Reddit reviews The Mabinogion (Oxford World's Classics)
We found 6 Reddit comments about The Mabinogion (Oxford World's Classics). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Oxford University Press, USA
For a start:
For Norse sagas, Penguin classics has some fantastic editions:
For eastern mythology, you'll want:
For Celtic mythology:
Well muffins you’re right. I saw someone else mention it so I thought there was (on mobile so can’t see it directly)
Here’s a general list. https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/3421.The_Best_Pagan_Books
For something beyond 101, you might like http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/michael-lloyd/bull-of-heaven-the-mythic-life-of-eddie-buczynski-and-the-rise-of-the-new-york-pagan/paperback/product-20287061.html. A friend wrote this and spent over a decade interviewing people and gathering information. It’s beefy but if you’re curious about the NY pagan scene and gay culture in the 70s and 80s it’s definitely worth checking.
I’m into Celtic stuff, if you are too you may dig The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom. I’ve read a few books by Caitlin and/or John Matthews, and I dig their scholarship.
I would also suggest going super old school and seek out sources of myth. If you’re into Celtic/Welsh seek out books that deal with 11-13 century myth. Some stuff was being rewritten with Christian themes around then but you can still find interesting symbolism and nuggets to meditate on. You can find copies of The Mabinogion and Lady Gregory's Complete Irish Mythology is also good to start on. Also don’t forget to check poetry. W.B. Yates touched on lots of pagan themes and so did his contemporaries
For reading material in general you may find you’ll have to look more and more into other sections of literature than the pagan section. The modern movement didn’t really get going since the 70s, and with so much to cover there’s just not a whole heck of a lot of books out there that go deep beyond the 101 stuff
Oh and one more thing. This is more of a hint. Get your favorite pagan books and look who they source. You’ll find lots of reading material that way.
I hope that helps
Evangeline Walton's retelling of the Mabinogion makes for wonderful reading. For a more direct translation of the original text (it was written down sometime in the 1200's after existing in oral tradition for who-knows-how-long), I like the slightly more readable tone of Sioned Davies' version from the Oxford World Classics.
I love your comments on Taran Wanderer. Myself, I loved The Castle of Llyr - probably because of my deeper sense of connection to Eilonwy. But I also loved the darkness of The Black Cauldron, and the hero's discovery of himself, and then the sacrifices, of The High King. Really, the whole series is a marvelous thing.
Time to re-read it....my daughter's 7 now and I bet she'd love it.
'Arthur: The Legend': https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Arthur-Legend-Lannig-Treseizh/1906587078
> If the names Arthur and Merlin conjure up images of knights in shining armour, going forth from Camelot on a quest for the Holy Grail, then prepare for a shock.
> Because Arthur: The Legend, published by small Welsh press Dalen Books, is a graphic novel that eschews the medieval trappings of Arthurian lore, popularised by such authors as Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chrétien de Troyes, to return to the roots of the tales.
> The iconic story of King Arthur, the warrior hero born to return the Island of Britain to its rightful owners, his band of heroes, and his otherworldly advisor, Merlin, originates in the literature of the Dark Ages some 1,500 years ago.
> Those responsible for Arthur: The Legend, originally released in French in 2004, scoured historical, mythological and poetic texts from that period, such as the Historia Brittonium, Annales Cambriae and Mabinogion, to compile the purest version of the legend available in graphic form.
> The tales are set in the British Heroic Age when the country was predominantly a Celtic island, ruled by the Brythons, the ancestors of the Welsh. The Roman invasion had ended with the collapse of the empire but the Brythonic kingdoms were facing a new threat from the Saxons, the predecessors of the English.
> Envisaged as the first in a series of four volumes, Arthur: The Legend contains the fascinating story of the birth and growth of prophet and wild man of the woods Myrddin (the modern Welsh orthographical rendering of Merlin) and the rise to fame of the fearless Arthur, adopted son of Cynyr, who would achieve renown resisting the Saxon advance as the Brythons' war-chief.
> Along the way the reader encounters other well-known figures such as insidious King Gwrtheyrn (Vortigern), whose treacherous actions gave the Saxons a foothold in Britain, the legendary leader of the Saxons, Hengest, the great bard Taliesin, and Arthur's sorceress sister Morgen (Morgan le Fay).
> Historical accuracy merges seamlessly with magical fantasy in this richly layered novel, which informs as much as it delights. Incredible tales of dragons in combat, animal transformations and enchanted relics, such as the cauldron of plenty, sit alongside ferocious battles, political machinations and bonds of love.
> The gripping narrative, by David Chauvel, is told through speech bubbles and box captions, and is brought vividly to life through the artwork of Jérôme Lereculey, whose traditional, detailed style of drawing is complemented by colourist Jean-Luc Simon's judicious use of a muted palette.
> There are some nice flourishes such as Lereculey's cartoon-style approach to the childhood tale of King Bendigeidfran and the powerful contrasts of red and blue in the colouring of some nighttime scenes, which draw the eye in and give a strong sense of immediacy.
> As a whole, Arthur: The Legend successfully integrates a wide range of moods, characters and folktales to deliver an absorbing, fresh approach to a seemingly all-too-familiar field.
> Suitable for teenagers and adults, this graphic novel will reignite your interest in Arthurian legend and have you counting down the days until the second volume, focussing on Arthur's nephew Gawain and the romance of Culhwch and Olwen, is released.
> I would like to find something with mythology of the gods and goddesses
If you would like a modern rendition of the Irish and Welsh tales, then Peter Berresford Ellis' Celtic Myths and Legends is a good choice.
If you are interested in delving into the lore directly, check out Táin Bó Cúailnge and other tales from Ireland's mythological cycles, or The Mabinogion for Welsh myths and legends. These are also available for free online, but I recommend buying the books if you can swing it because they tend to have higher quality translations and copious foot/endnotes that help put the stories in context and explain things to the modern reader.
> nothing goes into enough detail to connect dieties, or tell their stories, just general "this is the god of this, that and the other"
There are a lot of deities who we have only sparse information about. The majority of Celtic deities were local gods and goddesses, which gives us very few sources of detailed information. However, there are a good number of more widely-worshiped deities about which we know more. The myths and legends I mentioned above are the biggest sources of information about these figures, though we learn a lot of important info from the archaeological record as well.
You can check out http://www.maryjones.us/index.html which we link to in our sidebar. It has some decent articles and sources for many different Celtic figures and gods. If you would like a book that gives good info about archaeology and how it connects to the myths, check out Proinsias McCana's Celtic Mythology.
Wikipedia's Celtic and pagan projects have grown quite a bit, so you can even find some informative articles there with reference lists that can point you to more sources. For that, start with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_deities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Celtic_deities