Y Felenrhyd

[lorna]

'as soon as they reached Y Felenrhyd, because the foot-soldiers could not be restrained from shooting at each other, Pryderi sent messengers requesting that both armies be called off, and that the matter be left to him and Gwydion son of Don, since Gwydion had caused this... And they fought. And because of strength and valour, and magic and enchantment, Gwydion triumphed and he was buried inn Maentwrog, above Y Felenrhyd, and his grave is there.' - The Fourth Branch

[lorna]

The exact location of Pryderi's grave is unknown. When I visited with Heron he said he had a source locating it on a stream near Ivy Bridge in present day Coed Felinrhyd, but there was not visible sign of it. Heron, what was the name of the stream and what was your source? It isn't in the notes to Sioned Davies' Mabinogion.

[Heron]

Oct 21, 2017 11:50:50 GMT -1 lorna said:

The exact location of Pryderi's grave is unknown. When I visited with Heron he said he had a source locating it on a stream near Ivy Bridge in present day Coed Felinrhyd, but there was not visible sign of it. Heron, what was the name of the stream and what was your source? It isn't in the notes to Sioned Davies' Mabinogion.

Thanks for putting up the pics of your visit to North Wales. The source for the alternative location of Pryderi' grave is 'The Stanzas of the Graves':

In Aber Gwenoli
Lies the grave of Pryderi

It's on page 103 of Meirion Pennar's translation of The Black Book of Carmarthen.  It's difficult to find the exact stream on a map as the names of individual streams are not given but I think it is the one that runs down from Llyn Tecwyn (or Decwyn). The identity of the stream is given in a few places as being that stream where it flows into the part of the River Prysor that now runs from the lake at Trawsfynydd to the River Dwyfor at Y Felenrhyd, most accessibly by John Bollard (~>). Trawsfynydd lake was not there then, of course, and the geography of the area around Y Felenrhyd may have changed since the building of the embankment at Porthmadog which certainly changed the geography of Y Traeth Mawr. The first  reference to the stream being this particular one in Coed Felinrhyd is in a critical  edition on the Stanzas of the Graves by Thomas Jones (one half of Gwyn Jones & Thomas Jones, translators of the Everyman edition of The Mabinogion): Proceedings of the British Academy 1967.

Update : Looking at another edition of the stanzas of the Graves I notice that the punctuation in Meirion Pennar’s edition is misleading. He has a comma after Pryderi suggesting that the reference to him continues, but it seems that the reference to the sea striking the shore should apply to the following grave of Gwallawg and other editions follow ‘Pryderi’ with a semi colon to make this clear. So I  have deleted some bits from my original post. 

[lorna]

Thanks for adding this Heron. I assume the stream photographed was (hopefully) Aber Gwenoli then. It would make more sense in relation to the proximity to Y Felenrhyd if the sea wasn't striking the shore. I guess the Prysor may have been tidal but not that tidal so that does clear things up a bit.

[Heron]

Oct 28, 2017 9:08:22 GMT -1 lorna said:

Thanks for adding this Heron. I assume the stream photographed was (hopefully) Aber Gwenoli then. It would make more sense in relation to the proximity to Y Felenrhyd if the sea wasn't striking the shore. I guess the Prysor may have been tidal but not that tidal so that does clear things up a bit.

I'm sure it is the right stream Lorna and it's good to have the picture,

[Heron]

Here's a summary of sources for the location of location of Pryderi' grave as identified in 'The Stanzas of the Graves':

In Aber Gwenoli
Lies the grave of Pryderi

This appears in verse 7 of the series of 'Grave Poems' in The Black Book of Carmarthen.  The stream is not named on the OS map but it is identified as  the one that runs down from Llyn Tecwyn towards the Felenrhyd by Thomas Jones in his critical edition of the poems published in  Proceedings of the British Academy 1967.  R J Thomas in his Enwau Afonydd a Nentydd Cymru , a catalogue of rivers and streams in Wales published in 1938, says (in my translation): Gwenoli is a small stream which rises near Llyn Tecwyn and runs down to the Felenrhyd river". Llyn Tecwyn is a lake just above the Felinrhyd woodland and the "Felenrhyd river" is the part of the River Prysor continuing from the more recent artificial lake at Trawsfynydd that runs into the Dwyryd just below the woodland. The stream that runs down from near the lake meets the rive just below Ivy Bridge. 

 John Bollard has published an edition of the Stanzas of the Graves (~>) where he discusses the location of the Gwenoli in his notes and includes a small close-up photograph of the stream, though not a particularly good one compared to the photographs of some other places in this edition. Bollard also notes in his translation of The Mabinogi, that the Gwenoli flows into the Prysor just above Y Felenrhyd.

Taking all this into account Aber Gwenoli is at OS map reference SH65380 39462   i.e. HERE:

[Mallolwch]

In ‘The Textual Notes’ for page 60 in The Mabinogion, Gwyn Jones has stated that in the original MSS the place of Pryderi’s burial is given as Maen Tyuyawc. ( Jones, Gwyn, and Jones, Thomas, The Mabinogion, London, 1948). Maen Tyuyawc was amended to Maen Tyryawc by Lady Charlotte Guest, in order that she might identify it with Maentwrog in Wales!! Subsequently Rachel Bromwich gave the original place-name Maen Tyuyawc as the place of Pryderi’s grave but for some unexplained reason she still identified it with Maentwrog in Wales, as Lady Guest had done! (Rachel Bromwich, ‘Notes to Personal Names’, Trioedd Ynys Prydein, p. 486.)
The form given in the Internet version of ‘The Mabinogi of Math’ and in some other sources is ‘Maen Tyuynawc’. This is Irish written phonetically and decodes as Maon-tíghe Uanach –‘The Dumb-house of Leisure’ – a questionably cheery name for a grave.
The Mabinogi legends originated in the West of Ireland. For a photo of Pryderi’s grave – an umbo tomb on a height above a ford which the Welsh version of the legend calls ‘uelen rhyd’ (‘the golden ford’), see page 34 in “Reclaiming the Spoils of Annwfyn: Regia Altera and the Landscape of the Mabinogi”, available free online at 221.ebook777.com//080/Reclaiming-the-Spoils-of-Annwfyn-Regia-Altera-and-the-landscape-of-the-Mabinogi.pdf

[Gwern]

So how do you square that with the very precise geographical plotting in the Mabinogi story which locates the events leading to Pryderi's death above Y Felenrhyd at the mouth of the river Dwyryd in Wales and the statement that the grave is nearby?
And that it is reinforced by the Stanzas of the Graves references given above?

[gwiddon]

I used to live near Maentwrog. These stories are alive in the landscape and in the awareness of the locals. IRELAND...?