Development of Welsh Pagan Culture 1150-1300

Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest (May 19, 1812 – January 15, 1895), later Lady Charlotte Schreiber, was an English linguist who is best known as the first publisher in modern print format of the Mabinogion, the earliest prose literature of Britain.
She was the wife of Welsh ironmaster John Josiah Guest and became a leading figure in the study of literature and the wider Welsh Renaissance of the 19th century. With her second husband, Charles Schreiber, she became a well known Victorian collector of porcelain; their collection is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum. She also created major collections of fans, games, and playing cards, which she gave to the British Museum. She was noted as an international industrialist, pioneering liberal educator, philanthropist and elite society hostess. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Charlotte_Guest)
Photo is an enhanced version of one found at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Lady_Charlotte_Guest_(4674585).jpg

Scan of the page from the Red Book of Hergest showing the word "Mabinogi" in red at the top. written over some other text. This word was adopted as the name of the whole collection. This vellum manuscript is dated to between 1382 and 1410. Still at Jesus College at Oxford.
Photo online at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jesus-College-MS-111_00349_175r_(cropped).jpg

The Welsh Source Texts (Mabinogion) Translated by Lady Charlotte Guest

(June 30, 2023, updated October 2, 2024) Charlotte Guest writes this about the early European texts deriving from royal courts:

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there arose into general notoriety in Europe, a body of “Romance,” which in various forms retained its popularity till the Reformation. In it the plot, the incidents, the characters, were almost wholly those of Chivalry, that bond which united the warriors of France, Spain, and Italy, with those of pure Teutonic descent, and embraced more or less firmly all the nations of Europe, excepting only the Slavonic races, not yet risen to power, and the Celts, who had fallen from it. ...
These romances were found in England, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and even Iceland, as early as the beginning of the thirteenth and end of the twelfth century. The Germans, who propagated them through the nations of the North, derived them certainly from France. Robert Wace published his Anglo-Norman Romance of the Brut d’Angleterre about 1155. Sir Tristan was written in French prose in 1170; and The Chevalier au Lion, Chevalier de l’Epée, and Sir Lancelot du Lac, in metrical French, by Chrestien de Troyes, before 1200.
From these facts it is to be argued that the further back these romances are traced, the more clearly does it appear that they spread over the Continent from the North-west of France. The older versions, it may be remarked, are far more simple than the later corruptions. In them there is less allusion to the habits and usages of Chivalry, and the Welsh names and elements stand out in stronger relief....
That Wales possessed an ancient literature, containing various lyric compositions, and certain triads, in which are arranged historical facts or moral aphorisms, has been shown by Sharon Turner, who has established the high antiquity of many of these compositions.
The more strictly Romantic Literature of Wales has been less fortunate, though not less deserving of critical attention. Small portions only of it have hitherto appeared in print, the remainder being still hidden in the obscurity of ancient Manuscripts: of these the chief is supposed to be the Red Book of Hergest, now in the Library of Jesus College, Oxford, and of the fourteenth century. This contains, besides poems, the prose romances known as Mabinogion. The Black Book of Caermarthen, preserved at Hengwrt, and considered not to be of later date than the twelfth century, is said to contain poems only....
There is one argument in favour of the high antiquity in Wales of many of the Mabinogion, which deserves to be mentioned here. This argument is founded on the topography of the country. It is found that Saxon names of places are very frequently definitions of the nature of the locality to which they are attached, as Clifton, Deepden, Bridge-ford, Thorpe, Ham, Wick, and the like; whereas those of Wales are more frequently commemorative of some event, real or supposed, said to have happened on or near the spot, or bearing allusion to some person renowned in the story of the country or district. Such are “Llyn y Morwynion,” the Lake of the Maidens; “Rhyd y Bedd,” the Ford of the Grave; “Bryn Cyfergyr,” the Hill of Assault; and so on. But as these names could not have preceded the events to which they refer, the events themselves must be not unfrequently as old as the early settlement in the country. And as some of these events and fictions are the subjects of, and are explained by, existing Welsh legends, it follows that the legends must be, in some shape or other, of very remote antiquity. It will be observed that this argument supports remote antiquity only for such legends as are connected with the greater topographical features, as mountains, lakes, rivers, seas, which must have been named at an early period in the inhabitation of the country by man.

The Mabinogion is the title Charlotte Guest gave to her book in which she collected and translated these middle Welsh romance tales. This book was published in 1848.

But, the book of Taliesin was not a part of the oldest set of texts. The manuscript from which that story comes is quite late in date, possibly from the 1500's or 1600's. It is comprised of two parts--the Story of Gwion Bach, and the Story of Taliesin, both of which are sometimes found without the other. Lady Guest's version was derived from Iolo Morgannwg's copy.

Story Contents

The Lady of the Fountain
Peredur the Son of Evrawc
Geraint the son of Erbin
Kilhwch and Olwen
The dream of Rhonabwy
Pwyll Prince of Dyved
Branwen the daughter of Llyr
Manawyddan the son of Llyr
Math the son of Mathonwy
The dream of Maxen Wledig
The story of Lludd and Llevelys
Taliesin

References

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5160/5160-h/5160-h.htm

http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/jce/mabinogion.html

Book of Taliesin:

Cerridwen

https://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/jce/cerridwen.html

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