The Prince's Pen & The White Trail. The newest edition of Seren Book's "Stories from the Mabinogion"

18th October 2011
Chapter Arts, Cardiff. 

2011 see’s Welsh publisher Seren Books celebrate their 30^th Birthday.  Originally Poetry Wales Press, the publishing house has witnessed major changes in Welsh cultural history and as original founder Cary Archard said – helped bring about changes in the way Welsh funding is dealt with. They are a small publisher with a strong Welsh voice.  With First Minister Carwyn Jones AM in attendance the event was lent the weight and conviction that the Arts in Wales still mattered and weren't being sidelined.
    As part of the celebrations, the newest instalments of the Mabinogion Series were launched at Chapter Arts;  Fflur Dafydd’s The White Trail and Horatio Clare’s The Princes Pen. The books join the current four by prominent Welsh authors. 

All images from Seren website.

 The Mabinogion is a collection of eleven stories originating from The Red book of Hergest and The White book of Rhydderch, two medieval manuscripts dating as far back as the 6^th Century. Folk tales that grant unparalleled access to Celtic mythology and magic, the stories give us one of the first tastes of Arthurian legend and a perspective of ancient Britain. With enchantment and shape-shifting, conflict and peacemaking, love and betrayal what we would call magic realism, sci-fi or even war novels would have been a reflection of everyday belief’s and experiences in Celtic Britain. Seren took up the challenge to bring the Mabinogion into the 21^st Century three years ago nearly at my count and each author is allowed to take their chosen myth and have creative authority to do as they will.

Originally attending the launch of the first four books a year ago - as part of the BayLit Festival in conjunction with Academi (now Literature Wales) I dashed along to meet the new authors and listen to what they had to say.

Horatio Clare is best known as a travel writer and journalist and The Prince’s Pen is his first published fiction. He takes the myth of Lludd and Llevelys, transforming it into an ultra modern mix of faith, culture and futuristic landscapes involving the bandit kings of Wales Ludo and Levello. In the discussion with Seren editor Penny Thomas, he calls the novella a “[clean, beautiful three pointed story]”, its neat construct of two dragons and two faiths – reminiscent of the myth of Merlin as a young boy and a parallel with today’s multi-faith society. When choosing the tale, Horatio spoke of  how the tale’s revelations of London’s origin struck a chord with his memories of Newport Station platform and its links with Llundain Paddington (London Paddington) waiting for family to arrive. Particularily as there is some truth to the tale’s myth: Ludgate hill,  Lludd is rumoured to be buried under St Pauls.

Fflur Dafydd is an established Welsh language writer and lecturer at Swansea University - she has also publishing in English with her novel Twenty Thousand Saints.  Fflur’s adaptation The White Trail is taken from the Mabinogion tale How Culhwch won Olwen. Fflur’s own experience of the Mabinogion is extensive, playing a big part in her childhood and experiencing it in school through translating the difficult old Welsh. She explained that whilst it was familiar territory, the opportunity to do something new with it and use her creativity was a chance not to be missed. To Fflur the myth and the novel are two very different creatures but both have other worldly, magical elements, she has taken two of the tale’s most under-used character’s Goleuddydd and Cilydd and built the story round them. Yet she has also included the ‘task’ (one of forty in the tale) involving Rhiannon’s birds – magical birds capable of waking the dead and lulling the living to sleep.  The original tale is one of the first tastes of Arthurian legend we have and in The White Trail his heroics are very much diminished and he loses much of the traditional knightly valour.

As editor Penny mentioned the novels have come from each author looking at the gaps and finding what was missed, the crack in the apparent seamlessness of the tales.

The rest of the series will be published over the next few years, hopefully two at a time. With signed copies of all six books in hand, keep watching for their up and coming reviews.