Colin Jones's Blog
April 26, 2017
The Oral Tradition of Storytelling
Some while ago I spent a lot of time recording 'Mabinogion, the Four Branches' as an audio book. One of the reasons for that is the long tradition of oral storytelling in Wales...
The Mabinogion is the product of the Welsh storytelling tradition, whereby a series of storytellers re-forged the tales over the years, editing and improving as they went along, embroidering, seeing what worked, seeing what didn't work, what captured the interest of an audience and what sent them to sleep. Perhaps even forgetting some of the less interesting sections along the way, until someone somewhere finally recorded the tales that we know as the Mabinogion today, as a written manuscript.
And there it remained.
Cyfarwydd was the title given to the story-teller in old Welsh society, who had a fairly high status.
Cyfarwydd also has connections in Welsh with ‘familiar’ and ‘magic’. I imagine the Cyfarwydd travelling from area to area, entertaining different audiences as they went. And with a series of stories like the Mabinogion, it's not hard to imagine the Cyfarwydd entertaining an audience for a series of nights in one location. So the Mabinogion was a series of tales experienced through the storytelling tradition, where the stories would be heard, not read as a novel. This modern-day audiobook version is probably the closest we can get to this experience today.
'Mabinogion, the Four Branches' is available from all good audio book stores now.
The Mabinogion is the product of the Welsh storytelling tradition, whereby a series of storytellers re-forged the tales over the years, editing and improving as they went along, embroidering, seeing what worked, seeing what didn't work, what captured the interest of an audience and what sent them to sleep. Perhaps even forgetting some of the less interesting sections along the way, until someone somewhere finally recorded the tales that we know as the Mabinogion today, as a written manuscript.
And there it remained.
Cyfarwydd was the title given to the story-teller in old Welsh society, who had a fairly high status.
Cyfarwydd also has connections in Welsh with ‘familiar’ and ‘magic’. I imagine the Cyfarwydd travelling from area to area, entertaining different audiences as they went. And with a series of stories like the Mabinogion, it's not hard to imagine the Cyfarwydd entertaining an audience for a series of nights in one location. So the Mabinogion was a series of tales experienced through the storytelling tradition, where the stories would be heard, not read as a novel. This modern-day audiobook version is probably the closest we can get to this experience today.
'Mabinogion, the Four Branches' is available from all good audio book stores now.
