Welsh Version Research Articles

Eric fighting in Guatemala. Adaptation and proximation of medieval Arthurian literature in Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s Erec y Enide

Abstract Europe boasts a large number of traditions and cultures which coexist in a relatively small space. However, despite this, different literary motifs and topics have been readapted and transformed into other different traditions. The Arthurian legend is a prime example of this. Whilst it originated in the British Isles, it rapidly expanded throughout the continent in many different cultural manifestations, from poetry to decorative arts, music to drama. The Arthurian legend acquired special importance in France, where Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide gave it a courtly touch. The Welsh version of the story, Geraint ap Erbin, is less courtly than its French counterpart but keeps elements proper to the Welsh tradition. Thus, the Arthurian legend developed in different cultural traditions throughout the Middle Ages and it is the object of readaptations even today. Erec et Enide was recently rewritten and readapted into Spanish as a contemporary story focusing on modern-day problems. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s Erec y Enide is an exceptional example of intercultural practice tailored to a culture (or even cultures) different from the original one in which it was composed. This article analyses the process of transferring and recreating the European medieval time and space of the French and Welsh texts into a Latin-American contemporary context, where brigands and thieves are substituted by henchmen and guerrillas and argues how translation can play a key role in the recreation of the medieval world in a contemporary setting.

Arthur in the Celtic languages. The Arthurian legend in Celtic literatures and traditions ed. by Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan & Erich Poppe

Reviewed by: Arthur in the Celtic languages. The Arthurian legend in Celtic literatures and traditions ed. by Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan & Erich Poppe Matthieu Boyd (bio) Arthur in the Celtic languages. The Arthurian legend in Celtic literatures and traditions, ed. Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan & Erich Poppe. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019. ISBN 978–1–78683–343–3 (cloth), e-book formats available. 432 pages. £75 (e-book £34.99) / US$100. The Arthur of the Welsh (Bromwich, Jarman, & Roberts 1991, henceforth AoW) was hailed as a landmark book, and was followed, in due course, by seven more Arthurs in the Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages series co-published by the University of Wales Press and the Vinaver Trust. Now the series has come full circle with Arthur in the Celtic languages (henceforth AiCL), which is both much more and slightly less than a second edition of AoW. That is, AiCL should happily join AoW on everyone’s bookshelf, but it is not clear that it can entirely replace it, given AoW’s continuing value for the history of scholar-ship. Nor would AiCL seem to entirely replace the other single book that has so far been the closest thing to it, the special volume (xxi) of Arthurian literature on Celtic Arthurian material (Lloyd-Morgan 2004). For each chapter of AiCL, there will be earlier work that comes to mind—often by the same authors—that is similar and perhaps goes into significantly more or less detail, including chapters of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Arthurian literature edited by Helen Fulton (2009). AiCL brings almost all of this together in one place and makes a few significant revisions; and instead of the ‘Celtic origins’ framing in Fulton’s Companion, here the Celtic literatures take center stage. The introduction to AiCL mentions some of the developments since AoW that justify revisiting the Welsh material. The Cornish, Breton, and Gaelic coverage, of course, is mostly new to the series, and wonderful to have in this convenient form. [End Page 251] AoW did discuss saints’ lives, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and related prophecies, for which the primary reference would now be the chapters by Andrew Breeze, Siân Echard, and Julia Crick in The Arthur of medieval Latin literature (Echard 2011). AoW also started with a brief inquiry into the historical Arthur, which has fallen by the wayside in AiCL in favor of approaching Arthur from the outset as a literary and cultural phenomenon. AiCL opens with Nerys Ann Jones on ‘Arthurian references in early Welsh poetry’ (see her more extensive treatment in Jones 2019), John Bollard on ‘The earliest Myrddin poems’, and Jenny Rowland on ‘Trystan and Esyllt’. The Welsh Triads, meanwhile, show up not in this earliest round of texts, but in a later section on ‘Influences and re-compositions’, which reframes them as an evolving corpus showing European influence, as opposed to primordial lore. The ‘native Welsh’ tales Culhwch ac Olwen and the famously undatable Breuddwyd Rhonabwy are covered by Simon Rodway and Catherine McKenna respectively, and benefit from the singular focus: these chapters not only situate the stories, but ask important questions about what they are saying. There follows a section on translations and adaptations into Welsh: Katherine Himsworth discusses Brut y brenhinedd, the Welsh version of Geoffrey of Monmouth; then there are chapters on Owein, Geraint, and Peredur. These are treated independently in AiCL: the usefulness of grouping them together as ‘the three romances’ is considered and rejected at 113–114. The respective chapters—by Regine Reck, Poppe, and Lloyd-Morgan—highlight specifics of the adaptation from the corresponding romances by Chrétien de Troyes and related shifts in theme and values. A topic mentioned only briefly here (111–113, in Poppe & Lloyd-Morgan’s overview ‘The first adaptations from French. History and context of a debate’) is the problem of Celtic influence on Arthurian literature in French and English. A common view prior to AiCL (see, for example, Hellman 2014) has been that, even if the Welsh adaptations show influence from Chrétien, they also reflect the source material Chrétien had to work with. Since The Arthur of the French (Burgess & Pratt 2006) did not go into...

