The pearl of Celtic literature, the completed expression of the Cymric genius." [1] So Ernest Renan on The Mabinogion. Renan is probably more familiar to readers of Books & Culture as the author of a controverted Life of Jesus (1863) than as an essayist on the Celtic races, but if we have misgivings about his Christology, let them not deter us from heeding these choice words. Nor do you have to be Welsh to say so, proud as the Welsh are of their literary tradition as of the antiquity of their spoken language. [2]

The Mabinogion is the name commonly used for a collection of eleven medieval Welsh tales which unveil for us a world of magic, mist, and myth, where there is no manifest boundary between what we might call the "natural" and "supernatural," a space where heroes and maidens, chivalry and enchantment, love and death, war and friendship flower and flourish. What Feuerbach said mischievously of another world—"Nothing ever happened normally in Old Testament Israel"—can be said meaningfully of this one. The Mabinogion constitutes a magnificent and influential literature that has proved to be a vital and major tributary in European culture, one way or another. If "medieval Wales" conveys anything to non-medieval non-Welsh folk, it is doubtless the image of King Arthur and his gallant company. Arthur appears in a few of the tales of The Mabinogion, but he is neither a dashing nor even (overtly) a dominant figure by and large. Never mind. Enter this world and you will find more wond'rous things than Arthur.

A new translation invites us to make that entry. Its author, Professor Sioned Davies of Cardiff University, explains her rationale:

The overriding aim of this translation has been to convey the performability of the surviving manuscript versions … . The Mabinogion were tales to be read aloud to a listening audience—the parchment was "interactive" and vocality was of its essence. Indeed, many passages can only be truly captured by the speaking voice. The acoustic dimension was, therefore, a major consideration in this new translation.

This explanatory note is preceded by quite a long introduction and followed by a guide to the pronunciation of Welsh words, a short bibliography, and a map. So readers who are shortly to encounter arms and warriors, as they encounter these tales, are themselves well-armed for the encounter, and the equipment Sioned Davies supplies is adequate to the need. A further resource is provided at the end of the translation: over sixty pages of notes go into significant detail explaining allusions in the text and providing indices of personal and place names. The whole is usefully and pleasingly managed; the scholarship is detailed; the reader can thus both enjoy and enjoy knowledgeably.

The key question, of course, is whether the scholarship and textual care fortify a translation of commendable quality. Here, I have two reservations. First, Sioned Davies takes for granted that it is impossible to convey the literary force of the original in translation. She is certainly not to be faulted for any failure to do the impossible. But the stated description of her aim does not alert the reader to the extent to which she (or any translator) is bound to fall short. Her remark, quoted above, that "the acoustic dimension was … a major consideration in this new translation" is followed by the assurance that "every effort has been made to transfer the rhythm, tempo and alliteration of the original to the target language." But if we survey the alliteration in the original, we shall see how non-transferable it is, and the original unity of rhythm and tempo is therefore not captured in translation. Take the very first lines of the very first story. "Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, was lord over the seven cantrefs of Dyfed. Once upon a time he was at Arberth, one of his chief courts, and it came into his head and his heart to go hunting." The "h/d," "h/t" effect in "head" and "heart" and "hunting" works as well as can be expected, and there are many lines in this translation, unexpected in the English, that are explained by comparison with the Welsh original. For example, from the story "How Culhwch Won Olwen": "Knife has gone into meat and drink into horn, and a thronging in the hall of Arthur." The choice of "thronging" is doubtless governed by the advantage of picking up "thr" in "Arthur," and it reproduces what we find in the Welsh: "amsathyr y neuad Arthur." [3] So a reasonable attempt is being made; but compare the opening lines of that first story, which I have quoted above, with the Middle Welsh text [4] (the italics give a rough guide to where the accent should fall in reading):

Pwyll, Pendefic Dyfet, a oed yn arglwyd ar saith cantref Dyfet.

