(Breudwyt Rhonobwy)
(ca. 1220)
The Dream of Rhonabwy is an early 13th-century Welsh prose tale found among the tales of the MABINOGION in the 14th-century manuscript known as the Red Book of Hergest. Other manuscripts of the Mabinogion do not contain the tale. The Dream of Rhonabwy is a satirical look at contemporary Welsh society, contrasting the warriors of Rhonabwy’s time with the gigantic heroes of the age of King ARTHUR. Its structure follows the illogical structure of an actual dream.
The tale is set during the reign of Madog ap Maredudd, prince of Powys (ca.1160). It begins when Iorweth,Madog’s brother, is outlawed, and a band of warriors is sent off to find him. Rhonabwy is among this band. They spend the night in the house of Heilyn Goch (“the Red”), but the filthy bedding he is given makes it impossible for Rhonabwy to sleep. He chooses to lie on a yellow oxskin instead, and during the night has a DREAM VISION of King Arthur. Rhonabwy finds the giant Arthur at his court at Rhuyd-y-Groes on the Severn. The king is amused at the thought that Britain in later days is in the care of fellows as puny as Rhonabwy. Arthur is reminded that he is due to fight the Battle of Badon at noon. Rhonabwy goes with the armies to Badon, where Arthur proceeds to play a game of gwyddbwyll (a Welsh board game related to chess) against Owain, son of Urien. A group of squires enter to complain that Arthur’s men are killing Owain’s ravens.When Arthur refuses to stop them, Owain gives orders that his standard be raised, and another group of squires complains that now the ravens are killing Arthur’s troops. The battle ends when Arthur crushes the golden game pieces. Arthur then grants his enemies a two-week truce, and a group of bards sings Arthur’s praise in an incomprehensible language. Arthur decides to spend the night in Cornwall, and as the army prepares to follow him there, the noise they make awakens Rhonabwy, who has been asleep for three days and nights.
The Dream of Rhonabwy is an enigmatic poem, and seems to satirize the Arthurian age as well as the writer’s contemporaries. Perhaps it also satirizes literary conventions, in particular bardic poetry. The writer was a literary man who consciously composed the story as a written text: He ends the poem with a colophon stating that the tale was never recited aloud (as traditional tales were), but must instead be read. Scholars have proposed that the dream on the oxhide may suggest the writer’s familiarity with Virgil or with GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH. Others have related it to the Irish tradition of the tarbhfheis or “bull-sleep,” illustrated in the Irish tale of Dá Derga’s Hostel. According to this custom, a man sleeps on a bull’s hide and has a spell of truth chanted, and whoever he sees in his dream is destined to be the next king of Tara. Through the Norman and Welsh connections with Ireland after their invasion of the country in 1169, the author of The Dream of Rhonabwy may have become aware of such customs. This Irish connection also suggests a later date for the composition of the tale than immediately after the reign of Madog, even though the satirical effect would be diminished the later the tale was composed.
Bibliography
■ Breeze, Andrew. Medieval Welsh Literature. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997.
■ Jones, Gwyn, and Thomas Jones, trans. The Mabinogion. 2nd ed. London: Dent, 1974.
■ Richards, G. M., ed. Breudwyt Rhonabwy. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1948.