Peredur and the Valley of the Changing Sheep
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Peredur and the Valley of the Changing Sheep Master’s Thesis Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Utrecht University Student: Kiki Calis, 3844714 First supervisor: Natalia Petrovskaia Second assessor: Ad Putter Date: 13-07-2018 Word count: 33565 words Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3 Methodology ....................................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................................... 12 Historia Peredur ................................................................................................................................. 13 Structure and Content (summary) ................................................................................................. 13 Animals .......................................................................................................................................... 16 Locations ........................................................................................................................................ 17 Otherworldly Colours ..................................................................................................................... 19 Roman van Walewein ........................................................................................................................ 21 Structure and Content (summary) ................................................................................................. 21 The Perilous River .......................................................................................................................... 23 Immram Curaig Máel Dúin ................................................................................................................. 27 Structure and Content (summary) ................................................................................................. 28 Marvellous Islands ......................................................................................................................... 29 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 2: Encyclopaedic sources ......................................................................................................... 36 Sheep-changing rivers ........................................................................................................................ 39 Fiery Rivers......................................................................................................................................... 46 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 49 Chapter 3: How did Wales know about the East? .................................................................................. 52 The Crusades and the recruitment tour of Archbishop Baldwin ........................................................ 55 The Cistercian information network .................................................................................................. 59 Strata Florida Abbey .......................................................................................................................... 64 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 66 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 68 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 72 Manuscripts ....................................................................................................................................... 72 Source Editions .................................................................................................................................. 73 Secondary sources ............................................................................................................................. 75 2 Introduction Ac o’r neill parth y’r afon y gwelei kadw o defied gwynnyon, ac o’r parth arall y gwelei kadw o defeit duon. Ac val y brefei vn o’r defeit gwynyon, y deuei vn o’r defeit duon drwod ac y bydei yn wen, ac val y brefei vn o’r defeit duon, y deuei cn o’r defeit gwynnyon drwod, ac y bydei du.1 (And on one side of the river he could see a herd of white sheep, and on the other side he could see a herd of black sheep. And as one of the white sheep would bleat, one of the black sheep would come across and be white. And as one of the black sheep would bleat, one of the white sheep would come across and would be black.)2 This seemingly miraculous episode is taken from the Middle-Welsh Arthurian tale Peredur vab Efrawc (c.1100).3 On one of his quests the Arthurian knight Peredur passes a river and comes across this remarkable sight of sheep changing colour when crossing the physical boundary of the river. The sight is noted, after which Peredur continues his journey without making even the smallest remark about the event he has just witnessed. While this is not the only peculiar event in Peredur, the events he witnesses usually have a direct influence on him.4 In the episode Peredur plays the role of the silent observer and has no interaction with what he sees before him, nor is the purpose of the episode otherwise explained. The episode is never referred to again and, as will be shown below, remains a mystery within the tale Peredur vab Efrawc. Because the motif has received very little attention from scholars and, as I will show below, no satisfying explanation for the occurrence of this valley of changing sheep has been provided, the following paper will make a new attempt to discover the meaning of the Valley of the Changing Sheep.5 1 Glenys W. Goetinck, Historia Peredur vab Efrawc (Cardiff 1976) 47-48. 2 Sioned Davies, The Mabinogion (Oxford 2007) 89. 3 Found in Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 7 (s.XIII-XIV); Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 14 (s.XIV1); Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 4: White Book of Rhydderch (s. XIVmed); Oxford, Jesus College, MS 111: Red Book of Hergest (s.XIV/XV). Edited in Goetinck, Historia Peredur vab Efrawc; translated in Davies (tr.), The Mabinogion, 65-102. While Goetinck accepts the arguments for a date around 1100, she herself is more inclined to date the tale in its current composition around 1136. See: Peredur, 36. 4 This will be illustrated in detail in chapter 1. 5 I will use the definition of ‘motif’ as presented by John K Bollard in ‘Theme and meaning in Peredur’, Arthuriana 10 (2000) 73-92, 75: ‘a surface incident that occurs usually more than once and that may serve to link passages and episodes [between different tales]’. These motifs may create explicit or implicit parallelisms and comparisons that interact with the meaning and relevance of the tale. 3 An important interpretation of the nature of the colour-changing sheep was provided by Glenys Goetinck in 1975.6 In Peredur: A Study of Welsh Tradition in the Grail Legend, Goetinck presents an overall interpretation of Peredur based on the idea that the hero is constantly subjected to otherworldly influences. Most of the characters Peredur meets are considered either as otherworldly helpers or as otherworldly foes.7 One of these helpers is a young squire whom Peredur meets after he leaves the Valley of the Changing Sheep.8 Goetinck identifies this character as a herdsman, tending to the sheep and through his otherworldly nature the sheep acquire theirs.9 Rather than seeing the otherworldly shepherd as a character unique to Peredur, Goetinck considers this characters as one wider spread in Celtic culture. She identifies similar characters in the Welsh Owain, y Chwedyl Iarlles y Ffynnawn and Culhwch ac Olwen.10 Moreover, the specific occurrence of this character in combination with colour-changing sheep is also present in the Old Irish Immram Curaig Máel Dúin.11 The relationship between the Valley of the Changing Sheep in Peredur and this last tale has been more closely examined by John Carey in 1982.12 The Immram Curaig Máel Dúin is a sea-faring tale of which the composition is dated to the ninth century and the earliest manuscript to the twelfth.13 The tale is divided in thirty-four episodes and, as Carey notes, events described in the twelfth episode are remarkably similar to the Valley of the Changing Sheep found in Peredur.14 In this episode Mael Duín and his men sail past an island where they see two flocks of sheep, separated by a fence. On one side of the fence the sheep are white, on the other black, and when the sheep cross the fence they change colour. Because the sailors are afraid they might change colour themselves when they set foot on the island, they throw two rods onto the island to see what happens.15 The rod that lands on the side of the white sheep 6 Glenys W. Goetinck, Peredur: A Study of Welsh Tradition in the Grail Legends (Cardiff 1975) 251-252. 7 Goetinck, Peredur, 153. 8 Davies, The Mabinogion, 89. 9 Goetinck, Peredur, 251-252. Goetincks