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Celts, Bretons, Irish, Welsh, British, minstrels, harp, Orfeo, Orpheus
Author: Tim B. Page 118 of 204
Gogmagog (also Goemagot, Goemagog, Goëmagot and Gogmagoc) was a legendary giant in Welsh and later English folklore. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (“The History of The Kings of Britain”, 12th century), he was a giant inhabitant of Albion, thrown off a cliff during a wrestling match with Corineus (a companion of Brutus of Troy). Gogmagog was the last of the Giants found by Brutus and his men inhabiting the land of Albion.
The effigies of Gogmagog and Corineus, used in English pageantry and later instituted as guardian statues at Guildhall in London eventually earned the familiar names “Gog and Magog”.
Source: Gogmagog (giant) – Wikipedia
The Historia Brittonum describes the supposed settlement of Britain by Trojan expatriates and states that Britain took its name after Brutus, a descendant of Aeneas. The work was the “single most important source used by Geoffrey of Monmouth in creating his Historia Regum Britanniae”[1] and via the enormous popularity of the latter work, this version of the earlier history of Britain, including the Trojan origin tradition, would be incorporated into subsequent chronicles for the long-running history of the land, for example the Middle English Brut of England, also known as The Chronicles of England.
The work was the first source to portray King Arthur, who is described as a dux bellorum (‘military leader’) or miles (‘warrior, soldier’) and not as a king. It names the twelve battles that Arthur fought, but unlike the Annales Cambriae, none are assigned actual dates.
Source: Historia Brittonum – Wikipedia
The Brut Chronicle, also known as the Prose Brut, is the collective name of a number of medieval chronicles of the history of England. The original Prose Brut was written in Anglo-Norman; it was subsequently translated into Latin and English. The chronicle begins England’s history with the mythological founding of Britain by Brutus of Troy, named “Brut” in French and English; Brutus is the legendary great-grandson of Aeneas and his founding of Britain thus links that country to the grand history of Troy. […]
Originally a legendary chronicle written in Anglo-Norman in the thirteenth century (identified by the fact that some existing copies finish in 1272), the Brut described the settling of England by Brutus of Troy, son of Aeneas, and the reign of the Welsh Cadwalader.[7] In this, it was itself based on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s text from the previous century.[8] It also covered the reigns of many kings later the subject of legend, including King Cole, King Leir (the subject of Shakespeare’s play, King Lear), and King Arthur, and exists in both abridged and long versions.[7] Early versions describe the country as being divided, both culturally and politically, by the River Humber, with the southern half described as “this side of the Humber” and “the better part”.[9] Having been written at a time of division between crown and nobility, it was “baronial in its sympathies”.[10]
Source: Brut Chronicle – Wikipedia
Scota, in Scottish mythology, and pseudohistory, is the name given to the mythological daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh to whom the Gaels and Scots traced their ancestry. Scota first appeared in literature from the 11th or 12th century and most modern scholars interpret the legends surrounding her to have emerged to rival Geoffrey of Monmouth’s claims that the descendants of Brutus (through Albanactus) founded Scotland.[5][6] However some early Irish sources also refer to the Scota legends and not all scholars regard the legends as fabrications or as political constructions.[7] In the Scottish origin myths, Albanactus had little place and Scottish chroniclers (e.g., John of Fordun and Walter Bower) claimed that Scota was the eponymous founder of Scotland and the Scots long before Albanactus, during the time of Moses.
A petrosomatoglyph is a supposed image of parts of a human or animal body in rock. They occur all over the world, often functioning as an important form of symbolism, used in religious and secular ceremonies, such as the crowning of kings. Some are regarded as artefacts linked to saints or culture heroes.
Source: Petrosomatoglyph – Wikipedia
Prydain is the medieval Welsh term for the island of Britain (the name Albion was not used by the Welsh). More specifically, Prydain may refer to the Brittonic parts of the island; that is, the parts south of Caledonia. This distinction appears to derive from Roman times, when the island was divided into Roman Britain to the south and the land of the Caledonians to the North. The peoples north of the Roman borders eventually came to be known as the Picts (Welsh: Brithwyr); the Welsh term for Pictland was Prydyn, which caused some confusion in the texts with Prydain.
Source: Prydain – Wikipedia
Sometimes described as taking the form of a crocodile, giant beaver or dwarf, it is also said to be a demonic creature. The afanc was said to attack and devour anyone who entered its waters.
Various versions of the tale are known to have existed. Iolo Morganwg, who revived Welsh bardic traditions during the 18th and 19th centuries, popularised a version of the myth that had Hu Gadarn’s two long-horned oxen drag the afanc from the lake, enabling it to be killed. An earlier variation on this had the oxen cast the afanc into Llyn Ffynnon Las (lake of the blue fountain), where it was unable to breach its rocky banks to escape.
In one telling the wild thrashings of the afanc caused flooding which drowned all the people of Britain, save two, Dwyfan and Dwyfach. Another has a maiden who tamed the afanc by letting it sleep in her lap, which allowed her fellow villagers to capture it. When the afanc awoke its struggles crushed the maiden.
Later legends had King Arthur or Peredur slaying the monster. Near Llyn Barfog is a rock with a hoof print carved into it, along with the words Carn March Arthur (stone of Arthur’s horse), supposedly made when his steed, Llamrai, dragged the afanc from the deep.
