I was honored at the 2025 East Kingdom A&S championship to be chosen as Sovereign's Champion for my work in creating a narrative poem "Of Oak and Meadowsweet and Broom" as an adaptation of a portion of the Welsh Mabinogion.
Included here are the research documentation submitted for the work, and a recording of the narrative poem.
Abstract: “Of Oak and Meadowsweet and Broom” is a synthesis of a small portion of the tale of Math of Mathonwy – the fourth branch of the “Mabignogion,” a 14th century Welsh compilation of 11 medieval Welsh stories with unclear earlier origins. The source material comes from the latter portion of the tale of Math son of Mathonwy, and centers around Lleu Llaw Gyffes, the adoptive nephew of Math’s kinsman Gwydion, and Blodeuedd, the woman fashioned by Math and Gwydion from flowers to be the bride of Lleu. The source material for this adaptation is based on 4 different translations in 2 languages, from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, each with its own flavor and style; however the ultimate form of this piece is in a poetic format, distinct from the prose of the original, and following a Welsh poetic meter dating to at least the 12th century, known as Cyhydedd Fer: a series of paired A/A rhyme ending couplets composed of 8 syllables each.
The Challenge: While I have previously written multiple original prose stories in the style of period works, poetic works in the narrative style, and distillations of portions of the Mabinogion and other works, I have not previously attempted a synthesis of all these elements. A poetic adaptation of one portion of the Mab using one of the poetic forms of Welsh poetry required on one level moderate effort to craft the final product, but was the culmination of extensive study and working in various different styles and with different sources. One frustration was in pairing language elements of English and Welsh, matching styles and feel: while I wish that my Welsh was up to the task of crafting more elegant poetry, I am still a student of the language, and poetic crafting is a truly advanced skill of fluency.
I have worked in other Welsh poetic forms, including an epic in Cywydd Llosgyrnog and a number of praise poems in Hir a Thoddaid, but had never sought to work in the deceptively simple form of Cyhydedd Fer – a form that is easy to write, but difficult to polish into a final product that has no distracting aural snags of rhythm and rhyme.
History - The Bard in Wales: As this is a presentation of the SCA Bardic arts, it would be remiss were I not to discuss the role of the Bard in Welsh history – particularly as this historical reality is the essential source of most of our concept of “a Bard.”
The word, Bard, is at its very core: Celtic. The various Celtic languages have some variation of the word more or less unchanged (the Welsh variant is Bardd pronounced “barthe”) and even the Oxford English Dictionary credits the Celts with the concept, saying that bards were an “ancient Celtic order of minstrel-poets, whose primary function appears to have been to compose and sing (usually to the harp) verses celebrating the achievements of chiefs and warriors, and who committed to verse historical and traditional facts, religious precepts, laws, genealogies, etc.”
Welsh bards of antiquity (whether actual or apocryphal) include famous names like Taliesin and Aneirin, characters who probably existed in some way as early as the 5th or 6th century. (Schama, 2003) The laws of Hywel Dda (10th century) identify a bard as a member of a king’s household, and numerous references to the responsibilities of a bard to his (bards were essentially always male) lord, and of the lord to his bard. The value and importance of a Bard as an element of court is thoroughly supported by the source material itself, even in the source story of Math son of Mathonwy, where numerous cases of both Math and Gwydion simply turning up at a regional lord’s castle and presenting themselves as a Bard result in their immediate and effusive welcome.
While we have numerous references to the poetry, the instruments such as horsehair strung harps and crwyth, and the role of the bard in preserving the oral tradition and laws… the 13th century Edwardian conquest saw the ending of the tradition and the elimination of the ancient bard from Wales. We have no true idea of how, precisely, bards performed or what the audience situation was like. Did they perform during feasts? As special declamations? As a backdrop, or as a command performance? Many of the modern notions of what, precisely, the pre 19th century performance culture of Wales was are fabrications to re-invigorate an increasingly British Wales (Morgan, 1983). Conjecture is our only option, and the sound and sight of the event is something only our imagination can create.
