Celtic Source

Who wrote The Four Branches of the Mabinogi? That's a question numerous Celtic scholars have attempted to answer over the years, but none have been able to provide definitive proof to support their claims. This lack of evidence has prompted others to venture beyond the usual suspects of monks and clerics and instead consider more uncommon candidates such as Gwenllian, warrior princess of Wales . . .

Robert Graves' White Goddess is one of the most popular books ever written on modern Celtic mysticism, but as well as entrancing countless modern readers it has also enraged many Celtic scholars.

Perhaps one of its greatest successes was introducing Kat Godeu ('The Battle of the Trees') to an English audience. Few had ever heard of this obscure medieval Welsh poem from the 14th century Book of Taliesin. But Graves' version has done little to clarify what the poem actually means.

In this podcast I talk through the main problems with Graves' version and suggest another way of understanding this ambiguous Welsh text.

What can the almost universal practice of ritual mask wearing tell us about the Welsh bardic tradition? As far as we know, the medieval Welsh bards didn't use masks in performance, but they did take on archetypal personas such as that of the legendary Taliesin, and there are suggestions that some of these performances were considered a type of ancestral channeling.

Anthropologists have studied countless examples of how ancestral spirits are brought alive in public performance, and some of these accounts can help us think through what the old Welsh bards were doing in their performances.

If you're interested in following The Native Tales of the Mabinogion or The Taliesin Tradition, you can find these courses (and several others) here.

In answer to a question that comes up every now and again:

Why focus on interpretation? Shouldn’t we just cover the historical facts and let people decide for themselves what something means?

Unfortunately, sometimes the facts just aren't enough . . .

If you're intending to follow the new course starting tonight (8pm UK Time), please log in and take a look at the first chapter of The Native Tales of the Mabinogion, where you will find the Zoom link.

If you can't make it, I'll also be going live on the Celtic Source Facebook page at 9pm Uk Time, to answer another humdinger of a question:

What’s the function of channeling when it comes to poetry? What does it mean that the bard is essentially pretending to talk in another voice? What creative purpose does this serve?

This video is in answer to two questions sent in from The Taliesin Tradition course: 

- what is the bardic craft of classical Welsh poetry? 

- what evidence is there for human to animal transformations in Celtic art?  

You can follow The Taliesin Tradition course (as well as several others) with a subscription to the website:  

https://celticsource.online/courses-page/ 

Next Tuesday (16th) is the beginning of The Native Tales course, also available with the same subscription.  

https://celticsource.online/the-native-tales/

Concluding this short series on Welsh Arthurian poems we take a look at the broader use of the 'enchanted fortress' motif and see how it's used to evoke several different themes, both sociological and mythological.

Continuing with this short series on Welsh Arthurian poems, this talk takes a look at Preideu Annwfyn (The Spoils of Annwfn), one of the better known poems from the medieval Book of Taliesin. Like many other Taliesin poems from this period, it is a strange, ambiguous and multilayered text, and although many commentators have attempted to pin its ultimate meaning down, it remains a largely mysterious poem. In this talk we touch on at least some of the more definite things that can be said about it, and dwell in the mystery of all the things that can't!  Correction: the Historia Brittonum was written down in the 8 hundreds not the eighth century! 828 is the general consensus.

'The Discourse of Arthur and the Eagle' is a 12th century Welsh poem that was very popular in the Welsh oral and written tradition. Even though it's a poem about Christian learning, it also draws on a far more pagan mythology.

When we compare Welsh folktales about giant witches and their stone cairns to stories about the Cailleach of Ireland and Scotland, we find some very interesting similarities.

In recent decades, several authors on Celtic myth and spirituality have been  accused of misrepresented the cultural history of Wales. But what of Welsh scholars? Are they also misrepresenting Welsh history, intentionally obscuring pagan influences?