Peredur and the Problem of Inappropriate Questions

Abstract This article reopens the question of the relationship between the medieval Welsh version of the Grail narrative, the Historia Peredur vab Efrawc, and the French Conte du Graal of Chrétien de Troyes. It explores the seeming inconsistencies in the Welsh tale’s presentation of the Grail procession, and suggests that the hero’s actions, and in particular his reticence in asking questions about the procession, should be read in the context of medieval Welsh customs and legal tradition. The article concludes with an exploration of the implications of the proposed interpretation for the reading of Historia Peredur as a postcolonial narrative.

A Welsh Version ofVisio Pauli: Its Latin Source and the Translator’s Contribution

This article undertakes a comparative analysis of the Middle Welsh version of Visio Pauli transmitted in Oxford Jesus College MS. 119 in relation to its Latin analogues. According to Silverstein’s ...

Stories from Poland by a Welsh Soldier–John Elwyn Jones’s Translations

Abstract The majority of translations from Polish into Welsh published so far are the works of John Elwyn Jones (1921-2008), who learned Polish in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. His translations include Storiâu Byr o’r Bwyleg, a collection of short stories by two of the classic authors of the Polish Positivist period, Bolesław Prus and Henryk Sienkiewicz. This paper analyses two stories from the collection, Ianco’r Cerddor “Janko Muzykant” and Y Wasgod “Kamizelka”, within a comparative functional model of translation criticism. The texts are analysed in the light of lexical-semantic, cultural and aesthetic codes. A great number of modifications to the source texts introduced in the Welsh translation places them on the border between free translations and adaptations. While some of the alterations are tokens of a specific translation strategy, others can be regarded as translation errors. Although the Welsh version retains the primary message of the original stories, much of their culture-specific dimension, historical context and artistic value is not conveyed in the translation.

Enhancing rigour in the validation of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs): bridging linguistic and psychometric testing

BackgroundA strong consensus exists for a systematic approach to linguistic validation of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) and discrete methods for assessing their psychometric properties. Despite the need for robust evidence of the appropriateness of measures, transition from linguistic to psychometric validation is poorly documented or evidenced. This paper demonstrates the importance of linking linguistic and psychometric testing through a purposeful stage which bridges the gap between translation and large-scale validation.FindingsEvidence is drawn from a study to develop a Welsh language version of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and investigate its psychometric properties. The BDI-II was translated into Welsh then administered to Welsh-speaking university students (n = 115) and patients with depression (n = 37) concurrent with the English BDI-II, and alongside other established depression and quality of life measures. A Welsh version of the BDI-II was produced that, on administration, showed conceptual equivalence with the original measure; high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.90; 0.96); item homogeneity; adequate correlation with the English BDI-II (r = 0.96; 0.94) and additional measures; and a two-factor structure with one overriding dimension. Nevertheless, in the student sample, the Welsh version showed a significantly lower overall mean than the English (p = 0.002); and significant differences in six mean item scores. This prompted a review and refinement of the translated measure.ConclusionsExploring potential sources of bias in translated measures represents a critical step in the translation-validation process, which until now has been largely underutilised. This paper offers important findings that inform advanced methods of cross-cultural validation of PROMs.