History - The Source: The 14th century White book of Rhydderch (Peniarth MS. 4), and the later 15th century Red Book of Hergest (Jesus College MS. 111), held by the National Library of Wales and the Oxford Bodleian libraries, respectively, are two successive compilations of medieval Welsh stories, collectively known as the “Mabinogion.” This title is an inaccurate name made popular by the first and most famous translation used in this project – Lady Charlotte Guest, 1812-1895, who appears to have regarded “mabinogion” as the plural form of “mabinogi," when it in fact appears to have been a scribal error in transcribing “mabinogi” which is derived from the Welsh terms for “boy/child/youth” and “story.” (Davies, 2007) While most of the elements of the complete work are present in the White Book, the Red Book has the most complete collection and is the commonly used source for modern translations.
The original manuscripts appear in primarily Middle Welsh, and are a fascinating collection of tales and characters both distinctly human and some which can only have been Celtic deities tamed down in the light of Christianity. These characters – many of which would be immediately familiar to followers of the Arthurian mythos: Gawain, and Kay; Arthur and Bedivere, Guinevere, Lancelot – explore a world of pre-medieval Wales that is sweeping and compelling, and quite clearly fanciful. Some of the tales, like that of Peredur son of Efraig, are matched in stories from other contemporaneous sources in other countries, in Peredur’s case, Crestiens’s story of Percival. It is apparent to most scholars that, as Jeffry Gantz says:
The tales of the Mabinogion are not the product of a single hand, even individually. On the contrary, they evolved over a span of centuries: passed on from storyteller to storyteller, they were by turns expanded and distorted, improved and misunderstood. (Gantz, 1976)
What is frequently NOT present, is a coherent narrative that renders as something other than pleasant nonsense to the modern reader or audience. The stories were clearly not, as recorded, a complete declamation – but the bones of a story to be embellished and given vibrancy. Where our modern expectations are of a narrative arc which leads from an introduction and an inciting event, through a climax and perhaps a reversal, through a denouement and ultimately a conclusion or resolution; the Welsh stories of the Mabinogion are a collection reminiscent of improv game variants of “Yes… and!” Indeed, no story is as guilty of this as that of the previously mentioned Peredur, where the narrative is as meandering as the hero through adventures lacking anything like a coherent through-line.
The Mabinogion is the single most compelling, sweeping, and detailed collection of Welsh stories from pre-Christian and pre-Edwardian time, giving a (clearly distorted) glimpse into the legends, histories, and struggles of the Welsh people. It is also, tragically, one of the ONLY sources for this time period, and the only one with parallels in other works – albeit works of their own questionable veracity, like the infamous history of the Kings of Brittain by Geoffry of Monmouth. We simply do not, and will likely never, know the actual sources, content, performance styles, and dates of these tales.
Translations of the Mabinogion are, as with anything, straddling a line between making an approachable work and remaining true to the original. True direct translation of many stories does them a relative disservice over a degree of transliteration, and each of the translations referenced during this project make differing choices. While Charlotte Guest is most famous and created the first complete collection of the books into a single translated volume… her writing period of the 19th century brings with it various forms of artifact. References to activities which, when compared across translations and in looking at the source text, would imply that two characters went to engage in sex… are often rendered with 19th century sensibilities, thus the contrast of the wedding of the two characters at the heart of Of Oak and Broom and Meadowsweet:
“And they baptized her, and gave her the name Blodeuedd. After she had become his bride, and they feasted, Gwydion said ‘it is not easy for a man to maintain himself without possessions.’” (Guest, 1849)
versus
“And they baptized her in the way they did at that time, and named her Blodeuedd. After Lleu and Blodeuedd had slept together at the feast, “it is not easy for a man without a realm to support himself,” said Gwydion” (Davies, 2007)
Many such examples of the differences in translator’s mindset abound, resulting in passages that startle the reader at times; for example, while a modern translation, Davies leans into the use of “make love to” as a pre-regency synonym for courting. While reasonable, this leaves a reader wondering if the (later story) character Peredur’s mother is, indeed, advising him to force sex upon any woman he meets, whether she accepts or no, when she says:
If you see a beautiful lady, make love to her even though she does not want you – it will make you a braver and better man than before. (Davies, 2007)
Woven throughout, is the endless choice of altering the inherent voice of the narrative, or leaving it as close to the original as possible. The simple phrasing choice that Guest makes in the first example to render a reversal of the order of words, i.e. “after the feast Gwydion said …” versus Davies’ more faithful rendering of the actual order of the original, with the dialogue tag after the somewhat orphan line, is in service of readability if not in devotion to accuracy.