"Pendefic" is "prince," and we see how the "d,f" in "Pendefic" is picked up in the "D,f" of "Dyfed." This is inevitably lost in translation, but the original produces a romantic poetic effect from the outset. The same thing happens even in the translated title of a story. "The Lady at the Well" renders the Welsh "Iarlles y Ffynnon," but the words "Iarlles" and "Ffynnon" both have two syllables, the accent falling on the penultimate one, so producing a rhythmic effect; further, the "ll" (a single consonant in Welsh) is even capable, in this context, of an onomatopaeic reminder of flowing water. Of course, the translator will be the first to admit all this, but my point is that the extent of the contrast between translation and original will not be evident from what she says about the aim and ambition of this particular translation.

There is a second reservation. In an earlier translation of The Mabinogion, the translators remarked: "Any one translating from Welsh into English literally is confronted with the difficulty that arises from the differences in the structures of the two languages. It is much easier to render literary Welsh into literary English than it is to do so into literal English." [5] This is certainly the case and probably conveys a more general truth as regards translation even into a language which is not so structurally different from the original. It is always desirable to translate into literary English, as best one can, writing whose distinction is precisely literary. True, The Mabinogion is not just of interest strictly as literature; the stories as stories, together with the historical, political and cultural significance of the writing, command attention. Sioned Davies' ambition is entirely worthy: to convey the tales from the standpoint of orality and performance. Nevertheless, in executing this task, the original literary power has to be conveyed, as far as is possible. And here, however archaic some other translations; however inferior from the standpoint of scholarly information about the texts; however indulgent in their rendering, they occasionally read better in the English than this translation. [6]

Sometimes the English is awkward:

"Oh," she said, "then what kind of uprising was it?"
"An uprising to break your fate on your son," he said.

A comparison with other translations and with a fine version in modern Welsh indicates that the translator's decision here is between something like "to avert the fate (or destiny) which you have sworn on your son" and "to break the curse on your son." An alternative translation to the one Sioned Davies offers, even one that was slightly controversial, would have served better than "break your fate on your son."

On other occasions a phrase which works tolerably well translated literally into Welsh needs a different idiomatic rendering in the English. In the present translation, we read: "If you hear a scream, go towards it, and a woman's scream above any other scream in the world." [7] "A woman's scream, above all" or "above all, a woman's scream" works better in English. And sometimes, despite her remark that the most "notable" earlier translation is "rigorously accurate, if overtly literal," Davies seems too dependent on it, as far as I can judge. [8] For example, we read "the best suited to be emperor of all his predecessors," where "better suited to be emperor than any of his predecessors" makes more sense. [9]

But I hope that the hard work done on this translation, and the care taken to produce it so as to bring out that peculiar characteristic of the Welsh which this translator wishes to highlight, even if not always with success, will stimulate interest in The Mabinogion. I am not sure that I can recommend any one translation without qualification, and my Middle Welsh is too wobbly to do so confidently. This does not mean that little can be said for any of them; on the contrary, much can be said for them all. However, it may be that what was said by a translator sixty years ago is still the case: the way "is still open for a rendering which should aim to convey literature in terms of literature and yet endure the most rigorous scrutiny of contemporary scholarship." [10]

Sioned Davies' translation should conduct us into an enchanting and enchanted world (or "worlds"; the stories differ somewhat from each other in atmosphere). Credit for bringing them onto the European stage on a significant scale goes to the 19th-century translator, Charlotte Guest, whose style, said Tennyson, was "the finest English he knew, ranking with Malory's Morte D'Arthur." [11] Tennyson was stimulated by one of the tales, "Geraint, son of Erbin," to write his own "Geraint and Enid," and one interesting way into reflective reading of The Mabinogion would be to read Tennyson's poem alongside this tale and set oneself an examination question: "Tennyson's 'Geraint and Enid' moralizes where 'Geraint son of Erbin' does not. Discuss." This particular story is not actually representative of all The Mabinogion and illustrates their diversity, being a little short on the kind of magic we customarily meet elsewhere. But its treatment of female virtue, in particular, invites consideration of women in The Mabinogion as a whole, and once we start on that, we are well on our way into meditating on the whole corpus. The women, like the heroes and all the golden sights before us, are one reason why these tales should not be read at one sitting, but perhaps taken one a day over eleven days. For to be dazzled by several women—or sights, or heroes—all at once, each of whom or of which surpasses every other in beauty or grandeur, is more than mortals can ordinarily bear.

