Translating the Mabinogion. The story-teller's strengths and weaknesses


Plodding onwards, now in Ystoria Gereint Uab Erbin,  I am still in awe of the story teller’s skill. 

He walks such a fine line between a minimalist narration that would be the envy of Raymond Carver and notes for a story he hasn’t written. 

Here’s the incident that kick starts the story ‘Gerient Son of Erbin’. The quotes are taken from Sioned Davies' impressive translation.

A Forester has approached Arthur at the feast, and after the formal greetings:

‘Tell us your news’ said Arthur.

‘I will Lord,’ he said. ‘A stag have I seen in the forest and I have never seen anything like it.’

‘What is it about it for you never to have seen anything like it?’ said Arthur

‘It is pure white, lord, and it does not walk with any other animal out of arrogance and pride because it is so majestic. And it is to ask you advice lord, that have I come. What is your advice in the matter?”

‘I shall do the most appropriate thing,’ said Arthur, ‘and go and hunt it tomorrow at dawn; and let everyone in the lodgings know that, and Rhyferys (who was a chief hunstman of Arthur’s) and Elifri (who was the chief squire) and everyone else’.

The speech isn’t ‘described’. The same verb is used every time. The speaker is identified, but how he (or she in other instances) speaks is left to the audience. ‘Tell us your news’ said Arthur. Bluntly? In a resigned tone? In an authoritarian manner?

It’s up to you. 

There is no need to indicate who is being spoken to. ‘Let everyone know’ is obviously not addressed to the Forester. But ‘Arthur turned to his court officials and said’ would be redundant. 

There’s no description of what’s happening in the background during the conversation either. Nor is there any description of Arthur’s reaction, (there’s no description of Arthur), but I think you can hear him lean forward, suddenly paying attention at ‘I have never seen anything like it’. And you can hear the courtiers nearby voicing their approval when after ‘the most appropriate thing’ Arthur says ‘I will go and hunt it’. 

The style invites the audience in and asks it to participate, but also gives it the freedom to make it its own. 

I like this very much. It reminds me of the best of the traditional ballads, where everything that isn’t essential has been stripped out. You could argue that it produces too much ambiguity? Is Arthur bored or annoyed or excited? And the answer is probably that it’s not as important as what he says. You could argue that the style is the product of an exterior world, and we live in one that likes to pretend it has access to intention, character and emotion. And a great deal of modern fiction is based on the convention that the writer not only can but in some ways is obliged to tell you what the character/s is/are thinking. But it’s one of modern literary fictions more dubious characteristics.

I'm at the editing end of the current writing project.  The next part of A Presentment of Englishry is almost finished. I’m weighing up how much I can cut out. I’d like to follow the medieval method, but I suspect most modern audiences would not be happy with such a minimalist approach.  

On the other hand. 

I’m not so enamoured by the story-teller’s habit of describing what people are wearing. This happens to a greater or lesser extent across all the stories I’ve translated so far, and I’m beginning to assume there will be curly auburn hair, tunics and surcoats, brocaded silk and boots of Cordovan leather. In a status conscious world clothes are obviously a mark of status. But it seems there wasn’t much variation available.

The Forester who speaks above is described as:

A tall auburn haired lad, wearing a tunic and surcoat of ribbed brocaded silk, and a gold hilted sword  around his neck, and two low boots of Spanish leather about his feet. 

60 lines later, Gereint is described on his first appearance in almost identical terms, when he’s seen by Gwenhwyuar and her maid as they are trying to catch up with Arthur and the hunt. 

A young bare-legged, auburn-haired noble squire with a gold hilted sword on his thigh, wearing a tunic and surcoat of brocaded silk with two low boots of Spanish leather on his feet and a mantle of blue purple over that with a golden apple in each corner.   

You’d be forgiven for thinking the story has just got interesting and the forester is riding after Gwenhwyuar. Instead it’s an encounter with one of the story teller’s limitations. 

