The Mabinogion

I'm glad I read this, but I mostly didn't enjoy it very much. It was hard for me to retain specifics, in part because so many of the names were weird and in part because the stories' events often seem random, with cause/effect and time seeming sort of slippery. I did like some of the individual stories, and it was neat to read some of the Arthurian stories, but on the whole, I read these to get a flavor of some of the history of our literature more than for enjoyment. ( )

I love to read history and while these tales are not histories, they do give a perspective of what was of on the minds of early medieval readers. These are traditional Welch tales, some pre-Christian era, some related to the myths of Arthur. I found Davies translations very readable and the extensive notes were for the most part helpful in providing background and context.

The 11 stories in this collection are likely more than 1000 years old (perhaps some are much older but the written versions are in that range), and yet they are both similar to and different from modern stories. Similar in that sex and violence are common themes. Many of the fantastical elements form the basis for modern fantasy stories. Different in the way the stories are told and the expectation of what the reader will understand / accept as part of a good story. A couple of examples of that:

1. The mix of pagan, pre-Christian notions with references to the Christian God. God, for instance, in one story curses a king and his men by turning them into pigs.

2. In the "romances" in this collection, knights are constantly running about and killing people to win the hand of the "woman they love best", even to the point of killing other men to take their wives for themselves, and those wives scheming with them to do so. Perhaps an early form of "a code of chivalry" (and the medieval notion of love at first sight) when these tales were told, but certainly not a modern understanding of appropriate behavior between the sexes.

3. The understanding that children of the noble class were commonly given away to be reared by "foster parents".

I have not read the other translations that people mention in other reviews, but I enjoyed reading this enough to (at some point) seek out some of those translations. ( )

The Mabinogion is a compilation of Welsh mythology and Arthurian stories from a variety of authors and a variety of time periods. This means that the stories have a different feel. The first half of the collection is a bit speedier, with shorter stories. The Arthurian stories are much longer in the telling and contain staggering lists of warriors and horses of varying colours. Davies’s explanatory notes are well worth reading—I bookmarked the back so that I could read a tale and then the associated explanatory notes. Davies explains translation choices to convey alliteration and rhythm, the connections between the various tales, and how the Arthurian ones intersect with other sources of these tales (e.g., Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chrétien de Troyes). It is not a light read, but worth checking out if you like Arthur and Wales. Next step for me will be hunting down a good audio, to hear the Welsh names pronounced properly and to get the rhythm of the story. ( )

1986 printing. 1977 printing ( )

Used mainly as a reference in a course. Would have liked footnotes instead of end notes but the information was helpful. I've found more modern translations to be more easily understood as some of the arcane word patterns here made reading comprehension challenging in some parts. ( )