Talk:Mabinogion

Untitled
The link to Math gets me to Mathematics, not the son of Mathonwy. This needs to be fixed.


 * Someone's fixed that so the link doesn't go to Mathematics anymore. There's now a page for Math (Mabinogion), but as of this writing it's still empty of content. Oska 10:28, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)


 * The link now goes to the proper page, Math ap Mathonwy

Historical?
The article states the Mabinogion is based on "early medieval historical events." What exactly is meant by this? To say that there's anything historical about the Mabinogion, besides a few fictional versions of historical figures, seems a very odd claim. Toastedcheese 23:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I would like to translate this article into Chinese
I would like to translate this article into Chinese,Can I do that? --by k1234567890y in Chinese Wikipedia


 * yes, of course you can. Remember to add the link to the Chinese wikipedia entry to the English one --Nantonos 19:15, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Separated off the Four Branches
The article was unbalanced by the long (though excellent) description of one part, the Four Branches. I moved it to its own page, along with a warning that the summary gives away basically everything that happens.

--GwydionM 19:20, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

How do you pronounce Mabinogion?
"ma-bin-OG-yon", more or less. --Nicknack009 09:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * So is that with a plosive /g/ or an affricate /dʒ/ or a fricative /ʒ/? I've always assumed the last of these, and wondered if I was quite wrong. It would be super if someone could put a proper IPA transcription into the article.  --91.11.3.17 --Doric Loon (talk) 11:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


 * It's the plosive plosive /g/. I'll have a go at an IPA transcription. --Nicknack009 (talk) 21:44, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks. --Doric Loon (talk) 08:25, 24 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, "mabinogion" is pronounced "maahb-in-og-ee-on." Marble, bin, log neon, though the ma(ble) is not as long, but shorter. Xxglennxx (talk) 19:12, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Origins of the Maponos argument
The Maponos argument is first attested to in W. J. Gruffydd's Folklore and Myth in the Mabinogion, based on a lecture delivered in 1950. Hamp's earliest attested publication on the subject is in 1954... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.151.23.76 (talk) 18:01, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The Owl Service
Don't know if anyone is familiar with the novel or indeed the TV adaptation, but it claims to be a modern-day story based on The Mabinogion. It centres around the story of Bloduwedd. Does she actually appear in the Mabinogion, as I don't see her name mentioned here (or any of the other characters, Gyffes, Gronwy)?--Tuzapicabit (talk) 00:00, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I have only heard in passing of the novel, but yes- Bloduwedd does appear in the Mabinogion. In the tale of Math (which has several episodes) she is created from flowers by Gwydion and Math as a lover for their nephew Llew (Llew Llaw Gyffes). His mother had bitterly sworn a fate on him that he could have no mortal woman. Her name approximately means "flower face" hence the owl association.

link rot
The link to the PDF of Lady Guest's translation doesn't work. http://www.wyldwytch.com/weavings/reading_room/books/celtic/mab.htm 4.249.63.182 (talk) 15:08, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

"Welsh Deities??"
It could be said that the only well-attested to instances of ANY known non-christian deities worshipped by the Welsh are those named in inscriptions on Romano-Celtic altars.

I would like to see some serious discussion on the merit of the nearly universal custom of elevating to god/goddesshood virtually any of the primary characters in the stories of the Welsh corpus. Earrach 3/26/07

The idea that the stories are derived from pre-Christian stories separate from folklore is flawed. Wales had been fully Christianized for centuries before the Arthurian romances so the only traces of mythology would be in the folklore, and thus claiming that they are from pre-Christian mythology, folklore is flawed. We might as well say that anything, such as Robin Hood or Ivanhoe, are based on pre-Christian mythology as they have as much elements of pre-Christian traditions as Arthurian romances. It would be better to just say folkloric sources rather than pre-Christian and folkloric sources.86.154.189.209 (talk) 09:18, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * You may well be right. However, Wikipedia works on verifiability rather than original research. The policy states: “The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.” The citation at the end of the paragraph is to the BBC, here, which says: “The tales, which are outwardly concerned with the lives of various Welsh royal families - figures who represent the gods of an older, pre-Christian mythological order - are themselves much older in origin.”. Should you find a reliable source that says the tales are nothing to do with pre-Christian mythology, please add that to the article, as all valid viewpoints should be noted. Nevertheless, a reliable source says the stories eminate from pre-Christian sources, so it will continue to say that in the article. Daicaregos (talk) 10:02, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

In popular culture, or whatever...
Referenced to in the anime 'Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!' In which it refers to a binder containing a printed out blog, and contains the magical rants of a middleschooler plagued with 'Eight Grade Syndrome'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.67.181.117 (talk) 22:23, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Number of stories: eleven or twelve?
It says twice in the article that the Mabinogion contains 11 stories or tales. And yet, when listing the individual stories, the article gives four branches of the Mabinogi, five native tales, and three romances, for a total of twelve. Should the article be changed to state that the Mabonigion contains twelve stories, is there something I'm missing? (This article is the first I've ever read about these stories, so I'm very hesitant to change the text in case for some reason two of the stories are counted as one or something). biggins (talk) 19:05, 10 August 2014 (UTC)


 * As the article says, the Tale of Taliesin is later and not from the same manuscripts, and not included in most translations. That leaves only four "native tales", and eleven overall. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:18, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Not Encyclopedic opinion
We are not supposed to be making comments on the quality of work: IceDragon64 (talk) 13:52, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
 * "fine quality storytelling" is not encyclopedic and there are other comments throughout this page. We need to turn this into quotations from appropriate people if we are attempting to establish the quality of writing.

Distinguishing Mabinogion and Four Branches of the Mabinogi
A disambiguating hatnote was recently removed from the "Four Branches" article (not long after being introduced, to replace an entire editorial paragraph about how they need to be distinguished). The edit summary reasons that the title is not ambiguous. That's true enough, if the reader is familiar with the name already. Someone less well informed may well think that "Mabinogion" and "Four Branches of the Mabinogi" are alternative titles for the same thing—I certainly did!

However, rather than simply re-adding a hatnote, I brought it here for discussion, because it seems to me that the two need to be disentangled throughout both of their articles, and by someone with a sound grasp of the texts and names. Points to clarify include: -- Perey (talk) 08:20, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Does the title of "earliest British prose stories" belong to the entire Mabinogion, or specifically to the Four Branches?
 * Did the Mabinogion collection exist as such in the Middle Welsh manuscripts, or was that a creation of Guest, its "first publisher"?
 * What references and external links should be used in the Four Branches article? At present it seems like a broad bibliography on the Mabinogion as a whole, rather than a selection specific to those tales. But it may not be possible to adequately support the article without reference to at least some texts of/scholarship on the whole collection.

Earliest British? Earliest Welsh?
Earliest Welsh implies that there are earlier works in other languages of Britain. DuncanHill (talk) 16:02, 2 November 2022 (UTC)


 * One of the defining characteristics of the stories in the Mabinogion is that they are Welsh, and written in the Welsh language. There is Old English literature of comparable age and possibly older. --Nicknack009 (talk) 20:30, 2 November 2022 (UTC)