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Top reviews from Canada

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Ahazarus

Excellent book in very good condition

Reviewed in Canada on June 6, 2016

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Excellent book in very good condition. Somewhat delayed in the delivery process but Awesome Books solved the problem quickly and efficiently.

Good source of info

Reviewed in Canada on April 27, 2002

A competant enough translation, not the best or the worst that is out there. I can't say yea or nay about how Lady Charlotte Guest did with the source materials of the book, but I have to say that it's pretty entertaining.
It chronicles various tales from Wales, going back to ancient legends about heroes and gods, and then forward in time to recognizable elements such as King Arthur. Since this is a Dover thrift book (one of the pricier ones, since it's longer) the quality is so-so; the cover artwork is better than most of the thrift books, and the paper is only a little better than newpaper-quality.
In terms of readability, however, Guest's Mabinogion does not win any prizes. The translated sentences really could use a little tweaking, and often dialogue between several people is crammed together into one long paragraph. This is not only distracting, but hard to read.
Overall, it is fairly nice but needs an editor to tweak it in places. Fans of fantasy as well as mythology may want to check this out, especially if they are fans of the Prydain or Lost Years of Merlin series. For more readable Celtic myths, try Ella Young's "Celtic Wonder Tales."

E. M. Hodge

Difficult Read

Reviewed in Canada on February 5, 2003

This review is 100% opinion. While the mythology and legends inside are interesting, full of great characters and contain wisdom and understanding of the Celtic mindset, I felt that the storytelling itself was very poorly done. This may be a result of the translation, I haven't read another version yet to compare, or it may be a result of the writing itself. In either case, I couldn't immerse myself fully into the stories. They didn't "carry me away" as it were.

Top reviews from other countries

Batmanmatrix

oral tradition of story telling that many of the fantastic and supernatural elements of the tales have come

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2016

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The book has been widely influential, giving rise to timeless literary figures such as Arthur and Merlin, and providing the basis of much European and world literature - the fantasy fiction genre, so popular today, was practically unknown before its publication.

It first came to general literary prominence in the mid 19th century, when Lady Charlotte Guest published her translation of 11 medieval Welsh folk tales under the title The Mabinogion.

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.

Preserved in written form in the White Book of Rhydderch (1300-1325) and the Red Book of Hergest (1375-1425), portions of the stories were written as early as the second half of the 11th century, and some stories are much older still.

It is from this older, oral tradition of story telling that many of the fantastic and supernatural elements of the tales have come.

Ironically the title, The Mabinogion, is a relatively modern one, coined mistakenly by Lady Charlotte Guest herself. The word 'mabinogion', which she assumed was the plural form of 'mabinogi', appears only once in the manuscripts she translated and is commonly dismissed as a transcription error.

'Mabinogi', derived from the word 'mab', originally meant 'boyhood' or 'youth' but gradually came to mean 'tale of a hero's boyhood' and eventually, simply, 'a tale'.

It's these first four heroic 'tales', or the four 'branches' of Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan, and Math, which make up The Mabinogi(on) proper.

A single character, Pryderi links all four branches. In the first tale he's born and fostered, inherits a kingdom and marries. In the second he's scarcely mentioned, but in the third he's imprisoned by enchantment and then released. In the fourth he falls in battle.

The tales themselves are concerned with the themes of fall and redemption, loyalty, marriage, love, fidelity, the wronged wife, and incest.

They're set in a bizarre and magical landscape which corresponds geographically to the western coast of south and north Wales, and are full of white horses that appear magically, giants, beautiful, intelligent women and heroic men.

The title, The Mabinogion, is also used today to describe the other seven stories in Lady Charlotte Guest's collection: The Dream of Macsen Wledig, which is based on the legend of Emperor Maximus; Llud and Llefelys, a story full of fairy tale elements; Culhwch and Olwen, the earliest known Arthurian romance in Welsh; The Dream of Rhonabwy, a witty meditation on ancient Britain's heroic tradition; and three further Arthurian romances, The Lady of the Fountain, Peredur and Geraint and Enid. A 12th story, Taliesin, translated from a later manuscript, is included in some collections.