But they tend not to outweigh his strengths. 

Is a Medieval Romance a Love story? Owain or the Lady of the Well 2

Why Medieval Romances are not Love stories.

The danger of dealing with past texts is succinctly expressed by Corinne Saunders in ‘Rape and ravishment in the literature of medieval England’:

‘[…] by contrasting past and present, and assessing the past according to contemporary ideologies, we validate our own political assumptions. The temptation is to assume the transhistoric nature of contemporary premises and therefore to fit the evidently ‘misogynistic’ structures of the middle ages into a pattern to be censured and exposed…’

It’s that danger of assuming the ‘transhistoric’ nature of human attitudes and behaviour that I want to explore, and here the danger, as always, is compounded by the words we use and the silent way they shape our readings of a text and ‘understanding’ of the past.

Three examples from ‘Owain or The Lady of the Well’ from the Mabinogion. Translations are by Sioned Davies unless otherwise stated. 

The basic scenario which underlies the story is that every knight who finds the well of the title has been told what to do when he gets there: throw a bowl of water on the stone. This initiates a chain of events which ends with the arrival of a Black Knight. The knights then fight until one of them is beaten. The assumption in the story world is that no one finds the well by accident, and every knight who finds it is therefore looking for a fight.

Owain, the ‘hero’ of the story, mortally wounds the Black Knight, and chases him to his castle where he is trapped by a falling portcullis. He is saved by Luned, who hides him in an upstairs room. 

Example 1

Owain watches the funeral of the man he’s just killed from his hiding place, and at the end of the procession sees a beautiful but distraught woman.

And when he saw the woman he was inflamed with love for her until it filled every part of him.

Owain asked the maiden [Luned] who the lady was.

‘God Knows.’ says the maiden, ‘a woman you could say is the most beautiful of women, and the most chaste, and the most generous and wisest and noblest. She is my mistress, known as the Lady of the Well, the wife of the man you killed yesterday’.

‘God Knows’, said Owain, ‘she is the woman I love best.’ 

‘God knows’, said the maiden, ‘there is no way she loves you, not in the very slightest.’  

Jones and Jones, in a more literal rendering of her reply give it as ‘ God knows’, said the Maiden, ‘she loves not thee, neither a little nor at all.’

What Owain says is: ‘Duw a wyr arnaf, mae mwyhaf gwreic a garaf I yw hi’

garaf is from karu/caru, which is translated as ‘to love’. There’s no option. 

It’s related to the noun ‘Karyat/cariad ’ that names what fills every part of him and inflames him and can be translated as love, affection, fondness or friendship, though here it’s translated as ‘love’.  

Luned’s response sounds like the voice of modern reason. But in the world of the story, it isn’t. Whatever ‘love’ meant to the original audience, it is a very different collection of emotions than those we might associate with it today. Consider the second example.

Example 2

Luned will try to trick her mistress into accepting Owain as her new husband. Her approach is brazen. She finds her mistress grieving over her dead husband who she’s just buried. Luned asks her what’s wrong with her. The Countess is surprised. 

‘God knows, said Luned, ‘I really did think you would have more sense. It would be better for you to start worrying about replacing your husband than wish for something you can never have back’.

‘Between me and god’, said the countess, ‘I could never replace my lord with any other man in the world.’  

‘Yes you could’, said Luned, ‘marry someone as good as he, or better.’

The Countess’s initial reaction is understandable, She tells Luned to get out and never come back. But Luned points out the Kingdom can only be protected by deeds of arms, so the Countess needs a new man quickly. While the countess is initially offended by this, she also accepts its logic. Luned pretends she has gone to Arthur’s court to find a better man than the dead one. When she tries to pass off Owain as the man she’s found, the countess sees through the ruse, perhaps proving Luned’s description of her wisdom. 

The Lady looks at Owein, and points out he doesn’t look like a man who’s been travelling.

‘What harm is in that lady?’

