Review : Epic Celtic Tales

For my next mythology read, I decided to choose a book from a different publisher. Mark William's Celtic Myths whetted my appetite, but I wanted more of the original stories themselves. And here in the Czech Republic, it seems that every bookshop carries almost the complete series of Flame Tree Publishing's Epic Tales series, which I've been eyeing up for a while. At last the time was right to give them a go with their Celtic Myths & Tales book.

This is a hefty tome, so either I go all-in and write something equivalent to dozens of pages in itself, or I try and keep it brief and miss out a lot. I'm going for the latter. 

The Review Bit

Since this is a collection of tales there's not too much to say about the text itself. There's a good but short introduction giving some essential context, reinforcing Williams' point that it's very hard to determine with any certainty much about what Celtic peoples (here again meaning those of the British isles, with nothing at all from elsewhere) really believed. At least not in any detail. 

Unfortunately the book lacks some rudimentary features that could have made the whole thing a good deal better. Jake Jackson's main introduction and micro-introductions to each section are all worth reading, but short – too short, especially the latter. There are absolutely minimal footnotes, no index, no pronunciation guide, and worst of all the source for each text is unclear. With a few exceptions, none are clearly stated except to say, "we took most of this from a collection by blah in the 19th century". This is quite frustrating as it would help a lot to know which stories likely have at least some archaic origins and which are probably more modern constructions. Many of the stories are, in and of themselves, absolutely fascinating (my personal favourite is the proto-Cinderella who gets repeatedly eaten by a magical whale), but there's so much more value that could have been given with some decent metadata.

Some of the stories, it must be said, are absolute shite, so much so that sometimes the single note I made says, "stupid" and nothing else. By and large it's a good anthology, with plenty of stuff you're not likely to come across elsewhere. But I do wonder why some of them were included. Why have the ones in which absolutely nothing happens (or there's nothing much detectably "Celtic" about them) when you could have more about Taliesin or Merlin, the latter being conspicuously absent ? Some of the chosen stories are little more than word salad as told by a demented elderly grandmother to her half-dead cat.

All in all though, it's perfectly decent, and I'm certainly willing to give others in the series a go.

General Impressions

Bizarre storytelling

Celtic myths are weird. Sometimes, it must be said, it's because they're badly told. There are frequent redundancies and repetition, with many enchanted objects having exactly identical abilities even within the same story. Then there are truly awful metaphors : skin as white as snow is fine, and so is hair as black as a raven, but cheeks which are "redder than whatever is reddest" is comically awful.

Far worse is that often the text is unclear as to which character it's referring to, and in a few cases the basic meaning cannot be guessed until later. For example, in this edition's story of Bran the Blessed, Bran's gigantic size is at first only vaguely alluded to with "no house could contain Bran" and not made explicit until much later in the story. This is something a better edition could remedy with more footnotes or more detailed individual story introductions.

More frequently, in the earlier stories plot structure is often interminably complex, usually nested, and frequently features long "prologues" that are completely forgotten about once the main tale begins. This makes it very hard to keep track of who's important because often initially-central characters disappear without any explanation. Yet in other cases, minor points of detail become tremendously important, even pivotal, later on, sometimes even recurring between different stories. What's especially strange about this is that the literary style is otherwise incredibly and deceptively simplistic. Each individual sentence is the easiest thing in the world to read, but the collective whole... isn't.

For all that though, there's much to reward the reader as well. Characters in the tales are rarely "pure", even if they're warriors of superlative fighting prowess. The great Irish heroes are all of superhuman strength and courage, but while they may start off as men and women of perfect virtue, they usually grow bitter and jealous with age. Even in the courtly romances of the Mabinogion, knights who begin as noble and true almost invariably decline into pettiness. The exceptions are Peredur, who is a permanently insufferable git (imagine Wesley Crusher if he were a medieval knight), and Arthur, who never waivers from the path of true wisdom, righteousness, and courage*. Arthur**, like virtually all the heroes, is a great leader, in charge of but also definitely a member of, a team.  

* This is made easier because there's absolutely no sign of any adultery for him to deal with. Interestingly, his battle with Mordred isn't the climatic moment of his death, but just one of his many adventures.
** Who is very much Welsh, thankyouverymuch, holding court not in Camelot but Caerleon and even goes jousting in Cardiff, no less.

While character development decidedly plays second or third fiddle to plot, it's not absent. It just isn't expounded on very much. Likewise descriptions of the scenery are delivered with the absolute minimum of words necessary, and its emotive impact on the protagonists considerably less than that – which makes understanding character's motivations challenging. Their inner thoughts are almost never revealed. And at times, the endless parade of castles which are "the fairest man ever saw", and likewise for the maidens each more beautiful than the last dozen in the same damn story, becomes downright tiresome.  "What" and "who" take extreme precedence over why, how, where, or when. The latter, especially, barely gets a look in. Descriptions of when things occur becomes conspicuous by its absence; the use of days and seasons becomes a huge flag that a story is of later origin. 

