White Book of Rhydderch
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The Welsh Arthurian tradition was told also in Welsh prose, and survives in five important medieval tales now collected and translated as part of the Mabinogion. It is clear from tales such as Culhwch ac Olwen ('Culhwch and Olwen') and Breuddwyd Rhonabwy ('The Dream of Rhonabwy') that the medieval Welsh had an ambiguous if not critical approach to this 'national hero' who had by then been appropriated by nations other than the Welsh; the three 'Romances' of Owain, Peredur and Geraint – stories told differently in verse by Chrétien de Troyes – are indicative of this international appeal. Image 8 shows the beginning of 'Owain' from the fourteenth-century White Book of Rhydderch, where the story starts at the rubric (the large, red 'A') with the sentence, 'Arthur a oed yg kaerllion ar wysc, a mynet a wnaeth y hela' ('Arthur was at Caerllion-ar-Wysg [i.e. Caerleon], and he went to hunt.'
Image 8