‘Between me and god’, said the Countess, ‘this in none other than the man who took away my Lord’s life’.

Luned replies ‘All the better for you Lady; had he not been stronger than your lord he would have not taken his life. Nothing can be done about that’, she said, ‘since it is over and done with’.

At no point in the interview does Owain speak. His character and personality, if he has either, are irrelevant.  

Example 3

The Lady calls a meeting of her realm and puts the problem before them. Either one of them marries her and defends the well…or she is free to take a husband from somewhere else. 

If Owain’s love for the lady sounds like a dreamy infatuation of an adolescent with a wall poster, as far as ‘love’ goes this seems to be the defining moment in the story. She’s beautiful, wise, intelligent, rich. And not one man in her lands wants to marry her. In this story world not one man in her realm desires the Countess or her wealth. 

The reason for this is fairly obvious. 

Her Husband becomes the new Black Knight and he has to ride out every time a passing knight comes to the well and risk his life in combat. He has no choice. One day he will meet his match, or a strap will break, his horse will stumble, or a weapon will shatter and he will die.  

And the men of her kingdom are quite happy to let an outsider take that risk..

She marries Owain. Up to this point, she hasn’t spoken to him nor he to her.

Imagine the wedding night.

We hear of Owain’s subsequent career as the Black Knight, but nothing about his dealings with his wife. He will abandon her for three years. He will go mad and eventually be reunited with her. But they never speak to one another in the story. 

We translate what Owain feels for the Lady as ‘love’, but we have to accept that this is in no way a ‘transhistorical’ emotion.  

The Lady’s body is tied into her role as Countess of the Well…she is the wife of the Black Knight, and the Black Knight is whoever is currently defending the fountain.

Her husband is always going to be the man who killed her husband. 

It’s a story, but in this storyworld the body is not a private, privileged space. Just as Owain has no choice once he marries her. His body is now at the mercy of every passing Knight. 

Arthur turns up with a retinue three thousand strong. After he has beaten Kei, Owain pitches his tent and fights (by implication) every one of them except Gwalchmei. It’s an absurd logic, but he doesn’t seem able to avoid the consequences of his position, any more than the Lady can avoid a wedding night with a passing stranger who just killed her previous bedfellow.

It's fairly obvious that this story represents a very different attitude towards the body, to the way society organised the relationships between the sexes, to the way people regarded themselves and each other. And it’s not unique to this story nor is it only fictional.

I’ll get back to Uther eventually.    

Translating the Mabinogion: Owein or Chwedyl Iarlles y Ffynnawn part one

 

Jones and Jones translated this as 'The Lady of the Fountain', Sioned Davies as 'The Lady of the Well'. 

I've never enjoyed the 'Three Romances' in the Mabinogion. After the Four Branches and the Native Tales, there's a feeling of gears shifting, as though we've moved into a more nebulous, almost frivolous world where perpetually adolescent males run around bashing each other over the head with sharp bits of metal. 

Plodding my way through the original seemed like a good way of enforcing a close reading. 

First thought, the Welsh Story is much more enjoyable to read than the French of C de T. The anonymous teller skilfully demonstrates how to tell a tale that is formally structured by repetition without being repetitious. 

Like any genre, this one requires the reader’s co-operation. It’s not just the magic that you have to accept. Some questions, like ‘Does Luned share the bed she makes for Owain with Owain’, or ‘What kind of prison is Luned trapped in when Owain stumbles over her towards the end of the story’ are left to your imagination. Others, like ‘Why doesn’t one of Arthur’s 3,000 Knights, who are supposedly looking for Owain, stop to ask the Black Knight if he’s seen him?’ belong in the category of questions you must not ask unless you wish to destroy the story.  Deciding which category a question fits into is an interesting exercise.

The story is also a very good demonstration of how to make a totally improbable landscape real; while the Knights start from Arthur's court in Caerleon on Usk, the geography blurs almost as soon as they leave. But within this blur, of valleys, wastelands, forests, parks, mountains, rivers and castles, directions are always very specific and journeys equally detailed.