Performance – The Language: All of this becomes part of informing the performance decision to work primarily in English for this piece, for several reasons:
Firstly, there is no clear indication that the text of the Mabinogion was intended to be a performance piece unaltered. There is wide speculation regarding the exact dates of the sub-pieces, but the Oxford Guide to Literature concludes that the manuscript is the condensation of multiple oral tradition stories from pre 12th century Wales, and this leads one to wonder if the manuscript as it exists is, as Gantz opines, something of a “Cliff’s Notes” variant of the stories… the elements, distilled into minimal space, but with a cultural understanding that more needs to be added to reconstitute the story for an audience.
Secondly, the original text being in largely Middle Welsh – a language not readily understood by *modern* Welsh speakers – the text as written is doubly difficult for a listener to follow. The intent of creating this performance variant of the elements of this story is to involve the listener in the absurdity of the detailed method of dispatch required for the ending of Lleu Llaw Gyffes’ life… it is, at heart, a weird, quirky, and rather silly story.
Finally, the project is intended to entertain, to give the listener the aural feel of one of the forms of traditional Welsh poetry (in a format that does not hamper the rhythm experience or the content of the story) and to allow discussion of the sweeping, imaginative, familiar and deeply STRANGE world of the Mabinogion.
While it is regarded as our gold standard to reproduce an item from our period of study as exactly as possible – with techniques, tools, materials, and approaches pulled directly from our source – the reality of presenting objects to an audience versus a performed art form that necessitates language are quite different. While a fishing net might be made with period fibers, processed in historical fashion, and woven with period tools… when placed in a modern hand it is experienced with a modern eye, a modern understanding, and we discuss it in our lingua franca: English. In order to allow discussion of the “object” of this project, the story of Blodeuedd and Lleu, it is important that we as artisan, and audience, can come together in a place of easy communication.
Performance – The Format: Welsh poetry comprises 24 formal styles, a few modern and many stretching back far into the Middle Ages. The format of this poem, Cyhydedd Fer, is a frequent style used in the poems collected in the late 13th to early 14th century Book of Taliesin. (Lewis and Williams, 2019) These poems, dating to the 10th century or before, are in praise of a poet warrior and shapeshifter, and a common format is the 8-syllable couplet with a matching A/A terminal rhyme, familiar to us modernly as such:
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree
… a style which lives on as a popular format well after Welsh antiquity. (thank you, Joyce Kilmer)
While many of the traditional formal styles are more complex, they also often have a specific limited length or other requirements which make them a poor choice for use as a narrative poetic style. I have therefore chosen Cyhydedd Fer as a versatile vehicle for adapting a story without being forced to constrain to length other than for time and audience appreciation.
