Kenneth Morris and The Mabinogion: The Welsh Influence on Children's Fantasy

Kenneth Morris and The MaMnoglon: The Welsh Influence on Children's Fantasy by CW. Sullivan III The medeval Welsh stories pubRshed as The Mablnooion do not amount to a large book, and the oldest segment, the Four Branches of the Mabkiogl (dating from about the twelfth century ki written form but centuries older ki oral tradition), is smaller stiR, some eighty pages ki translation. The Anglo-Welsh author, Kenneth Morris (18791937 ), arguably the first to use materials from the four Branches ki children's fantasy, Is an almost-forgotten (or at least seldom-studied) figure ki the history of children's fiction. Yet, without Monis and The Mablnooion. contemporary children's Rterature might not include Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prvdaki. Nancy Bond's A String In the Harp. Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series. Atan Gamer's The Owl Service, and a number of other books (including some of the Arthurian stories) based less directly on these Welsh sources of materials and style. Although regarded as 'among the finest flowerings of the Celtic genius and, taken together, a masterpiece of . . . medeval European literature, the materials which make up The Mabkiooion were completely translated Into English only three times prior to 1950 (Jones and Jones ix). Lady Charlotte Guest made the first complete translation ki the 1840s; T.P. EIUs and John Lloyd, using a newty-dscovered manuscript, translated The Mabkiooion in 1929; and Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones made a translation ki 1949. Interestingly, several new translationsincluding a revised version of the Jones and Jones translation (1974), Jeffery Gantz's The Mabkiooion (1976), Patrick Ford's The Mablnool (1977), (and Gwyn Jones and Kevki Crossley-HoRand's Tales From The Mablnooion, Illustrated by Margaret Jones (1984)-have appeared recently, and their publication could be a response, In part, to the popularity of the Mabkiooion-based Action of Alexander, Cooper, Bond, and the rest The Mablnooion Itself Is something of a cultural stew, containing, as It does, materials which can be traced to sources in mythology, legend, folklore, or history. The oldest materials, the Four Branches, contain mythological elements which are untraceabry old, going back, perhaps, to the beginnings of the Celtic civlzation and containing obvious references to an ancient matriarchal and matrHineal culture and mythology. In addition, most translations include a number of other prose tales tied to the Four Branches only by their date of written composition, their Welsh sources, and/or their inclusion ki the same medeval manuscript or manuscript collection. The 'Four Independent Native Tales' and the "Three Romances," as Jones and Jones catted them (vil), were certainly composed in a more recent oral tradition than the Four Branches and have very Httta mythology about them. The "Native Tales" draw heavily on foHdore; the 'Romances," medieval ki style as weH as ki content, draw on legend, especially the Arthurian legend. And the Teleskí materials, 'The Tale of Qwton Bach' and 'The Tata of Talesin,' both of which deal with the sixth-century bard, are included in a few translations. The existence, nature, and extent of a Celtic influence on subsequent cultures and lteratures has been the subject of considerable debate, some of It acrimonious, for almost a century and a half. In the tatter half of the nineteenth century, Ernest Renan, Matthew Arnold, and WiUiam Butler Yeats al argued for a pervasive Celtic influence on subsequent literatures. Their efforts were compromised, somewhat, by the political and social overtones of the tum-of-the-century Celtic Revival and were also denigrated by the majority of Victorians who, as L.P. Curtis, Jr., recounts in Anglo-Saxons and Celts: A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice ki Victorian England (1973), were definitely antiCeltic and quite convinced that nothing good or valuable could have come from people with a QeHJc ancestry. As the twentieth century has progressed, fortunately, scholars have begun to recognize the quality of the ancient Irish and Welsh lteratures, have begun to assess the possibility of a Celtic influence, and have even come to respect some of Matthew Arnold's insights on the subject. Patrick Leo Henry and James Travis have documented correspondences between early Celtic and English poetry, and Martin Puhvel has suggested...