Chapters 5 - 8

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CHAPTER

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY

BRITAIN

‘WHEN Britain first, at Heaven’s command, arose

from out the azure main,’ her name was

Clas

Myrddin,

that is, the Place, or Enclosure, of

Merlin. In later days, she became known as

‘

the Honey Isle of

Beli,‘l

and it was not until

safely occupied by mankind that she took her

present designation, from Prydain, son of Aedd

the Great, who first established settled govern-

ment. All this is told us by a Welsh Triad, and

it is from such fragmentary sources that we glean

th.e

mythical history of our island.

With these relics we must make what we can ;

for the work has not been done for us in the

way that it was done by the mediaeval monkish

annalists

for Ireland. We find our data scattered

through old bardic poems and romances, and in

pseudo-hagiologies and hardly less apocryphal

.’

Beli seems to have been sometimes associated in Welsh

legend with the sea, which was called the

‘

drink of Beli,’ and

its waves

‘

Beli’s

cattle.’

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN

histories. Yet, without perhaps using more free-

dom with our materials than an early writer

would have done, we can piece them together,

and find in them roughly the same story as that

of Ireland-the subjugation of the land by friendly

gods for the subsequent use of men.

The greatest bulk of ancient British myth is

found in the Mabinogion-more correctly, the Four

Branches of the Mabinogi. These tales evidently

consist of fragments of varying myths pieced

together to make a cycle, and Professor

Anwyll

has

endeavoured with much learning to trace out and

disentangle the original legends. But in the form in

which the Welsh writer has fixed them, they show

a gradual supersession of other deities by the gods

who more especially represent human culture.

The first of the Four Branches deals with the

leading incidents in the life of

Pwyll:

how he

became a king in Annwn, the Other World of

the Welsh; how, by a clever trick, he won his

bride Rhiannon

;

the birth of their son

Pryderi,

and his theft by mysterious powers

;

the punish-

ment incurred by Rhiannon on the false charge

of having eaten him; and his recovery and re-

storation upon the night of the First of May.

In the second

(

Branch

’

we find

Pryderi,

grown

See a series of articles in the Zeitschrift

fiir

Celteltische

Philologie.

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

up and married to a wife called

Kicva,

as the

guest of

BrBn,

son of

Llfr,

at Harlech. Matholwch,

King of Ireland, arrives with a fleet to request

the hand of

B&n’s

sister, Branwen of the Fair

Bosom.

It is granted, and Branwen sails- to

Ireland. But, later on, news comes that she is

being badly treated by her husband, and

B&n

goes with an army to avenge her. There is parley,

submission, treachery, and battle, out of which,

after the slaughter of all the Irish, only seven

Br&‘s

host

remain-Pryddri,

Manawyddan,

the

bard Taliesin, and four others of less known mythic

fame.

B&n

himself is wounded in the foot with

a poisoned spear, and in his agony orders the

others to cut off his head and carry it to ‘the

White Mount in London,’ by which Tower Hill

is believed to have been meant. They were

eighty-seven years upon the way, cheered all the

while by the singing of the Three Birds of

Rhiannon, whose music was so sweet that it would

recall the dead to life, and by the agreeable con-

versation of

B&n’s

severed head. But at last

they reached the end of their journey, and buried

the head with its face turned towards France,

watching that no foreign foe came to Britain.

And here it reposed until Arthur disinterred it,

scorning, in his pride of heart, to (hold the island

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN

otherwise than by

valour,’

a rash act of which the

Saxon conquest was the result.

The third Mabinogi recounts the further adven-

tures of Manawyddan, who married the apparently

old, but no doubt ever youthful, Rhiannon, mother

of his friend Pryderi, and of Pryderi himself and

his wife Kicva. During their absence in Ireland

their kinsmen had all been slain by Caswallawn,

a son of Beli, and their kingdom taken from

them by the Children of

Don.

The four fugitives

were compelled to live a homeless nomadic life,

and it is the ‘spiriting away’ by magic of

Rhiannon and Pryderi and their recovery by the

craft of Manawyddan which forms the subject of

the tale.

With the fourth

(

Branch

’

the Children of

Don

come into a prominence which they keep to the

end.

