object of worship.  Christ may have been a proponent of peace, but the religion his followers founded managed to lose that goal somewhere along the way, or to accord it only lip service.  Havgan is thus a shadow of another kind of god, a masculine god, perhaps Yahweh.  In The White Goddess (Chapter 4), Robert Graves postulates that the Achaeans brought Zeus worship into Greece, diluting the fundamental worship of the female principle among the original inhabitants.  And I found an interesting citation in a website entitled "Celtic Women: Myth and Symbol":  "What appears to have dismantled this [mother-goddess-oriented] society was the warrior culture and the spread of Christianity into Ireland. ...  The appearance of the war-goddess appears to develop as a result of the change in Celtic society to one of violence and paradoxically, Christianity."

       The original text moves rapidly.  Walton slows this pace.  Instead of having Arawn conduct Pwyll directly to the court and dwellings of Annwn (in about two sentences), she gives Pwyll three tests along the way, in some of the most memorable sequences in the book.  First off, she sends Arawn off on Pwyll's horse and puts Pwyll (in the guise of Arawn) on Arawn's horse.  Arawn's horse, which knows its way home and will take Pwyll there, is known simply as the Grey and Pwyll comes to love him.  It's a great addition because it gives Pwyll a helpful and trustworthy companion along the way. 

       First they encounter a truly horrific Monster.  "Its flat, black head pierced the grey sky, the mighty, hill-like width of the black-scaled chest  and shoulders towered above the mists ...  It had three sets of jaws, and the fangs of all three dripped blood.  From the two lower jaws protruded a human leg.  ...  Pwyll saw two immense forepaws, he saw a human head dangling from each, its hair caught in the great, glittering claws."

       Walton says in her "Sources" note that she based this Monster on the Celtic sculpture called the "Monster of Noves" (although all editions of the books that I've seen have it misprinted the "Monster of Moves"), also known as the "Tarasque de Noves" (a tarrasque or tarasque was a dragon-like creature that looks like a cross between a turtle and a stegosaurus).  The sculpture itself looks more like some other type of animal; the Encylopedia Britannica calls it a bear, and this image website here refers to it as a lion or perhaps a wolf.  Personally, I think it belongs in its own subspecies of monster! 

       At the top of this post you can see a picture of the Tarasque de Noves, and at the right is a detail from that same photo (you can also view more images here).

       The Tarasque de Noves seems to relate to the Celtic cult of severed heads.  Walton makes effective use of this belief (the heads come to life, as does the leg in the monster's mouth, and they and the Grey help Pwyll defeat it in a fast-paced, highly entertaining battle). 

       Walton also makes use of the "Bird which keeps age-long vigil above the skull-adorned pillars of the grim Temple of Bouches-du-Rhone" ("Sources" note).   I identified this as the Roqueperteuse Sanctuary, which includes a set of pillars with niches for skulls and a bird that originally perched above the lintel.  (Unfortunately, I couldn't find a photo of either the gateway or the bird that I felt comfortable reproducing here, so go to these links if you want to see pictures of the Bird and the Gateway.)

       In yet another trial of his strength and purpose, Pwyll encounters a free-standing gateway in the wilderness, with skulls and two freshly severed human heads in the niches and a giant bird of prey perched on the lintel.  These heads and skulls talk among themselves and we learn that this is the place where those who die in despair come, to become victims of this Bird, who eats more than their bodies -- it eats their very essence and denies them the power to enter the Cauldron of Rebirth.  This test is not merely physical; it is a psychological test of will.  Pwyll becomes immobilized at the foot of the gate as he listens to the conversation among the skulls and heads:

      

       " 'But the Mothers -- will they let this be?'

       " 'The Man-Gods from the East are draining their strength, even as She of the Dark Wings drained ours.'

       "But when the Son comes back -- He that at three nights old was stolen from the Mother?'

       " 'This time the Son will not come back.  He has joined the Man-Gods.'  Again both skulls laughed together."

 

      The reference here is to Mabon son of Madron, which means "Son son of Mother" -- a duo of important Celtic deities.  But it's difficult to avoid seeing in this dialogue another reference to Christ. 

       Pwyll is compelled toward the belief that life is a hopeless quagmire and death brings only oblivion.  But he passes this test, also, because he is buoyed by an event that happened between his two trials, yet another addition by Walton.  He had encountered Rhiannon of the Birds, whom he will see again in the next section, while retaining no recollection of their earlier meeting.  I'll talk a little more about that in the next post.

