Midwinter at Merlin's Monument

Sun and Stones
Today, 22nd December, is the midwinter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, an astronomical phenomenon marking the shortest day of the year. Headlines throughout the country will report that the sunrise was witnessed by thousands of pagans and Druids, one of the oldest winter celebrations in the world marking the end of darkening nights.

The midwinter solstice, from the Latin word 'solstitium', meaning 'Sun standing still', marks the longest night with less than 8 hours daylight. This is the moment the North Pole is tilted furthest from the sun as the Earth continues on its orbit.

Midwinter sunset at Stonehenge

The one iconic monument that immediately brings the solstices to mind is Stonehenge, a monument surrounded in mystery and myth and yet for all the excavations and words written about the site it remains an enigma. The ring of stones on Salisbury Plain has attracted solstice pilgrims for millennia. Today numbers attending the summer solstice sunrise celebrations at Stonehenge number some 40,000 but significantly fewer numbers attend the winter solstice sunrise celebration; an estimated 7,000 people made the journey to the ancient site this year.

The midwinter solstice occurs every year when the sun reaches its most southerly declination of -23.5 degrees, when the North Pole is tilted furthest away from the Sun, delivering the fewest hours of sunlight of the year, while the sun is closer to the horizon than at any other time in the year. On this day the sun appears to stand still on the horizon for about three days before reversing its direction, growing in strength until it reaches its peak at midsummer. Hence the Teutonic term 'sunturn'.

It is the midwinter sunset that is the significant feature in the design of Stonehenge. At summer solstice pilgrims stand inside the stone circle and watch the sunrise on the horizon above the Heelstone. This misconception was first noted by Dr John Smith, remembered as the 'smallpox inoculator', who was the first to provide a solar interpretation for the Heelstone following his survey in 1770 and it has stuck ever since.

Yet there is no known back-marker at the centre of the stone circle to define the spot where the observer should stand to witness this event; it is a simple matter to position oneself within the circle to frame the Heelstone between two sarsens and photograph the sun rising above the top of the monolith. However, the Heelstone was originally one of a pair with the midsummer sun rising between the two, the solar axis aligning between the two major Trilithons, stones 55 and 56. At no sacred site do you turn your back on the inner sanctum to witness an event outside.

But at the midwinter solstice watchers should be standing outside the stones, perhaps by the Heelstone itself, and witness the sun setting between the main Trilithons to the south-west and sinking into the recumbent Altar Stone. This moment marks the death of the sun which has been growing weaker and weaker since reaching the height of its power at midsummer. The following dawn bears witness to the birth of the new sun.

Antiquarians and Archaeologists
The first mention of Stonehenge appears in the Historia Anglorum of Henry of  Huntingdon in about 1130 AD, in which he refers to the monument as ‘Stanenges’; the name 'Stonehenge' was not recorded until 1610. Henry lists the monument as the second of his wonders, being made of stones like doorways, which no one can imagine, he says, how they were raised or why.

Six years later Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae), calling the monument the 'Giants' Dance', had the answer saying that Merlin brought the stones from Ireland and erected them on Salisbury Plain by magic arts and claimed the kings of Britain were buried inside the stone circle. Geoffrey's tale is dismissed as pure fantasy, a product of an over-active imagination, as the monument was erected around 3,000 BC, yet he placed the event in the Dark Ages, around 500 AD. Although his chronology was hopelessly muddled, had Geoffrey stumbled across a trace of an oral tradition that had survived across millennia?

800 years after Geoffrey's fanciful claims Herbert Thomas identified the source of the Stonehenge bluestones as the Preseli Hills in south-west Wales in the 1920s. The stones of Geoffrey's Giants' Dance had indeed come from the west in an area occupied by the Irish during the timeset of his story, indeed in the ensuing battle the Irish king was killed near St David's, very close to the source of the Stonehenge bluestones. This year a  team of archaeologists and geologists claim to have positively identified the bluestone quarries for the first time at Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin. Dating material suggested the quarrying took place between 3,400 BC and 3,200 BC. Is it possible that recollection of an event such as the movement of the bluestones 140 miles from South Wales to Salisbury Plain could survive such a great expanse of time?

In 2008 the Stonehenge Riverside Project excavated Aubrey Hole 7, just inside the Stonehenge ditch, much to the dismay of the Stonehenge Druids. The Aubrey Holes are a ring of 56 pits distributed around the inside of the area enclosed by Stonehenge's earthen bank, named after the 17th Century antiquarian John Aubrey who first recorded them.

This pit contained all the human remains found by Colonel Hawley during his excavations at Stonehenge during the 1920's. In Hawley's time museums were reluctant to curate the remains so they were re-interred in Aubrey Hole 7 in several bags and identified by a lead plaque. Study of the remains suggest that they would have been interred over a period of more than 200 years, interpreted as an elite group, just as Geoffrey of Monmouth had claimed.

A legal challenge by the Stonehenge Druids, launched for the remains to be returned to Stonehenge, failed in 2011 and now the remains of this select group, possibly the ruling elite of Stonehenge,  grace a cardboard box in a dark room in a museum store instead of their intended esteemed position at Britain's most important megalithic monument. We still await news of the great scientific advance resulting from the removal and study of the guardians of Stonehenge in an act that can only be described as archaeological trophy hunting. It is time for their return.

Stonehenge by William Stukeley 1722

The Druid Revival
As with Geoffrey's story of the movement of the Giants' Dance surviving across the millennia, the concept of astronomical alignments at sacred sites also persists. The phenomena of astronomical alignments at ancient monuments is recorded in the 14th century French work called Perceforest, described, at over a million words, as one of the largest and most extraordinary of the late Arthurian romances. The anonymous author creates a prehistory of King Arthur's Britain in which Perceforest is the first of Arthur's Greek ancestors. The work is notable for its detailed description of megalithic stone temples.

In one episode a round stone temple is described. Through the doorway a ray of light from the setting sun falls on a throne. Placed on the throne is the withered corpse of the last high-priest wrapped in a sheepskin. A similar phenomena occurs at Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland which faces the midwinter solstice sunrise. For a few short minutes the sun's rays penetrate the tomb and strike the inscribed monolith at the rear of the passage.

