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The Mabinogi of Branwen the House of Ll^Yr and the Island Otherworld Introduction

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The Mabinogi of Branwen the House of Ll^Yr and the Island Otherworld Introduction Chapter 3 The Mabinogi of Branwen The House of Ll^yr and the island otherworld Introduction The Assembly of Brân and Island Otherworld The Second Branch concerns the fate of the children of Ll^yr. Brân the Blessed (Bendigeidfran, or Brân Uendigeit) son of Ll^yr is the High King of the Island of Britain, ‘exalted by the crown of London’. Here we move away from the localised perspective of the other three Branches and take in events on a pan-British scale. By reference to these wider developments, the Second Branch situates the action of the Mabinogi at a definable point in the framework of Medieval Welsh historiography. The Second Branch might therefore be seen as the panoramic view – documenting a shift in the regional geopolitics of the insular world as a whole, contextualising the more local developments enumerated in the other three Branches of the Mabinogi. The story begins with this High King Brân sitting in state on the rock of Harlech – looking westwards, significantly, out across the Irish Sea. The events that follow lead relentlessly towards the climax of the Branch, in which the one hundred and fifty districts of Britain rise up in anger to avenge the injury of the king’s sister Branwen ‘one of the three Chief Matriarchs of the Island of Britain’. But the tale of Branwen ends on a muted, strangely ethereal note – with the armies of Britain reduced to seven men, the decapitated king suspended between life and death and these seven survivors feasting and drinking in a magical island palace, curiously disengaged from the world of time and space. This dramatic shift in atmosphere reflects the fact that the Second Branch seems to be a fusion of two quite distinct streams of tradition. The first of these was body of warrior mythology evidently known to the bardic author as ‘The Assembly of Brân’451 – elements of which (as we will see below) 451 This is one of four ‘sub-titles’ (evidently a reference to the source traditions drawn upon by the bardic composer), which are defined at the end of the end of the Second Branch: Thus ends this Branch of the Mabinogi, which arose from the Beating of Branwen. (that was one of the Three Grievous Beatings of this Island); and from the Assembly of Brân (when five and seven-score districts came to Ireland to revenge the beating of Branwen), and concerning the feasting in Harlech for seven years; and the Singing of the Birds of Rhiannon; and about the Assembly of the Head for four-score years. 263 Chapter 3 The Mabinogi of Branwen were evidently in formation even during the Continental background of the Iron Age Celts. The other ingredient of the Second Branch, referred to as ‘The Assembly of the Wondrous Head’, seems to derive from a more insular context. Here we enter a rich seam of magico-religious tradition of a more localised nature, which would seem to have its origins in the metaphysical speculations of the druidic schools of the Irish Sea/Atlantic region. Just as we examined the First Branch divided into its constituent three sections, so will we now examine the Second Branch in terms of the two halves into which it is naturally divided. The first half, ‘Branwen I’, consists of what the twelfth century author described as the interlinked chwedleu or stories he knew as ‘The Beating of Branwen’ and ‘The Assembly of Brân’. This is a prima facia example of a familiar heroic age narrative, along the lines of Homer’s Iliad: in which an archetypal hosting of a nation rises up in response to an injury committed against a totemic royal female. This section, as Andrew Welsh has pointed out, conforms to a classic international story-type known as the ‘Tragic Peaceweaver Tale’452, most clearly represented in the Germanic tradition, where it forms the central thematic ingredient of stories like the Niebelungenleid or the Finnsburgh episode of the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf. The Tragic Peaceweaver scenario includes all the main elements found in this section of Second Branch: a marriage between (formerly or potentially hostile) kindreds; the progressive break-down of relations between them followed by the ill-treatment of the foreign bride; culminating in a pyrrhic showdown between the two kindreds, nations or tribal groupings involved. Specific details in the Second Branch – the mutilation of horses, for example, or the bird-as-messenger motif – are also to be found in the Germanic accounts, confirming the likelihood of a deep-rooted Continental substrate to both of these traditions. To the tradition of the Assembly of Brân itself we can possibly assign an even more specific provenance. Certain details within this sequence provide a significant link to the Belgic peoples: a Late Iron-Age Gallo-Brittonic