Feasibility, validity and reliability of the Welsh version of the EQ-5D health status questionnaire

The feasibility, reliability and validity of a Welsh version of the EQ-5D health-related quality of life questionnaire were evaluated by means of a postal questionnaire administered on two occasions to a sample of adults across Welsh-speaking areas of Wales. The absolute response rate was 126 (out of 1,000), though after considering language and expected response to Welsh language questionnaires, the adjusted response rate was 50%. Respondents' mean age was 56.8 +/- 18 years and 38.7% reported having chronic illness. The number of missing items from the descriptive EQ-5D (aggregated for both administrations) was 4, representing 0.33% of all responses. Five EQ-VAS responses were returned incomplete. 97 (85.8%) respondents reported no change in health in the fortnight between the first and second administration. The Spearman rank coefficients for these respondents were 0.828 for EQ-5D scores, and 0.815 for EQ-VAS, respectively (both P < 0.000). Construct validity was confirmed by the power of the EQ-5D to discriminate between those expected to be healthy or otherwise, as assessed by self-reported health, presence of chronic illness, receipt of treatment, and age (all P < 0.0001). It is concluded that the Welsh version of the EQ-5D is both valid and reliable for measuring health status in subjects across Wales.

The Wandering Giant in Literature: From Polyphemus to Papageno by D. D. R. Owen (review)

466 Reviews all and sundry open house. As forthis reader, now it showed me in, now it pointed to the door. If hospitality betokens opening up, then why stop at the near-exponential coverage of this compendium? Why not let in spiders and flies, Her Majesty's pri? sons, our bodies' coexistence with microbes, or sexual partners, for taking in can mean welcome, deceit, or erotic togetherness, when we are in or around each other. Hitchhikers, the editor remarks, could have had a ride. There is a huge bibliography to round offthe blanket-bombing of the subject. The essayists, all thoughtful if few original, often bang on the obvious, as when several of them discover seriatim that between outside and inside lies a threshold. A nagging suspicion remains that a goodly number are going, albeit with professional thoroughness, through various routines triggered by the overarching topic ofthe book. Among the plethora, I have had to be eclectic, nay picky. Thank you for having me, but I must move on now. University of Reading Walter Redfern The Wander ingGiant in Literature: From Polyphemus toPapageno. By D. D. R. Owen. East Linton: Tuckwell Press. 2003. vi+i53pp. ?14.99. ISBN 1-86232-127-2. So long as humans remember to exaggerate, giants will not become an endangered or extinct species; nothing can sink the titanic. D. D. R. Owen starts by stressing the giant as protean, 'the shape-shifter', though the transformations he records over the centuries turn out to be unastounding. Apart from 'the pleasures of the chase', he does not explain why his quarry lures him on. Interestingly, however, he finds that both pagan and Christian mythologies breed colossi, who in the former tradition possess greater complexity. Polyphemus is his ur-giant, the monocular, man-eating Cyclops girt by beasts. In a later avatar, Polyphemus grows love-sick and has a liaison with Galatea, while remaining painfully conscious of his unappetizing mien (the Quasimodo complex, we might say). In the pious allegories of the 'Ovide moralise', he mutates to Satan. In Irish myth, he re-emerges as Fer Caille and as Ysbaddadan in the Welsh version. Owen emphasizes the key role of oral transmission, and its concomitant doctoring, spinning, inverting, and expatiating of the trigger-story. Although regularly drawn into scholarly argy-bargies, on the controversy over Yvain/Owein, Owen's sanely settling forwhat he calls 'cultural give-and-take' seems more plausible than any one-way theory. The constants of the Polyphemus tradition as he tracks it are: the outsize figure, his blackness and shagginess, and (in variable forms) the mastery over beasts. For Owen the height ofthe curve occurs in Sir Gawain and theGreen Knight (where a verdant giant, centuries later, spawned the logo on cans of sweetcorn). Indeed, the original terrifying,if partly comic, ogre modulates over time into increasing sweetness, even a kind of gentrification. Other instances chased up by Owen include the gruffbogeyman Danger (Owen rebaptizes him 'Reluctance') in the Romance of theRose. Owen, however, escalates his leitmotif by finding Polyphe? mus yet again transmogrified in Voltaire's Candide (the syphilis-scarred Dr Pangloss), where Owen detects analogies with Aucassin et Nicolette. The final appearance, none too recognizable, is the big-talking ifun-huge Papageno in The Magic Flute. The 'wandering' of Owen's title refers to giants, or one protypical such, cropping up in differentcultures and epochs, and in changing guises, rather than to any peripatetic activity on their part. In fact, they come across as curiously home-bird by inclination. Throughout, Polyphemus gets lost periodically or goes underground, sidelined by the academic truffle-huntfor sources and similarities, and the generally polite textual in-fighting. All in all, Owen has domesticated the wild man-mountain ofthe Odyssey, and in fact engineers a happy ending. He seems to preferthe awesome MLR, 100.2, 2005 467 Titan warbling 'O ruddier than the cherry' in Handel's Acis and Galatea. Children know better. Ted Hughes's troubling fantasy forthem, The Iron Man, shows how the Goliath can remain potent in our litotic age. University of Reading Walter Redfern Why Does Literature Matter? By Frank B. Farrell. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press. 2004. xi +266 pp...