At Chartres Cathedral, famous for it pavement labyrinth and well known for its Black Madonna veneration, the summer solstice is marked by a gleam of sunlight passing through a small hole in the stained-glass window named for Saint Apollinaire, on the western side of the transept, and, exactly at midday, strikes a gilded metal tenon that rises slightly above the natural level of the floor. This setting is clearly to establish the moment of the Summer Solstice. On the midwinter solstice, a light beam enters Chartres, near its South Porch, and alights on a column leaving the building on a stone wagon featuring the Ark of the Covenant.

The Cathedral at Chartres is said to have been built on the site of an ancient Druidic temple, the sacred mound of the Carnuti, erected in honour of the “Virgo Paritura” (The Virgin who will conceive); is it possible that the solstice alignment was maintained from the original layout of the site?

However, there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support the claims of a former Druid temple on the site, but before you dismiss this as pure nonsense it worth considering the fact that Chartres is not aligned east-west like most Christian churches but aligned to the solstices like Stonehenge, a pagan temple.

Pagan groups traditionally celebrate the midwinter solstice, the so-called birth of the new sun, at sunrise. The new sun emerging the morning after solstice (standing still) as it starts its journey along the horizon, growing in strength each day, toward the midsummer point. It is a seasonal shift; after the winter solstice, the days get longer, and the nights shorter.

Latter-day Druids have been attracted to Stonehenge since antiquarians such as Aubrey and Stukeley named stone circles 'Druidical temples' and monoliths were so-named  the 'Slaughter Stone' and the 'Altar Stone' suggestive of barbaric rites.

In the 1660s John Aubrey suggested that the megalithic remains of Britain were built by the Druids, and intrigued by this William Stukeley visited Stonehenge in 1719. For the next five years he made annual visits to Wiltshire carrying out a detailed study of both Stonehenge and Avebury. In his book 'Stonehenge Restored to the British Druids', he popularised the notion that the Druids built the most famous of stone circles, and that they were also responsible for the other megalithic monuments that were so well distributed throughout Britain.

Aubrey and Stukeley's works inspired the formation of The Ancient Order of Druids in 1781. One hundred and twenty years later, Stonehenge was the scene for a mass gathering of Druids on the summer solstice in 1905 when the Druids initiated some 250 novices inside the stone circle, returning every year since.

Druid ceremony 1905

But of course everyone knows that modern Druids have no claim on the megalithic monument on Salisbury Plain as it was constructed in the Neolithic period, whereas the Druids do not appear in the historical record until the musings of classical authors on the Iron Age Celtic peoples. Yet antiquarians were aware that these stone circles were built prior to the Roman arrival on these shores. In these times the Ancient Britons were considered a Celtic race with the Druids their priestly class as described in the writings of Julius Caesar.

The Roman Destruction of Stonehenge
At Stonehenge there is no evidence of medieval destruction, it seems that from as long as it was first recorded, outside of early imaginative manuscript illuminations, it was depicted as a ruin. The destruction may have begun in Prehistoric or Roman times; there is certainly no record of the robbing and wrecking that occurred at Avebury just 20 miles to the north. Today Stonehenge has the appearance of a half-wrecked religious house, such as the many abbeys put out of use during the Dissolution.

Indeed, in 1956 Richard Atkinson noted that the distribution of missing and fallen stones is “curiously uneven and looks like the result of deliberate destruction rather than chance collapse”. Atkinson observed that that the stones at Stonehenge were set much deeper, some up to five foot, than is common in other British stone circles and they would not have toppled easily

In excavations carried out within the stone circle of Stonehenge in 2008 Timothy Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwright found structural evidence for the use of Stonehenge in Roman times, mainly in the late 4th century or a little later and a series of Post-Roman cuts into those earlier features.

Earlier excavations recovered Roman coins, half of which are also of fourth-century date. All together there is a substantial collection of Roman material; 1,857 sherds of Roman pottery from previous excavations, and several items of Roman metalwork. In the past this has been interpreted as the result of Roman tourism; however, Darvill and Wainwright suggest that this material should be reconsidered in the use of the site as a place of ritual or ceremony in the first millennium AD.

Stone 34 adjacent to the Darvill and Wainwright 2008 excavation trench showed clear flake-beds resulting from the removal of substantial pieces of stone, perhaps in later prehistoric or Roman times. In the case of Stone 35a almost all the rock that originally protruded above ground was removed leaving just a stump; certain evidence that some bluestones were broken  up on the site.

Stonehenge - Lucas de Here (Wikimedia commons)

The evidence suggests two early episodes in the destruction of Stonehenge; Roman souvenir taking preceded by purposeful wrecking of the monument.

Classical writers claimed that for the most part the Druids conducted their religious ceremonies in clearings in sacred groves. These ill-defined, dim, rural sanctuaries were regarded by the Romans, always eager to justify conquest, as evidence of the lowest form of barbarism. Tacitus gives us a glimpse of the Druids, the Celtic priestly caste, besieged in their island headquarters on Anglesey in 61 AD. It seems likely that Stonehenge was sacked at around this time.

The Romans may have first found Stonehenge functioning as a Druidical temple, adopted as a ceremonial site for sacrificial offerings and other such acts of barbarism. During the Roman campaign on Druidism in 60- 61 AD in Britain the Legions may have descended on Stonehenge and perceived it as a threat to imperial authority, giving them a powerful motive for dismantling it.

Atkinson noted that the filling of the Y and Z holes, probably the last phase of construction at Stonehenge, is indicative of these events. At the bottom of theses pits there are a few bluestone chips which were probably purposefully placed in the bottom of the pits. This was followed by relatively clean accumulation of debris suggesting the pits were left open. But toward the middle and top of the filling, the number of bluestone chips increases again. Similarly, the numbers of fragments of Roman pottery increase towards the top of the filling matching the distribution of the stone chips indicating that they must be contemporary with one another. This can only be explained in terms of the destruction of some of the bluestones during the period of the Roman occupation.

The Triumph of the Moon
The Roman historian Pliny observed that Druids worshipped by the moon in their sacred groves and were not known to use enclosed temples. However, it is possible that the Druids had adopted open air temples such as Stonehenge prior to the Roman invasion of Britain.

It is without doubt that the First Stonehenge was a lunar observatory. In 1922 Hawley  had uncovered rows of stake holes on the north-east entrance causeway, generally about 0.5m across and 0.6m deep. He thought they might have formed a palisade and paid little further attention to them.

