Cyfarwyddyd: Welsh Tales and Foreign Adaptations

Arthurian Studies

• Rachel Bromwich, A.O.H. Jarman and Brynley F. Roberts (eds.), The Arthur of the Welsh (1991, 1992, 1993; pb. 1995). This book contains thirteen studies by scholars from universities in Wales and England, and from the National Library of Wales, which offer a comprehensive survey of medieval Arthurian literature, as composed either in the Welsh language, or in Latin by men with Welsh connections. The first chapters investigate problems surrounding the alleged `historical' Arthur, and the earliest traditions as revealed in chronicles and poetry; subsequent chapters discuss in turn Geoffrey of Monmouth; the Merlin Legend; the Triads and the Lives of the Saints; the altering and developing presentation of Arthur in `Culhwch and Olwen' and in the different `Mabinogion' tales; Arthur in Brittany; the evidence relating to Tintagel and other famous `Arthurian' sites in south-west Britain; the transference into Anglo-Norman and French of some Celtic personal names (including `Drystan' > `Tristan') and story-themes from early Welsh and Breton traditional tales; and the later reassimilation of continental Arthurian material into Welsh. An introduction by the editors gives a broad outline of some of the fundamental problems, and includes a palaeographer-librarian's authoritative account (by Daniel Huws) of the most important early Welsh manuscripts which contain the Arthurian poems, triads and stories. A companion volume The Arthur of the English is in preparation and expected to be published in 1999, with The Arthur of the Germans to follow.
• A.O.H. Jarman, The Legend of Merlin (1960, 1970). Professor Jarman's inaugural lecture gives a clear and succinct outline of views which he later developed more fully in a number of articles, in Welsh and in English (the most recent one is in The Arthur of the Welsh), concerning the pre-history of the legendary Merlin, as this figure is presented by Geoffrey of Monmouth and in the continental romances. Geoffrey's Merlin derives from a combination of traditions preserved in Welsh poetry concerning the poet-prophet Myrddin (see Jarman's Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin), and the unrelated tale of the wonder-child Ambrosius, which he derived from the Historia Brittonum. An extended knowledge of Celtic traditions, acquired at a later date, is reflected in Geoffrey of Monmouth's poem the `Vita Merlini'.
• Basil Clarke (ed.), Life of Merlin: Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini (1973). Edited with facing translation, introduction, textual commentary, name-notes and bibliography, together with appendices which give quotations from relevant Celtic source-material. The `Vita Merlini' is a poem in 1,529 Latin hexameters, which is believed to have been composed by Geoffrey of Monmouth about 1150 - some fifteen years after the appearance of that writer's Historia Regum Britanniae, and reflecting the increased knowledge of Welsh poems and Triads and other Celtic tradition which Geoffrey had evidently acquired during the intervening years. The complete text of the poem exists only in a single manuscript of the late thirteenth century (Cotton Vespasian E iv), though a number of manuscript fragments have also survived. The `Vita Merlini' was last edited by E. Faral (Paris, 1929), following on the publication of J.J. Parry's American edition of 1925: both are now difficult to obtain, and have been superseded by more recent work on the Celtic background material. Considerable advances have been made in the understanding of the Welsh and Irish cognates and sources of the poem: all of these are reflected in the apparatus to BC's careful edition. The `Vita Merlini' has a special importance as supplementing from lost sources the Welsh traditions about Myrddin Wyllt: it also presents an essential facet to the portrayal of Merlin in Arthurian romance.
• Glenys Goetinck, Peredur: A Study of Welsh Tradition in the Grail Legends (1975). A useful survey, which draws on contemporary scholarship to examine the Welsh and Irish tales which are relevant to the Celtic background of the Grail romances. There is a general discussion of the theme of `sovereignty', which she discerns in each of the Three Romances - `Owein', `Gereint' and `Peredur' - and this is followed by a more detailed study of the tale of `Peredur'. (Later opinion, however, as reflected in The Arthur of the Welsh and elsewhere, records a lack of general agreement with the writer's belief in the individual, rather than separate authorship, of the Three Romances.) An appendix examines the complex relationship subsisting between the four existing manuscript copies of `Peredur'. (See also G. Goetinck's edition of Historia Peredur vab Efrawc.)
• Constance Bullock-Davies, Professional Interpreters and the Matter of Britain (1966). This essay broke new ground on the subject of the cultural and linguistic interchanges which took place between the Welsh and the Anglo-Normans, both before and after the Norman Conquest, and CBD's study has especial relevance for the transmission of Celtic names and stories into Arthurian Romance. She emphasizes the importance of the highly- qualified latimarii or professional interpreters, attached to the courts of kings and princes, who acted both as translators and also as messengers and negotiators. Drawing on original research into pedigrees, Latin charters, and the Pipe Roll, she has identified among these the famous Bledericus or Bledri latimer (who worked for King Henry I), and Iorwerth Goch of Powys `king's latimer in Wales' who is familiar, though in a different capacity, from the `Dream of Rhonabwy'. Did the activities of these men include the transmission of Welsh `cyfarwyddiadau' to the Norman families with whom they lived and worked? No certainty on this point is possible, but CBD emphasizes that a basic distinction must be drawn between the original translators, and the less well-endowed entertainers who subsequently transmitted the Welsh tales to the Normans.

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