Malory's Le Morte Darthur : Anatomy of a Legend; Understanding Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; The Legend of Arthur in Literature and Popular Culture (review)

96ARTHURIANA Katherine's shrine) would have been able to take 'imitative journeys' to that place by visiting those shrines in medieval England built to duplicate the saint's resting place (p. 51). Jane Carrwright attends to the various 'lacks' in the Welsh version of the saint's life {Buchedd Catrín) that distinguish it from other versions in England or the continent (the Welsh version is not concerned with Catrin's nobility or her education) in order to indicate the appeal the legend might have had for a broader audience. Jenkins reads a late medieval prose life of Katherine and places it within the context of'laywomen's reading, devotional practices, and manuscript production' through an examination of Harley MS 4012 which includes an introductory Prohemium indicating 'the legend's intended use as a private devotional and meditative text' (p. 154). Two essays are primarily concerned with how the legend was consumed and altered by clerical audiences. Sherry L. Reames reads breviary lessons on St. Katherine and detects 'a certain degree ofclerical ambivalence' about Katherine's rhetorical skills, her sexuality, and her mystical marriage with Christ (p. 208). Alison Frazier's essay on the Italian humanist Antonio degli Agli's unsuccessful efforts to integrate hagiography and historiography in his De vitis etgestissanctorum similarly notes that clerical audiences often found whatJenkins calls 'the polysemous nature' of Katherine's cult more troublesome than inspiring (p. 116). I would make special note of the essays by Anke Bernau, Karen A. Winstead, and Emily C. Francomano because ofthe care with which they present and analyze what Winstead calls 'the varied imaginings ofgender that marked the later Middle Ages' (p. 199). Bernau shows that a culture in which 'virginity [was] shown to govern and exemplify both proper bodily governance and speech' would have had particular interest in Katherine's ability to confound her tormenters with her verbal eloquence (p. 114). Francomano's study ofa medieval Iberian manuscript that includes DeSanta Catalina with other saint's lives and romance tales firmly places Katherine's legend within a larger cultural 'debate about women's nature' (p. 133). Finally, Winstead's study of visual representations in which Katherine is shown to have short hair— what Winstead calls 'an androgynous. . .aspect ofKatherine' (p. 188)—suggests that the saint could, in a single representative moment, appeal to both women and men. For those interested in the specifics of Katherine's cult, the broad range of the collection will prove enlightening and substantial. For those more generally interested in the representation of female saints, essays such as those by Lewis, Bernau, and Winstead are clearly in dialogue with current studies ofdevotional practices in the Middle Ages. KATE KOPPELMAN University of Montevallo Malory's Lc Morte Darthur: Anatomy ofa Legend; Understanding Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; The Legend ofArthur in Literature and Popular Culture. Video Series: TracingtheArthurian Tradition. Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 2002. $129.95 per video; $349.95 for the set of three videos. In the quest to appeal to an increasingly visually-oriented student body, academics teaching Arthurian literature often supplement their class presentations with documentary videos about the Arthurian legend. Most of the videos currently REVIEWS97 available, aimed at satisfying the educated general public's seemingly inexhaustible fascination with things Arthurian, were originally broadcast by PBS Television, The History Channel, Biography, or theA&E Network. These programs have been assembled from a montage of filmed still images, brief generalizations made by 'talking heads'—not always the best scholarlyauthorities on thesubject—and footage ofplaces associatedwithArthur.To satisfy theTV audience's 'star interest,' voiceovers by familiar actors like Leonard Nimoy or Richard Harris handle the narration, while the visuals all too often feature travelogue-like camera shots lingering over telegenic scenes of Tintagel castle ruin or Glastonbury Tor at sunset. Although inevitably these previous documentaries mention in passing medieval Arthurian texts or examples ofnineteenth- or twentieth-centurymedievalism, the literary texts and their authors receive rather short shrift. This new series ofrelated videos aims at 'Tracing the Arthurian Tradition' not so much by raising the overused question ofthe 'historical' versus 'legendary' Arthur as much as by chronicling the development ofmedieval-through-modern Arthurian literature and the endurance of the legend in...