In 1924 he discovered four large post holes 25m outside the entrance causeway and parallel to the stake holes discovered two years earlier. These ‘A posts’ must have been massive tree-trunks about 1m in diameter and spaced an orderly 1.8m apart, their huge girth suggests that they were very tall, possibly 4m or more. Hawley's excavation stopped just short of where the fifth post should be under the Avenue bank. There would have been a sixth but the most northerly hole was lost when the Avenue ditch was cut. At the same time as the construction of the Avenue the north-east entrance was widened and the axis skewed to the solstice line running through the site between the major Trilithons and the Heelstone and its partner on the causeway, around 2,200 BC, a thousand years after Stonehenge I.

It was not until 1972 that Peter Newham proposed that these causeway posts were markers for tracking the northern moonrises. The moonrise, then as now, shifted along the horizon, so the Stonehenge observers had to plant a stake each year to track it; watching the rising moon from the circle’s centre; each stake marked the northernmost position of the rising moon in a particular year. The most northerly stake in the row marking the major northern moonrise, completing the lunar cycle in 18.6 years.

The Causeway post holes (after Castleden)

The existence of six rows of stakes shows that they tracked the moon through six cycles (6 x 18.6), at least 112 years, until they were absolutely certain they had found the overall northernmost moonrise position. The southernmost stake of this row marked the moonrise at what is called the ‘mid-swing’ point. There are no stake-holes beyond this point so we know the observers were not interested in the ‘minor’ moonrises. The large 'A posts' must have served as summaries of the stake-hole observations.

Several metres out from the 'A posts', the builders raised the first two megaliths of Stonehenge, stones 96 and 97. Stone 97 was removed long ago, but stone 96 still stands today, known as the Heelstone, 77m from the centre of Stonehenge. Along with the Station Stones these were the earliest megaliths on the site, possibly found not far from where they now stand, easily identifiable from the later sarsen circle stones by their rough, gnarled, undressed appearance. Newham saw a relationship between this early arrangement of the first Stonehenge megaliths and the car park post holes which date to the Mesolithic. Most archaeologists have dismissed the probability of any Mesolithic activity at Stonehenge, but in their 2008 excavation Darvill and Wainwright uncovered pine charcoal which has returned a date of 7330–7070 BC.

Today it is still believed that the Heelstone indicates the alignment of the midsummer sunrise, as first suggested by Dr Smith in 1770, although this was certainly not its purpose in antiquity. It is clear the Heelstone was intended to mark the moonrise at mid-swing.

At Stonehenge the sunrise reaches its northernmost position on the midsummer solstice, around 21 June each year, standing still between the position of stones 96 and 97 for about three days before heading back southwards again. It is incorrectly assumed by many today that the Heelstone, and possibly the whole monument, was specifically raised to mark this solar event.

Stukeley suggested that the entrance to Stonehenge faced North-East to align with the summer solstice but refused to go as far as saying the Heelstone was aligned to the midsummer solstice sunrise and noted that ‘The interest of the founders of Stonehenge was to set the entrance full north-east, being the point where the sun rises, or nearly, at the summer solstice.’

A few years later John Wood considered the Heelstone marked the point where the New Moon first appears when the Druids began their Festivals. It appears that Stonehenge was a lunar observatory from its earliest days.

The author of the 13th century Gesta Regum Britannie, a verse rendering of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, in Latin hexameter, usually attributed to the Breton monk William of Rennes, in describing the place were Aurelius Ambrosius is crowned following the erection of the Giants' Dance at Mount of Ambrius exactly as they had been set up in Ireland, refers to the King's court as decorated with merely 'nemus et frondes' (woodland and leaves).

This implies Stonehenge was a sacred enclosure in a woodland clearing as such used by Druids.


Copyright © 2015 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/


Sources:
Richard Atkinson, Stonehenge, Penguin, 1979.
Aubrey Burl, Great Stone Circles: Fables, Fictions, Fact, Yale University Press, 1999.
Aubrey Burl, The Stonehenge People, Barrie & Jenkins, 1989.
Rodney Castleden, The Making of Stonehenge, Routledge, 1993.
Christopher Chippendale, Stonehenge Complete, Fourth Edition, Thames and Hudson, 2012.
John Darrah, Paganism in Arthurian Romance, Boydell Press, 1997.
Timothy Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwright, Stonehenge Excavations 2008, The Antiquaries Journal, 89, 2009, pp.1–19, The Society of Antiquaries of London, 2009.
Mike Parker Pearson, Stonehenge: Exploring the greatest Stone Age mystery, Simon & Schuster, 2012.

* * *

The Druids and King Arthur

A New View of Early Britain
Robin Melrose

Paperback, 220 pages
McFarland & Co Inc., October 2010
ISBN 0786458909
Retailing at around £30 this is expensive for a paperback of 220 pages.

This book examines the role the Druids may have played in the story of King Arthur and the founding of Britain. In exploring the beliefs and origins of the Druids, the author sets out to explain how the Druids originated in eastern Europe around 850 B.C., bringing to early Britain a cult of an underworld deity, a belief in reincarnation, and a keen interest in astronomy. Concluding that Arthur was originally a cult figure of the Druids whose descendants may have founded the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. The author's research draws upon a number of sources, including the medieval Welsh tales known collectively as the Mabinogion and ancient Welsh poetry such as the The Spoils of Annwn.

In exploring the archaeology of Stonehenge's Salisbury Plain, Melrose came across a work by Barry Cunliffe, which claimed that the All Cannings Cross pottery, which appeared in Wiltshire around 800 BC, may have come from eastern France, possibly the Jura region, and possibly from limited foreign infiltrations from further afield.

From here he learnt from Graham Anderson’s book ‘King Arthur in Antiquity’, that the name Arthur is based on Arcturus, the name for the brightest star in the constellation Bootes, and found in early Greek poetry around 700 BC. Anderson goes on to show that many elements of the Arthur story have parallels in Greek mythology relating to Arcas, the mythical founder of Arcadia.