As for plot holes, forget it. The authors show absolutely no regard for addressing the most obvious violations of even their own internal consistency. Magic can be used by almost anyone for almost any purpose entirely at random and then suddenly it can't. Symbolism is everything, coherency is something which happens to other people. Even causality is almost incidental, like a Humean nightmare. Combined with the lack of clear insight into character motivations, and this frequently gives the stories a highly dreamlike quality. What made sense at the time, what may have been obvious to the early audiences, is now lost, but the sequence of events is still interesting all the same. The clearest examples of this are the magical aspects, like the walk-on part of a character whose eye can lay waste entire armies, or the casually-mentioned-in-passing spear that can melt whole cities.

Family matters

What comes across surprisingly strongly are the diverse family relationships. True, there is no sexual diversity whatsoever : every single romantic relationship is between a man and a woman*. But there are single-parent families galore, both of the mothers and fathers, which are described without judgement excepting perhaps a general sense that the situation is unfortunate : there is a strong insistence that everyone must be married regardless of whether they want to or not, but this applies equally to both genders. Men need a woman about the house whereas women need male protection; there's an undertone of extreme patriarchy, but it is at least supposed to be a reciprocal relationship.

* Virtually always one-on-one, with only a single dubious exception that might be polygamy. I don't think there are any transgender characters here, though shapeshifting is common.

For children, adoptions are frequent, with many a hero requiring a slightly unusual and mysterious background. Though their bloodline plays a crucial role, they are rarely born directly into their destiny, but still have to discover it, and must still struggle against adversity. 

As for the parents, there are both happily married couples and those who are at each other's throats. There are some who love their children, some who hate them, some who just want their damn baby to stop crying all the time. Romance flourishes but also dies. Sexual encounters, though never described as such, are all over the place, with rampant promiscuity in both genders; "marriage" and even "love" seems to be used as a very loose term which really means little more than "they hooked up that one time" (well, it's either that, or bigamy is rife). There are few stories which revolve around the characters' romantic-sexual interests, it's always somewhat incidental. Slut shaming doesn't happen, but nor are the conquests of either gender especially celebrated. Things just happen. Which tends to be true more generally as well*.

* At least for the earlier stories. The later ones, the classical "fairy tales", are delivered in a strange, grandmotherly style and are tremendously, outrageously judgemental and are sometimes only bearable because they're so damn weird.

As for women specifically, there's plenty of female agency and empowerment but few women who actually take up arms except in dire need. But though rare, they are present. Most notably, the greatest Irish hero is sent for training by Scathach, the "greatest woman warrior", clearly indicating she's not a unique example, but also of sufficient prowess to easily dominate most of the male warriors. But if combat is rare, so too is the damsel-in-distress. Those are present as well, but they're atypical. Even when women are almost literally the object of a hero's quest, they don't just sit there. Usually, if anything, they hold the essential knowledge the hero himself needs to get out of trouble. And while they are sometimes boring and meek, this is hardly always the case. My favourite bit of sass is from the Welsh Rhiannon, who chides her husband in very modern terms :

Never did man make worse use of his wits than thou has done.

While the predominance of women as either "the fairest maiden man ever saw" is overwhelming, with the main alternative being a villainous hag*, less stereotypical examples are also found. There are plenty of presumably-normal looking women married to ordinary commoners, they're just in the background and seldom play a major role in events – much like in modern TV shows, everyone knows that normal people exist, but people have always desired unrealistic standards from their entertainment even in text format. One very nice exception is a female friend of the virtuous knight Owain, who is just his friend without any romantic interest on either side at any point. Owain marries someone else but this doesn't affect their fraternal bond.

* Villains are by no means always hags, though they don't usually compare to the heroines in beauty.

An unpredictable world

Exceptions to all common trends are frequent. Most giants are little more than brutes, but Bran the Blessed is a noble king. Most fairies are malicious, but a few are helpful. Most heroes are generally wise, but can be prone to stupidity. Many characters are archetypes, but many also are very human and deeply imperfect. Trickery and lies can be used to fool the good but also employed against the bad. Direct moral judgements are few and far between.

Williams mentioned the importance of the themes of being in the wilderness and set apart from society, and this comes across here too in the Welsh myths. Not only in the story of Bran the Blessed do all the main characters essentially retreat from the world after a calamity, but in the direct sequel "Manawyddan" (the Third Branch of the Mabinogion) the survivors, who live in an extended double-family, one day find the whole land is deserted. They eventually wander through a series of inhabited towns, but even there they are repeatedly shunned. If there are larger-than-life heroes, then there are also plenty of the downtrodden and outcast. Sometimes it feels like the author ran out of ideas, but the theme of just "giving up" is so common that it must carry some deeper meaning : there are stories that are resonant with the disaffected as well as having the straightforward appeal of goodies and baddies.

