Bird Blood Snow Read online

a synopsis

  Synopsis by Penny Thomas

  for the full story see The Mabinogion, A New Translation

  by Sioned Davies (Oxford World’s Classics, 2007).

  Peredur was the son of Earl Efrog who lived by fighting. He was too young to fight and his mother, a wise woman, fled with him to the wastelands. No one mentioned war or weapons to him, but every day he would go to the forest and throw holly darts.

  One day he saw three knights but when he told his mother she fell in a dead faint. So he took a bony grey nag and put a pannier on it for a saddle. As he left, his mother gave him words of advice. Go to Arthur’s court, she said. Peredur copied all the horse-trappings he had seen with twisted branches and set off with a fistful of darts. He saw a maiden sitting near the open door of a pavilion and went in. She let him eat half her food and wine; he took a golden ring and left. When the knight who owned the pavilion returned he accused her of sleeping with Peredur and vowed revenge.

  Before Peredur reached Arthur's court another knight arrived and insulted Gwenhwyfar by pouring drink over her face and breast. He kept the goblet and left asking someone to follow and fight him for it. All the knights hung their heads, but then Peredur arrived. Cai, a tall man, was standing in the middle of the floor and laughed at Peredur’s horse and weapons. He told Peredur to go and get the goblet back. Peredur did so, putting a holly stick through the knight’s eye. He left court, swearing loyalty to Arthur and revenge on Cai. That same week he met sixteen knights and overthrew them all. Finally he came to a fortress where a man who said he was his uncle offered to teach him to be a knight.

  Peredur went on and came to a great, ivy-covered fortress where a lad with yellow hair leaned over the battlements. In the house he saw a maiden wearing an old dress of silk that showed her white flesh; her hair was blacker than jet and her cheeks red. She gave him a place to sleep, and for three weeks he helped her overthrow her oppressors.Then he came to a castle but was told the nine witches of Caerloyw lived there. At dawn he heard a scream and saw a witch attacking the watchman. Peredur struck her head with a sword until her helmet spread out like a dish. He left and stayed the night in a hermit's cell. The next morning he found it had snowed and a wild hawk had killed a duck near the cell. The hawk rose and a raven descended and Peredur stood and compared the blackness of the raven and the whiteness of the snow and the redness of the blood to the woman he loved best.

  Meanwhile Arthur and his retinue were searching for him. Cai called to him and Peredur struck him, before Gwalchmai spoke kindly to him and brought him to Arthur. At the court he met Angharad Law Eurog and loved her, but she did not love him and he swore to speak to no Christian until she did. He left, continuing his journey, killing knights and oppressors, a lion and a serpent until he came back to the court and found Angharad now loved him.

  Arthur went hunting with Peredur and Peredur’s dog killed the stag. Then inside a house he saw maidens and men playing a board game and then he saw a huge, black-haired, one-eyed man, who terrorised everyone. He had lost his eye fighting a serpent, but Peredur killed him. Then he came to a place where women were bathing corpses which came back to life. They said there was a monster in the cave which killed them every day. A maiden gave him a stone so the monster would not see him.

  Following her words he found a valley where he could see sheep and hear hunting dogs. He found the monster and killed it. Soon afterwards he was stopped by a man in red armour called Edlym, Then he came to a huge tournament where he saw a beautiful empress. He overthrew many knights till the empress asked to see him. They talked together and three men came and offered her goblets to give to a man who would fight for her. Peredur asked for them. He killed the three men and ruled with the empress for fourteen years.

  Then a black-haired maiden came to court and berated Peredur for all the killing he had caused. He set out on a quest for the Fortress of Wonders, until he found that it was the witches of Caerloyw who had been tormenting him. Peredur and Gwalchmai called for Arthur, and he and his retinue attacked the witches and killed them. And that is what is told of the Fortress of Wonders.

  Afterword

  Cynan Jones

  There’s no academic basis for this, but Peredur comes across to me as a story written down before it was ready.

  There’s something unfinished about the tale – clear, perhaps, when we consider the several versions of it that exist. To me, it seems the story hadn’t had time to mature and develop before it was put down. (A child sent out into a changing world before he was quite ready.)

  I wonder if the ‘questing tale’ was newly in fashion, and while the other Mabinogion stories had time to grow up and accumulate integrity, Peredur – roguish youth as he is – went ahead as a mishmash of popular motifs and events without the narrative balance that comes with giving a story time.

  It’s a poor piece of prose. If you compare the language and writing with de Troyes’ Perceval, there is no contest as to which is the more sophisticated, compelling piece.

