Saturday, Wales will hope for their first victory in the Six Nations when they take on Ireland at the Aviva stadium in Dublin, a bloody and hard-fought battle is one to be expected given the nature of the sport and the forms of the teams. But let’s cast our minds back though history to medieval Wales, when the Welsh travelled to Ireland and similarly to this Saturday, expected a brutal and bloody war, only this time it involved a royal marriage, giants and a magical cauldron… or so the story goes.
The tale I speak of tells of the exploits of Brân the Blessed, high king of Britain and his feud with the Irish king, Matholwch. This story, titled Branwen ferch Llŷr, is the second of four branches that make up the mabinogi, a collection of early medieval Welsh prose.
The story begins on the coast of Harlech, where the Irish king Matholwch sails across the Irish sea to ask the giant king of the Britons, Bran the Blessed or contemporarily Bendigeidfran, for his sister Branwen’s hand in marriage. To solidify an alliance between the two Celtic nations, King Bran accepts, and the festivities last throughout the night… or they should have.
The king’s brother, Efnysien, had taken offence to the lack of consideration given to his opinion on this alliance and in retaliation mutilates all the Irish horses being housed in the stables, stifling the celebrations. Matholwch is furious with what Efnysien had done, but King Bran offers the Irish king a magical cauldron that revives the dead, a gift that soothes the Irish king’s temper.
Matholwch and his new wife, Branwen, sail back to Ireland and enjoy a relatively enjoyable few years and birth a son, Gwern, and while the couple seem to have put the horse ordeal behind them, Matholwch’s advisors haven’t. His advisors stoke the kings fire, reminding him of the insult Efnysien delivered to him all those years ago, and in reaction Matholwch orders that each morning Branwen be taken into the kitchens and beaten, before being locked in a tower until the next morning.
Branwen, tired of the abuse, sends a message to her brother, King Bran, by way of a messenger starling. In response, Bran musters his army to set sail for Ireland and rescue his sister, hundreds of ships traverse the cold Irish sea all while King Bran wades across the body of water safely due to his enormous height.
The Irish can see Bran walk across the sea and retreat to an island, destroying the bridge as a way of defence. Instead of initiating a siege, Bran lays flat and acts as a bridge to the island for his men. Matholwch calls for peace negotiations after the ease of which Brans army foiled his plan. To appease the Welsh king, Matholwch offers him a house that could fit the giant-king inside, which Bran accepts along with guarantees for the safety of his sister.
The newly built house has one hundred bags hung from many pillars throughout the house, filled with grain. Expecting trickery from the Irish, Efnysien walks through the house and places his hand into each bag, but instead of the touch of grain, he can feel the head of ambushing Irish soldiers before crushing the skull within.
At a feast to celebrate the new-found peace amongst the two kings, Efnysien again crashes the party and throws Branwen and Matholwch’s son, Gwern, into the fire pit in revenge for Matholwch’s attempted betrayal. Expectedly a bloody battle ensues, the Welsh seem to be on the verge of triumph until the Irish start throwing their dead soldiers into the magic cauldron that Bran gifted to Matholwch.
Seeing what was happening, Efnysien feigns death amongst the Irish dead waiting to be thrown into the cauldron. When his time has come and he is about to be thrown in, he spreads his limbs out and shatter the cauldron from within, sacrificing himself in the process.
Branwen dies of a broken heart from all he trauma she has suffered, and King Bran is mortally wounded. Bran orders his head be removed and brought back to his homeland. On the island of Grassholm, then called Gwales, the King entertains a host of his most loyal men for eighty years until the sorrow of their losses return to them. The sorrow causes Brans head to become silent and as instructed during the eighty years, the men bury his head facing France on Gwynfryn, which modern scholars attest to possibly be where the Tower of London is today, to ward off invaders.
And so ends the tale of Branwen ferch Llŷr, a tale of magic, kings and ultimate family drama, like Bran the Blessed we hope that our Welsh boys can claim victory from their Celtic brothers across the Irish sea, only with less bloodshed and death this time around.
留言