It’s always fun to try something new and, for me, this week, it’s a podcast story. I’ve listened before to Night Vale – who hasn’t? – but I’ve never listened to an audio book or heard a story read by an actor in a less formal setting.
This came about as part of a Facebook thread on the Queer Sci Fi group. We were all invited to post about what we wrote – which meant I was completely out of place since the majority of my work is historical – and then the person who made the original post paired off all the writers with the idea that we could read each other’s work and maybe do a bit of cross promotion. I’m delighted to say that I was paired up with Heather Rose Jones whose rendering of the stories of the Mabinogion as Merchinogion are absolutely my type of thing to read.
My favourite edition of the Mabinogion is the one illustrated by Alan Lee
The Mabinogion is a collection of ancient stories that weren’t written down until the 12th century and weren’t properly translated until the 19th century. Lady Charlotte Guest, a friend of our local Welsh loving Lady Llanover, made the first translations expanding upon previous work by scholar William Pughe. These stories contain many of the themes found in British mythology and also some of the oldest references to King Arthur. Just for clarity, in Welsh ‘mab’ means son/boys so Mabinogion is stories of the sons – ‘merch’ = daughters/girls 🙂 and that makes a lovely change.
Heather’s stories also feature a leading lady called Elin who is WAY cooler than I am!
Even more interesting – these stories have been produced as a podcast so you can listen to them or read the text. I particularly enjoyed the bilingual blurbs. I may not know more than basic Welsh but it’s a lovely language to hear spoken. Because it is an ancient language it has had to work hard to catch up with the 21st century. Old words take on new meanings and so the language builds up layer upon layer. The first story “Hoywverch” can be split neatly – hoyw and verch – and could be rendered merely as ‘gay women’ according to the dictionary, but scrape away just a little from the surface and they are also “radiant, illuminated and brilliant ladies” and I find that very satisfying. Book two is entitled “Hyddwen” – the white deer – and that taps straight into a powerful otherworldly celtic motif. These stories are beautifully written, with a wonderful rhythm to them and delicate little descriptions spark throughout the plot.
Here is Hoywverch and here Hyddwen. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
Bio:
Heather Rose Jones writes fantasy, historic fantasy, and historical fiction, including the Alpennia series with swordswomen and magic in an alternate Regency setting. She blogs about research into lesbian-like motifs in history and literature at the Lesbian Historic Motif Project which provides inspiration for her fiction. She has a PhD in linguistics, studying metaphor theory and the semantics of Medieval Welsh prepositions, and works as an industrial failure investigator in biotech.
Heather has a page on Facebook and can also be found on Twitter.
 |
 |
 |
Elin Gregory 