Calumniation and Transfiguration

Elements of Folklore in The Four Branches of the Mabinogi

by Amina Malak Otto

The presence of Indo-European folklore in The Four Branches of the Mabinogi has been a frustrating though fascinating topic of research for decades. When comparing The Mabinogi to folktales from continental Europe, there seem to be too many similarities to comfortably refute the possibility of some influence. However, the close parallels also serve to throw the stark differences into sharp relief. The focus of this presentation will be centred around three episodes in The Mabinogi, two of which exhibit a tale type or motif recorded in the Aarne- Thompson-Uther Index and the third of which closely follows a popular ballad. In each of these cases, there are striking similarities, but the corresponding folktale fails to completely manifest. Both the correspondence and divergence call into question what role, if any, folklore played in the creation of The Mabinogi and whether it was through deliberate application, misunderstanding on the part of the author, or simply dissemination and adaptation of stories.

To look for elements of folklore in any work, it is important to define what it is exactly. Oxford Languages defines folklore as ‘the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth’. (1) It is only in the last couple centuries that it has been removed from its oral context and committed to writing. Folklore can inform anything from the cosmology of the universe to local place names and anchors a community in both time and space by contextualizing their shared history and the landscape around them. Folklore is how culture is sustained and transmitted from one generation to the next, and while one of its functions is preservation, it is also capable of changing and adapting as the people of that culture migrate, encounter other cultures, and exist in a changing world. Folktales belong to this tradition and tend to be simple stories that are easy to grasp, easy to memorize and accessible to the wider community.

In 1910, Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne set out to index reoccurring Indo-European tale-types in the collections of folklore that were accessible to him. He was working primarily with European tales from Finland and other northern European countries. (2) It is important to note that Aarne’s work was shaped not only by what was available to him, but also by the theories of preceding folklorists such as Theodore Benfey who believed that India was the sole origin point of folktales. (3) Even his contemporary, Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, founded a school on the thesis that ‘folk-tales are the exclusive property of European peoples’. (4) What would come to be known as the Aarne Thompson Uther Index (ATU) began with quite a narrow perspective on what a folktale was and to whom the tradition and its origin belonged.

In 1928, American folklorist Stith Thompson translated Aarne’s work into English and released six volumes of motif classifications in the following decades. (5) A motif is a recogniseable and often formulaic element of a folktale that be found in multiple tale-types. In the words of Canadian folklorist and host of the Folklore and Fiction podcast, Cealleigh MacCath-Moran, ‘motifs are like chocolate chips; you might put them in cookies, in fudge, or directly in your mouth by the handful at two in the morning. Similarly, the same motif might be found in an animal tale, a tale of magic, a religious tale, and so on’. (6) Thompson’s work on motifs made the index more widely applicable, though it was still heavily Euro-centric. In 2004, Hans Jörg Uther revisited the index and made further revisions in attempt to expand the applicability of the index beyond European tales and reclassify certain tale types, creating the index used today.

The first example of a potential tale type occurs in the First Branch when Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, encounters Arawn of Annwfn and accidentally insults him. Arawn tells Pwyll that he can rectify the insult by trading places with him for a year so that Pwyll can meet a rival king, Hagfan, in a prearranged duel. Pwyll agrees and Arawn changes their appearance. Pwyll lives in Annwfn or a year and successfully defeats Hagfan on the appointed day while Arawn governs Dyfed. When they return to their respective homelands, Pwyll finds that his land has prospered under Arawn and vows to maintain the new standards of rulership. Arawn returns home to his land and wife to discover that Pwyll has abstained from any form of intimate relations with her despite her belief that he was her husband. Arawn is pleasantly surprised at Pwyll’s chastity and a strong alliance between Dyfed and Annwfn forms.