Melrose traces the transmission of this story across Europe and finally to Britain, putting forward the proposal that the Arcturus story originated in the early Greek Mycenean civilisation and spread westward via the Thracians and Cimmerians to Switzerland, and then on to the Jura in eastern France, the source of Cunliffe's Wiltshire poetry.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1. The Dragon Star
2. The Severed Head and the Bone Cave: Religion in Roman Britain
3. Arthur’s Voyage: The Spoils of Annwn
4. Magic Mounds, Sea People and Shape-Shifters: The Wonderful World of the Mabinogion
5. Mounds, Mounds, Mounds: Rubbish Heaps, Hillforts and the Prehistory of Southern England
6. Visitors from the East
7. Brutus of Troy Town
8. Arthur, King of Wessex?
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Robin Melrose is a retired senior lecturer in English and linguistics at the University of Portsmouth in England.

* * *

The Shaman and the Sorcerer: The Feathered Cloak

LUD'S CHURCH (XV)

Part Two

The priest talks to God,
but God talks to the Shaman

The Feathered Cloak
There is a modern trend to claim that these medieval tales of the wildman of the forest are loaded with shamanistic symbolism and not without good reason as an important function of the shaman is to access knowledge from the gods and spirits by way of the otherworld journey. As we have seen described above, it is the supernatural spirit, the night wanderer, that Myrddin calls 'Hwimleian', that passes on occult knowledge from the Otherworld to him while he is living in the forest where he has fled following the Battle of Arferydd, prior to ultimately undergoing the threefold death; is this symbolic of the otherworld journey before a ritual death as depicted in the rites of shaman initiation? As we have discussed, there would appear to be several similarities between the tales of Lleu, Myrddin, Lailoken and Shuibhne; were they just deranged wildmen or all shaman?

We have already noted how Lleu Law Gyffes, whose ordeal we have been following since starting our journey in the remote North Staffordshire countryside, undergoes a transformation into an eagle at the closing stages of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi after Blodeuedd tricks Lleu into telling her how he can be killed:

I'll tell you gladly,' he said 'It is not easy,' he continued 'to kill me by a blow . It would be necessary to spend a year making the spear to strike me with - and without making any of it except when one was at mass on Sundays.'

'…...I cannot be killed inside a house, nor outside,' he continued 'I cannot be killed on horseback or on foot.''I'll tell you,' he replied. 'By making a bath for me by the side of a river, making a curved, slatted roof over the tub, and thatching that well and without [leaving] any gaps. And bringing a buck,' he continued 'and putting it next to the tub, and me putting one of my feet on the buck's back, and the other one on the side of the tub. Whoever would strike me [while I am] like that would bring about my death.'

On being struck with Goronwy's spear Lleu turned into an eagle and took flight. Gwydion finds him perched atop an oak tree between two pools in a valley which is called Nant Lleu (Nantlle), western Snowdonia. Gwydion coaxes him down from the tree on to his lap and transform him back to human form and nurses him back to health. These peculiar conditions required to bring about Lleu's death, somewhat reminiscent of the threefold demise of Myrddin, have been compared to a shamanic initiation rite. [10]
The shaman also has close associations with the eagle, the father of the first shaman, the feathered cloak being an important part of shamanic ritual to enable flight to the otherworld. The eagle is associated with prophecy and foresight in ancient British tradition. As we saw in Wizards and Wildmen Part II - Magicians and Madmen the source of the name Myrddin is still the subject of some debate between scholars; the popular claims that Carmarthen, originally the Roman fortress Moridunum, was named after the wizard are untenable and there is a distinct absence of pre-Geoffrey primary source material to associate 'Myrddin' (Geoffrey's 'Merlin')with the Welsh town. Although the precise origin of the name remains a mystery, it has been suggested that it may have derived from the Brythonic words meaning something similar to 'voice of the eagle'. Contained within the Red Book of Hergest is a poem called the 'Prophecy of the Eagle' in which the speaker is Myrddin as the Eagle. [11] 

Celtic mythology features many seers, druids and magicians who in modern literature have been compared to the shaman. In the Irish Mirabilia we saw how “… it is said of these men then when they have lived in the woods in that condition for twenty years, that feathers grew on their bodies like birds.” When the shaman puts on his feathered cloak it is to give his soul the ability of flight to the realm of the gods during his trance; significantly it is reported that early Irish bards used to wear a cloak of feathers. [12]

In the Irish tale the Siege of Druim Damhgaire (Knocklong), from the account in The Cycle of Kings, it describes how Cormac mac Art took his forces into Munster in order to exact the tribute due to him from Fiachu Muillethan, the king of southern Munster. Cormac lays seige on Druim Damhgaire, his druids dry up all the water in Munster until the opposing side is about to surrender. Cormac appears to be triumphant until Fiachu and the Munstermen decide to call upon chief mage, the Druid Mog Roith, who has a beautifully ornamented chariot, drawn by fierce and impatient oxen as fast as the March winds, who has acquired his wisdom over seven centuries. Mog Roith demands a large area of land, a hundred cows, a hundred steers and a hundred horses, fifty mantles and a beautiful girl. Fiachu has no choice but to meet the demands of the Druid.

The Druid Mog Roith is brought his brown hornless bull's hide, and his 'encennach', the bird head-dress, speckled with flying wings, and other druidic tools; “he rose into the air and the heavens at the same time as the fires and he started to beat the air, so as to turn the fires to the North, all the time chanting this spell, 'I make the druid's arrow'...” turning the victory in the Munstermen's favour. [13] The description of Mog Roith has been described as akin to an African or Native American sorceress and not typically Celtic, appearing as a typical warrior-priest. He has limitless power over the four elements of fire, water, air and earth. He has many similarities with the Shaman. [14]

Of all the pagan gods of Northern Europe, it is Odin who displays behaviour closest to the shaman. The Norse god Odin has many parallels with the Celtic god Lugus who we see descended as Irish Lugh and Welsh Lleu Llaw Gyffes. The Roman historian Tacitus equated Odin with Mercury and Julius Caesar wrote of Mercury in his Commentaries on the Gallic War as being the most popular god among the Celts of Britain and Gaul, being regarded as the “inventor of all the arts.” The god Lug(h) has a very similar epithet, 'Samhildánach' meaning "equally skilled in many arts", which is generally agreed upon as equating the Gaulish Mercury with the Celtic god Lugus.

Odin of the Scandinavians was descended from the German Wotan (Woden of the Anglo-Saxons), both representing a development of the Proto-Germanic god, *Wōdanaz. Gwydion has been linked both etymologically and mythologically to be the Celtic form of Wotan/Wodin and therefore reciprocally to Mercury.

