Branwen - The Landscape of the Story and Songs
Eglwys Cwyfan, Aberffraw, Ynys Môn/Anglesey, with mountains of the Llŷn Peninsula beyond.
This story, in common with many of the stories in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, is clearly located in the landscape of Wales and beyond. Harlech is a central location in the story and is the King Bendigeidran’s favourite court. The castle in Harlech you can see today was built many centuries after the story was first told but, more or less, around the time the story was first written down. Edward I commissioned the castle as part of his attempt to conquer Wales. In spite of this one of the castle’s towers is called Tŵr Bronwen (Bronwen’s Tower), so perhaps the story has leaked into the fabric of the building to make this tower the place where from Branwen sent her starling in search of help.
If you’re confused by the names Branwen and Bronwen, you are not alone. They are both girls names still current in Welsh. Branwen means ‘white crow’ and ‘Bronwen’ means ‘white breast’. The medieval copyist wrote the name as ‘Branwen’ in the manuscript on all but one occasion, when he wrote ‘Bronwen’. We are not the only ones to get confused, which is comforting.
After her death Branwen was buried in a place called Bedd Branwen on Anglesey. There is a Bronze Age burial mound with the little river Alaw flowing round three sides of it in a horse-shoe shape. This has an uncanny resemblence to the Isle of Dogs on the Thames just downstream from the White Tower where Benidgeidfran’s head was buried at the end of the story. If I tell you that in the Mabinogi the place is called Bryngwyn (White Hill) it may just sound like a cheesy coincidence but once you factor in the ravens it does start to add up. Bendigeidfean means ‘Blessed Crow’ and great efforts are made to ensure that his totem animal, the raven, is always to be found in the Tower of London. In the Mabinogi, Bendigeidfran’s buried head is used as a magic talisman to protect the Island of Britain from invasion and the same story applies to the ravens.
Starlings outside my window. Yet more corvids!
I’m not suggesting that you immediately grab your Gandalf cloak and set off down to the Tower of London to find the portal to the Otherworld (although you can if you want. They have quite a tolerant dress code down there, as evidenced by the Beefeaters). Maybe it’s an opportunity to slow down and tune into what effect the story is having on us. This is a deeply strange story with many resonances beyond the tale types that comprise it. The fact that the name ‘Branwen’ is once rendered as ‘Bronwen’ in the manuscript and that there is a tower in Harlech called ‘Bronwen’s Tower’, in a place that, when it was built, was an instrument of political and cultural conquest is not just sloppiness or entropy. It points to a resonance that the stories still have for us today. A resonance that is not about facts or archeology or artefacts but about us as a people and species.
Gwales here we come. Watch out for the gannets!
Even the strange island of Gwales (pronounces ‘Gwal-ess’) where the Seven Survivors feasted for eighty years in the company of the Head, is a real place. Gwales is as hard to get to now as it was then. The island is over the horizon if you are on the mainland but if you go to the RSBP reserve of Skomer Island you can just make it out perched on the horizon. Today it appears white because, now the feasting has stopped, it has become an important gannet colony (around 40 000 pairs at the last count).
You can listen to the Branwen podcasts here
Branwen at Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival 2019 in Amgueddfa Ceredigion Museum