Folklore and Myth in the Mabinogion - A Lecture Delivered at the National Museum of Wales on 27 October 1950 by W. J. Gruffydd

Author:W. J. Gruffydd [Gruffydd, W. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473303546
Goodreads: 21007319
Publisher: Read Books
Published: 2013-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

7

While discussing the traces of the second and third elements in Branwen, I wish to remind you of another episode which, in itself a supremely interesting piece of folklore, may throw some light on the difficult question of folk-recollection in the traditions about an older race such as we saw inherent in the Lake legends. Into the already confused tangle of Branwen a long story has been inserted in the form of a conversation between Bendigeidfran and Matholwch, King of Ireland, explaining the circumstances in which Bendigeidfran obtained the miraculous Pair Dadeni, the ‘Cauldron of Resurrection’ which he has just presented to Matholwch. According to my reconstruction of the probable growth of the Branwen complex, the original myth on which this episode is based was an account of an attack on Annwfn by the Hero, under whatever name he went, and the carrying away of Preiddeu Annwfn, ‘the Spoils of Annwfn,’ the King’s Magic Cauldron, but this myth, originally the basis of the main element in Branwen, has in the final form of the Mabinogi been reduced to a mere shadow. It is probable that it had no previous connexion with the story of the Iron House to which it is here attached.

Bendigeidfran informed Matholwch that he had received the Cauldron from a man who, with his wife, had escaped ‘from the iron house in Ireland when it was made red-hot over their heads.’ Matholwch then took up the story and related how he was hunting on the top of a gorsedd, ‘mound’ near a lake. He saw a large man of terribly hideous aspect with an even larger wife coming from the lake. ‘In a fortnight and a month’, says the stranger, ‘this woman will give birth to a child fully armed.’ Matholwch took them under his protection but within four months ‘they made themselves hated and no one would countenance them, because they insulted and worried respectable men and women and were rapacious and truculent.’ Matholwch could not get rid of them so he made an iron house for them. He plied them with food and drink and heaped charcoal all about the house. All the smiths in Ireland had been summoned, ‘all the owners of tongs and hammer,’ but this was not to build the house, since it was already erected. When they were drunk, they kindled the fire and worked the bellows, and so the heat of the iron house drove out the troublesome folk. By this time they had many descendants with them, but only two escaped, the husband and the wife. These two went to Bendigeidfran’s realm where they greatly increased in numbers.

This episode is also found in an old Irish tale called Mesca Ulad, ‘The Drunkenness of Ulster.’ The victims in the Irish tale are Conchobar, King of Ulster, and his men, who are placed in the iron house by the King and Queen of Connacht. I hope to deal with the development of this story elsewhere; let it suffice to say here, that in this instance at least, the Welsh version is more primitive than the Irish.

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