The etymology of the name 'Gwydion' is complex and continues to be the cause of much debate between scholars. An early form of the name appears in the Harleian 3859 genealogies as "Lou hen map Guidgen" suggesting a derivation from *Uidugenos who is likely related to the Celtic god Mercury Uiducus, Mercury the woodsman, or Mercury the wise, suggesting “one who knows the knowledge of the trees” or put simply “woodwise”, with clear correlation to the Druid and underlining the association of Mercury with Odin/Woden. The word 'druid' has been interpreted from the Proto-Celtic stem *dru-wid combining the Proto-Indo-European elements *deru = oak tree and *weid = to see (as in knowledge/wisdom), therefore we can interpret “druid” as “one who has knowledge of the oak tree” which is remarkably similar to Mercury Uiducus. Modern interpretations in Welsh and Irish universally equate the word 'druid' with the meaning magician, seer, enchanter. There can be little doubt that Gwydion is a Druid, performing extraordinary magical acts throughout the Mabinogi of Math.

A more recent suggestion for the derivation of the name 'Gwydion', containing the same root *weid as in 'druid', is from the Proto-Celtic *Weidī-kondos from the elements weid/weido = know/knowing and kondos = sense. [15] The confusion of the Gwydion/Lugus/Mercury god(s) would appear to be due to the religious syncretism of the incoming Romans, blending the indigenous Celtic and Teutonic belief systems of a Northern pantheon with their own gods.

It appears to be quite clear that whichever meaning of this disputed name we accept they all would appear to be indicating an association with 'knowledge', 'knowing' or 'to know'. The word 'shaman' originates from the Siberian Tungus people's word šamán containing the Tungusic root ša' = 'to know'; [16] shaman meaning literally 'he who knows' which is remarkably similar to the meaning of the Proto-Celtic *Weidī-kondos as the origin of the name Gwydion. Indeed it is Gwydion who is the prominent character throughout the tale of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi. Gwydion is the chief mage, sorcerer par excellence, displaying what some see as typical shamanistic behaviour; his role being similar to that of the Master Shaman; his protégé being Lleu the initiate. 

The similarity of the etymology of the name seems beyond coincidence but can we justifiably make a comparison between the Druid and the Shaman?

Archaic Religion
Shamanism has been termed the oldest organised religion. Evidence for this claim is based on the paintings and art of the caverns of the European Upper Palaeolithic epoch.

On 12th September 1940 four teenagers digging in a large hole left by the root ball of a large pine tree which had fallen a couple of years previously on a hill near village of Montignac in the Dordogne region of France, broke through to a narrow crevice. The boys squeezed through into a larger void decorated in magnificent paintings of horned cattle across the walls. They had discovered the Great Hall of the Bulls in the Lascaux cave system, perhaps the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century. The cave was found to contain a stunning collection of 1,500 engravings, 600 drawings of horses, aurochs, bison, reindeer, felines, a bird, a bear, a rhinoceros, and one human, dated from 17,000 to 18,500 years old.

Lascaux may be one of the most visually stunning of all the decorated caverns but it is not the only European cave found to contain art dated to the Upper Palaeolithic, others include Altamira, Spain, discovered in 1879, Les Trois Frères, in Montesquieu-Avantès, in southwestern France (1910), Pech-Merle (1922), Chauvet, Ardèche Valley of south eastern France (1994), Creswell Crags, Derbyshire, England (2003). Over 300 decorated caverns have been discovered containing often-overlapping paintings and engravings of bison, horses, stags, reindeer, ibex, mammoths, and a small percentage of human, or part-human figures, the so-called masked dancing sorcerers. The great majority of these images have been dated to the mid-Magdalenian period of the Upper Palaeolithic, about 14,000 years ago, and some substantially older. To date, the world's oldest known cave paintings have been discovered in Fumane Cave, near Verona, Northern Italy where archaeologists have found tablets of stone showing images of an animal and a human-like creature believed to be between 32,000 and 36,500 years old.

These images have been termed the origins of religion and art: the genesis of religious art, as they seem to represent more than simple hunting magic; the anthropomorphic figures, the masked sorcerers, are one of the most discussed topics in Palaeolithic Art. Clearly something was happening in the Upper Palaeolithic as attested by this fantastic cave art but the recurrent question is why did our not so distant ancestors adorn the cave walls with these images?

A shamanic explanation has been given for this ancient mystery of Europe’s ancient decorated caverns, with claims that the cave wall paintings depict scenes experienced by the shaman when in trance, the half man - half animal therianthropic figures being either the shaman in transformation or his meetings with supernatural entities. This remarkable cave art is cited as evidence of shamanism as the first religion practised by ancient hunter-gatherer people originating in the Upper Palaeolithic epoch of Europe 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. [17] It can be no coincidence that the first cave art appeared around the same time as the presumed first religious figurines dated to approximately 30,000 BC; the Lion-Man, from Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany carved from Mammoth ivory and the Venus of Dolní Věstonice, the oldest known ceramic in the world. The ivory figurines and the paintings clearly posses a significance beyond simply hunting, appearing to be evidence of man's first venture into a religious belief system.

The Shaman has been described as the priest of the Ural-Altaic peoples, a ritual practitioner in hunter-gatherer societies who can enter into ecstatic trance as a means for the shaman's soul or spirit to leave his or her body and go on a spirit-journey, acting as an intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds using a spiritual-magic to cure the sick, foretell the future, meet spirit animals, change the weather, and control real animals by supernatural means.

In describing the shaman's role as similar to that of the priest, there is, however, is an essential difference between the two as the priest is the ceremoniously inducted member of a recognised religious organisation and holds a particular rank and functions as the holder of that office that was held by others before him; whereas the shaman is one who, as a consequence of a personal psychological crisis, has gained a certain power of his own. The spirits that visit him in vision had never been seen by any other; they are his particular familiars and protectors. In effect, shamans are mystics; their initiation is not one of office or ceremony. [18] It has been said that the essential difference between priest and shaman is that the priest talks to God, but God talks to the shaman. He is intermediary between the realms of the living and the spirits of the dead; having direct contact with the spirit world, the shaman walks with the supernatural.

