"A fo penn bydd pont."
("He who would be a leader, let him also be a bridge.")
The Author of the Mabinogi
Though the Four Branches of the Mabinogi (Pwyll Pendeuic Dyfed, Branwen uerch Lyr, Manawydan uab Lyr, and Math uab Mathonwy) together constitute the finest work of prose fiction to emerge from the Welsh Middle Ages, and clearly (at least to many scholars, including myself) stand as the masterwork of a single author, next to nothing is known of this person. Like the Beowulf-Poet, the author of the Mabinobi remains resolutely anonymous. Nonetheless, the text may preserve some traces of the concerns of its author and his or her culture.
Each of the Four Branches stands as an independent story, overlapping with the others only peripherally in terms of plot and thematics. In the First Branch, the hero Pwyll befriends the lord of Annwn (the Welsh Otherworld), wins an Otherworldly bride, and loses and then regains his son, Pryderi, overcoming his enemies through bravery and quick wits along the way. In the Second Branch, the marriage of the king of Ireland to Branwen, sister of the gigantic Bran, King of Britain, turns sour and a devastating war ensues, leaving almost all parties dead in its wake. The Third Branch focuses on the travails of Manawydan, King Bran's nephew; Manawydan returns to a Wales that has been placed under an evil enchantment and deprived of its population. Only his cunning and strong impulse to persevere win the day. The Fourth and final Branch deals primarily with the machinations of the seemingly amoral enchanter, who brings war to the land of Gwynedd (North Wales) but also produces, raises, and ultimately even resurrects an heir, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, for the aging King Math.
As a whole, the Four Branches are preoccupied with the qualities that make a good leader, with the proper and improper uses of human ingenuity, with the boundaries between life and death, and with the possibilities of non-sexual creation of new humans. Some scholars have even sensed in the Mabinogi a concern with the integrity of Wales in the face of foreign occupation.
A recent theory that the author of the Four Branches was a monk from North Wales has garnered considerable support (but by no means a consensus). Andrew Breeze once outlined the not implausible theory that the Mabinogi were written by a woman (indeed, he even speculated about a particular woman -- Princess Gwenllian ferch Gruffudd, who died fighting the Normans at the Battle of Kidwelly in 1136). Some earlier scholars supposed that the author was from Glamorgan, others that he hailed from Llanbadarn Fawr. Recently, even the long-prevailing view that the author lived in the late eleventh/early twelfth century has been challenged. Of the identity and life of the author of the Four Branches, then, it seems we must remain agnostic.
Further Reading
Each of the Four Branches stands as an independent story, overlapping with the others only peripherally in terms of plot and thematics. In the First Branch, the hero Pwyll befriends the lord of Annwn (the Welsh Otherworld), wins an Otherworldly bride, and loses and then regains his son, Pryderi, overcoming his enemies through bravery and quick wits along the way. In the Second Branch, the marriage of the king of Ireland to Branwen, sister of the gigantic Bran, King of Britain, turns sour and a devastating war ensues, leaving almost all parties dead in its wake. The Third Branch focuses on the travails of Manawydan, King Bran's nephew; Manawydan returns to a Wales that has been placed under an evil enchantment and deprived of its population. Only his cunning and strong impulse to persevere win the day. The Fourth and final Branch deals primarily with the machinations of the seemingly amoral enchanter, who brings war to the land of Gwynedd (North Wales) but also produces, raises, and ultimately even resurrects an heir, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, for the aging King Math.
As a whole, the Four Branches are preoccupied with the qualities that make a good leader, with the proper and improper uses of human ingenuity, with the boundaries between life and death, and with the possibilities of non-sexual creation of new humans. Some scholars have even sensed in the Mabinogi a concern with the integrity of Wales in the face of foreign occupation.
A recent theory that the author of the Four Branches was a monk from North Wales has garnered considerable support (but by no means a consensus). Andrew Breeze once outlined the not implausible theory that the Mabinogi were written by a woman (indeed, he even speculated about a particular woman -- Princess Gwenllian ferch Gruffudd, who died fighting the Normans at the Battle of Kidwelly in 1136). Some earlier scholars supposed that the author was from Glamorgan, others that he hailed from Llanbadarn Fawr. Recently, even the long-prevailing view that the author lived in the late eleventh/early twelfth century has been challenged. Of the identity and life of the author of the Four Branches, then, it seems we must remain agnostic.
Further Reading
- J. K. Bollard, "The Structure of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi," Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1974/1975): 250-276.
- Andrew Breeze, Medieval Welsh Literature (Four Courts Press, 1997)
- Helen Fulton, "The Mabinogi and the Education of Princes in Medieval Wales," in Medieval Celtic Literature and Society, ed. Helen Fulton (Four Courts Press, 2005)
- Patricia Clare Ingham, "Marking Time: Branwen, Daughter of Llyr and the Colonial Refrain," in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000)
- Catherine A. McKenna, "The Theme of Sovereignty in Pwyll," Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 29 (1980): 35-52
- C. W. Sullivan, The Mabinogi: A Book of Essays (Garland, 1996)