Efnisien

Also Known As: Welsh Efnisien fab Euroswydd, Efnisien son of Euroswydd; also known as Efnysien, Efnissien, Evnissyen; the name is usually read as the hostile or unpeaceful one
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Welsh Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: Efnisien can crush an armoured man’s skull with his fingers, and his stretching body is strong enough to burst the cauldron that raises the dead.
Role in Mythos: He is the half-brother of Bendigeidfran and Branwen in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, and his three acts of violence cause the war with Ireland, the death of his nephew and, in the end, the breaking of the cauldron.
Relation to Humans: Efnisien is a mortal nobleman of the royal house of Britain, and the tale says he could set two brothers fighting at the moment they loved each other most. His own kin fear him and pay for what he does, and his last act saves the few of them who are left.

The horses stood quietly in their billets at Aberffraw, and the man walking down the line of them asked a simple question. Whose were they? They belonged to Matholwch, he was told, the king of Ireland, who had come to marry his sister and had slept with her the night before. Nobody had asked the man walking the line. He drew a blade and went to work. He cut the horses’ lips back to the teeth, their ears down to the skull, their tails to the rump, and where he could get a grip on the eyelids he sliced those to the bone. When he was finished there was not an animal among them fit to be ridden or looked at.

This is how the Second Branch of the Mabinogi lets Efnisien announce himself. The tale, set down in Welsh in the Middle Ages and kept in two great manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest, has already given fair warning. Bendigeidfran, the giant king of the Island of the Mighty, has two half-brothers on his mother’s side, sons of Penarddun by a man named Euroswydd. One is Nisien, a gentle youth who could make peace between two armies at the height of their rage. The other is Efnisien, who could start a fight between two brothers when they were at their fondest. The pair are a matched set, peace and its opposite, born of the same mother.

How those two came to be born is a story the tale does not tell. An old Welsh triad lists Llyr, father of Bendigeidfran and Branwen, among the three exalted prisoners of Britain, held captive by Euroswydd. Something lies behind that, perhaps a lost account of a stolen wife and two sons fathered in a rival’s house. It would explain a good deal about Efnisien’s temper. It has not survived.

Nor has any account of what he looked like. The storyteller describes a king too large for any house and a sister counted among the fairest women in the world, and for Efnisien offers nothing at all. He is known by what he does.

The maiming of the horses was an insult no king could swallow, and Matholwch made for his ships. Bendigeidfran called him back with a sound horse for every ruined one, a rod of silver, a plate of gold, and an apology of a remarkably frank kind. The thing had been done by his own half-brother, he explained, and it was not easy for him to have the man killed. When that failed to lift the mood he added a cauldron. Throw a dead warrior into it and he would rise the next morning, whole and fit to fight, but without the power of speech. Matholwch took it home with his bride.

The gift did not hold. Within a few years the Irish court remembered the horses, and Branwen was sent to the kitchens to be struck each day by the butcher. She trained a starling to carry word across the sea. Bendigeidfran came for her with the hosts of Britain behind him, wading the water himself because no ship could carry him.

The Irish offered peace, and a house big enough at last to hold the giant king. It was a trap. On each of its hundred pillars hung two bags of crane skin, and in every bag crouched an armed man waiting for the feast to begin. Efnisien walked in ahead of the host and ran his hard eyes over the hall. He asked an Irishman what was in the nearest bag. Flour, friend, came the answer. He felt along the leather until he found the shape of a head and squeezed until his fingers met in the brain. Then he went to the next bag and asked again. He did this two hundred times, patiently, getting the same answer each time, and when he had finished he made up a small verse about the peculiar flour the Irish kept.

It is the one moment in the tale when his savagery serves his own people. It does not last.

The two sides sat down, and peace was made, and the kingship of Ireland was settled on Gwern, the small son of Branwen and Matholwch. The boy went from one uncle to the next and was fondled by each. Efnisien asked why his nephew did not come to him as well. Bendigeidfran sent the child over gladly. Efnisien stood up with the boy in his arms, and the tale lets us hear what he was thinking: that the household had no idea what outrage he was about to commit. He took Gwern by the feet and pitched him head first into the blazing fire. Branwen lunged after her son and was caught by her brother’s arm. Then every man in the hall reached for a weapon.

The battle that followed should have been short. Instead the Irish lit a fire under the cauldron and fed their dead into it, and each morning the corpses climbed out again, silent and ready. The men of Britain died once and stayed dead. Efnisien looked at the heaps of his countrymen and, for the first time, the tale gives him something like remorse. He cried out against himself for being the cause of that slaughter and swore to find a way out of it.

He lay down among the Irish dead. Two barefoot Irishmen came by, took him for one of their own and heaved him into the cauldron. Inside the hot iron he stretched himself out, arms and legs braced against the walls, and pushed until the cauldron burst into four pieces. His heart burst with it.

He was strong, then, beyond what a man should be, and cunning enough to smell an ambush that a whole army had walked past. His talent for discord was treated almost as a magical property, as fixed as his brother’s talent for peace. He was also plainly mortal. He was no match for his own nature, which nobody could govern, least of all himself, and the one deed that redeemed him was the one that killed him.

It was not enough to win much. Seven men of Britain went home from Ireland, carrying the severed head of their king. Branwen looked back at the two islands laid waste on her account and died of grief on the bank of the river Alaw. Readers have been arguing about Efnisien ever since. Some see a study of a broken mind, some a trickster in the mould of the Norse Loki, some a brute who happened to die well. The tale itself passes no verdict. It reports what his hands did, and moves on.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Efnisien in Welsh mythology?

Efnisien is a character in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, the medieval Welsh tale of Branwen. He is the son of Penarddun and Euroswydd, the twin of the peacemaker Nisien, and the half-brother of Bendigeidfran, Branwen and Manawydan. The tale describes him as a man who could cause strife between the most loving brothers.

Why did Efnisien mutilate Matholwch’s horses?

Efnisien mutilated the horses because his sister Branwen had been given in marriage to Matholwch, king of Ireland, without his consent. He cut the animals’ lips, ears, tails and eyelids at Aberffraw. The insult nearly ended the alliance, and Bendigeidfran had to give Matholwch new horses, silver, gold and the cauldron of rebirth to make amends.

What did Efnisien do to the men hidden in the bags?

Efnisien killed them one by one. The Irish had hidden two hundred armed warriors in crane-skin bags hung on the pillars of a feasting house and claimed the bags held flour. Efnisien felt each bag for the man’s head and crushed the skull with his fingers.

Why did Efnisien kill Gwern?

The Second Branch gives no reason for the killing. At the peace feast, Efnisien asked for his young nephew Gwern, Branwen’s son, to be brought to him, then threw the boy head first into the fire. The tale says only that he knew he was about to commit an outrage. The murder started the battle that destroyed both armies.

How did Efnisien die?

Efnisien died destroying the cauldron of rebirth. He hid among the Irish dead and was thrown into the cauldron, where he stretched himself out until it broke into four pieces. His heart broke at the same moment. His death stopped the Irish from reviving their warriors and let seven men of Britain survive.