Branwen

For three years she kept a bird on the rim of a kneading trough. Flour worked into its feathers and settled in the creases of her hands, and the court around her went on eating bread she had made and thought nothing of her at all. She taught the starling words. She described her brother to it until it would have known him in a crowd, the way you might describe a mountain to someone who has only ever seen hills. Then she wrote down what was being done to her, tied the letter under the bird’s wing, and let it go over the sea.

Branwen daughter of Llŷr is the still point of the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, the bleakest of the four and the one with the highest body count. Her brother is Bendigeidfran, crowned king of the Island of the Mighty, a giant no house has ever contained. Another brother is Manawydan. Her half-brothers, sons of Penarddun by Euroswydd, are Nisien, who could make peace between two armies at the height of their fury, and Efnisien, who could start a war between two brothers at the height of their affection. That single sentence of introduction is the whole engine of the tale, and the storyteller sets it down in the first paragraph like a loaded gun on a table.

The name itself is unsettled. Brân means raven and bron means breast, and the manuscripts cannot decide: the White Book of Rhydderch mostly writes Branwen but has one Bronwen, the Red Book of Hergest adds Brannwen and Branwenn, and a late eighteenth-century antiquarian recorded a mound on Anglesey known locally as Bedd Bronwen. Rachel Bromwich went looking for the name in ordinary medieval Welsh use and found none. Nobody in Wales was called Branwen before the nineteenth century. She is a name that belongs to exactly one story.

It opens with thirteen ships coming up from the south of Ireland with the wind behind them and banners of brocaded silk, and a shield raised point upwards on the lead vessel as a sign of peace. Matholwch, king of Ireland, has come to Harlech to ask for her, and to bind the two islands together so that both are stronger. The council agrees in a morning. She is not asked. The wedding feast is held at Aberffraw in pavilions rather than a hall, because her brother has never fitted indoors, and that night Matholwch sleeps with her.

Efnisien finds out from a groom, in a field full of tethered Irish horses, that his sister has been given away without his consent. What he does to the horses is set down with terrible flatness: he cuts their lips back to their teeth, their ears back to their heads, their tails back to their backs, and where he can get a grip on an eyelid he cuts that back to the bone. The insult is absolute and Bendigeidfran pays for it absolutely, a sound horse for every ruined one, a silver rod as tall as Matholwch and a gold plate as broad as his face, and then, because the Irish king still looks sullen over dinner, the cauldron. A man killed today and thrown in it will stand up tomorrow as good as he ever was, except that he will never speak again. Bendigeidfran gave away the war before it started.

In Ireland the first year is good. She gives a clasp or a ring or a jewel to every noble who comes to see her, and the giving away of it is a thing worth watching. She bears a son, Gwern, and he is fostered out to the best household in the country. Then in the second year the murmuring starts, because Matholwch’s foster brothers have not forgotten the horses and will not let him forget them either. The revenge they settle on is aimed at her. She is put out of the king’s chamber and set to bake in the court, and every day the butcher comes in from cutting meat and boxes her ears. The ports are closed so that nothing can cross to Wales and nobody who crosses from it can go home.

The starling finds Bendigeidfran at Caer Seint in Arfon and lands on his shoulder, ruffling itself until the letter shows. He musters the full levy of a hundred and fifty-four districts and wades the Irish Sea with his musicians riding on his back. Swineherds on the Irish shore report a forest moving on the water and beside it a mountain with a ridge and a lake on either side of the ridge, and Matholwch has to send to the woman in the bakehouse to have it explained. She tells them the forest is the masts, the mountain is her brother, and the lakes are his eyes, and that he is angry. Her first words to the messengers are a correction: a lady she is not, not any more.

The Irish break the bridge over the Llinon and Bendigeidfran lies down across the river so his men can walk over him on hurdles, saying that whoever would be chief must be a bridge, which is still a Welsh proverb. Then comes the house built to hold him, the first roof in the world large enough, with a hundred pillars and a hook on each side of every pillar and a leather bag hanging from every hook, and an armed man folded inside every bag. Efnisien walks in ahead of the host, asks what is in the bags, is told flour, and goes along the row crushing skulls through the leather with his fingers until all two hundred are dead.