For a story about a Knight, the most dramatic and entertaining episodes involve women. As in many of the Mabinogion's stories, they have the best lines. The dialogues between Luned and her Mistress, the Lady of the Well, are probably the highlight of the story. And while it’s impossible to know, I suspect the story teller thought so too.

Luned seems more interesting as a character than Owain, and generations of readers have realised that in modern terms she loves him and he'd be better off marrying her. The fact he doesn't points to the fact that while this is a Romance it isn't a love story (more on this later). 

'Love' as a modern concept is almost entirely absent. Owain's marriage to the Lady is, at least on her part, a clear sighted understanding of her position: her Kingdom can only be protected by a Knight who is willing to fight anyone who comes to the Well. Whoever defends the Well is her Husband. When no one in her kingdom offers to replace the man Owain has just killed, she knowingly marries her husband's killer. As Luned tells her, Owain is obviously the better knight.. 

Owain's Lion is the other star of the story. In whatever fantasy land Owain strays into out of Wales there are lions and serpents, as well as one eyed giants and cannibals. All the lion wants to do is repay Owain for saving him, and Owain's baffled and ultimately futile attempts to stop him intervening in every subsequent combat on his behalf border on the perhaps unintentionally comic.

Plodding through the original has not only confirmed my admiration for the story teller, but also increased my admiration for Sioned Davies' translation. 

 

Mathew Francis 'The Mabinogi'

Enthusing in progress….

Mathew Francis. The Mabinogi, Faber 2017

This is an excellent performance. I read praise of it that stated it ‘Does for the Mabinogion what Heaney did for Beowulf’. This is unfair to Francis for several reasons: if you need a comparison it might be more accurate to compare it to what Logue did for Homer. And as far as narrative poetry, retelling an older source, that’s about as good as it gets in term of praise. 

In the version of ‘The Mabinogion’ that you buy as the standard prose translation, there are 11 stories. The collection is not coherent, and splits itself into three groups. There are three ‘Romances’ which read like Welsh versions of stories by Chrétien de Troyes. There is a cluster of ‘native tales’ which range from the elliptically odd to the sprawling magnificence of Culhwch and Olwen. And there are the ‘Four Branches’, the ‘Mabinogi’ which stand at the head of most translations and are rightly regarded as the jewels in the crown.

They are four uniquely strange and beautiful tales. 

Francis retells the four stories, shifting poetry to prose. He admits he can’t read the originals and that perhaps frees him from their syntax and means this in not a translation but a version. If you don’t know the Four Branches you are not at a disadvantage. If you do, the act of selection and emphasis implicit in any retelling will provide readers with much to think about. 

His basic unit is a fourteen line stanza organised syllabically.  To help the reader follow the story marginal ‘signposts’ are included. 

As poetry, the collection shows an unobtrusive verbal inventiveness which muscles along in service to the story. It rewards frequent rereading, from the small details:

The trunks of birches are like ‘Nobbly moonbeams’ (p.54) Efynysien is ‘unhorsing a king/one cut at a time’ (p.28). 

To larger descriptions of setting and character: In the first branch, Pwyll, disguised as Arawn, enters the latter’s bedroom: 

The room is many rooms, coming and going
At the whim of its flames. The red fire 
Utters yellow, and magics

A bed out of dark,
A cave hewn from curtain where they lie
In the candle’s buttered light (p.6)

 

Or the description of Branwen, seen through her half brother’s eyes:

And his swan of a sister, who seems to walk
Without moving her feet, nudged at times 
To right and left by currents 

Only she can feel…

But the world of the stories is also richly sensuous with the presence of the physical world; woods, rivers, coast lines, hills, contrast with halls and rooms. It’s one of the ways the story world differs from the contemporary one. These characters are very much at home and part of their landscapes. Francis allows this into his writing, and keeps it in view, so that the book begins:

Here at the turn off the leaf a horseman is riding
Through the space between one world and another,
Warm in his company of noises. (p.3)

The third line being particularly good.