  But let’s remember: these were oral tales. To a degree, pantomime. A sentence like: ‘Peredur killed the three men then went to the pavilion’ is not ‘good’ writing to read. But performed, how much more would a storyteller have given the line? As Steinbeck pointed out while working on his retell­ing of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur: ‘The teller of the story could inform his audience with a raised eyebrow or a wink...’

  I wanted to keep these two key things when I worked on this book: the unfinished feel of a ‘work in progress’; and the idea of performance and exaggeration. The notion that a narrator could put on different hats.

  I also wanted to preserve an element of quest. Throughout Bird, Blood, Snow there are relics from other books, there for the reader errant to uncover should they wish. Some are somewhat buried, have a patina – they’d need a dusting off. Others lie about on the floor of the text pretty much intact. But it’s as you wish. Take it up or not.

  As for everything meaning something else, you can take that for granted.

  Usually I do the work for a story in my head, then write like I’m remembering. And I try to be clear and precise and economic; and I try to make sure that what my characters do is what they would really do. It wasn’t that way here. The task was to cut a shape out of an existing block of someone else’s authorship. I enjoyed that. The work happened in a blur. There are clichés, embellishments, anachronisms, but that felt right. I think it’s the better for not sanding it smooth.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Seren for offering me this, and particularly to Penny Thomas. It was a chance to go at something differently.

  Thanks also to Sioned Davies for her translation of The Mabinogion, which was my central text.

  Appendix

  From The Celtic Echo

  Multiple Dead Sheep Fuel Big Cat Theory

  The discovery locally of an unusual number of dead sheep in the remote hillsides has led to a fear that a big cat could be on the loose.

  They were found by a walker, Mr Winton, while on a hike and because the injuries caused to the sheep were so severe some people believe that a big cat is in the area.

  Mr Winton, 43, said he’d been walking an old bridleway with his partner Julia, 40, and about two miles off the road heading into the hills they spotted the first dead sheep.

  ‘As we went further, we came across another and it really looked like it had been attacked by something,’ he said. ‘There must have been seven or eight in the end.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to say it was a big cat, but having shown the photos to some friends who work in farming, it seems there are too many for it to be a fox or a dog.

  ‘Of course I’d heard of big cats on the loose before, and I looked for footprints, but couldn’t see anything unusual there,’ added Mr Winton.

  In the 1960s and ’70s, it was not unusual for the rich to own a big cat such as a puma or a leopard.

  But the Dangerous Animals Act 1976 made it illegal witho
ut an expensive license, and it is widely believed that many were simply released into remote areas of wilderness such as Bodmin Moor.

  Famously, there is the ‘Beast of Bont’ legend which first gained prominence after twelve sheep were found mutilated in Ysbyty Ystwyth in 1981, not far from the village of Pontrhydfendigiad in Mid Wales.

  There continued to be sporadic sightings and reports of alleged big cat activity in Borth, Talybont, Talgarreg and Bontgoch over recent years and in 1995, 50 sheep were reported to be killed in Pont­rhydfendigiad.

  Wild cats such as puma or panthers can live up to fifteen years in the wild and their territories can cover up to 386 square miles.

  But a spokesman for the Big Cat Society said: ‘From the pictures it is impossible to tell what killed the sheep. But it does not sound like the work of a big cat.

  ‘They kill for food, not usually randomly. In my view at a quick glance there is something other than a big cat at work here, and they would have been also ravaged by scavengers, foxes, birds etc.’

  He added: ‘Some look a lot older than ten days. Also with that amount of kills something took a long time to kill them.’

  A local sheep farmer and NFU spokesman said after looking at Mr Winton’s photos: ‘There is a difference between a dead sheep and a killed sheep. And these are killed sheep.’

  He was unable to determine what might have caused the animals’ death, but he did comment that they looked unusually mutilated.

  ‘Whatever it was it is not something like I have seen before.

  ‘Just from the photos it is clear that whatever it was that did this is certainly a very dangerous and very capable and very violent thing.’

  Seren is the book imprint of

  Poetry Wales Press Ltd

  57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

  www.seren-books.com

  © Cynan Jones 2012

  ISBN 9781854116079

  The right of Cynan Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters and incidents portrayed are the work of the author’s imagination. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Mathew Bevan

  Inner design and typesetting by [email protected]

  Mind map rendered by [email protected]

  With thanks to the estate of John Steinbeck (The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, John Steinbeck, Penguin, 2001)

  Newspaper article p193 with thanks to the Cambrian News

  Printed in the Czech Republic by Akcent Media

  ­­­

  The publisher acknowledges the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.