I’ve been a little obsessed on and off, for years, with a detail from the story Branwen Daughter of Llyr, of the Mabinogion. In this story, there is a description of a caldron that, when dead warriors were thrown in, they’d come back to life the next day, ready to fight, but unable to speak.
So, today I was sitting around waiting to not get selected for a jury, I reread this one and Gereint and Enid
But that wasn’t the one I had stuck in my head on the drives tonight. No, a detail from Gereint and Enid was stuck in my head. There is this part, early in where, Gereint gets in a duel with a knight who insults him and worse still, Queen Gwenevere.
After Gereint smashed the knights helmet and cuts his face, the knight begs for mercy. Gereint tells him:
I will show mercy on condition that you go to Arthur’s wife Gwenhwyvar and make good the insult…but you are not to dismount from the time of your departure until you are before Gwenhwyvar, to make such amends as Arthur’s court decrees…
Don’t get off your horse. Don’t pass go. Don’t collect 200.
It kept popping into my head each time we got stopped at lights and had to unclip.
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