According to shaman belief, the soul of the shaman climbs up the world tree towards God when he 'shamanizes', in a state of ecstatic trance. During the rite the tree grows and invisibly reaches the summit of heaven. The shaman is intercessor between man and the gods. He also has the power to descend into the realms of the dead. The shaman's spirit is believed to leave his body while in trance and journey to the otherworld. The shaman can induce the conditions of ecstasy by beating his drum or by an elaborate and exciting dance.

Essentially the shaman enters into a trance state to enable his spirit to depart on a journey to the otherworld in which he can converse with the gods and obtain prophetic information or visit the spirits of the deceased and retrieve the souls of the dead. The shaman enjoys a special relationship with the spirits, who's role is to give the Shaman the necessary information to perform healing work, but the Shaman only acts as an intermediary in the healing, as all instruction has been given by the spirit helpers. The trance state is a self induced altered state of consciousness which the shaman can enter at will. This can be induced by drumming, dancing, starvation, enforced isolation, sensory deprivation or by using hallucinogenic substances. The shaman will often put on a bird costume prior to entering trance for his flight to the realm of the gods or spirits. Shamanism can also involve the magical transformation of humans into animals. Accordingly, Mircea Eliade provides a definition of Shamanism as: "techniques of ecstasy". [19]

Technician of the Sacred
Shamanic vocation can manifest in the form of illness, sometimes this can be seen as a progressive change in behaviour where the neophyte becomes meditative, seeks solitude, sleeping a great deal, displays absent mindedness, experiences prophetic dreams and sometimes seizures. Illness, dreams and ecstasies in themselves constitute an initiation in that they transform the profane, pre-'choice' individual into a technician of the sacred. [20]

There are three possible ways to become a shaman; the first being the call (spontaneous vocation); secondly hereditary transmission; thirdly, by personal ‘quest’ or, more rarely, by the will of the tribe. [21] Shamanic initiation often takes the form of a sickness or psychological crisis. Traditionally, the evolution from ordinary human state to shaman is marked by a series of visions and dreams of the neophyte being killed, dismembered, eaten, regurgitated, and put back together by the spirits, his or her bones being replaced with quartz crystals or similar magical substances. The death and mystical resurrection by means of a descent to the underworld is followed by an ascent to the sky. While undergoing this shamanic initiation, the neophyte receives fulfilment of the divine.

When a young child is chosen to be a shaman, the neophyte is excluded from society and must exist in the mountains and remain there for a period of time, feeding on animals 'caught... directly with their teeth' later returning to the village dirty, bleeding, with torn clothes and hair dishevelled 'like wild people'. [22]

As with admission to many secret societies the neophyte must undergo essentially suffering, death and resurrection whilst enduring the following rituals:

- seclusion in the forest- face and body daubed with ashes to take on ghostly appearance: funerary masks
- difficult ordeals: beatings, torture
- symbolic burial in the temple
- hypnotic sleep: drink makes candidate unconscious
- symbolic descent to the otherworld
- symbolic resurrection

These rituals are designed to make the candidate forget his past life, on returning to the village he appears to have lost his memory, community considers while in the bush he has died and on his return consider them as ghosts. [23]

This immediately strikes a cord with the Celtic 'wildmen' we have discussed earlier enduring a period of solitude in the forest. Again, this is very similar to the motifs we have seen in Celtic literature in which we have already discussed the Hwimleian, the supernatural night wanderer, spirit of the forest, encountered by Myrddin, which has been translated at times as 'wildman'. Seclusion in the forest would appear to be a form of an initiation rite that we see experienced by the Celtic wildmen of the woods prior to symbolic death.

The shaman of the Buryats, the largest ethnic Siberian group, undergoes an initiation ceremony involving a he-goat and purification bath [24] which seems remarkably similar to the conditions that Lleu stipulates to bring about his death when he states he must stand with one foot on a buck goat and the other on the bath tub. As we have seen initiation is considered the death of the old way and start of the new.

In the Mabinogi of Math we see Lleu experiencing a psychological crisis and after being struck with a spear while in that particular pose, he then transforms into an eagle and then undergoing a period of isolation in the wilds until found by Gwydion. We have seen many of the Celtic wildman take on avian characteristics and perch in the treetops. It is the shaman who retrieves the souls of the sick and significantly, it is Gwydion who makes the symbolic journey to the otherworld to retrieve Lleu's soul from the oak tree in Nant Lleu As we saw above, the term 'dihenydd' is used by W J Gruffydd to describe Lleu's execution in the Fourth Branch, which can also be written as 'dienydd' meaning 'death, extinction of life' but containing the compound 'dien' which can have the spiritual meaning 'the separation of body and soul'. Gruffydd's choice of word would appear to be very apt as Gwydion retrieves Lleu's soul from the tree and nurses him back to full health, from then we can safely assume he has now graduated as a shaman. This episode is mirrored perfectly by the description given by the Tungus shaman Semyonov Semyon:

“Up above there is a certain tree where the souls of the shamans are reared, before they attain their powers. And on the boughs of this tree are nests in which the souls lie and are attended. The name of the tree is “Tuuru”. The higher the nest in the tree, the stronger will the shaman be who is raised in it, the more he will know, and the farther he will see”.[25]

In the Mabinogi of Math, the ordeal of Lleu meets all the requirements of shamanic initiation; he is struck by the spear as the symbolic death of the soul, transforms into the eagle and flies to the tree tops. He undergoes ritual dismemberment while in the tree as his flesh falls from his body and is devoured by the sow below. Gwydion retrieves his soul from the tree and rebuilds him.

