For instance some of the stories have digressions giving spurious reasons for the names of places.

Then a version is set in ink, the way that maybe one person told them in one place and at one time. Stories are told and changed, always in flux until they are caught between the pages of a book. The odd thing about collections like this is the need to drop any idea of an original version of the stories. The Mabinogion is a collection of Welsh stories preserved in manuscripts from the fourteenth century, but it's assumed that the stories are older than that, they have been translated into English since the eighteenth century and this collection is in that tradition. The advantage of Ford's translation is its inclusion of the earliest version of 'The Story of Taliesin' the disadvantage is it doesn't include the Three Romances ('Peredur', 'Owain', and 'Gereint').ĭ.) a translation that focuses on the environment of Wales: the Bollard translation is great for this. The real advantage of this book is if you're interested in the history of how the Mabinogion has been treated in the English language otherwise, you should decide if you wantĪ.) a literal translation: in that case, go with the Jones and Jones translation of the 1950s (IIRC), offered by Everymanī.) a readable translation that also tries to give the flavor of the medieval original: in that case, go with Sioned Davies' translation from 2006.Ĭ.) a translation that focuses on the pre-Christian mythology of the non-Romance tales: in that case, go with the Patrick Ford translation from the 1970s. Y Mabinogi and other Welsh tales) and Lady Charlotte Guest's sometimes-bowdlerized, romanticized, nineteenth-century (and I mean that in the worst possible way) translation (which would garner at best two stars, because I'm feeling generous). I'm splitting the difference between my love of the medieval collection (i.e.

The Mabinogion by Unknown