Peace is concluded anyway. The boy Gwern is given the sovereignty of Ireland and passes from hand to hand among his uncles, liked by all of them, and it is Efnisien who calls him over last, and takes him by the feet, and throws him head first into the fire. Branwen goes for the flames after her son and her brother catches her one-handed and holds her wedged between his shield and his shoulder while the hall arms itself around them. The Irish light the fire under the cauldron. The dead climb out mute and fight again, and there are so many of them that the men of the Island of the Mighty are being pressed into nothing, until Efnisien hides among the corpses, is thrown in with them, and stretches until the cauldron bursts into four pieces and his heart bursts with it.

Seven men come home. Bendigeidfran, poisoned in the foot by a spear, has his own head cut off at his order, and the head goes with them, still talking. Branwen is the eighth. They land at Aber Alaw on Anglesey and she sits down and looks back at Ireland, and then at Britain, and says that two good islands have been destroyed because of her. Then she sighs and her heart breaks. They dig her a four-sided grave and bury her at Glan Alaw.

Nothing in the tale is her fault. The horses were Efnisien, the punishment was Matholwch’s pride, the cauldron was her brother’s diplomacy and the fire was Efnisien again. Her counsel is the only thing that ever stops the killing, and the peace in the great house is made on her advice. What she has is intelligence, patience and three years of teaching a bird to talk, and none of it is any use against men who have decided to be insulted. The branch we now call Branwen does not call itself that. Its own closing line names it after the expedition: the men who went to Ireland.

The grave is still there. A low dished mound about thirty metres across stands in a meadow by the Alaw river in Anglesey, and in 1813 a cremation urn came out of a cist inside it, which reminded the local clergy of the four-sided grave in the story. Frances Lynch re-excavated it in 1967 and found a squat standing stone at the centre of a carefully built ring cairn, eight more urns with fragments of three others, most of them holding burnt bone, one crammed into a small cist with a string of jet and amber beads laid beside it. The radiocarbon dates cluster between 1274 and 1403 BC. Whoever was burned and buried at Bedd Branwen went into the ground more than two thousand years before anyone wrote the sentence that put her there.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Branwen in Welsh mythology?

Branwen is the daughter of Llŷr and the central figure of the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, a medieval Welsh prose tale. She is the sister of Bendigeidfran, the giant king of Britain, and of Manawydan, and half-sister to Nisien and Efnisien. She is married to Matholwch, king of Ireland, to seal an alliance between the two islands, and the collapse of that alliance destroys both kingdoms.

How did Branwen send a message from Ireland?

Branwen reared a starling on the edge of her kneading trough while she was working in the Irish court kitchens, taught it to speak, and described her brother to it so it would recognise him. She then tied a letter describing her punishment beneath the bird’s wing and sent it across the sea. The starling found Bendigeidfran at Caer Seint in Arfon and landed on his shoulder, and he mustered an army as soon as he read it.

Why was Branwen punished in Ireland?

Branwen was punished for something her half-brother Efnisien did in Wales. Furious at not being consulted about her marriage, Efnisien mutilated Matholwch’s horses at the wedding, and although Bendigeidfran paid full compensation, the humiliation followed Matholwch home. Two years later his own household shamed him into revenge, and the revenge was taken on Branwen: she was driven from the king’s chamber, set to bake in the court, and struck by the butcher every day.

How did Branwen die?

Branwen died of a broken heart at Aber Alaw on Anglesey, on the journey home from Ireland. She had survived the battle in the great house, in which her son Gwern was thrown into the fire by Efnisien and almost every man on both sides was killed. Looking back at Ireland and then across at Britain, she said that two good islands had been destroyed because of her, gave a great sigh, and died. Her companions buried her in a four-sided grave at Glan Alaw.

Is Bedd Branwen really Branwen’s grave?

Bedd Branwen is a real Bronze Age monument by the Alaw river in Anglesey, but it is far older than the story. A cremation urn recovered from it in 1813 prompted local clergymen to identify it with the four-sided grave described in the tale, and excavation by Frances Lynch in 1967 found a ring cairn, a central standing stone and eleven urns, several with jet and amber beads. Radiocarbon dates place the burials between about 1274 and 1403 BC, roughly two millennia before the Second Branch was composed.

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