"The remains of something"

Ted Hughes and the mabinogion

Katherine Robinson

pp. 161-176

in: Neil Roberts, Mark Wormald, Terry Gifford (eds), Ted Hughes, nature and culture, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

Ted Hughes retold two early Welsh stories, the Tale of Taliesin and The Mabinogi's Fourth Branch, in Crow (1970) and Cave Birds (1978). Like Hughes's poetry, these Welsh tales are filled with magic, shape-shifting, dismemberment, and renewal. In these tales, violence and destruction often, paradoxically, lead to rebirth. Understanding how these stories serve as narrative substructures for several of Hughes's poems helps elucidates how the violent transfigurations in Hughes's poetry often allow either an escape from death or a new life. Many of Hughes's retellings of early Welsh tales have not hitherto been accounted for, and this chapter discusses those retellings and traces Hughes's discovery of early Welsh tales such as The Mabinogi.