In conclusion, the Shaman and the Druid share many similar traits as attested by the ancient tales recorded in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi; certainly a form of North European Shamanism existed in the Celtic lands.

for Leigh Ann

* * *

Notes:
10. Leigh Ann Hussey - The Ordeal of Lleu as Shamanic Initiation.
11. Graham Phillips - Merlin and the Discovery of Avalon in the New World – Bear and Company 2005, p.8.
12. Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees – Celtic Heritage, Thames and Hudson, 1978, p.17.
13. The Siege of Druim Damhgaire.
14. Jean Markale - The Epics of Ireland: Ancient Tales of Mystery and Magic – Inner Traditions 2000, pp 183-187.
15. Proto-Celtic - English, University of Wales, 2002.[PDF] 'Gwydion' would therefore be interpreted as 'knowing sense'. *Weidī-kondos would have descended into the Brythonic form *Vedicondos, which in turn would render Old Welsh *Gwydichonn, giving the Welsh Gwydion.
16. The word's etymology is uncertain and often disputed, however, it does appear to be connected to the Tungus root ša- "to know". According to Michael Ripinsky-Naxon the term 'SHAMAN' is derived from the Tungus-Mongol, or the Tungus-Manchu noun word 'saman' which is constructed from the Indo-European verb root 'sa' meaning 'to know'.Thus the French 'savoir' and the Spanish 'saber', “to know”, produce also linguistic relationships with such words as 'witch' and 'wizard' from the Indo-European root “to see” or “to know” as in the French 'voir' and Latin 'videre' and the German 'wissen', “to know”. Hence the cognate saman conveys the literal meaning “he who knows”. It is very possible that the Tungus-Mongol saman possesses a cognate in the Sanskrit 'sramana', meaning “an ascetic”. While in Pali, a samana, 'a beggar monk' may represent a true, but a later, cognate of the Altaic saman. - Michael Ripinsky-Naxon, The Nature of Shamanism: Substance and Function of a Religious Metaphor, State University of New York Press, 1993, p.69.
17. Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams - The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves – Trans. Sophie Hawkes. New York: Abrams, 1998. Lewis-Williams, in particular, has pushed the theory that the cave art of the Palaeolithic period depicts the same images as experienced by modern volunteers in hallucinatory experiments carried out during altered states of consciousness. Central to the argument is that modern man possesses the same neurophysiological system as Palaeolithic man, we have not changed in 40,000 years, and therefore the ancient shamans would have witnessed the same images which they then adorned on the cave walls. This explanation for the cave art has not been universally accepted by any means.
18. Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, 1969, p. 231
19. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton University Press; New Edition, 2004, p.4. First published in French in 1951, first English edition 1964.
20. Ibid. pp.31-33.
21. Ibid. p. 13
22. Ibid. p.18
23. Ibid. p.64
24. Ibid. p.116
25. Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, 1969, p. 256, quoted from “Legendy i rasskazy o shamanach u Yakutov, Buryat i Tungusov”, collected by G. V. Ksenofontov (Moscow 1930). Translated from the Russian (into German) as Schamanengeschichten aus Sibirien, (Legends of Siberian Shamans) by A. Friedriech and G. Buddruss, Clemens Zerling, Munich 1955, pp 213-14, While carrying out serious research into Christianity and its early history Ksenofontov, termed an 'outstanding Yakut scientist', claimed to have discovered a similarity between Christianity and 'shamanstvo' (shamanizing). The title of Ksenofontov's second book, Christ: Shamanism and Christianity indicates that he considered it was not just a casual similarity. It is incredible that such important works in this discipline have not been translated into English considering the modern popularity of shamanism.

* * *

Wizards and Wildmen: Lleu's Death

Lud’s Church (XIV)
Part One

Pierced by a spear, crushed by a stone,
And drowned in the stream’s waters,
Myrddin died a triple death. [1]
Lleu’s Death
Lleu’s transformation into an eagle at the end of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi has been the subject of much discussion, not least the similarities between Lleu and the Norse god Odin in what is claimed to be a shamanistic initiation ritual. The eagle features in many mythologies around the world, its majestic qualities leading to association with ancient kings throughout history.

The Mabinogi of Math details a strange sequence of conditions required to bring about Lleu’s death. Firstly, he can only be killed with a spear that must have been worked for a year and a day, only on Sunday, during the time of Mass; secondly he cannot be killed inside or outside a house; thirdly he can neither be killed on horseback or on foot.

These conditions are overcome when Lleu emerges from the bath in a gazebo-like bath house, having no walls but a roof, therefore neither “indoors or out”. He places one foot on the back of a buck-goat and the other on the edge of the bath, neither “on land nor on water” or “on horseback or on foot”.

Goronowy Pebyr cast the spear which struck Lleu, he immediately turned into an eagle and took flight to be found later on an oak tree by Gwydion at Nantlle in western Snowdonia. A suggested translation for Goronwy Pebyr has been “shining/radiant, spearman”. “Shining/radiant” has also been suggested as an etymology for the name Lleu which has led to suggestions that he is a sun deity

The conditions required to bring about Lleu’s death bring to mind the 14th Century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, conjectured at being written in the Staffordshire Moorlands, nearby to Lud’s Church. We have already discussed how this medieval tale probably derived originally from the much earlier 8th Century Irish tale Bricriu’s Feast (The Champion’s Bargain or Portion). [2] A shorter, more archaic version of Bricriu’s Feast, called the Yellow or Terror version (sometimes the Uath version), and differs from the Champion’s Bargain in that the warriors must travel to meet the challenger. They meet a man known as Yellow son of Fair, who sends them onto meet a man called Terror son of Great Fear who challenges them to the Beheading Contest beside a lake.

The Beheading Contest always features three strikes, or axe cuts in this tale, which is symbolic of the threefold death reserved for Kings and Deities in Proto-Indo-European mythology holding a particular obsession in Celtic myth. There are essentially two distinct types of threefold death in Indo-European myth, the first being, the death of one individual simultaneously in three ways; hanging from a tree (strangulation); drowning; wounding. The threefold death is foretold, often by the victim himself, and can be considered as retribution for an offence against one, or more, of the three functions of Indo-European society. [3]
The second form of the threefold death is divided into three distinct deaths as sacrifices to three distinct gods of the three functions.

The threefold death as three distinct sacrifices can be found in the epic poem Pharsalia, (also known as De Bello Civili or On the Civil War) telling of the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate, written by Lucan in 61-65AD. The poem describes Caesar's conquest of Gaul; he describes three Celtic gods to whom are delivered human sacrifices:

”And those who pacify with blood accursed
Savage Teutates, Hesus' horrid shrines,
And Taranis' altars cruel as were those” [4]

According to a marginal note in a medieval manuscript of the Pharsalia:

“Taranis was propitiated by burning, Teutates by drowning, and Esus by means of suspending his victims from trees and ritually wounding them”.