       Pwyll finally makes it to the Court of Arawn, where he passes one final test.  When in the guise of Arawn he goes to bed with Arawn's wife, he is tempted by her beauty, but he is too honorable a man to take advantage of his good fortune and he turns his back to her.  When the real Arawn returns later, his wife upbraids him for his coldness and he knows that Pwyll has not betrayed him.  For this reason, the Grey Man and the human hero form a lasting bond of friendship.  In honor of this friendship, Pwyll is granted the title of Head of Annwn, hence the title of the book Prince of Annwn.

       I can't end this part without saying a word about the battle with Havgan.  First off, the battle takes place at a ford, traditional in Celtic culture. And we get a final look at the Celtic head cult (those arrays of capering heads do help to make this book memorable).   When Arawn killed Havgan earlier, the Sun-God begged him to be merciful and to finish him off by cutting off his head, and Arawn, who is a quite benevolent Death God, is impelled to comply.  However, the head immediately hops back onto the body and Havgan is as good as new. 

       So Pwyll knows he mustn't decapitate Havgan.  And when he arrives at the ford, he sees this sight:

   

       "Smoke veiled the far side of the ford, smoke and the shadow of that massed blackness that filled the heavens above it. Dimly Pwyll could see the skeletons of trees, still seemingly writhing in the agony that had burned out their lives. This time words of Arawn came back to him: 'Where Havgan treads, nothing grows again. Where he rides, the earth is burnt black beneath his horse's hoofs. He sears the breast of the Mother; all his land is a barren waste.'"

       However, when Havgan enters the ford, Pwyll sees "a boy young and beautiful as morning," and he begins to doubt the rectitude of his cause.  How could anything so beautiful be evil?   If he kills Havgan, will the sun ever rise again?  Has Arawn been tricking him all along?  And Pwyll's physical prowess begins to weaken as his will weakens.

       But the power of Havgan himself wanes as night approaches.  Pwyll finally strikes the ultimate blow and Havgan begs him to put him out of his misery, just as he did with Arawn. 

       "Again Pwyll's arm rose.  The blue eyes lit with hope.

       "They were engulfing him, those sky-hued seas of beauty and longing, those eyes that promised a new universe.  And then something -- the cold feel of bonds coiling snakewise round his will -- made Pwyll tear his eyes away ...  He looked up ... and he saw the darkness beyond the ford.

       "It covered all now.  From the water's edge to the half-swallowed heavens that smoky blackness boiled ...

       "If Havgan rose, his men would cross the ford.  Would that hot, reeking darkess cross with them?"

       And so Pwyll refuses to behead his opponent and his lamenting men come and bear him away to die.  The world of the Mothers is saved.  But this scene can only remind you of ...

       Mordor!  Isn't it Mordor we're seeing beyond the river?  Havgan is another Sauron, only one who uses personal beauty to deceive.  Prince of Annwn was completed late enough for Evangeline Walton to have read Lord of the Rings, but I don't know if she did.  Certainly she hadn't read it when she first began the book.  Just the same, the resemblance between Mordor and the descriptions of the army beyond the ford is uncanny.

       I find that this analysis requires a third post.  Next time I'll deal with the second part of the original Branch, where Pwyll meets and courts Rhiannon.  And I'll also touch a little bit more on some of the book's themes and on some of its flaws.

Prince of Annwn, by Evangeline Walton: Analysis, Pt. 1

This is the first in a series of posts in which
I will examine Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion Tetralogy

and how she adapts the original myths. 

Prince of Annwn is the first volume of the work,

retelling the First Branch of the Mabinogion.



The Hounds of Annwn, by Deb Holman
From http://druidnetwork.org/deity/mythology/bc_pwyll

         I'm trying to recall how I first discovered Evangeline Walton's retellings of the Mabinogion, but for the life of me I can't do it.  I own several paperback versions and usually I write in a book the date I bought it.  In this case, I didn't, but my original copies are all Ballantine Books and I know I was ordering a lot of their fantasies from a catalog back in the '70s.  I probably just saw the titles and was attracted because I studied the Mabinogion in college, in my senior seminar on medieval literature.  And they turned out to be some of my favorite books of all time, as those of you know who follow my Ruminations blog!  I used The Island of the Mighty in my own book The Termite Queen to effect a significant turning point in Part IV.