St. Katherine of Alexandria, Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe edited by Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (review)

REVIEWS95 text that, he argues, deserves more critical attention despite the author's real deficiencies in writing style and prosody. If, judging a book by its cover, readers expect a collection ofstudies about identity in a wide-range of medieval romances, they will surely be disappointed. However, they will find a number ofsolid investigations that contribute to the field ofMiddle English studies as well as several comparative readings of a variety of interesting works. The collection is most useful to generalists in any field ofmedieval literature— particularly those familiar with the continental tradition in Old French. LYNNE DAHMEN Al Akhawayn University , Ifrane, Morocco Jacqueline jenkins and Katherine j. lewis, eds., St. Katherine of Alexandria, Texts and Contexts in Western MedievalEurope. Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 8. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2003. Pp. xiv, 257. isbn:2—503—51290-9. EUR 67.50. In their introduction to this collection often essays, JacquelineJenkins and Katherine Lewis note that 'a great part of the intrinsic power and popularity ofSt. Katherine in Medieval Europe was her ability to resist easy categorization, and to be many things to many people' (p. 18). In like fashion, the main success ofthe collection is its presentation ofwhat Jenkins and Lewis call 'interdisciplinary and multinational criticism' on St. Katherine's cult both within and beyond the Middle Ages (p. 4). The essays included address many different objects ofstudy (Books ofHours, 'replica shrines' of Mount Sinai, breviary lessons, literary versions of Katherine's life in various languages) while using a wide range of theoretical approaches. The essays are strongest when they are not overly anxious about why Katherine's cult was popular across historical and cultural divides (a question most often answered by the authors with a resigned, 'We don't know.'), but instead demonstrate how the cult enacted its multifaceted nature by interacting (often in quite complex ways) with other cultural constructs (chivalry, aristocracy, lay devotion, or gender categories, for example). Early in the introduction, Jenkins and Lewis present what will become one ofthe main concerns for many ofthe authors: the different audiences for whom Katherine became an object of devotion and study. All but two of the essays focus on lay devotion to the saint. The essays by Christine Walsh and Tracey R. Sands concern themselves with how Katherine's legend might have been read by devotees interested in establishing and/or strengthening their own connections to nobility. Walsh examines devotion to Katherine in eleventh- and twelfth-century Normandy, arguing that it was related to the 'economic and political' interests of those involved. Sands examines naming traditions and sigillographie evidence to argue for a particular popularity for Katherine among medieval Sweden's aristocracy. Many more ofthe essays argue that lay devotion to Katherine might have extended beyond a noble audience. Lewis's fascinating essay argues that laywomen who would not have been able to afford an actual pilgrimage to Mount Sinai (the site of 96ARTHURIANA Katherine's shrine) would have been able to take 'imitative journeys' to that place by visiting those shrines in medieval England built to duplicate the saint's resting place (p. 51). Jane Carrwright attends to the various 'lacks' in the Welsh version of the saint's life {Buchedd Catrín) that distinguish it from other versions in England or the continent (the Welsh version is not concerned with Catrin's nobility or her education) in order to indicate the appeal the legend might have had for a broader audience. Jenkins reads a late medieval prose life of Katherine and places it within the context of'laywomen's reading, devotional practices, and manuscript production' through an examination of Harley MS 4012 which includes an introductory Prohemium indicating 'the legend's intended use as a private devotional and meditative text' (p. 154). Two essays are primarily concerned with how the legend was consumed and altered by clerical audiences. Sherry L. Reames reads breviary lessons on St. Katherine and detects 'a certain degree ofclerical ambivalence' about Katherine's rhetorical skills, her sexuality, and her mystical marriage with Christ (p. 208). Alison Frazier's essay on the Italian humanist Antonio degli Agli's unsuccessful efforts to integrate hagiography and historiography in his De vitis etgestissanctorum similarly notes...