Book III of the The Pharsalia recounts the Roman vexation at the horror of the Druid groves, giving another life in their affirmation of the transmigration of the soul, which permeated Celtic religion at the time. The following passage paints a macabre scene of the Druid’s forest groves and appears to portray firsthand experience by the poet:

“Now fell the forests far and wide, despoiled
Of all their giant trunks: for as the mound
On earth and brushwood stood, a timber frame
Held firm the soil, lest pressed beneath its towers
The mass might topple down. There stood a grove
Which from the earliest time no hand of man
Had dared to violate; hidden from the sun
Its chill recesses; matted boughs entwined
Prisoned the air within. No sylvan nymphs
Here found a home, nor Pan, but savage rites
And barbarous worship, altars horrible
On massive stones upreared; sacred with blood
Of men was every tree. If faith be given
To ancient myth, no fowl has ever dared
To rest upon those branches, and no beast
Has made his lair beneath: no tempest falls,
Nor lightnings flash upon it from the cloud.
Stagnant the air, unmoving, yet the leaves
Filled with mysterious trembling; dripped the streamsFrom coal-black fountains; effigies of gods
Rude, scarcely fashioned from some fallen trunk” [5]

Lleu in Y Gododdin
In Part XIII – Gwydion’s Eagle we discussed Y Gododdin the Dark Age poem recalling a raid by the Gododdin, a tribe occupying modern Lothian, on Catraeth, an event usually dated around the end of the 6th Century. The raid was a disaster for the Northern Britons; in one account only the poet Aneirin survives. We noted how there are in existence various renditions of that poem owing to the fact that it survives in the mid-13th Century manuscript in at least three variants, namely A, B1 and B2 texts.
All three texts, and therefore the oldest variant, B2 text, contain the lines “the rock of Lleu’s tribe, the folk of Lleu’s mountain stronghold at Gododdin’s frontier” a reference to Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh, also known as The Crag or The Rock.

It has been proposed that the youngest variant of Y Gododdin, the A text, moved to Gwynedd following the Battle of Winwaed, recorded in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle as 655AD. This variant became enlarged with additions from a Welsh scribe to 88 stanzas and was no doubt influenced by a similar oral tradition as the Mabinogi as it contains references to characters from Culhwch ac Olwen and mentions Twrch Trwyth, the boar hunted by Arthur. The A text contains the reference to “Gwydion’s Eagle” generally accepted as a direct reference to Lleu from the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi. [6]

The episode of Lleu’s death at the end of the Mabinogi of Math would appear to contain all the details of the threefold death in Celtic society, even transmigration of his soul as an eagle. Significantly, this same stanza also alludes to Myrddin, who also suffered a threefold death.

Myrddin in Y Gododdin
In that same stanza of the A text variant of Y Gododdin mentioning Lleu as Gwydyen’s Eagle there is also an allusion to Myrddin, included in the following lines,

Morien defended,
The fair song of Myrddin and laid the head,
Of a chief in the earth….. [7]

Compare with another translation of the same passage:

Morien defended,
Myrddin’s praise song, and placed the chieftain,
In earth….. [8]

The earlier, B text, version of the poem omits this line, therefore it cannot safely be regarded as part of the original 6th Century poem, and suspiciously looking like a later addition to the A text variant of Y Gododdin, dated to 900-1100 AD, as we have seen above, developed with Gwynedd influence. Although Myrddin does not appear in the Mabinogi, his influence would appear to be from an independent Northern tradition.

The earliest known reference to Myrddin occurs in "Armes Prydein" (the Omen or Prophecy of Britain). The earliest extant manuscript copy of this prophetic poem dates to c.1275 AD, contained within the Book of Taliesin. However, the poem has been dated on linguistic and historic grounds to c.930 AD. The name Myrddin appears only once in the poem, in the opening line of one stanza that reads:

"Dysgogan Myrdin ..." (Myrddin fortells)

We cannot totally dismiss the possibility that the poem experienced later additions in Gwynedd as with Y Gododdin textual variations, and the name Myrddin substituted at some point later than 930 AD, it is generally considered to be original as it safely fits the poem structure as a similar opening formula is used on two other occasions in the poem:

"Dysgogan Awen ..." (poetic inspiration fortells)
"Dysgogan derwydon ..." (wise men fortell)

Myrddin is considered by some commentators to be a genuine historical character from Dark Age Northern Britain, but there would appear to be no evidence to support this. Historically he is an even more elusive than the warrior Arthur. The basic element of the Myrddin legend no doubt has its provenance in Northern Britain and as we have seen with Y Gododdin, became influenced by later Welsh medieval literature.

However, there does appear to be an independent tradition regarding a prophet called Myrddin as we have seen in the Omen of Britain, although we cannot securely date this tradition prior to the 10th Century. The common perception of a wizard in a pointed hat with long white beard as familiar to most people from childhood tales are no more than modern interpretations of the Merlin creation of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey had to rename him as Merlin as Myrddin sounds too much like merde, excrement to a Norman audience.

Continued in Wizards and Wildmen Part II - Son of an Incubus

*

Notes:
1. "Meldred and Lailoken”, British Library manuscript Cotton Titus A. XIX.
2. See Part III – The Hawk of May
3. The Trifunctional Hypothesis is a controversial conjecture proposed by French mythographer Georges Dumézil. The hypothesis states that Indo-European religion has societies and religions divided into three similar roles: warriors, priests, and farmers, as seen in the Welsh story Lludd & Lleuelys, which echoes three elements of the story of Naudu and Lug, in the Irish tale The Second Battle of Mag Tuired.
4. Pharsalia (“On The Civil War"), BOOK I, The Crossing of the Rubicon - Marcus Annaeus Lucanus. The Online Medieval & Classical Library [http://omacl.org/Pharsalia/book1.html]
5. Pharsalia (“On The Civil War"), BOOK III Massilia, The Online Medieval & Classical Library [http://omacl.org/Pharsalia/book3.html]
6. John T Koch, The Gododdin of Aneirin: Text & Context from Dark Age North Britain, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1997.
7. A O H Jarman, Aneirin: Y Gododdin, Gomer Press 1990, stanza 45, p.30.
8. Joseph P Clancy, Medieval Welsh Poems, Four Courts Press 2003, A text, stanza 40, p.55.


Picture Credits:
• Lleu’s Bath House from The Mabinogion by Lady Charlotte Guest
• Merlin and Vivien enter the woods. Engraving by Gustave Dore.

* * *