Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race - T. W. Rolleston

In many respects the Irish Celt anticipated the ideas of these romances. The lofty courtesy shown to each other by enemies,[213] the fantastic pride which forbade a warrior to take advantage of a wounded adversary,[214] the extreme punctilio with which the duties or observances proper to each man's caste or station were observed[215]—all this tone of thought and feeling which would seem so strange to us if we met an instance of it in classical literature would seem quite familiar and natural in Continental romances of the twelfth and later centuries. Centuries earlier than that it was a marked feature in Gaelic literature. Yet in the Irish romances, whether Ultonian or Ossianic, the element which has since been considered the most essential motive in a romantic tale is almost entirely lacking. This is the element of love, or rather of woman-worship. The Continental fabulist felt that he could do nothing without this motive of action. But the “lady-love” of the English, French, or German knight, whose favour he wore, for whose grace he endured infinite hardship and peril, does not meet us in Gaelic literature. It would have seemed absurd to the Irish Celt to make the plot of a serious story hinge on the kind of passion with which the mediaeval Dulcinea inspired her faithful knight. In the two most famous and popular of Gaelic love-tales, [pg 346] the tale of Deirdre and “The Pursuit of Dermot and Grania,” the women are the wooers, and the men are most reluctant to commit what they know to be the folly of yielding to them. Now this romantic, chivalric kind of love, which idealised woman into a goddess, and made the service of his lady a sacred duty to the knight, though it never reached in Wales the height which it did in Continental and English romances, is yet clearly discernible there. We can trace it in “Kilhwch and Olwen,” which is comparatively an ancient tale. It is well developed in later stories like “Peredur” and “The Lady of the Fountain.” It is a symptom of the extent to which, in comparison with the Irish, Welsh literature had lost its pure Celtic strain and become affected—I do not, of course, say to its loss—by foreign influences.

Gaelic and Cymric Mythology: Nudd

The oldest of the Welsh tales, those called “The Four Branches of the Mabinogi,”[216] are the richest in mythological elements, but these occur in more or less recognisable form throughout nearly all the mediaeval tales, and even, after many transmutations, in Malory. We can clearly discern certain mythological figures common to all Celtica. We meet, for instance, a personage called Nudd or Lludd, evidently a solar deity. A temple dating from Roman times, and dedicated to him under the name of Nodens, has been discovered at Lydney, by the Severn. On a bronze plaque found near the spot is a representation of the god. He is encircled by a halo and accompanied by flying spirits and by Tritons. We are reminded of the Danaan deities and their close connexion with the [pg 347] sea; and when we find that in Welsh legend an epithet is attached to Nudd, meaning “of the Silver Hand” (though no extant Welsh legend tells the meaning of the epithet), we have no difficulty in identifying this Nudd with Nuada of the Silver Hand, who led the Danaans in the battle of Moytura.[217] Under his name Lludd he is said to have had a temple on the site of St. Paul's in London, the entrance to which, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, was called in the British tongue Parth Lludd, which the Saxons translated Ludes Geat, our present Ludgate.

Gods of the House of Dōn

Gods of the House Of Llyr

Arthur and his Kin

Anlawdd
|
+--------------------+----+----------------------------------+
| | |
Yspaddaden Custennin Kilwydd -+- Goleuddydd
| | |
Olwen +---------+-----------+ Kilhwch --- Olwen
| | |
Goreu Erbin Igerna -+- Uther Ben
| | (= Bran)
Geraint |
+-------+-----------------------+
| |
Arthur Lot -----+---- Gwyar
(=Gwydion) (=Llud) | (Gore, a
| war-goddess)
|
+--------------------------+-------------+-------+
| | |
Gwalchmai Medrawt Gwalchaved
(Falcon of May, (=Dylan, (Falcon of Summer,
= LLew Llaw later Sir later Sir Galahad;
Gyffes, later Mordred) orig. identical
Sir Gawain) with Gwalchmai)

Llyr and Manawyddan