English: Please excuse the crude painting. It's just an excuse to upload this song lyric! As a result of conversations with "Davies up North", I have been revising (and hopefully improving) a series of lyrics on the Mabinogion. The first draft was written ten years ago. Here is the first:

Lords of Annwn

Here begin the Mabinogi: Tales of youth, of heroes past, Following the strong Pryderi From his first breath to his last. His father Pwyll – a man to trust – Hearken how he conquered lust!

Pwyll mounts his horse to hunt At Glyn Cuch with his hounds. They bay, they bark, they forge in front; His hunter’s horn resounds Through the woods. His grey dogs stop And bristling, sniff the breeze. Pwyll lifts up his riding crop; His hounds dash through the leaves. Through moss and fern the hounds are gone, Gnarled oaks loom overhead. The trees close in; Pwyll trudges on, His horse by halter led. The woods close in upon his way: The distant howls of dogs. He pushes on without delay Stumbling over fallen logs.

At last he steps into a clearing: Strange dogs stand on slaughtered prey, With milk white fur, red eyes leering, And slavering, bar Pwyll’s way. Pwyll finds a bleeding stag, No other huntsman to be seen. He takes the quarry for his bag And beats the hounds off through the green. He baits his own hounds, blood in hands, Running slick and wet. A stranger in the clearing stands; Looking up, he cries, “Well met!”

The stranger scowls, calls, “Nay indeed!” White dogs cower at his feet And slink about his dappled steed. He shouts, “You steal another’s meat! Discourteous and dull thou art To drive my hounds away! Fast have they pursued this hart! You bait your own beasts with the prey!

Pwyll smites himself for shame, “Forgive my inadvertent slight. You shall dine tonight on game, And for your friendship shall I fight!”

“Arawn, Annwn’s king, am I,” The towering man replies, “Your favour shall I test and try, My kingdom weeps and sighs: Evil Hafgan seeks my throne; He covets my dominions proud. You shall face him on your own And lay him dead beneath a shroud. By my arts you will be changed Into the likeness of myself. Take my kingdom, my face feigned; Protect my wife, wield my wealth. Your own fine lands shall I rule For the passage of one year – At that time, Hafgan cruel Is trysted to meet me here, But you shall meet him in my stead. Smite him hard, with but one blow. When Hafgan gutters, cold and dead My affection shalt thou know!”

Pwyll comes to Arawn’s court; All there take him for the king. He is before a damsel brought Wearing Arawn’s wedding ring. No fairer woman has caroused With any man in Wales, The court, by beer and wine aroused, Gold brocaded, Pwyll regales. Yet when at last they come to bed She lies naked, sight to see! Faithful Pwyll turns his head, Says not one word. No move makes he. And so it is for all the year: He touches not, though tested sore, And she sheds many a secret tear: “Arawn desires me no more.”

The year gone, Pwyll rides out Surging forward through the mist And Hafgan with a husky shout Also rides to keep the tryst. “At last, the killing-hour is here!” Cries Hafgan in his rage. He spurs his horse and bares his spear Faithful Pwyll to engage. Pwyll strikes Hafgan on the shield; It splinters, the lance drives home; Hafgan, writhing on the field, Pleads for death with helpless moan. Arawn of Annwn comes before Pwyll, and bows on bended knee: “You snubbed me once, but never-more! Faithful friend! My land is free!”

Pwyll rides to his own domain And finds his lands grown twice as rich. Lushly grow the fields of grain; His ladies sew with silken stitch.

Arawn comes home to his court And calls his knights to hear his tale; “A lesser man would come to nought But faithful Pwyll did not fail!” Then he goes up to his bed And puts away his kingly gowns. Kisses his wife upon her head; But she recoils, glowers, frowns. He lays his head upon her breast But she pushes him away: “This bed’s seen naught but silent rest For twelve months and a day! Has my body lost its beauty? Have my eyes their lustre lost? Were you so laid down with duty That my charms enticed you not? Have my breasts gone slack or dun? Have you lost the ability? Perhaps there is some other one Who gains from your virility?”

Arawn laughs, explaining all, Unwinds her hair, in golden braid: “Never once did it befall A king found such a true comrade!”

Source material: The first tale in Branch I of the Mabinogion, ‘Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed’, adapted into verse from the translation by Gwyn and Thomas Jones (1974). The Mabinogion is preserved in two Welsh manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch (scribed between 1300 and 1325) and the Red Book of Hergest (1375-1425), but the tales are evidently very much older, despite courtly and Christian accretions such as the emphasis on courtesy and chastity. The story of a human being changing places with the Lord of Annwn (the Celtic underworld) is undoubtedly of great antiquity. I have argued elsewhere that a similar story is implied in the ballad of ‘Robin Hood and the Potter’. It would be absurdly reductive to offer a dogmatic interpretation of the tale, but it is possible that on one level, Arawn’s wife is Pwyll’s ‘muse’, and Arawn is Pwyll’s weird: his doppelganger, or the dark side of his own self. By this interpretation, Hafgan too is a projection of Pwyll’s own self. In fact, the Mabinogion tells and retells this same story under different guises: it is there again, for example, in the love triangles of Pwyll, Rhiannon and Gwawl (Branch I), and Lleu, Blodeuwedd and Gronw (Branch IV). On another level, the story may be read, like ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, as a parable on the changing seasons. Ultimately, however, the narrative is spiritual in nature, and so should be read with spirit rather than with reason. The white hounds with red ears are invariably associated with Annwn, and are its chthonic messengers, quite probably sharing their genesis with the Gabriel Hounds of the Wild Hunt. Lyric by Giles Watson, 1999; revised 2009.