Welsh - Branwen uerch Lyr

Branwen, the daughter of Llyr: Efnysien shows his true colours

Branwen uerch Lyr ‘Branwen, the daughter of Llyr’, to give it its full title, is the second of the four tales which goes to make up the medieval Welsh narrative, Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi ‘The Four Branches of the Mabinogi’. Full versions of these tales are preserved in two fourteenth-century manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch (digital image) and the the Red Book of Hergest (digital image). The text presented here comes from the White Book and can be found on folio 14v. The narrative of Branwen is a tale of royal marriage, insult, revenge and the disastrous consequences. Branwen, sister of Bendigeiduran ‘blessed Bran’, the king of Britain, is given in a dynastic marriage to Matholwch, king of Ireland. At the wedding-feast Matholwch is insulted by Efnisien, her half-brother. Compensation is paid, but the insult still smoulders and on their return to Ireland the Irish persuade Matholwch to set Branwen aside. She then spends her life working in the royal kitchens and being beaten by the cook. When eventually Bran hears of his sister’s plight he leads an army to Ireland to avenge her. This passage comes towards the end of the narrative. The Irish have been using the peir dadeni, a mystical cauldron of re-birth, to restore their soldiers to life, and Efnisien arranges to be thrown into it to destroy it.