Throughout we are reminded of landscape and its natural inhabitants.  Later, in the third branch, when Dyfed is under enchantment

The land managed without them. Woodpeckers ratcheted,
A beetle cantilevered from a soft log,
Spangled flies twitched between slants of sun
That tip toed across the ground
Marking the non-hours. (p.5) 

Retelling these stories presents a modern writer with a host of problems, and Francis acknowledges some of these in his introduction. ‘Stories’ unavoidably evokes modern prose fiction. But if you approach the four branches looking for character development, plot coherence, thematic unities, you might be disappointed if not confused. Pryderi may be the one character who appears in all four branches but there’s no noticeable ‘development’ of his character from one to another.  

Attempts to make them into modern stories run the risk of killing off what makes them special. (This point deserves its own discussion.)

While Francis does streamline the stories, the effects of his cutting and rearranging are positive. 

He moves his narrative swiftly, which in the case of the third branch’s repetitions is something readers should be grateful for. In the fourth the speed doesn’t give anyone much time to stop and wonder at Lleu’s stupidity. (He not only tells his flower wife the unique (utterly improbable) way in which he can be killed, but willingly demonstrates how it can be brought about. Inevitably he’s speared during his demonstration).

There has been much discussion about the relationships between the four branches. And these versions bring some of the links alive. Changes made to the first story affect the third. Cutting the ‘badger in the bag’ incident isn’t a great loss to the first, but it does mean we don’t get to see how smart Rhiannon is, and by removing the incident Francis removes the motivation for the malicious enchantment in the third tale. Modern coherence demands Francis alter the reason behind the revenge since the original motive has been removed; medieval narrative would have ignored the problem. 

The major changes seem to be to the fourth story. But the changes pay off. The story is in some ways the most famous:  it’s the one where Gwydion the magician magics a wife out of flowers for his nephew, but while that gets quoted and remembered so much more happens and the beginning of the story is tangled. 

Long before we reach the the flower wife, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy, two men at the court of Math the King, plan the rape of Goewin. However,  to get to her the two men have to get Math away from the court. Gwydion uses his powerful magic to steal Pryderi’s pigs (yes) and start a war. This leads to Pryderi’s death and their punishment. It’s only after this that the tale of the flower wife begins, and she is only the last of Gwydion’s attempts to side step the last of the three curses placed on LLeu by his mother.  

Francis cuts the rape of Goewin, the planning that goes into it, and Math’s uniquely appropriate and repetitious punishment of Gwydion and Gilfaethwy.  Scrapping Goewin’s story frees him to shift the death of Pryderi to the end of the book. Since the first tale includes his birth, his death now brings the stories to a close. 

His other major change is to make Gwydion into a storyteller who is entertaining his hosts. Instead of a 3rd person tale about him, the fourth branch becomes a first person tale told by him. This alters a tale about magic into a story told by a great storyteller who claims to be a magician in the story he’s telling.   

Francis hints that all the stories in the four branches are told by Gwydion. The link between the magician who can make a ship out of sea weed or dogs out of mushrooms and a poet who constantly presents one thing as another seems a fair one. But the idea seems to appear in the final branch rather than be a consistent motif all the way through. 

Rereading this book over several weeks, I haven’t found anything to dislike. There’s so much to admire.

 

'Three stories by Gerald of Wales' new poems

Three poems from A Presentment of Englishry are in the translation section of this month’s ‘The High Window’. Takes a bit of scrolling, I’m the ‘medieval Latin’ contributor, but the first of Gerald’s stories is worth the scrolling effort. And should you ever be in that position, you’ll know the correct answer.

https://thehighwindowpress.com/category/translation/

A Presentment of Englishry will be published by Shearsman books in March of 2019.