Week 11 Reading Diary: The Mabinogion, Part 1

(Pwyll hunting with his hounds, via Wikimedia Commons)

The fact that I actually get to read the Mabinogion for this week is crazy exciting to me; I've been meaning to read it for years and somehow it just hasn't happened. That said, there's a lot of fodder for stories in this week's unit, and a lot of cool ways to turn it into stories, so here's my thoughts so far:

Pwyll and Rhiannon: this entire story is great. I chuckled the entire time I read it, because of the single-mindedness of all of the characters--Pwyll saying I'm going to the mound again today if it kills me, I'm going to finally catch this beautiful woman, and his servant saying I'm going to make my ruler happy if it kills me or my horse, I don't care, and Rhiannon coming by every day riding her horse and deliberately making it so that Pwyll can't catch her unless he asks her to stop first. Rhiannon is one of my favorite characters from any of the units we've read, because she's so incredibly opinionated and strong-minded and so willing to go out and get what she wants. So I was thinking that it might be interesting to do a piece where Rhiannon decides on her plan to go out and get Pwyll interested in her--maybe set in the present day?

Gwawl's Request: Once again, Rhiannon is the real reason why Pwyll succeeds in the first place. Also, the part where Pwyll agrees to give her suitor whatever boon he requests is priceless, because of the way she chews him out afterwards. I don't know that I want to write a story about this so much--I just wanted to mention this part because it's one of my favorites!

Gwri Wallt Euryn (these names are killer again): I really, really appreciate the fact that the royal child who accidentally ended up with the wrong parents was actually suspected of being royal by the parents--there are so many other stories where this isn't the case, and in all of them my suspension of disbelief takes a severe beating, because I honestly can't think of a situation where the foster parents couldn't put two and two together. Missing royal child + mysterious baby shows up on the doorstep + royal child is suspiciously strong and brave and handsome and looks incredibly like the king...gee, I wonder where the child could have come from? But in this case Teirnyon figures out what's happened pretty quickly (although not before Rhiannon gets framed for eating the baby) (although in Pwyll's defense he mostly only goes along with this explanation because the entire rest of his kingdom is incredibly outraged). But anyway, I was thinking that a baby switch story in the present day might be interesting...although I don't know how I would pull off the "royal" part...

Source: The Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest (1877).