Bendigeidfran and Branwen#
I first told this tale, sort of, as a work-in-progress, though I omitted to mention that fact, in a fifteen minute feature slot at the Waverley folk night, Newport, in July 2023. Half an hour before storytime, I lost my voice — nerves, I think — which caused something of a panic cascade into forgotten words and garbled names. (I still don’t learn what I keep trying to tell myself: don’t use names for the first two or three tellings, until the characters have enough remembered substance to merit a name… I also need to find some emergency repair voice exercises if it goes that way again…)
Anyway, here’s a revised version of how I’d intended to tell the tale, with plenty of repetition to signpost the names to myself, if no-one else. There are also callbacks, to give it a bit more shape. On a bit of reflection, it would be well suited to being told in five parts, making use of the plentiful supply of cliff-hanger opportunities. It might also be nice to tell it with a harp tune or two between each part, in a 20-25 minute slot. Or maybe take it out to a 30 minute set, if are there any songs that would fit in the breaks?
The Shortened Retelling
The shortened retelling is not a literary tale, and is not, strictly, a transcript of an orally performed tale. It’s a “written as if spoken” account of the sort of thing I originally intended to say, revised in light of what I did and didn’t say.
It is also not intended as a script to be recited, though a retelling may include elements that are very similar to the words that are written down… The words are always new in a telling, even if they’re words I’ve used before, or read from an oral account somewhere…
A Shortened Retelling of the Second Branch of the Mabinogion
Have you ever seen, or heard, of the ravens at the White Tower — the Tower of London? The ravens whose continued presence there keeps England free from invasion? This story, even though it is a Welsh tale, tells of how they came to be there… sort of.
It is a tale of a giant, Bendigeidfran. Bendigeidfran son of Llyr. Bendigeidfran, also known as Brân the Blessed, or Blessed Crow. For in Welsh, Brân means “raven”, or “crow”. Bran, the giant. No ship could carry him, no house could give him shelter. Bran, King of the Island of the Mighty, as the island of Britain was known at the time.
And it is also the tale of Branwen, Bendigeidfran’s sister. Branwen, whose name means “white crow”. Branwen, the most beautiful girl, in this world, or the other.
One day, thirteen fast ships were spied approaching the Pembrokeshire coast. Irish ships. At the prow, a shield, its point faced upwards, a sign that they came in peace.
Matholwch was the first ashore. Matholwch, the King of Ireland. He was immediately taken to meet Bendigeidfran, the King of the Britains. The Irish king, Matholwch, was seeking marriage with Branwen, Bendigeidfran’s sister, Branwen, Princess of the Island of the Mighty, as a marriage treaty between their two kingdoms.
“A splendid idea”, said Bendigeidfran and his advisers, and so it was agreed. The feasting, and the drinking, and the carousing began. And that night, as was the custom, Matholwch and Branwen spent together, as the start of what would be their three days of hand-fasting.
As the festivities began, Matholwch’s men and horses were billeted far and wide. And it was one of these new billets that was seen by Efnysien, just as he returned from a journey far to the north. Efnysien, Bendigeidfran and Branwens’s half-brother on their mother’s side. Efnysien, a man so bitter, a man so twisted, he could pitch two of the most loving brothers into mortal battle with each other.
“Whose are these horses?”, he asked, and he was told: “the horses of Matholwych, King of Ireland, he who is now married to your sister, Branwen”.
And Efnysien was not happy: he was not happy at all. He was furious; he should have been consulted, for Branwen was his sister, and, and… and so he took his sword, and he started to mutilate the horses: he pared their gums to their teeth; their tails to their backs; their ears to their heads; and their eyelids to their skulls.
And word got back to Matholwch. What treachery was this? He took offense as well he might, and started to leave, with Branwen in tow.
Bendigeidfran called him back, offered him recompense. But the honour price was too high — the life of Efnysien. Instead, Bendigeidfran offered a horse for each horse that was mutilated, a silver rod the width of Matholwch’s thumb, and as tall as he stood, and a gold plate the size of his head.
