CHAPTER 1 The Time of the Four Branches 1

In 1839 Lady Charlotte Guest began publishing English translations of a medieval Welsh cycle to which she gave the name the Mabinogion (‘tales for children’), but which is now called the Mabinogi (‘tales of a hero's coming of age’). ² These annotated translations, which she refined and reissued throughout her life, contributed on the one hand to reviving pride in the indigenous Welsh tradition, and, on the other, to understanding the roots of Arthurian literature on the European continent. Whether inherently because of the material itself, or secondarily because of the nationalist emphasis in Guest's commentary, a dichotomy between “Celtic” and “Christian” came to be standard in Arthurian commentary on the Mabinogi. In this selection, most of the explicit instances of a Christian presence in the Four Branches are enumerated within the context of an attempt to date the narrative, both with regard to its actual composition and to the age in which the story purports to be taking place.