Performance - The Material: The portion of the fourth branch of the Mabinogion used in this project is a relatively minor detour from the overall narrative of the life of Math son of Mathonwy. Math is a wizard and warrior king, who must – for reasons never explained – rest at all times with the feet of a virgin in his lap unless at war. When he finds himself without a virgin, he is advised to use the lap of Aranrhod, the daughter of a cousin of his, who it is revealed is not a virgin when Math’s magic causes her to give immediate birth to a young man, and to an “object” which is spirited away by one of Math’s dear friends Gwydion. Gwydion keeps the object until at one point it suddenly begins to cry, and becomes a baby, who then grows to a 10 year old over the span of a week. When Gwydion attempts to introduce the boy to Aranrhod, she curses him three times. First, to have no name, which Gwydion solves through disguising them both as shoemakers and making the wrong size shoes to lure Aranrhod to their boat where she is impressed by the boy killing a sparrow and calls him “fair haired one” which translates roughly to Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Second, she curses him to never bear arms; which Gwydion resolves by, again, coming in disguise to her castle, and as her guests tricking her into believing the keep is under attack, whereupon he urges her to arm them both, and once she presents arms to Lleu, Gywdion reveals that she has broken her own curse. Finally, she curses Lleu never to have a wife born of humans… which Math and Gwydion solve by crafting a bride out of the flowers of the oak, the meadowsweet and the broom, and naming her Blodeuedd.
While Blodeuedd and Lleu are happy, when he leaves for a time she becomes enamored of a neighboring minor lord named Gronw, which whom she cheats on Lleu for a number of days. Between the two, they plot to kill Lleu, but are aware that the magic of his birth leaves him resistant to such plots. On luring Lleu into telling her the means by which he might be killed (so that she can keep him safe) Blodeuedd learns that he may only be slain when neither inside, nor outside, nor on foot, nor on horse, not on land, and not on the sea, and only with the thrust of a spear made over the course of a year, solely while people are at mass. When pressed on what that would look like, he replies that he must be:
- Under a well thatched roof, that is open on the sides
- Standing with one foot on the side of a tub placed next to the stream
- Having the other foot on the back of a billygoat
- stabbed with the spear.
Conspiring to do this, Blodeuedd and Gronw bring it about, and kill Lleu, who turns into an eagle, and flies away.
Gwydion, distraught, leaves to wander the wilds to search for the Eagle. He finds a shepherd’s hut with a swineherd, and learns that their sow leaves each day and nobody knows where she goes. Following the sow, he finds a tree with carrion at the base, and an eagle in it, to whom he reads poetry. When the eagle flies down, he changes it back into Lleu, and takes him to Math’s castle. Once Lleu is revived, he seeks vengeance on Gronw and Blodeuedd, chasing Blodeuedd and her maidens until all but his bride fall into a marsh and drown, and then turning Blodeuedd into an Owl – because all the other birds hate the owl. Then he challenges Gronw to receive the same blow he did, which Gronw agrees to as long as he can stand with a boulder between them… but Lleu throws the spear so hard it goes through the stone, and this is why that boulder has a hole in it, and that is the end of the tale.
This is a tale that is, in my opinion, somewhat lacking in linking details. The summary I have provided here is only slightly condensed… there is no clear explanation of much of the events, and the overall narrative is clear but also confused. The poetic notion of a woman crafted from the flowers of Oak, and Meadowsweet, and Broom is so captivating that it features in a number of websites dedicated to the Mab, and as the back cover annotation on Sioned Davies’ translation… but the story itself is so deeply WEIRD, and the delightful list of the absurd conditions under which Lleu may be slain is so absurd, that I was immediately drawn to craft it into a tale.
The Process: Adapting the final form of this piece required first distilling the story into my own free-form adaptation of the narrative in an irreverent fashion much like the synopsis above, and then attempting to re-write into a coherent prose narrative which would be recognizable as a story presentation in our performance context. To this end, I have eliminated the origins of Lleu Llaw Gyffes’ birth and the story of his first two curses, and chosen to begin with the creation of Blodeuedd and their wedding, proceeding through to the restoration of Lleu and his vengeance and restoration to his cantreth. While this comprises only half of the overall narrative, the telling is still 8 minutes long. My experience of converting stories into poetry is that there is often a slight increase in length, and so I chose to define the slaying of Lleu and his rising as an eagle as the first possible ending point for the poem.