Magic in Medieval Romance from Chrétien de Troyes to Geoffrey Chaucer by Michelle Sweeney (review)

948 Reviews Gower's Genius may lack authority), in general White skirts the important fact that many of the poems he discusses are poetic visions or psychological allegories: the positions taken by allegorical figures like Nature or Genius therefore reflectthe moral condition of a controlling central character. White, however, takes almost everything that is said, regardless of its point of view or tone, as a transparent reflection of the author's true opinions. This carelessness about form makes it difficultto achieve the praiseworthy task set early in the book?that is, to look at how the poets make the 'instability and ambivalence' of Nature a source of 'enormous poetic power as the focus of contesting energies within individual poems' (p. 47). Because the effect of form on meaning goes largely unacknowledged, we end up seeing Gower in the Confessio Amantis as an author who has tried but failed to reconcile the claims of Nature and Reason, rather than as one who self-consciously probes an allegorical fault-line to convey equivocations issuing from Amans. Parts of the chapter on Gower, however, show what this book could have been. White's understanding of Nature's ambiva? lence allows him to introduce to criticism of this poem a refreshing and clear-sighted recognition of Gower's pessimism; his reading of Amans's renunciation of love is closely observed and shows the potential of his method. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the book does not live up to this potential. The final chapter on Chaucer is especially disappointing. Here White skips from poem to poem without significantly engaging any of them or their relationship with the full tradition. In a book that at the beginning proclaims Gower and Chaucer as its ultimate objects (p. 7), one expects both less and more: a less meandering opening, a more sustained and thoughtful close. Wellesley College Kathryn L. Lynch Magic in Medieval Romance from Chretien de Troyes to GeoffreyChaucer. By Michelle Sweeney. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2000. 199 pp. ?35. ISBN 185182 -536-3. It is the virtue of this book to draw attention to an area which, one suspects, many earlier medievalists have regarded as just too silly to merit serious attention, but as the author?quite rightly?says of magic in the romances, 'to fail to acknowledge its influence is to diminish [. . .] a phenomenon which medieval authors saw as a means of interrogating their own community's sense of self and purpose' (p. 53). Sweeney's conclusion, expressed already in the introductory chapter, is that 'magic is used to achieve a similar purpose across the range of texts under discussion, that is, evaluation of the characters' values, identities or moral beliefs' (p. 19). The 'texts under discussion' include Geoffreyof Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae as progenitor of the Arthurian romances elaborated by Chretien de Troyes, the subject of the firstchapter, 'The Origins of Romance'. Chretien's derivative ro? mances and the 'Breton laisyof Marie de France are the texts drawn on in Chapter 2, 'Breaking the Celtic Spell'?though one suspects that this particular spell was never whole for the present author, who, despite writing from within a 'Celtic' university, is content to repeat the complacent Romanicist's position of downplaying the Celtic origins of the MF and ME romances. Indeed, she is far from up to date with the current state of scholarship on matters Celtic. Her familiarity with the 'Matter of Britain' underlying the Arthurian Romances, i.e the medieval Welsh tradition, is?to put it kindly?inadequate. Like many scholars of Romance romances, one suspects her familiarity with Welsh is minimal, if not non-existent, as exemplified by the frankly illiterate Prouder, which appears here for the name of the Welsh romance Peredur (p. 57). Even worse garbled is the statement on page 61 that one of the sources identified as influential on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae is 'potentially one ofthe Welsh Triads, namely the Tysilio\ As St Tysilio makes MLR, 98.4, 2003 949 no appearance whatsoever in the Trioedd Ynys Prydein, the reference is perhaps to the late medieval Welsh version of GeofTrey's Historia known (misleadingly, as it has nothing to do with the...