The afanc has been variously known as the addanc, adanc, addane, avanc, abhac and abac. Several sites lay claim to its domain, among them Llyn Llion, Llyn Barfog ad Llyn-yr-Afanc (the Afanc Pool), a lake in Betws-y-Coed.
Source: Dwyfan and Dwyfach – Wikipedia
Dwyfan and Dwyfach, sometimes also called Dwyvan and Dwyvach, in Welsh mythology, were the equivalents of Noah or Deucalion who take their names from small rivers, as told in a flood legend from the Welsh Triads.[1] A great flood was caused by the monster Afanc, who dwelt in Llyn Llion (possibly Bala Lake).[1] All humans were drowned except Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who escaped in a mastless boat. They built an imposing ship (or ark) called Nefyd Naf Neifion, on which they carried two of every living kind.[1] From Dwyfan and Dwyfach all of the island of Prydain (Britain) was repeopled.[1] Dwyfach appears to take her name from the small Dwyfach (Welsh: little Dwy) River of Gwynedd (until 2018, Caernarvonshire) that flows into Cardigan Bay; Dwyfan would then derive from the river it enters, the Dwyfawr or Dwyfor (Welsh: great Dwy).[1]
Source: Dwyfan and Dwyfach – Wikipedia
As the convoy cruised along, rowers rowing, Benda and Greppo the First King looked ahead off to the sea in the direction of Buorth. The Lost Direction was found again, thanks to an unlikely hero, Tob Gobble, and his reed flute.
A subtle silvery stream of water seemed to flow just beneath the surface of the vast ocean, and the prow of their ship clove to it. Neither man spoke, each filled with his own thoughts. Benda’s were of the tragic loss to Quatria which he knew in his heart was destined to come, and that he in his returning to Kremel had propelled that ruin into existence. Greppo’s was solely focused on the gains in wealth and majesty to himself, his kingdom and all of Kremel which were to surely come. He felt great pride too, for re-opening the way, the way of his ancestors – for he too traced his line of descent from Embatet, the magical son of Omouna, who had been expelled from the Far Blessed Lands. For each, then, it was a kind of sacred home-coming, though the meaning inverted one to the other.
As Benda stood in contemplation of his predicament, and what he ought to do, he thought he heard a small voice speak from nowhere. He turned around, but the decks were clear on his ship. He looked back to the next, and though he saw activity there, discerned no probable source of voice, none who had spoken to him, as if just near at hand – or within?
“Papa!” he heard the voice now clearly ringing, as of a bell in his heart. And he knew it at once, as though his own. “Sol?” he said aloud, and turned around again in wonder. No one was there still, but as the chained-together ships swayed and lumbered under oar, he saw a ways off on the deck of the third ship the sable golek Machef, along with his wife Lualla, and his young son Sol.
“We are with you,” the voice of Machef spoke now in his heart. “You need suffer no more in loneliness.”
On the channels of light which connected them, the golek mindspeaker acted as a lightwell, a kind of transceiver. It happened with some regularity that non-mindspeaker listeners who often received from mindspeakers would have these internal ports temporarily or permanently opened on account of the purity and intensity of this manner of communication. And they would learn to feed back into the lightways, replying in like manner. This had not yet happened between Benda and Machef naturally, but it was on the verge of becoming. Machef simply pushed the door open the rest of the way, stepped back, and acted as bridge and repeater to connect to Lualla and Sol.
Sol, a child, took to it naturally, not knowing that among his people, mindspeaking had retreated to being only the province of beasts, and magicians, and madmen. Lualla, however, this being her first such experience, was much more fearful and tentative. She could listen, but she could not speak thus. Benda, whose heart was near to overflowing, however spoke for all of them, and he did in not words, but brilliant pictures.
He sent them along the lightways the fullness of his experience since he had left them that day outside Cananxus village for what should have been a three hour fishing tour. It had been a day like any other, but which lead him by the hand of fate instead to a storm-at-sea, and then to those far shores. He showed them the fear he felt and then all the joy and happiness he’d found in the welcome of the peoples of Quatria. He showed them how he had given it all up to return to the two of them, his family – the one true source of all joy, without which he knew, no matter how rich the country, or beautiful the people, he would surely languish and die.
Lualla wept, and Sol listened and watched in the shared chambers of their hearts in rapturous wonder.
Benda showed them the island of Ovarion, which had been promised to him before his departure by the High Augur, a bright shining green and white jewel in the sea to the west of Quatria, on the cusp of the Houses of Song and Silence. And he showed them the strong but humble house he vowed to build them there, once things had been put to rights. It was a dream of his, an inward vision which he had always dwelt on but had not yet named. But the name welled up spontaneously in his heart, calling itself in the Quatrian tongue, Tantathawe. He shared it with them as his vow, a testament, a promise. Despite their fear, and the losses they had and would still have to endure, all would be made whole again at a higher level in Tantathawe.
Just then, the sky darkened, and out of it stooped the eagle Murta, landing heavily on deck of the first ship, to report to Greppo. Machef let the canals of light connecting himself and the others to Benda go dark and silent once more.
“The winds are upon us, my lord. We have reached Tetharys.”
It was then the storms began in earnest.