In crafting couplet rhymes, one issue that arose was allowing any couplet to terminate in a Welsh word, because several of the Welsh consonants and diphthongs lack a rhyming sound partner in English, an example of the name of Lleu’s cantreth of Mur Castell is one. The doubled L of Welsh is a consonant which is an unvoiced, palatalized L sound, and not one which is matched in English. This means that pairing a line “To Lleu Llaw’s hall of Mur Castell” would require something akin to “they made their way, and then said MEH.”
Another challenge in writing couplets is one that is difficult to fully intuit, as English does not have the degree of rigorous limitation to stressed syllables that other languages do. Although certain words require the proper emPHAsis on the correct sylLAble, we are fine with stressing unusual portions of words gently. This means that we are less conscious of the inherent peaks and valleys of emphasis with our words, and edits to the verse will result in subtle changes that are hard to explain concisely, yet make artistic sense. Metrical feet, being the cornerstone of consistent rhythm in poetry, become something we are subconsciously aware of but must take conscious effort to assess.
In draft, this couplet was the original format:
By mother thrice-cursed was Lleu’s life;
Most dire of all, to know no wife.
Which, while perfectly serviceable, was altered to:
Thrice-cursed by mother was Lleu’s life;
Most dire of all, to have no wife.
The change is twofold. Easiest is the change of having Know/No adjacent to each other. But secondarily is the stress flow. In version one the pattern of stressed (^) and unstressed (-) syllables is:
- ^ - - ^ ^- ^ by MUH-thur thrice CURSED was lleu’s life
And in the second:
- ^ - ^ - ^- ^ thrice CURSED by MUH thur was lleu’s life
(While it’s possible to make the same stress patterns out of variant one, it buries the emphasis on CURSED and makes it on THRICE… which is not the most potent element of the narrative.)
From a crafting standpoint, I have set out to make each of these lines a set of paired diiambs* ( - ^ - ^ / - ^ - ^) and have chosen to contrast this with the interspersed lines in Welsh taken from the late 19th century John Rhys translation into modern Welsh (Rhys, 1897):
Erwain banadl a derw;
Gwraig a anwyd i fyw.
Translating roughly as: “Meadowsweet, Broom and Oak, A wife born” which is in a set of paired ditrochee (^ - ^ - ^ - ^ - / ^ - ^ - ^ - ^ -)
* “Iambs” are an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (e.g. in-TENT) “trochee” are the reverse (GI-ant), whereas “tetrabrach” is an indicator of 4 relatively unstressed syllables (e.g. this-is-my-life). Two sets of iambs or trochee are called respectively diiambs and ditrochee. Iambs are famous for their extensive use in all of Shakespeare and as the cornerstone of iambic pentameter (daDAH daDAH daDAH daDAH daDAH)
This choice was partly artistic, to set the flow of the Welsh at odds with the English and lean into the way the language flows… and also partly practical as I wanted to include the line about Boldeuedd’s flowers, and to also find a rhyme for that line in my still somewhat limited Welsh.
A significant portion of the editing phase of the poem was in ensuring that I did not overuse a rhyming sound, did not duplicate a rhyming word, did not have homophones next to each other (know/no) and had maintained my pattern of English lines in Diiambs, interspersed at the correct moments narratively with the ditrochee Welsh. My artistic instinct upon composing the poem was to intersperse the repeated Welsh lines every 5 couplets… which did not bear out artistically once the poem was complete, and required significant editing to comply with my arbitrary stylistic choice. The version of the poem included here in Appendix 3 is, by design, part way through this process.
Summation: It is my hope that the combination of artistic flow, of playful word choice, of language and content will allow the listener a sample of the elements of this fanciful tidbit of the single most important collection of Welsh tales in a format that allows both comfortable understanding, and the flavor of this beautiful branch of the Celtic language family tree. The world of the Mabinogion is sweeping, curious, and rich, with stories enough to fill any Bard’s life; thank you for joining me for this one.
Gavin Kent,
in the Barony of Carolingia, the 12th day of February, Anno Sociatatis LIX
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