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How Culhwch Won Olwen: A verse translation of the oldest Arthurian story
Paperback
ISBN13: 9781837380121
Publisher: Shearsman Books
Published: Jan 9 2026
Pages: 102
Weight: 0.28
Height: 0.24 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Culhwch and Olwen (Culhwch ac Olwen) is a prose tale, written in medieval Welsh, which survives in two manuscripts from the 14th century. The story, in its current version, probably dates from the 11th, though some parts may be much older. It is one of the eleven stories collected in The Mabinogion. When Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones translated the collection, they placed Culhwch and Olwen in a group they called The Four Independent Native Tales. The 'oldest surviving Arthurian tale', it is unlike any of the other stories in the collection and I think it is one of the great literary performances. Whoever put the surviving version together was a genius; a wayward or accidental genius, but a genius. It has the logic of dreams and the morality of nightmare.
By modern literary standards it is chaotic and unsure of its genre. It is episodic, inconsistent and contradicts itself. There are conversations which read as though parts have been lost or misunderstood, and episodes in which the sequence of events seems to be scrambled. But if one accepts the story is the way it is because its audience liked it that way, then it is a reminder that 'modern literary standards' are not the only way of approaching a text, and any attempt to cling to them will ruin your enjoyment of what follows. It has the logic of dreams and the morality of nightmare.
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