The closest corresponding tale type for this episode, according to Andrew Welsh, is ATU 303: The Two Brothers. (7) Also referred to as The Twin Brothers or The Blood Brothers, this type of tale involves two brothers who are essentially identical in everything from appearance to possessions and can trade places easily. Usually, one brother finds himself in mortal peril, often of a supernatural nature, and the other must rescue him. When the second brother goes to rescue his twin, he encounters his brother’s wife and, though she believes him to be her husband, lays a naked sword (a sword of chastity) between them when they share a bed. Though Pwyll needs no sword of chastity to abstain from Arawn’s wife and though neither of the two are in any immediate danger, this part of the First Branch does have elements of ‘doubling’ throughout it that allow some parallels to be drawn with ATU 303. (8) Both Pwyll and Arawn are hunting with dogs when they meet, both of their kingdoms benefit, and Arawn can be posited to be a ‘double’ to Pwyll before they literally ‘twin’ each other by trading appearances. (9) Welsh posits that Arawn is an aspect of Pwyll’s nature and causes him to be ‘fruitfully disturbed’ into becoming a better ruler. (10) While an argument can be made for possible motifs of the Two Brothers in the First Branch Pwyll and Arawn’s situation is far from a perfect example.

The second point of examination spans both the first and second branches of The Mabinogi and applies the motif of the Calumniated Wife (motif K 2110.1in the ATU) to the characters Rhiannon and Branwen. (11) Rhiannon marries Pwyll in the First Branch and bears him a son, Pryderi. Some maidservants are told to watch over the child which Rhiannon sleeps, but they fall asleep as well and the child is stolen by a mysterious giant claw. Upon waking to find the child gone, the servants panic and frame Rhiannon by killing several puppies and smearing their blood on her face and hands while she is still asleep. They accuse her of devouring her baby and she is sentenced to bear visitors to the castle on her back like a horse. Pryderi is eventually returned and Rhiannon’s position restored. The Second Branch begins with Branwen’s (daughter of Lyr and sister of King Bendigeidfran) marriage to King Matholwch of Ireland. One of Branwen’s other brothers, Efniesen, is insulted that he was not consulted about his sister’s match and maims Matholwch’s horses in retaliation. Insulted, Matholwch returns to Ireland with his new bride, but his court still seethes with discontent and urges him to action against Branwen. She is forced to work in the kitchens, but she manages to send word to her brothers. A war breaks out between Ireland and Wales. Branwen returns home but her son is killed, and she is never reconciled with Matholwch. Neither Rhiannon nor Branwen is a perfect example of the Calumniated Wife, but there are many more parallels here than in the first episode. Both Branwen and Rhiannon are outsiders in their husband’s courts, which is a common feature of the motif. Rhiannon is accused of eating her child, a detail that appears in several tale types with this motif. Both women are completely innocent. However, Rhiannon’s accusers are never punished, Branwen’s punishment has nothing to do with childbearing, and she never reconciles with Matholwch. Rhiannon’s character also does not fit the chaste demure and pious archetype of the Calumniated Wife. Juliette Wood makes excellent observations about both the ubiquity of this motif in continental folktales and the key differences that mar its application to these two women. (12) There is a chance that some details of this motif were either deliberately applied by the author of these tales or they naturally came to exist in the oral tradition from which the Four Branches emerged.

The third example does not correlate to an ATU tale type, but rather to a popular ballad that is still performed in modern music. This last episode occurs at the end of the Third Branch. Manawydan catches a fat mouse stealing his grain and tries to hang her on a tiny gallows because she is a thief. A passing cleric offers him a pound to free the mouse. Manawydan refuses. A priest offers three pounds with the same result. A bishop offers seven pounds, then twenty-four pounds, then every horse on the plain plus seven baggage-laden horses. Manawydan still refuses. Finally, the bishop reveals he is Llwyd mab Cil Coed and he has enchanted Dyfed. He divulges that the mouse is his wife. They strike a deal and she is released and turned back into a maiden. The spell on the land is broken. Kristen Mills and Stephen Hill offer an excellent summary of the ballad to which this series of events corresponds:

A maid or young woman ... has committed an offence for which she will be hanged. The gallows are prepared and the executioner is ready to proceed. At this crucial moment an outsider ... appears, and either offers or refuses to redeem the maid from execution. This intervention, however, delays the execution for a time and when the executioner is again ready, another figure appears who might free the maiden. He or she... does not or cannot prevent the execution, and the executioner yet again begins to proceed with the hanging. At this point, a third figure appears who is willing to pay the full price and redeems the maiden by paying whatever high ransom is demanded. (13) This is the closest parallel seen in these examples, though there are slight deviations between the Third Branch and the ballad. This can easily be ascribed to different versions of the folktale itself, but even accounting for these the major events of the ballad still mirror those of the Third Branch. Though this does not have an explicit corresponding ATU tale type, the ballad is still a fairly well-known folktale. Its presence in this episode may suggest either passive transmission of this tale into Welsh folklore or a deliberate insertion of it into The Mabinogi.

The search for folklore in this collection of stories may not yield particularly satisfying results, but it can serve to contextualize the relationship between Celtic and Continental folklore and position these tales in relation to folktales with more scholarship on them. Examining the ways that they do not neatly fit into the motifs can be as ediying as noting the parallels. It is unlikely that the inclusion of these elements was due to a mistake or misunderstanding of the material or poor attempt to reconstruct an older narrative as some scholars have suggested. In conclusion, I am inclined to agree with the findings of Wood in her exploration of the Calumniated Wife motif: ‘What seems unlikely is that [the author of the Four Branches] created a pastiche out of half-remembered folklore motifs, which is the impression that one gets from Jackson’s book, or that he was trying to make sense out of a contaminated mythology, as Gryffudd implies. Rather, his use of folklore was a creative and very controlled activity’. (14)

1 Oxford English Dictionary via Oxford Languages and Google, 2023.

2 Aarne, Antti, & Stith Thompson, The Types of Folktale: Classification and Bibliography, (Helsinki, 1973) p. 5.

3 Honti, John Th, ‘Celtic Studies and European Folk-Tale Research by’, Béaloideas, Volume 6, Issue 1 (June, 1936) pp. 33–4.

4 Ibid.

5 MacCath-Moran, Cealleigh, ‘Introduction to the ATU Index’ in Folklore and Fiction blog, (January 2021).

6 Ibid.

7 Welsh, Andrew, ‘Doubling and Incest in the Mabinogi’, Speculum, Vol. 65, No. 2 (April, 1990), pp. 344–62.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid. pp. 351–3.

10 Ibid. p. 352.

11 Wood, Juliette, ‘The Calumniated Wife in Medieval Welsh Literature’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, Vol. 10 (1985), pp. 25–38.

12 Ibid.

13 Hill, Thomas D. & Kristen Mills ‘The (Pregnant) Mouse Freed from the Gallows: A Ballad Parallel for the Conclusion of Manawydan fab Llŷr’, Folklore, Vol. 129, No. 3 (October, 2018), p. 308.

14 Wood, ‘The Calumniated Wife’, p. 38.

Bibliography:

Aarne, A, & Stith Thompson, The Types of Folktale: Classification and Bibliography, (Helsinki, 1973).

Davies, Sioned, The Mabinogion, (Oxford, 2007). ‘Folklore and Fiction’, a blog by Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran, PhD candidate in the Folklore

Department at Memorial University of Newfoundland https://csmaccath.com/blog/introduction-atu-tale-types [Accessed 4th December 2023]

Hill, Thomas D. & Kristen Mills ‘The (Pregnant) Mouse Freed from the Gallows: A Ballad Parallel for the Conclusion of Manawydan fab Llŷr’, Folklore, Vol. 129, No. 3 (October, 2018), pp. 302–15.

Honti, John TH, ‘Celtic Studies and European Folk-Tale Research by’, Béaloideas, Vol. 6, Issue 1 (June, 1936) pp. 33–9.

Welsh, Andrew, ‘Doubling and Incest in the Mabinogi’, Speculum, Vol. 65, No. 2 (April, 1990), pp. 344–62.

Wood, Juliette, ‘The Calumniated Wife in Medieval Welsh Literature’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, Vol. 10 (1985), pp. 25–38.