       First, a few words about the Mabinogion itself -- a compilation of Welsh myths, folktales, and romances that is probably not that familiar to the general public.  (The following information is taken from the "Introduction" to The Mabinogion, translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones.  London, New York, Everyman's Library [c1974])

       The tales exist in two Welsh collections: the White Book of Rhydderch (compiled ca. 1300-1325) and the Red Book of Hergest (ca 1375-1425).  The stories themselves must have originated much earlier, but they developed within an illiterate society with only oral traditions, as did all Celtic myth; consequently we have only these later redactions.  Lady Charlotte Guest published an original translation of the 14th-century compilations in the 1830s and '40s.  It was she who gave it the not-entirely-correct title of "Mabinogion," which she considered to be a plural of "mabinogi," although it was probably derived from a scribal error. (For more about the obscure derivation of the name see Mabinogion in Wikipedia.)  In fact, only those parts designated the Four Branches should be called by this name, since each ends: "And thus ends this branch of the Mabinogi."  The other tales (which contain interesting archaic Arthurian material), do not end with that phrase.
 

       The Four Branches are titled (in English) as follows (with the titles of Walton's adaptations in parentheses):

• Pwyll Prince of Dyved (Prince of Annwn)
• Branwen Daughter of Llŷr (The Children of Llyr)
• Manawydan Son of Llŷr (The Song of Rhiannon)
• Math Son of Mathonwy (The Island of the Mighty, originally published as The Virgin and the Swine, a publisher's unfortunate title)

       In this first post I will begin a discussion of Prince of Annwn.  It's the First Branch, but it was the last of the four adaptations to be published (in 1974).  I tried to research the order in which Walton wrote the books (since they were published out of sequence), but I couldn't find anything, so I wrote a note to the administrator of the Walton web page (http://evangelinewalton.com/).  I got back a wonderful response from her current editor, Douglas A. Anderson, and I thank him for his interest.  He says that the chronology is difficult to  determine, but apparently the first major pieces that she wrote were The Island of the Mighty (the Fourth Branch) and Witch House (her occult horror novel), both of which were completed by 1936 (when The Virgin and the Swine was first published.  Witch House was not published until the 1940s.)  By 1940, she was trying to market the Second and Third Branches as one huge volume entitled Brothers of Branwen, but the publishing deal fell through.  Later, when Ballantine Books became interested in republishing The Island of the Mighty, she divided Brothers of Branwen into separate volumes for the Second and Third Branches.  She had done some work on the First Branch in the early '40s, then picked it up again in 1971.  It was finally published in 1974.  So in fact it was the last to be completed.

      

       My approach in this series of posts will be first to take a look at the original text and discuss how Walton adapted it.  I'm  using as the original text the Jones and Jones translation mentioned above; I don't own the Lady Charlotte Guest translation and moreover I remember reading somewhere that she, being a good child of the Victorian Era, bowdlerized the text somewhat (in fact way back in the '70s, I compared the two texts and it was true!)

       In the "Introduction" to the translated text, Gwyn Jones waxes enthusiastic about the excellence of the writing, with remarks like "the final redactor ... was a great artist.  ...  He wrote the finest Welsh prose of his age. ... [employing] a skilled management of dialogue ... a command of phrase that allowed him to move easily from tenderness to cruelty, from the grave to the grotesque ... [with] a sustained yet delicately varied pace of narration. ... Second, though it is the tendency of folktale to deal with types, our author had a fine feeling for character."

       I certainly wouldn't disagree with those points.  The modern reader can read original stories without any feeling of boredom, and that's probably a good place to start.  However, the novel hadn't been invented in medieval times and our literary sensibilities have changed a lot.  To me, the original still smacks of flat mythic exposition.  Walton turns this straightforward narrative into a fully modern piece of fiction.

       To illustrate, one need only compare the opening paragraphs of Prince of Annwn with the text of the original.  Here is the original opening of the First Branch:

       "Pwyll prince of Dyfed was lord over the seven cantrefs of Dyfed; and once upon a time he was at Arberth, a chief court of his, and it came into his head and heart to go a-hunting.  The part of his domain which it pleased him to hunt was Glyn Cuch.  And he set out that night from Arberth, and came as far as Pen Llywn Diarwya, and there he was that night.  And on the morrow in the young of the day he arose and came to Glyn Cuch to loose his dogs into the wood.  And he sounded his horn and began to muster the hunt, and followed after the dogs and lost his companions; and whilst he was listening to the cry of the pack, he could hear the cry of another pack, but they had not the same cry, and were coming to meet his own pack.

       "And he could see a clearing in the wood as of a level field, and as his pack reached the edge of the clearing, he could see a stag in front of the other pack.  And towards the middle of the clearing, lo, the pack that was pursuing it overtaking it and bringing it to the ground.  And then he looked at the colour of the pack, without troubling to look at the stag; and of all the hounds he had seen in the world, he had seen no dogs the same colour as these.  The colour that was on them was a brilliant shining white, and their ears red; and as the exceeding whiteness of the dogs glittered, so glittered the exceeding redness of their ears.  And with that he came to the dogs, and drove away the pack that had killed the stag, and baited his own pack upon the stag."