Matholwch was persuaded to stay; but the good cheer that had bound the two Kings together the previous night was gone. Bendigeidfran filled the silence with a promise of another gift - the cauldron of rebirth. If a man that had died that day was put into the cauldron, he would live again the next day, although without the power of speech.
And so Matholwch departed, along with his new wife, Branwen. And the Irishmen swore never to mention the humiliation that Matholwch had suffered on that trip.
Things went well, at first. Before long, a son was born, Gwern. But as the years passed by, the mutterings began, about how Matholwch had been humiliated. And Matholwch, well, his humiliation started over again, but at home this time. And so, Branwen was humiliated in turn, forced to work in the kitchens, her head slapped and beaten by the cook and the butcher each day.
But what could she do?
One day, she found a starling in the courtyard. Its wing was hurt, damaged. She nursed it, and it recovered; she trained it, and trained it well; and one day attached a message to it, and sent it on its way to her brother, to Bendigeidfran.
When he received the message, he was furious, cursing — what brother wouldn’t be? — cursed, and raged, and summoned his men to set off across the sea. No ship could carry him, no house could give him shelter, so Bendigeidfran, giant that he was, being too big for any ship, walked through the sea; and his fleet sailed at his side.
On the Irish coast, a pig-herder, tending his… flock? do you have a flock of pigs? A drove? A sounder?… saw something on the horizon he had never witnessed before. A forest; a forest, coming closer; a forest, and a mountain; a mountain on which there was a high ridge; a high ridge with two lakes, one on either side.
The pig herder rushed to inform the king, who could make no sense of what the babbling idiot was talking about. But Branwen knew: and she told Matholwch. The forest was the masts of the ships of her brother’s men, the mountain was Bendigeidfran himself, the ridge his nose, the two lakes, his eyes.
Matholwch retreated. Over the river Liffey they went, tearing down the bridges as they did so. The lodestone in the riverbed would destroy any ships that tried to cross the river, would tear out any nails that held the ships together.
When Bendigeidfran and his men reached the bridge, the giant let out a cry that is still a proverb in Wales to this day: “let he who would be a leader, be a bridge”. And it was so.
Bendigeidfran lay across the river, and his men walked over him in pursuit of the Irish.
Mathelwch surrendered, offered his son Gwern, Bendigeifren’s nephew, to be king of Ireland. But this honour price was not enough for Bendigeidfran, there to avenge the slight against his sister, against his people.
Mathelwch, once again, completely out of ideas, turned to Branwen. Was there anything that would placate him?
“You know what they say of him,”said Branwen. “‘No ship can carry him, no can could give him shelter.’ There has never been a house big enough that he could enter”, she said, “so make him a house he might fit in”.
And so the house was built.
But as the house was built, hooks were placed on either side of the hundred great columns that held up the roof of the great hall, and two hundred sacks were hung on the hooks, and in the sacks were hidden Irish soldiers set to ambush Bendigeidfran’s men.
When Efnysien came to inspect the hall, he saw the sacks on the hooks, and he asked what was in them. “Flour,” they said, and so he felt the first bag, felt the man’s head inside the bag, and squeezed. And squeezed some more; and squeezed until the man’s skull gave way. He squeezed and it squished.
And then he went to the second bag: “and this is…?” “Flour”. “Ah ha…”. And he squeezed, and he squeezed some more. And then it squished. And so it went on…
That night, the great house was filled with the men of both armies, seated round a great fire in the center. There was eating; and drinking. A lot of drinking… And the tension between them lessened, perhaps.
But Efnysien, always Efnysien… “Why doesn’t my sister’s boy, my very own nephew, come to greet me?” he said. And Gwern was brought forward to meet him… At which point, Efnysien took everyone by surprise, laughing madly, and calling out: “I bet none of you expected this…?!”. At which point he grabbed the boy and threw him into the raging fire, kicking him back into the fire as the boy tried to save himself it, for good measure.
