How does a person even presume to review a book that has survived 700 years, containing stories that survived close to their current form without anyone writing them down for a further 300 years? Ac yuelly y teruyna y geinc hon yma o’r Mabynogyon” – And so ends this branch of the Mabinogion Story summaries

Despite many of the surface similarities between Welsh and some Irish tales, they are just that: surface. The Welsh tales go in vastly different directions, have singular and unique progressions and ideas that set them apart from stories that might have shared similar origins long ago. a b c d e "Amazing Artworks By Alan Lee". Art. KlingPost. Archived from the original on 7 December 2010.

The style of storytelling is very different from our common present day style. While the language and sentence construction is fairly basic, the narrative threads themselves are very compressed, with less emphasis on the slow rise and fall of dramatic tensions and more simply abrupt happenings and endings. In this regard I found similarities between it and many of the Old Testament tales. It’s as if much more was left up to the reader (or listener), more room given for the play of the receivers’ imaginations, less pre-digested if you will. It took just a little while for me to get accustomed to this, and once I did I was gripped and transported to another time, another mindset; a mindset shrouded in obscurity but definitely still vibrantly alive; a mindset where journeys to and from the Otherworld, talking owls, and ferocious giants come as naturally as meat and drink and a maiden's pale thigh. However, Mabinogion is not even a Welsh word. Mabinogi is a Welsh word, but in these texts only appears in the first four of these stories. The real title should be 'The Mabinogi and Other Early Welsh Tales'. Strange and otherworldly, the Four Branches of the Mabinogi are unquestionably the jewels of this collection of medieval Welsh mythology and folklore. In volume they make up only a little over a third of the book, but trust me — this is what you are here for.

My favorite stories were The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, especially the fourth one, maybe because of my love for Ovid's The Metamorphoses. A scene very much like this one appears in the Irish myth of Dierdre, in which a snowscape of ravens feasting on the dead gets Dierdre thinking about the appearance of the man she loves. Artful contrasts and vivid imagery like this abound in the Mabinogion. In 2000, he won the competitive, juried Spectrum Award for fantastic art in the grandmaster category. [18] Some of his figure drawings remind me of the works of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, a 19th-century artistic movement in England.

Often there are deafening noises that come roaring out of nowhere and seem to cue some intrusion from the Otherworld. It’s not uncommon after such a noise to find the landscape completely devoid of people or to suddenly find oneself standing in front of a vast army of horses and men with banners whipping in the wind.

Lady Charlotte Guest in the mid 19th century was the first to publish English translations of the collection, popularising the name "Mabinogion". The stories appear in either or both of two medieval Welsh manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch or Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch, written c.1350, and the Red Book of Hergest or Llyfr Coch Hergest, written c.1382 – 1410, tho texts or fragments of some of the tales have been preserved in earlier 13th century and later mss. You’re hunting alone in the forest and encounter a stag being chased by brilliant white hounds with blood-red ears. Seeing no one around, you chase the hounds off and let your own dogs feed on the kill. But out of the forest appears the king of the Otherworld who says the stag was his and claims offense. The only way make amends, he says, will be to trade places with him for a year—he will become you and you will become him.

Jones, Gwyn and Jones, Thomas. "The Mabinogion ~ Medieval Welsh Tales." (Illust. Alan Lee). Dragon's Dream., 1982. My usual obsessive self began searching for publications featuring Alan Lee's work, and over the years, I've been fortunate to find several books illustrated by him. Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed is the first tale collected here. I only took one King Arthur oriented class in college, and we didn’t have to read this one there. All the other instances of Arthurian literature I read on my own time.