Violence is endemic. It can be absolutely brutal, but like everything else its description is kept to an absolute minimum : the audience needs to know that someone was flayed or crushed, but rarely do they need any of the gory details. It's quite unlike the violence in Homer, who describes the flow of blood and the quivering of spears in hearts with a devastating mixture of titillation and dismay; similarly unlike Homer, violence causes characters to go mad and/or depressed on multiple occasions. Most problems, though, are solved the hard way. There are very few moments indeed of reconciliation between adversaries : one or both of them must die, and often with massive causalities among their followers on both sides. Often the causes of these problems are extraordinarily petty.

What does it all mean ?

I'm not qualified to answer what this tells us about the world view of Celtic peoples. The magical elements are weird and inscrutable : Arthur is the undisputed ruler of Britain despite much of it being a vast, unexplored wilderness home to all manner of weird creatures*. Fairyland in Ireland is somewhere underground, but in Britain it's somewhere you can accidentally wander into almost anywhere and at any time. Getting out might be harder, but it can also be as simple as retracing your steps. There's a strong connection to nature, but it's a dangerous and sometimes savage nature with is nothing like any New Age nonsense.

* Other countries are mentioned as well, especially Greece for some reason. Arthur is even described not as a king but Emperor, having conquered Greece, even while much of Britain is totally unexplored.

My guess is that there might have been some belief in the general ideas floating around here but the specifics are almost impossible to pin down with any confidence. Fairies, giants, and shape-changing are so common that it's hard to see them being purely literary devices but reflecting actual beliefs; violence is so frequent that it can't have been simply added to make the story more exciting (dragons, sadly, are very scarce). That said, there most definitely are literary devices being used here for pure storytelling. While some tales fit the typical description of myth, i.e. explaining why something is the way it is or giving a particular dynasty supernatural credence, many are just stories : they are entertaining, might contain a moral message or two, but are very clearly not meant to be literal truths. 

I suppose overall I'd have to describe the tales as mangled but sophisticated, the product of both deep craft but also told and retold by artists both skilled and idiotic over many centuries. The result is a mixture of important symbolism and the batshit crazy, the sacred and the stupid. This can make them incredibly frustrating, like a garbled mess of deus ex machina all over the place, but it can also make them compelling. These are stories from a different age with a radically different, fascinating way of viewing the world that extended not just into their actual world view, but into how they chose to tell the stories themselves. So were the stories true or believed to be true ? The original authors, in that there were any at all, may have had such a different notion of truth that the question may not, in the end, make much sense.

Highlights

I've tried to keep this brief and I'm in danger of failing. In fact there's scope for god-knows how many book-length analyses in the style of Williams' and I wouldn't dare to try anything of that nature here. Still, there are too many other things that stuck in my head not to give them at least a cursory mention, both individual stories and general features :