But it was too late. Gwern was dead.
The fighting began. The fighting went on all night, and both sides lost many men. Afterwards, in the Irish camp, a smaller fire could be seen, a dull red glow beneath a cauldron, a cauldron into which the Irish dead were thrown, and out of which they stepped again, voiceless, the living undead.
The next day the fighting began again, the losses terrible on both sides.
Efnysien, realising perhaps, the awful consequences of what he had started, saw that with the Cauldron of Rebirth, there would be a never ending stream of Irish soldiers to fight against, no matter how many were killed. So that night, he covered himself with mud, and blood, and lay among the Irish dead as if he were one of them. When he was thrown into the cauldron, the shock of a living body being thrown in to the magical maelstrom it contained, and the strength of him as he pushed against the inside walls cauldron, shattered it into a thousand pieces. And shattered Efnysien with it.
The battle was all but over. The dead were many. The survivors were few.
The Irish had been killed, to a man. Only their women remained. Of Bendigeidfran’s men, only seven lived through that terrible battle. Seven men, and Branwen.
Bendigeidfran, perhaps, would have been one of those who few who survived, were it not for the poison on the tip of the spear that pierced his foot. Poison that had started to spread. “Cut off my head” he said, “I will still be good company for you, for seven years in Harlech, and eighty years after that. But do not open the door that faces Cornwall,” he said, rather cryptically, “or sorrow will end it all. And then you must bury my head, on the Bryn Gwyn, the White Hill in London, facing south”.
And so they did. And of all the men who had left the Island of the Mighty only seven returned. Only seven, and Branwen. And the chatty head of Bendigeidfran, carried on the golden platter that had been given to Matholwch several years before.
Back now, in Wales, Branwen was distraught. In her sorrow, her heart was broken. She died and was buried.
The seven then feasted for seven years in Harlech, and the head of Bendigeidfran the giant was good company indeed. And then they went to the island of Grassholm, off the Pembrokeshire coast, and continued their feasting and their drinking there. And it seemed to them as if time did not pass.
Now, the hall in which they lived had three doors. They made use of two of them, but the third one, the door that faced Cornwall, that door had always been closed.
But as the years went by, for one of the seven, it started to become too much. And after the eighty years foretold by Bendigeidfran’s prophecy had passed, it really became too much.
“Shame upon my beard,” he said, “if I don’t find out what happens if I open that door”.
And so he did. And as he did so, the weight of years, and the weight of all the sorrows of their lives, and their brothers lives, and of all those that had died in the battle, and more, fell upon them.
And so, they left. They made their way to London. And there, under the Bryn Gwyn, the White Hill, they buried the head of the giant Bendigeidfran, facing south to protect the Island of the Mighty against foreign invaders from France.
And though the story may have been lost to many, in England at least, if not in Wales, a memory of it remains. In the form of the ravens who inhabit the Tower of London today, the White Tower that stands on the White Hill, the Bryn Gwyn. The ravens who will protect England against invasion as long as they are there. As did Bendigeidfran, Brân the Blessed, the Blessed Crow, or Raven.
And that is the end of the story, the story of Brân and Branwen, the story of the second branch of the Mabinogion.
Performance Notes#
The following notes are personal reflections on my performances of this tale, typically all the bits that I felt didn’t work as I’d intended or hoped. If you’ve been to a show, and thought it went okay, the following may contain spoilers of where I felt I may have messed up!
