The Prince of Annwn

For reasons that will become clear later in the year, I am doing some fairly deep dives into The Mabinogi. I now own three different translations, three modern interpretations, and a poetry version. I also have a couple of recently published novels based loosely on the Fourth Branch that I need to read. I have previously reviewed two of the modern interpretations here, but now it is time to tackle the big one: Evangeline Walton’s version.

Walton appears to have written the books in the first half of the 20th Century. One of them, based on the Fourth Branch, was published in 1936, and sank without trace. Then, in 1970, Lin Carter, freelancing for Ballantine Books, discovered it. He took it to Betty Ballantine who was enthralled, but she could find no contact information for the author. She resorted to placing ads in the SF&F media (presumably Locus and the various fiction mags), and getting no response she was about to publish anyway when she got a postcard from August Derleth saying that he had a 20 year old address for Walton. Miraculously it was still good, and Ballantine went on to publish all four books.

The Prince of Annwn is based on the First Branch and tells two parts of the story. It contains Pwyll’s adventure in which he takes the place of Arawn, the King of Annwn, and also the tale of how Pwyll woos Rhiannon. It does not include the story of the birth of their son, Pryderi, and his abduction by a monstrous claw, which is by far the weirdest part of the First Branch.

Walton is, of course, attempting to create a coherent, four-part story based on The Mabinogi, and in the process expand all four Branches to novel length. This is quite an undertaking, and I won’t know for a while yet how successful she has been. But there are some things that are immediately obvious.

The first is that Walton’s work was heavily informed by late 19th and early 20th century theories of Celtic culture. In her notes on The Prince of Annwn she cites Nora Chadwick and Roger Loomis, neither of whose work I would rely upon these days. She also uses a particularly lurid tale about the Irish that she gets from Giradlus Cambrensis. Given that Gerald, bless him, was heavily involved in the first attempts by the Normans to conquer Ireland, I’m not sure I would be taking too much of what he said at face value.

The other point is that there is a very strong feminist element to Walton’s work. She introduces to the narratives the Old Tribes and New Tribes, the latter apparently being invaders from Ireland. The Old Tribes have much more of a matriarchal culture, while the New Tribes are fiercely patriarchal. This should be really interesting when we get to the Fourth Branch. It does rather remind me of late 20th century ideas about Celtic culture being some sort of feminist paradise (thank you, Jean Markale).

When Walton was writing it was generally the fashion for historical fantasy to use cod-mediaeval language rather than modern patterns of speech. Personally, I prefer the latter. I know people will claim that it is anachronistic, but so is the fake mediaeval speech that writers tended to produce. Given that you are inauthentic either way, why not make the book readable?

I note that Walton’s books appear to be currently out of print. That’s not entirely surprising given their age, but it is rather sad considering their impact on the field. I discovered from an article by Anna Fiteni that Stevie Nicks owns some rights to the books, but that may just be film rights… I see that a new audiobook edition is on the way.

Title: The Prince of Annwn
By: Evangeline Walton
Publisher: Overlook
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