       These two paragraphs of no-nonsense narration take up less than one page in my Jones and Jones volume.  Walton expands them into nine  I'll quote part of her beginning and intersperse some comments.  Here is her opening sentence:

      "That day Pwyll, Prince of Dyved, who thought he was going out to hunt, was in reality going out to be hunted, and by no beast or man of earth."

       This is a terrific opening sentence -- a great hook. Right away we recognize that this is not an piece of archaic mythic exposition -- it contains too much stylistic artifice.   It creates tension by suggesting that this story will provide a lot more than we will immediately learn and that Pwyll is entering into a dangerous situation.

      Walton continues, "The night before he had slept at Llyn Diarwya, that lay halfway between royal Arberth, his chief seat, and the deep woods of Glen Cuch.  And at moonset, in the last thick darkness before dawn, he woke there.

       "He woke suddenly, as if a bell had been rung in his ear. Startled, he peered round him, but saw only sight-swallowing blackness that soon thinned to a darkness full of things yet darker. Of half-shaped, constantly reshaping somethings such as always haunt the lightless depths of night, and make it seem mysterious and terrible. He saw nothing that meant anything, and if he had heard anything he did not hear it again.

       "Then sharp as an order, came memory: 'You have come to hunt in Glen Cuch, so why not get to it?'

        " 'By the God my people swear by, I will do that!' said Pwyll, and he jumped out of bed."

 

       Walton has drawn us into the character of Pwyll Prince of Dyved -- not only what he is experiencing but also how it affects him.  Again we can sense ominous events brewing.  She stimulates the reader's emotions, giving us a little frisson of anticipatory fear.  Also, she is showing us what is happening, not simply telling us, as the original mostly does.

         Then she proceeds to add some humor and a down-to-earth tone, something totally lacking in the original.  I happened to be glancing through Ursula K. LeGuin's compilation of essays on fantasy and science fiction entitled The Language of the Night, and I came across this remark: "Evangeline Walton ... has achieved her own idiosyncratic blend of humor and heroism; there is no doubt that the Keltic mythos lends itself to such a purpose." (p.92)

       I call this technique "bathos," a descent from the lofty to the commonplace, sometimes defined by the term anticlimax. "Bathos" is often equated with the sentimental or the trival, but Walton uses the device with great skill.  It provides a sense of balance to the writing and prevents it from growing too heavy: "He rousted out men, dogs, and horses, he drove them forth with their breakfast only half eaten. 'I wish he would get married,' grumbled one man, looking sorrowfully back at his food as he made for the door. 'Then he would get up later in the morning.'

       "But that morning Pwll would not have stayed in bed if the loveliest woman in the world had been there with him.  The Mabinogi says that it pleased him to go hunting, but the fact is that it pleased somebody else.  The idea had been planted in his brain by another, one far older, more subtle and mightier.  Pwyll, who liked to do as he pleased, whose wont it was to give orders, not to take them, never dreamed that he was being as obedient as one of his own hounds."

       The author has briefly switched to omnipotent narrator mode (here building off the sentence that opens the book).  She gives us additional insight into Pwyll's character -- he's a man accustomed to exercising power. 

      

       "Out into the first feeble grey of dawn he rode, his hungry, sulky men with him.  Soon the forest of Glen Cuch loomed before them, still black as night, mighty with the mystery and darkness that fill all deep forests. ...

       "Pwll's horn sounded, and the dogs were loosed.  For a space the huge beasts stood sniffing, red eyes, the hair on their backs rising.  Then, with a great wild bellowing they were off.  The black woods closed over them like gigantic jaws.

       "One man, looking after them, said uneasily: 'I never saw them act quite like that before.'"

       Pwyll then proceeds to get lost in a forest that seems much thicker than he remembers it.  He loses track of his men as he follows the belling of his unseen hounds.  As the woods grow black as night, the author continues to humanize Pwyll. "He began to wish that he could hear some of his men, no matter how far off, and to be ashamed of how much he wished it."  Then Pwll hears the cry of another pack coming to meet his own .

       Now Walton makes a significant enlargement.  The final sentence of the first two paragraphs of the original read like this:  "And with that he came to the dogs, and drove away the pack that had killed the stag, and baited his own pack upon the stag."  Walton's version requires about three pages to flesh out that one laconic statement.  When we see the unfamiliar dogs, here is Walton's description, intensified to emphasize horror and deathliness:

        "The eyes and ears and the blood-dripping teeth of the strange dogs glowed red, red as fire, but their white bodies glittered more savagely, with an unnatural, deathlike brilliance of paleness."