Reflective performance notes
Having fallen off the bike in the first telling, I also gave this tale another couple of tellings quickly after: the first at Calbourne Water Mill, where I split it into five parts and told it interspersed with the island based Eye of the Dawn belly dancers (which I think with a bit more co-ordination regarding the dance selections to fit the narrative breaks in the tale could make for a different sort of telling!) The splits were useful because they provided a break from the barrage of names, and allowed folk to process where the tale had got to for three or for minutes between each three of four minute chunk of the telling. At the start of the new part, I briefly recapped the previous, Soap style… Confused? You won’t be…
After the Water Mill telling, I realised that the opening sequence needed to be presented slowly, with repetition of each name, along with a separate bit of reinforcing detail at each repetition, for Bendigeidfran and Branwen. This helps fix the name and character in my mind as the teller, as well as hopefully building a memory picture of each character for the listener. Using the same trick to develop Efnysien also makes sense (and I perhaps also need to do the same for Matholwch and Gwern?) The build of up “Bran, which means rook, or crow, in Welsh” etc. also helps set up a call back for the end of the tale (the rooks).
The tale then got an outing at Ventnor Fringe for the ‘Tis Tales “Here Be Giants” set. (Half an hour before, my vocal chords started to tighten up again. A Locket from Sue helped…) I rushed and fumbled the opening — this perhaps needs to be really formulaic and maybe even learned, or at least so familiar that the required name setting trips off the tongue — which consequently led to all sorts of fumbles in the first part. Part of the fumble started in the planned opening around asking the audience if they knew rooks in the Tower of London, when I messed up my attempted hook into the previous tale, and then didn’t trigger the audience as I’d hoped when soliciting familiarity with the legend of the rooks/ravens in the tower. A break was planned at the point of Bendigeidfran having received Bran’s letter, at which point I realised I hadn’t added the detail of Bran being “too tall for any house, too large for any ship”. As Holly pointed out, I have a tell of touching my hair/head when I get a bit lost, which I had actually spotted myself doing at last once in the telling and made a note to ponder. (In discussion after, this may be a thing to use almost consciously, perhaps as a tool for recapping apparently for myself, but also for the audience, where we are if it all seems to be getting a bit confused?) The horse mutilation was graphic enough to prompt a comment at the end, but could also perhaps have been more gruesome still (perhaps from the character position of a sneering Efnysien), although it might have needed some trigger warning set-up so folk could try to cover their ears..!
Another forgetting was to hang the bags on the hooks on the posts in the hall; I had had an intention to try to involve audience participation in the “what’s in the bag?” question, asking audience members in the front couple of rows, but fumbled that (not set up properly or forceful enough), and then fumbled my first attempt at the second part of the audience interaction — “he squeezed, and it crunched; and he squeezed, and it crunched, and he squeezed, and it squished, and it left a small red mark…”. There may be better words? Better use of pauses, and looks? And I need practice, and audience needs educating, in offering a hand that solicits the next word from the audience. Maybe aim for something like: “and he squeezed, and it crunched; and he squeezed, and it ____, and he ____, and it ____, and it left a ____…”? Play around with the order of that at each bag for several bags. Then push luck on “so what’s in the bag?”. I could maybe set up different things — flour…, flour?, potatoes?, washing?, then let audience members make suggestions?
For more completeness in call backs relating to the honour price given to Matholwch, the silver rod maybe needs a reference? And perhaps something about the horses? even though they aren’t in the Second branch translation I have…
Finally, the out with the rooks and ravens was really fumbled, in part because I’d forgotten to set up the “bury my head facing South to ward off invasion from the French under the White Hill in London” instruction as Bendigeidfran was decapitated.
Five (up to seven) part telling:
Bran and Branwen, the arrival of the Matholwch’s ships; the betrothal; and the mutilation of the horses by Efnysien; cliffhanger: how would Matholwcyh respond?
the blood price, the departure and the promise to never mention the humilation again; (possible break here); the child, the humiliation of Branwen, the sending of the message, its presentation to Bran; cliff hanger: how would he respond? or Bran assembles his fleet and sets off to save his sister;
the fleet, the chase, the hall, (possible break point here…) the battle; the survivors made their way back to Wales; as to what happened then, we will have to wait for the next part of the tale…
the return to Wales, the seven years, the door, the White Castle, the rooks.
Two part telling: split at the point where Branwen sends the starling to her brother…