• Bizarre magic. This can mess with our very basic notions of space and time : fall asleep for a day and you might wake a century later; Rhiannon initially appears on a horse moving at normal speed but no-one can catch her; there are plenty of instances of whole castles hidden inside small bags and the like. In the Arthurian tale Culwch and Olwen there are too many weird magical powers (clearly invented in fun) to list in full, but these include : causing everyone in the village to stay awake if the protagonist wants anything; having sparkly feet; standing all day on one foot; growing enormously extended lips when sad (disgustingly, going below the waist and over the head like a hat); having a HUGE ginger beard as big as a hall. And then there's the recurring use of magical and super-knowledgeable fish. One character, having accidentally burned his finger on the roasting salmon, can thereafter learn anything he needs by merely sucking on his thumb.
• Origin of seals. The tale of the selkie has a lot of the elements of the other stories : a strong sense of tragedy, but more complex and bittersweet than a simple tale of woe. The seal-children are cast out by their wicked stepmother, and thereby assume human form once per year. The rest of the time they're still blessed with beautiful eyes and coats. A fisherman steals one of their coats while human, marries her, they have a happy life with many children... but one day she finds the coat and returns without farewell to the sea.
• Contrasting figures. The Mabinogion presents a wonderful sequence of stories. First there's Peredur, the knight par excellence to whom all gifts are given for NO REASON AT ALL. He's unbearable. But next comes Owain, a good but much more human knight. Not only does he have female friends without romance, but he rescues a lion which becomes his inseparable companion – even when he tries to keep the lion away so that he can fight his opponents fairly, the lion insists on coming to his rescue. Then there's Geraint, another very powerful knight but who has a full-blown midlife crisis. He goes off with his wife to prove he's still got it, continuously chiding her to be silent, but she can't help but warn him every time she she sees bandits up ahead. He grows increasingly threatening and then exasperated. "I know not what good it is for me to order thee", he protests in very modern tones, "but this time I charge thee in an especial manner !". She doesn't keep quiet of course, and he never makes good on his threats. Underneath it all is a genuine sense of love between the two. Given the preceding unbearable perfection of Peredur, and the frequent use of repetition which usually culminates in something, this unexpected turn of events and much more complex character interaction is quite the radical departure.
• The Cinderella stories. Much later than the mythological tales but nevertheless fascinating for that. The core seems to be a girl who returns to her future husband because she keeps leaving stuff behind. She often has a sort of alter-ego : grubby ash-girl by day, adventurous beauty by night. Variants are manifold. There's one where she's walking along the seaside and is pushed into the sea by her wicked stepmother, where she's promptly eaten by a whale. The whale vomits her up a few days later, but apparently she's now magically cursed to be eaten by this whale repeatedly until her rescuer-prince slays it by hitting a spot on its vulnerable underbelly. Or there's the version where she rides a talking bull and then hacks its head off – not casually but in a brutal moment of great despair – and flays it. Often in these stories the beheading is a ritualistic part of restoring a creature to its original human form, but in this case... apparently not. 
• Smallhead. My favourite of the feminine heroes, Smallhead is a sort of proto-Cinderella. Rather than fleeing her murderous stepsisters who killed her mother, she pursues them. Forcing them back home, she then outsmarts a pair of witches by sneaking into their house to steal their magical equipment. She eventually magics herself beautiful and marries some prince or other, but this is pleasingly incidental to the main storyline. On that note, sometimes these princes are noble and virtuous, sometimes they're offensively dickish to the point where it makes no sense whatsoever that anyone would want to marry them. 

There are endless recurring motifs. Smallhead at one point hides in a tree in a miller's house, and his wife and daughters, mistaking her reflection in the well for their own, declare themselves too beautiful to live in such a place any more and bugger off. This same unlikely device is used again and again. Or the "Master Maid" stories, in which the escaping heroes (usually a prince and his would-be wife, but sometimes just one person and a magical horse) distract a pursuing giant by throwing out magical items : sticks that become a forest, stones that become mountains, water that becomes a lake. This too is reused over and over.

What's difficult to say is whether the Celtic tales contain the same sort of versatile metaphors found throughout Greek myth. On the surface it appears not, though whether that's by corruption or design is hard to say. It could also be that the Greek stories simply won the literary influence : for example, we say Herculean strength rather than using the Irish or Welsh figures. There are certainly many memorable moments and sayings in the Celtic stories : "He who would be a king, let him be a bridge", says the giant Bran, in a story which presents starkly contrasting examples of good and bad rulers. "I journey for my own pleasure and to seek the adventures of the world", declares the cantankerous Geraint. Even Peredur has a noble moment that could have walked out of Hollywood : "I am Peredur, son of Evrawc from the North, and if ever thou art in trouble or in danger, acquaint me therewith, and if I can, I will protect thee."

My suspicion is that the metaphorical element is indeed there, but cultural evolution has obscured it. For the stories to have real, routine meaning, they must be frequently told and retold. Hence the strength of Hercules is known to all, but that of Bran is not; the wisdom of Nestor is more widely known than that of salmon; Athena's emergence from the head of Zeus is more famous by far than Taliesin's emergence from a chicken; Protean shapeshifting is a common term but that of the countless other Celtic figures of similar abilities just hasn't caught on. The use of seemingly arbitrary instructions which have to be followed precisely but never are is also something that has distinctly obvious appropriateness in the modern world. As does Connal Yellowclaw's magic ring that can always reveal where it is.

It's a shame. Worse by far, as Tolkien noted, is that so many of these tales have been sanitised and reduced to charming children's' bedtime stories. Cinderella hacking the head off a bull hardly seems like a tale originally designed for children, nor does the black horse with iron spikes in his bones that goes through a lake of fire. Hands which reach down chimneys to snatch babies from the crib, never mind flaying Auburn Mary to use her bones as climbing gear to escape a giant...  and the less said about the number of women Peredur beds, the better.

They way to remedy the situation is, fortunately, obvious : get HBO involved. I want to watch a distraught Cinderella spattered with blood as she hacks the head off a bull. I want to watch a giant king act as a bridge for his army only for them all to be burned alive inside a giant house. I want a series in which characters are constantly having extramarital sex and being eaten by whales and shapeshifting chickens and rescued by friendly lions. It'd be better than East Enders, at least.