The Mabinogion

Welsh myth · c. 1350 CE · Myth / Legend · Celtic / Irish · Medieval

Eleven Welsh prose tales preserved in the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest: Pwyll trading places for a year with the lord of the otherworld, Branwen married into Ireland and the war that follows, Math and Gwydion conjuring a wife out of flowers, Culhwch demanding forty impossible gifts to win Olwen. Arthur appears here earlier than in any French romance, as a Welsh warlord surrounded by retainers with absurd talents. The chief surviving record of Brythonic myth, and the reason so much later Arthurian material has a Welsh floor under it.

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Lineage

• shares sources with ↑ Le Morte d'Arthur
  Thomas Malory · 1470 CE · Novel
• ↓ Tristan and Iseult
  Anonymous · c. 1170 CE · Myth / Legend — shares sources with this
• ↓ Idylls of the King
  Alfred, Lord Tennyson · 1859 CE · Poem — influenced by this
• ↓ Erec and Enide
  Chrétien de Troyes · c. 1170 CE · Poem — shares sources with this
• ↓ Yvain, the Knight of the Lion
  Chrétien de Troyes · c. 1180 CE · Poem — shares sources with this

Attributes

Closest analogues

• The Saga of the Volsungs
  Anonymous · c. 1270 CE · Myth / Legend

  52% · 12 shared
  Myth / LegendFantasyEpicBetrayalDuty & HonorJustice & RevengeMedievalShapeshifterSorceressvs Supernaturalvs PersonMythic
• Idylls of the King
  Alfred, Lord Tennyson · 1859 CE · Poem

  48% · 10 shared
  EpicBetrayalDuty & HonorRuler / KingSorceressEpisodicThe Crownvs PersonMythicElegiac
• Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
  Pu Songling · c. 1740 CE · Folktale

  48% · 9 shared
  FantasyTransformationJustice & RevengeShapeshifterSorceressEpisodicDual WorldMetamorphosisvs Supernatural
• Tales from Ovid
  Ted Hughes · 1997 CE · Poem

  48% · 9 shared
  FantasyEpicTransformationJustice & RevengeShapeshifterEpisodicMetamorphosisThe ForestMythic
• The Nanabozho Cycle
  Anishinaabe myth · c. 1800 CE · Myth / Legend

  46% · 10 shared
  Myth / LegendFantasyTransformationJustice & RevengeShapeshifterEpisodicMetamorphosisThe Forestvs SupernaturalMythic
• The Faerie Queene
  Edmund Spenser · 1590 CE · Poem

  46% · 10 shared
  FantasyEpicDuty & HonorShapeshifterSorceressEpisodicThe Forestvs Supernaturalvs PersonMythic