grouping, dominant in Britain immediately prior to the Roman invasion. This Belgic lore, initially identified as such by the philologist Professor John Koch453, takes us as far back as the Sack of Delphi in 279 BC, a seminal event which seems to have precipitated an extensive diaspora from the Balkan region out of which the Belgic nation would appear to have emerged (pp. 278-280). Extraordinary as it may seem, certain events from the Sack of Delphi from can be identified (albeit in a distorted, mythological form) in the Medieval Welsh tradition of the Assembly of Brân, written down twelve-hundred years or more after these events took place. The character of Brân himself, on one level at least, would seem to be based on the Balkan warlord Brennus – leader of this third-century-BC barbarian invasion of the Hellenic world. In the Assembly of Brân, then, we find remnants of the Belgic origin myth – which seems to have become integrated at some stage with the archetypal Heroic Age narrative of the Tragic Peaceweaver Tale. The subsequent 452 Andrew Welsh, ‘Branwen, Beowulf, and the Tragic Peaceweaver Tale’ in Viator: Medieval and Renaissence Studies 22 (1991), pp. 1-13 453 John Koch ‘Bran: Brennus: An instance of Early Gallo-Brittonic History and Mythology’ Cambridge 264 Medieval Celtic Studies 20 (Winter 1990) pp. 1-20 Chapter 3 The Mabinogi of Branwen relocation of these events to the British Isles seems to have occurred under the influence of a dimly- remembered Romano-British invasion of Ireland in the third century AD, under the leadership of a certain Bennius or Benignus (Benne Brit of the Irish tradition). This event, and its legacy in the medieval tradition, will also be considered in the introductory (tribal-historic) sections preceding the text of the main part of the Branch (Branwen I). The Belgic connection is explored in some detail at the beginning of this chapter; just as we explored the psycho-geographic complex of the ‘Indigenous Underworld’ in the introductory sections of the previous chapter. Both these cultural complexes form important coordinates in the tribal schema of the Four Branches as a whole. But as this Branch seems to involve some narrative material of evident Belgic provenance, we now look in depth at this demographic element and consider its relationship (in terms both mythic and historical terms) to the ruling caste of Medieval Wales. The second and final section of the Second Branch (‘Branwen II’), encompasses the traditions the author described as the ‘The Assembly of the Head’ and ‘The Singing of the Birds of Rhiannon’. This brings into play the Otherworld Island mythology, which has its cognates in the Irish tradition: suggesting a more Atlantic background for this particular stratum of magico-religious material. In the introduction to Branwen II we will discuss these Irish parallels: particularly the Immram Brain, some of the protagonists of which (Bran Mac Febail and Manannán Mac Lir) can be plausibly related to the members of the House of Llyr, the main players in the Second and Third Branches. The chapter will be concluded, as before, with a synchronic analysis of the Branch from a structural perspective. The question of origins will be put aside while we consider the text as it itself as a functioning whole and what it would have meant to its contemporary medieval audience. As we have already seen, the Mabinogi formed part of a highly nuanced narrative culture in which myth, magic, historical tradition and tribal politics merged seamlessly (and sometimes dangerously) into one. As with the First Branch, we will begin by considering the magical or psycho-dramatic meaning of the tale of Branwen as it is developed cumulatively, through a sequence of moves or interchanging symbols. By careful analysis of this process some of these symbolic elements can apprehended here in terms of esoteric conceptions such as the martial group-mind and the principal of totemistic equivalence. Through these schemata, additional significance is given to more familiar complexes of the Medieval Celtic magical thought-world: including the archetype of the Living Head and the mystical Otherworld experience. Finally, for the first time, we can begin to see how this symbol- system extends across the Branches, accumulating and compounding meaning as it goes. The device of containment, for example, employed repeatedly throughout in the Second Branch recreates (to an almost obsessive degree) the symbolism of the Badger-in-the-Bag episode of the First Branch. Furthermore, the equine symbolism developed around the person of Rhiannon in the previous Branch is invoked significantly in the Mabinogi of Branwen. It is a means of obliquely associating Rhiannon with certain key events and individuals therein. In this way, we can build on our understanding of the magical language of the Mabinogi, and the means by which key signifiers are qualified across the Four Branches as a whole.
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