This land where I live was once called Annwn
in the old tales of its inhabitants.
The Lord of Annwn is Gwyn ap Nudd, which
translates as White, or Holy, the son of the
Mist, or Haze.
His people are called Plant Annwn, the
Children of Annwn, or the Tylwyth Teg, the
Fair or Beautiful Family.
What the English would call Fairies, and the
Irish, the Sidhe-folk.
Annwn is a strange enchanted realm, located
somehow underground, or magically comingled
with the ordinary world. An invisible dimension
but connected to the normal mortal world by
way of concealed entrances.
A parallel reality, where nothing is ever quite
as it seems, and where the laws of physics
are mutable.
Pwyll, the Prince of Dyfed, is sitting upon one
of the ancient tumuli, when a strange lady in
a golden robe rides by upon a white horse.
He follows her, and is drawn away into her
realm, where time has no meaning, since she is
Rhiannon, and when the Birds of Rhiannon
sing, men lose all sense of the passage of time.
The stories are filled with fantastic imagery
and enigmatic references and allusions to
characters, places, and events which were
possibly common knowledge at that time,
but are obscure today. The stories were
composed or collected by the bards.
The status of a master of the bardic lore and
skill was acknowledged symbolically by the
special chair upon which eminent bards were
enthroned.
The idea of these otherworldly folk has been
explained as the memory or spirits of a former
race, an earlier culture, displaced by invaders,
mixed with elements of prechristian religious
beliefs. Other interpretations are possible.
The written sources of the early Welsh stories,
probably date from 1200 -1300 A.D., containing
material from the 9th. or 10th. centuries and
possibly including some earlier fragments.
To what extent the material allows genuine
insights into prehistoric Celtic culture has been
disputed for a century and more, and still is.
( Personally, I believe there is the possibility
that the Mabinogion tales contain material, not
just from Iron Age Celtic times, but from very
very much earlier. Some 7000 years earlier, in
fact, because there is a mention of a time when
Ireland and Wales where only separated by two
shallow rivers, the Archan and the Li. We know
now, from the geological record, that that must
have been the case. But at the time the stories
were written down, the authors couldn't have
known that.
So either they invented that detail - why ? - or
else it must have been passed down via oral
transmission from neolithic and mesolithic
times. There are also the tales of the sunken
offshore kingdoms. That land was inundated
approximately 4000 B.C. )
In the ancient Irish stories, Nuadu came to
Ireland with the Tuath de Danann, the people
of the goddess Danu, or Anu.
Having lost an arm in battle which was
replaced with one made of silver, he is called
Nuadu Argatlam, or Nuada ' of the silver hand '.
In the Welsh tales he is called Lludd Llaw
Ereint, which also means ' of the silver hand '.
With the coming of the Romans, he appears at
Lydney ( named after Lludd ) on the western
side of the River Severn ( itself named after a
goddess Sabren, or Sabrina ), where in late
Roman times, c. 365 A.D., a temple was
flourishing, probably a healing centre for wealthy
patrons, where was discovered an inscription
' D. M. Nodonti ', meaning ' to the great god
Nudons, or Nodons, or Nodens ', another cognate
of Nuadu, Lludd, Nudd.
After the Romans had been and gone, and
England had been conquered and settled, first
by the Anglo-Saxons, and then by the Normans
led by William the Conqueror, Nuadu
transmutes once again, his name Lludd or Lud
becoming Lot or Loth in Norman French, and
thus he enters the Arthurian legends, ( joining
Pwyll, who became Pelle, then Pelleas ) becoming
in Malory's ' Morte d' Arthur' ( c.1469 ), King
Loth of Orkney.
The first known story-teller of Arthurian themes
on the continent of Europe was a Welshman
named Bleheris or Bledri, who frequented the
court of Guilhem IX, Count of Poitou and VIII
Duke of Aquitaine.
It is likely that Guilhem received the stories of
the Holy Grail from this Bleheris, and that they
subsequently spread from the Court of Poitou.
It seems that this Bleheris was one Bledri ap
Cadifor, whose father, Cadifor, was a great
personage of the time in West Wales, and was
looked upon as the ancestor of important
families of ancient Dyfed.
Cadifor seems to have been on quite friendly
terms with the Normans, being said to have
entertained William the Conqueror on his visit
to St. David's in 1080.
In those days, St. David's, on the south-west
extremity of Wales, was a very famous
pilgrimage destination. Two pilgrimages there
were considered the equal of one to St. Peter's
in Rome. In the Age of Saints the peregrination
or ' soul journey ' was a major activity, and St.
David's must have had contacts with much of
Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
Cadifor died in 1089.His eldest son, Bledri,
probably lived between 1070 - 1150.
As many people have noted, the cycle of stories
surrounding the Holy Grail contain an esoteric
mystery, the tales being utilised to implant a
secret spiritual teaching concerning the Divine
Source, and the possibility of experiential
communion with it.
As an aside, it is here perhaps appropriate to
mention that, in my boyhood, I did actually
hold what was said to be the Holy Grail
in my young hands.
I recall its appearance as being similar to a
portion of coconut shell that you'd find on
the beach, worn by sand and water.
It was part of a very old wooden bowl, and
supposedly the vessel from which Jesus
drank at the Last Supper.
I had, and have, no way of verifying that claim.
The story was that it had found its way across
the intervening distance in time and space, to
Strata Florida and from there to Nanteos,
where I met it.
Perhaps it is the genuine cup, but I believe
that the Grail mentioned in the stories refers
to something of a different order entirely,
something immaterial.
And given that in mediaeval times, a ' good
relic ' could produce enormous wealth by
attracting pilgrims, all such relics must be
viewed sceptically.
A pilgrim visiting shrines in France was shown
the skull of John the Baptist on two consecutive
days, at two different places.
When the pilgrim enquired how this was
possible, the attendant monk at the second
shrine said that the first skull was obviously
that of John when he was a young man, and
this second skull from when he was old....
There are two sources which mention the Grail
as a chalice related to Christ whose date is
considerably earlier than that of the main body
of Arthurian literature.
One, from the early ninth century, says that
Joseph of Arimathea brought the Chalice of the
Last Supper to Britain, where he was given an
island called Ynis Avalon ( Welsh, Ynys Afallon,
island of the apples, or orchards ) by a king
named Arviragus.
The second, and earliest, is from Helinand de
Froidmont ( circa 717-9 ) : ' At this time a
wonderful vision was shown to a certain
hermit by an angel, concerning a noble decurion,
Joseph, who took down the body of our Lord
from the Cross, and concerning the bowl or
dish in which the Lord supped with his
disciple in regard to which a history, which
is called the Grail, has been written by the
same hermit.'
The quantity of literature, both ancient and
modern, concerning the Grail - or Sangreal as
it is sometimes known - is immense, but despite
countless scholarly researches, the Grail remains
elusive, its precise origin and nature unknown.
If anybody discovers the true nature of the
Grail, it is certainly best to keep it a secret, lest
they spoil the mystery for all those folk who
are still seeking and engaged with their Quest.
The journey is, after all, just as important as is
the final destination, and they are, in fact,
really the same thing. If you show someone
the way, you rob them of the chance to make
their own discovery.
It is told in ' La Queste del Saint Graal ', that
when the knights of the Round Table set forth
in quest of the Grail, they depart from King
Arthur's castle, " And now each one went the
way upon which he had decided, and they set
out into the forest at one point and another,
there where they saw it to be thickest, so that
each would experience the unknown pathless
forest in his own heroic way."
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