They are shown as dwelling together at

Caer Dathyl, an unidentified spot in the moun-

tains of Carnarvonshire, and ruled over by Math,

Don’s brother. There are two chief incidents of

the story. The first tells of the birth of the twin

sons of Gwydion’s sister, Arianrod-Dylan, appar-

ently a marine

deity>

who, as soon as he was

Professor

Rhfa

is inclined to see in him

deity of

Dark-

nest,

opposed to the god of Light,

Hibbert

Lectures, p. 387.

See in this connection

32 of the present book.

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

born, disappeared into the sea, where he swam as

well as any fish, and Lleu, who was fostered and

brought up by Gwydion

;

the rage of Arianrod

when she found her intrigue made public, and

her refusal of name, arms, or a wife to her un-

wished-for son; the craft by which Gwydion ob-

tained for him those three essentials of a man’s

life

;

the infidelity of the damsel whom

Math

and

Gwydion had created for Lleu ‘by charms and

illusion

’

out of

(

the blossoms of the oak, and the

blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the

meadow-sweet,’ and his enchantment into an

eagle by the cunning of her lover; the wander-

ings of Gwydion in search of his protege, and his

eventual recovery of him; and the vengeance

taken by Lleu upon the man and by Gwydion

upon the woman. The second relates the coming

of pigs to Britain as a gift from

Arawn,

King

Annwn,

to Pryderi

;

their fraudulent acquisition

by Gwydion

;

the war which followed the theft;

and the death of

Pryderi

through the superior

strength and magic of the great son of

D6n.

These ‘Four Branches of the Mabinogi’ thus

give a consecutive, if incomplete, history of some

of the most important of the Brythonic gods.

There are, however, other isolated legends from

which we can add to the information they afford.

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN

We learn more of the details of Gwydion’s

struggles with his enemies. In his first attempts

he seems to have been unfortunate. Trespassing

upon Hades, he was caught by Pwyll and

Pryderi,

and imprisoned in a mysterious island called Caer

Sidi. It was the sufferings he endured there which

made him a poet, and any one who aspires to a

similar gift may try to gain it, it is said, by sleep-

ing out either upon the top of Cader Tdris or

under the Black Stone of the Arddu upon the

side of

Snowdon,

for from that night of terrors

he will return either inspired or mad.

But Gwydion escaped from his enemies, and

we find him victorious in the strange conflict

called Cad

God&q

the ‘Battle of the Trees.’

His brother Amaethon and his nephew Lleu

were with him, and they fought against

Bran

and Arawn. We learn from various traditions

how the sons of

Don

‘

changed the forms of the

elementary trees and sedges

’

into warriors

;

how

Gwydion overcame the magic power of

Bran

guessing his name

;

and how, by the defeat of

the powers of the Underworld, three boons were

won for man-the dog, the deer, and some bird

whose name is translated as

(

lapwing.’

But now a fresh protagonist comes upon the

scene-the famous Arthur, whose history and

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

even existence have been involved in so much

doubt. The word Arthur, of which several vary-

ing explanations have been attempted, is now

held to have been originally

ArtFrius,

recog-

nised Latin name found on inscriptions, and as

A~~GGus

in Juvenal, which would make him

a Romanised Briton who, like many others of

his period, adopted a Latin designation. His

political prominence, implied not only by the

traditions which make him a supreme war-leader

of the Britons, but also by the fact that he is

described in a twelfth century Welsh MS. as

Emperor

(cumhemwcly~),

while his contempor-

aries, however high in rank, are only princes

(gwledig),

may be due, as Professor

Rhfs

has

suggested: to his having filled, after the with-

drawal of the Romans, a position equivalent to

their Comes

Britanniae.

But his legendary fame

is hardly to be explained except upon the sup-

position that the fabled exploits of a god or gods

perhaps of somewhat similar name have become

confounded with his own, as seems to have also hap-

pened in the case of

Dietrich

von Bern (Theodoric

the Goth) and the Gaulish Toutidrix. An inscrip-

tion has been found at Beaucroissant, in the valley

of the

Is&e,

Mercurius

Artaios, while the name

Studies in the

Arthurian

Legend,

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摘要：

CHAPTERVTHEMYTHICALHISTORYOFBRITAIN‘WHENBritainfirst,atHeaven’scommand,arosefromouttheazuremain,’hernamewasClasMyrddin,thatis,thePlace,orEnclosure,ofMerlin.Inlaterdays,shebecameknownas‘theHoneyIsleofBeli,‘landitwasnotuntilsafelyoccupiedbymankindthatshetookherpresentdesignation,fromPrydain,sonofAeddt...

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Chapters 5 - 8

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