      Striking colors and color symbolism play a large role in Celtic myth.  Animals from another plane of existence are often portrayed as being white, but they might also have strangely particolored bodies, and trappings and costumes are often described in vivid detail, particularly in the tales and romances of the Mabinogion.  For example, here is an extract from "The Dream of Rhonabwy":

 

       "He could see a youth with yellow curly hair and his beard new trimmed, upon a yellow horse, and from the top of his two legs and the caps of his knees downwards green.  And a tunic of yellow brocaded silk about the rider, sewn with green thread, and a gold-hilted sword on his thigh, and a scabbard of new cordwain for it, and a deerskin thong and a clasp of gold thereon.  And over and above those a mantle of yellow brocaded silk sewn with green silk, and the fringes of the mantle green.  And what was green of the rider's and his horse's apparel was green as the fronds of the fir trees, and what was yellow of it was yellow as the flowers of the broom." (p. 139 of Jones and Jones)  Throughout Walton's version she makes fine use of this colorful bent of Celtic myth; I'll point out more examples in the next post.
       (According to http://www.ilovefairies.com/fairy_characteristics.html, green combined with red are the favorite colors of fairies in Celtic countries.)

 

       The appearance of the otherworldly dogs is followed by another bathetic shift, when Pwyll sternly orders his own cringing pack to take the stag away from the intimidating hounds. 

      "They looked at him beseechingly; they wagged their tails, begging him to change his mind.  Their eyes said pitifully: 'Lord, we have always done your bidding.  Anything we can do for you we will always do.  But this ... Do not ask it of us, Lord; do not ... '

       "And because he himself was afraid that they could not do it Pwyll was miserable; also their misery hurt him.  And because he felt guilty he glared at them harder than ever.

       " 'I said: take that stag!'

       "They cowered yet lower; they whined. ...

       "He never had struck any of them.  They were his darlings and his heart's pride.  Yet now he stooped and picked up a stick.

       "They could not bear that; death was less dreadful to them than his wrath.  They moved, they advanced, tails down, bodies trembling.

       "Pwyll dropped the stick and drew his sword.  He would not let them fight alone."

       Walton draws an interesting comparison here.  Picking up on the earlier sentence (Pwyll "never dreamed that he was being as obedient as one of his own hounds"), she identifies Pwyll with his dogs: both are scared and reluctant to do as their master wants, although Pwyll doesn't yet know he has a master.

       And then we meet that master.  Inexplicably, the ominous pack withdraws and allows Pwyll's hounds to take the stag uncontested.  As they gorge themselves, the strange pack simply watches.

       " 'They are waiting for something,' thought Pwyll.  He glanced over his shoulder toward the west from which they has come.  But there was nothing there; only trees.

       "His heart leapt, then sank; there was Something!

       "A namelessness, a far-off greyness, not solid enough to be a beast, too thin to be fog ...

       "The bole of one enormous old tree hid it; for a breath's space Pwyll could not see it, and then a Grey Man on a Grey Horse rode out into the glade."

       And so we meet Arawn, Death himself, the Grey Man of the Twilight World of Anwnn, one of the parallel planes of existence where souls go when the body dies -- master of the Hounds from Hell --  the entity that has been exacting obedience from Pwyll all along ...

       Here is how the original text introduces us to the King of Annwn:

       "And whilst he was baiting his dogs he could see a horseman coming after the pack on a big dapple-grey steed, with a hunting horn round his neck, and a garment of brownish-grey stuff about him by way of a hunting garb."  Period.  That's it.  No sense of horror, not even any suggestion of the supernatural.  Just a flat statement.  I have to say, I'm biased -- I prefer Walton's version!

       Obviously I can't continue to compare texts in this much detail for the extent of the whole book, although it would be great fun!  But I hope this is some indication of how skilled Evangeline Walton is in taking the flat, straightforward narrative of the original Mabinogion and introducing the tension, excitement, humor, and complexity of character that we like to see in contemporary fantasy. 

      In a follow-up post I intend to discuss the elements of the original that Walton omits in her retelling, and also some which she adds.  I will also talk about the social and philosophical ideas which run through all the books but which are particularly discussed in Prince of Annwn.  She does have a didactic purpose: an interesting view of history to promote and a quite modern philosophy.  Her books are much more than well-written sword-and-sorcery adventure tales.

 

[A note on the formatting of this post: I'm well aware that large amounts of quoted material should be presented as block quotes without quotation marks, but I have no idea how to use HTML to get block quotes (indented on both margins), so if anyone cares enough to tell me how to do it, I'll fix it.]