The Quest for Olwen (review)

REVIEWS159 One may question (as does John) whether Mordred is self-deluded, but there is little evidence to contradict his observations regarding Merlin and his influence overArthur. All three tales suggest Merlin's culpability in the Arthurian tragedy, albeit not entirely from selfish motives. Indeed, Merlin does create the estrangements between Arthur and his wife and between the king and his illegitimate son. If the other characters are less than ideal (Lancelot is especially debunked) Merlin nonetheless must shoulder a great deal of the blame for the catastrophic end ofArthur's tealm. Even if Mordred exaggerates when he views Merlin as a flim-flam man a la Twain's 'rival magician,' thete issome truth to hisclaims.AnArthurian Triptych is an enjoyable read for anyone interested in the continuing Arthurian tradition. REBECCA UMLAND University ofNebraska at Kearney The Questfor Olwen. Directed byValeri Ugarov. Script by Gwyn Thomas. Produced by Metta (Llangolen, Wales) and Soyuzmultfilm (Moscow) for S4C and HTV (Wales), 1990. Videotape available from Films for the Humanities & Sciences, P.O. Box 2053, Princeton, NJ 08543—2053 (1-800-257-5126). 22 minutes. $89.95. Although animatots have created more than fifty film tteatments of the Arthurian legend, the matter ofWales has curiously all but escaped their notice. In 1990 Welsh television S4C corrected this oversight with The Questfor Olwen, a twenty-two-minute animated feature based squarely on Culhwch andOlwen from TheMabinogion. While purists will always find details to quibble over in any adaptation, theywill also discover that scriptwriter Gwyn Thomas and the crew of Soviet artists who animated The Questfor Olwen do a reasonably faithful job of rendering Culhwch and Olwen for younger and/or less-sophisticated audiences that otherwise would be put offby some ofthe original tale's difficulties. As such, the film can be a useful classroom adjunct when teaching the mattet ofWales. The producers could not have found a mote sympathetic author than Thomas for the task ofsimplifying the story to meet the exigencies ofa short film. He has repeatedly streamlined the tale: as librettist for William Mathias's 1971 twenty-eight-minute Welsh/English choral work for children, Culhwch ac Olwen: Difyrrwch, as author of a 1988 modern Welsh version of Culhwch for children, and as author ofa 1988 English version as well, The Questfor Olwen, the immediate source behind this animated feature. Over the years, Thomas has labored to pare the narrative to its essential elementswithout doing harm to the intent ofthe original. In this film, he has generally done well. In the animated vetsion of The Questfor Olwen, after a mercifully briefnarrator's 'historical' introduction, the story moves rapidly through Culhwch's unusual birth in the pig-tun, the curse of love (Culhwch's quest for Olwen) his stepmother places upon him, his journey to Arthur's court for help in finding Olwen, Culhwch's first meeting with Olwen, and then on to Olwen's father, the giant Ysbaddaden, for the i6oarthuriana tasks Culhwch must complete before Olwen will be his and the giant will die—here, expiring when he sees his shaved face in a mirror rather than dying at the hands of one of Arthur's knights. Thomas strategically abridges the tale to limit Culhwch's adventures, trimming the original's many tasks to just four major ones: (i) recovering and planting the flax seed necessary for Olwen's bridal veil, (2) gaining the scissors and comb ofthe giant boar,TwrchTrwyth, to groomYsbaddaden, (3) finding Mabon, the hunter who will be required to locate Twrch, and (4) obtaining the blood ofthe Black Witch, needed to shave Ysbaddaden's tough beard. Thomas's revision is not unreasonable, given that even the original relates only a few ofCulhwch's adventures in any detail. The animators take more liberties than the scriptwriter. For instance, the object ofCulhwch's quest is on screen more than a readingofthe tale mightsuggest, making the film more clearly a love story than the original warrants. In fact, this film is The Quest for Olwen—without even a 'Culhwch' in the title—and the visuals have sometimes been skewed to emphasize this new perspective. The animators have also given themselves free rein in determining what the Welsh original's sketchy...

