Irish Mythology: The Coming of the Milesians (Gaels)

Tuatha de dannan video

Culhwch and Olwen & welsh mythology

The tale of Beren and Lúthien also shares an element with folktales
such as the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen...

Culhwch and Olwen
is a Welsh tale about a hero connected with Arthur and his warriors that survives in only two manuscripts:
a complete version in the Red Book of Hergest, ca. 1400,
and a fragmented version in the White Book of Rhydderch, ca. 1325.

It is the longest of the surviving Welsh prose tales.

Lady Charlotte Guest included this tale among those she collected under the title
The Mabinogion.

------------
The Red Book of Hergest (Welsh: Llyfr Coch Hergest)

is one of the most important medieval Welsh language manuscripts.

The manuscript includes both prose and poetry and was written between about 1382 and 1410.

The first part of the manuscript contains prose, including the Mabinogion, for which this is one of the manuscript sources (the other principal source being the White book of Rhydderch),

other tales, historical texts (including a Welsh translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae), and various other texts including a series of Triads. The rest of the manuscript contains poetry, especially from the period of court poetry known as Poetry of the Princes (Welsh:Gogynfeirdd or Beirdd y Tywysogion).

The manuscript also contains a collection of herbal remedies associated with Rhiwallon Feddyg, founder of a medical dynasty that lasted over 500 years - 'The Physicians of Myddfai' from the village of Myddfai just outside Llandovery.

J. R. R. Tolkien borrowed the title for the Red Book of Westmarch, the imagined legendary source of Tolkien’s tales.

------------

The White Book of Rhydderch (Welsh: Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch) is one of the most notable and celebrated manuscripts in Welsh.
Written in the middle of the fourteenth century (ca. 1350) it is the earliest collection of Welsh prose texts, though it also contains some examples of early Welsh poetry.

-----------

he Mabinogion (pronounced /mabɪ'nɔɡjɔn/) is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts.

The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions.

While some details may hark back to older Iron Age traditions, each of these tales is the product of a highly developed Welsh narrative tradition, both oral and written.

Lady Charlotte Guest in the mid 19th century was the first to publish English translations of the collection, popularising the name "Mabinogion" at the same time.

The stories of the Mabinogion appear in either or both of two Medieval Welsh manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch (Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch) written ca. 1350,

and the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest) written about 1382–1410, although texts or fragments of some of the tales have been preserved in earlier 13th century and later manuscripts. Scholars agree that the tales are older than the existing manuscripts, but disagree over just how much older.

It is clear that the different texts included in the Mabinogion originated at different times.

Song of Beren and Luthien

The Tale of Beren and Lúthien is the story of the love and adventures of the mortal Man Beren and the immortal Elf-maiden Lúthien, as told in several works of J. R. R. Tolkien.

It takes place during the First Age of Middle-earth, about 6500 years before the events of his most famous book, The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien wrote several versions of their story, the latest written in The Silmarillion.
Beren and Lúthien are also mentioned in The Lord of the Rings.

The first version of the story is the Tale of Tinúviel, which was written in 1917 as a part of The Book of Lost Tales.

During the 1920s Tolkien started to reshape the tale and to transform it into an epic poem which he called The Lay of Leithian.

He never finished it.

The story and the characters reflect the love of Tolkien and his wife Edith.

Particularly, the event when Edith danced for him in a glade with flowering hemlocks seems to have inspired his vision of the meeting of Beren and Lúthien.

On Tolkien's grave, J. R. R. Tolkien is referred to as Beren and Edith is referred to as Lúthien...

Song of Beren and Lúthien

The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinúviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.

There Beren came from mountains cold,
And lost he wandered under leaves,
And where the Elven-river rolled
He walked alone and sorrowing.
He peered between the hemlock-leaves
And saw in wonder flowers of gold
Upon her mantle and her sleeves,
And her hair like shadow following.

Enchantment healed his weary feet
That over hills were doomed to roam;
And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,
And grasped at moonbeams glistening.
Through woven woods in Elvenhome
She lightly fled on dancing feet,
And left him lonely still to roam
In the silent forest listening.

He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Or music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-sheaves,
And one by one with sighing sound
Whispering fell the beachen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.

He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.

When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.

Again she fled, but swift he came.
Tinúviel! Tinúviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell
His voice laid on her: Beren came,
And doom fell on Tinúviel
That in his arms lay glistening.

As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tinúviel the elven-fair,
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.

Long was the way that fate them bore,
O'er stony mountains cold and grey,
Through halls of ireon and darkling door,
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless.


The Tale of Beren and Lúthien

After the ruin of his land in the Battle of Sudden Flame the Man Beren fled into the elvish realm Doriath. There he met the Elf-maiden Lúthien and they fell in love with each other.

Thingol, the father of Lúthien, did not want his daughter to marry a mortal man.

Therefore he asked Beren for a Silmaril, one of the hallowed jewels which the Dark Lord Morgoth had stolen from the Elves, as the bride price.

With the help of Huan and Finrod Felagund, Beren and Lúthien defeated Sauron and came to Angband, where they stole a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown.

The unfinished poem ends when they encounter the wolf Carcharoth at the gate of Angband.

Qntal "Von Den Elben"

"flightless bird, american mouth" - iron & wine

Never Think By Robert Pattinson in background of Video...