It is tempting to feel pressure to say something about Christian faith and the Mabinogion. It is a temptation rather easy to resist. For where should we begin? However, reflection on their relation is both a salutary historical exercise and a productive contemporary one in a culture where Harry Potter (not to be confused with The Mabinogion) has stamped his influence. Some readers of these medieval Welsh tales will experience what Etienne Gilson somewhere said in relation to Thomas Aquinas, to the effect that "he who has stepped into Thomas' enchanted world will never want to step out of it again." The Mabinogion belongs broadly to Thomas' epoch, but its world is a rather different one. And the juxtaposition of Thomas and The Mabinogion conjures up a temptation that I shall not resist, which is to end where we started, with words of Renan: "It would be wronging God to believe that, after having made the visible world so beautiful, he should have made the invisible world so prosaically reasonable." [12] I hear Arthur hoarily assent. Best leave it there.

Stephen N. Williams is professor of systematic theology at Union Theological College in Belfast. He is the author most recently of The Shadow of the Antichrist: Nietzsche's Critique of Christianity (BakerAcademic).

1. Ernest Renan, "The Poetry of the Celtic Races," in The Poetry of the Celtic Races and Other Studies (Kenniket, 1970), p.  3. "Cymric" here is "Welsh" or "British" in the older sense; these days, "British" is often associated particularly with "English."

2. For the practically unique revival of Welsh in the contemporary world, note an observation in Preston Jones, "Endangered Species," Books & Culture, March/April 2001, p. 26.

3. The text as edited by Rachel Bromwich and D. Simon Evans, Culhwch Ac Olwen (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 1997), p. 4, line 90. Davies' translation is not the only one that opts for "thronging."

4. The following is from one of the two principal texts that contain the Mabinogion, but, generally speaking, any linguistic differences between the texts do not affect the points being made about their literary quality. I quote from Ifor Williams' edition of Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi (Cardiff, 1930). I modernize just one consonant above in order to bring out the effect.

5. T.P. Ellis and John Lloyd, The Mabinogion: A New Translation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1929), vol.1, p. x.

6. Davies indicates these translations on p. xxxvii.

7. This sentence, from p. 66 of Davies, does not sound too bad in modern Welsh: see Dafydd and Rhiannon Ifans, Y Mabinogion (Llandysul: Gomer, 2001).

8. Davies, p. xxix. The phrase "rigorously accurate and literal" is applied to that same translation (by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones) by another translator, Patrick K. Ford, The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales (Univ. of California Press, 1977), p. ix.

9. The phrase is from "The Dream of the Emperor Maxen," p. 103; my alternative follows the translation by Jeffrey Gantz, The Mabinogion (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976).

10. Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, The Mabinogion (Dent, 1974; original, 1949), p. xxxi.  I have not had the opportunity to consult in detail a new translation, The Mabinogi: Legend and Landscape of Wales, by John K. Bollard (Llandysul: Gomer, 2006), beautifully illustrated with photographs. This volume does not include all eleven tales; the word Mabinogi can strictly refer, as it does here, only to the first four stories that we find in Sioned Davies' translation. Bollard notes the degree of similarity between the mode of narration in the Mabinogi (= Mabinogion) and the Hebrew of the Pentateuch, p. 14.

11. Quoted by Rachel Bromwich, "The Mabinogion and Lady Charlotte Guest," in C.W. Sullivan III, ed., The Mabinogi: A Book of Essays (Garland, 1996), p. 13. Lady Guest's translation can combine ideal descriptives with slightly inaccurate translations, as in her sentence concerning "the churlish dwarf" in The Mabinogion, volume 2 (London: Longman, 1859), p.  90.

12. Op. cit., p. 59.

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