‘City harsh’ and ‘the welsh version of RP’: Some ways in which teachers view dialects of welsh English

This paper summarises some of the findings from a project in progress which researches teachers’ sociolinguistic awareness in Wales. A questionnaire was sent to secondary teachers all over Wales to investigate their perceptions of, and attitudes towards, geographical varieties of Welsh English. They were asked to draw in what they felt to be the main Welsh English dialect regions on a blank map of Wales, and then to label and characterise these regions in their own words. They were also asked to complete semantic differential scales for a number of conceptually presented varieties. In the scales task, they differentiated the varieties in such a way that each had its own evaluative profile along dimensions of prestige, dynamism, pleasantness, and Welshness, with one variety approximating subjective definition as a standard. The labels and characterisations provided by the teachers often carried highly evaluative content, and differentiated varieties in terms of the quality and relative proportions of comments relating to positive and negative affect, prestige, Welshness, English‐ness, perceived linguistic features etc. Some interesting differences between the labels and scales data are considered, and issues of importance to Language Awareness are highlighted.

Cân Rolant: The Medieval Welsh Version of the Song of Roland. Annalee C. Rejhon , Can Rolant

<i>Cân Rolant: The Medieval Welsh Version of the Song of Roland</i>. Annalee C. Rejhon , Can Rolant

The Welsh Versions of The New Testament, 1551—1620

In the fifth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I it was enacted by Parliament ‘that the Bishops of Hereford, Saint Davids, Asaph, Bangor and Llandaff… shall take such Order amongst themselves…, That the whole Bible…, with the Book of the Common Prayer…, as is now used within this Realm in English, to be truly and exactly translated into the British or WELSH tongue’. This authorization of a version of the Holy Scriptures by the English Parliament is unique, but that does not make the Welsh version the authorized version of the realm. What was endorsed by the 1563 Act was not the validity of the Welsh version as Scripture, but its legality despite being in Welsh. A generation earlier, the Act of Union of England and Wales had proscribed the use of Welsh in ‘any manner office or fees within this realm of England, Wales or other the Kings Dominion’. It so happened, however, that the 1563 Parliament had amongst its members a sufficient number who could be persuaded to put religious need before political expediency, having themselves but recently suffered for their religious convictions. Moreover, it was the good fortune of the Welsh people, in contrast with other Celtic groups, that they had in their midst, at this critical point in their history, men whose competence and scholarly equipment were equal to the task of producing a vernacular version. They were all alumni of the English Universities; and there they had come into contact with those movements which were radically transforming the intellectual, the religious and the political life of Western Europe. These were, of course, the rebirth of learning, the reformation of religion, the growth of national feeling with the accompanying emergence of vernacular literatures – movements whose irresistible onward surge was greatly accelerated by the printing press, an invention of the previous century. It was the dream of these Welshmen that this flood could be channelled to fructify the arid spiritual desert which they saw in their native land; and this they sought to achieve first and foremost by giving the Welsh people the Bible in printed form and in their own tongue.

A Welsh Version of the William Tell Legend

THE story of William Tell's skill in shooting at the apple placed on the head of his little son by order of Gessler, the tyrannical Austrian bailiff of Uri is closely bound up with the legendary history of the Swiss confederation and is of course well-known. Far less familiar, even among Welsh people, is a similar story found in a Welsh manuscript (Peniarth 13i), now at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. According to this Madog, son of Gruffydd Maelor (+ i191), a Welsh chieftain who had been dispossessed of his lands in Breconshire by William de Breos, son of William de Braioze and nephew of Earl Roger of Hereford, was ordered by Matilda (Maud) de St Valery, Countess of Breconshire and wife of William de Breos to shoot an apple from the head of his youngest son (he had five), also called Madog, a feat which he successfully accomplished. William Tell is a historical figure for he appears in a rising planned for 8 November, 1307, to expel the oppressors. Maud de St Valery (in the Welsh manuscript Maud Walbri) belongs to the twelfth century and is a notable figure around whom, as Moll Walbee, numerous legends grew, many no doubt of early date. William de Breos having seized the cantref of Elfael (East Breconshire) built two castles, one in the valley of the Colwyn for the commote of Upper Elfael, the other called by the Welsh Castell Paen or Payne's Castle in the valley of the Machawy for the commote of Lower Elfael (commotes still known as the hundreds of Colwyn and Painscastle). The latter was known to the English as Castrum Matildis or Castle Maud, no doubt because it had been stoutly defended against a Welsh attack in 1195 by Maud de St Valery, the Amazonian wife (as Sir J. E. Lloyd calls her) of its builder and lord a feat which would not endear her to the Welsh. (Lloyd, History of Wales, II, p. 585.)

Whole duty of man': Welsh version

Whole duty of man': Welsh version