Barefoot Bran

This is the second out of four blog posts discussing not only my upcoming album Four Branches: Tales of the Mabinogi in Song, but also the Mabinogi itself! I’ll be discussing songs 5 and 6 off of my album, as well as Branches 2 and 3 of the Mabinogi.

In the second branch, we follow along with the story of Branwen, the sister of the mighty giant king, Bendigeidfran, or Bran the Blessed. Branwen marries the king of Ireland, Matholwch, and is carried away to the Emerald Isle of Eire. But because of a misdeed Bran’s half-brother Efnisien committed, Matholwch is resentful of Branwen and punishes her in various ways. Branwen, as you can guess, does not like that one bit, and she sends word to her brother of her ill treatment.

Bran is furious. He rallies up all the soldiers he can muster and goes off to war.

Matholwch’s men are terrified (as they should…they pissed off the wrong giant!) and burn all the bridges they can behind them, trying to get Bran and his warriors off their tails. When Bran and his men find they cannot cross the river, Bran says “A fo ben, bid bont,” which is a Welsh proverb that means “He who be a leader, let him be a bridge.” He lays across the river–being a giant and all–and lets his men cross him like a bridge.

Long story short, there’s a big battle where almost all the men of Ireland are killed, and all but seven of Bran’s companions survive, and Bran’s brother Manawyddan, who will come into play later.

Bran is poisoned by a spear and orders his men to cut off his head. His head lives a while longer, but Branwen dies of a broken heart. Bran’s head is buried in the White Mount (which is said to be where the White Tower of London is), and as long as his head remains, the Island of the Mighty will never be invaded again.

This story, plainly, is a classic tragedy. Both Branwen and Bran die, along with Branwen’s and Matholwch’s child, basically everyone in Ireland, and all of Bran’s men except seven (among which are Pryderi, as we saw in the first branch, and Manawyddan, who we will be focusing on in the third branch).

I thought a somber song would be best for this story, and it’s entitled Bran’s Head, referring to his head being cut off. It’s probably one of the saddest stories in the Mabinogi, so the song manifested itself with a sorrowful feel to it.

(And a side note, no, my name “Bran Cerddorion” is not in fact named after Bran the Blessed! I was given the nickname Bran growing up because my birth name Bryan, if the y was removed, would be Bran. Not sure where my friends came up with that though–although they also did/do call me branflakes, too. I was surprised, however, to find a figure in Welsh lore named Bran! That may or may not have made me like Welsh mythology more…)

The third branch quickly follows, and tells the story of Bran’s brother, Manawyddan. After he returns to Wales, he quickly realizes he has nowhere to go. Pryderi, the song of Pwyll, invites him to live with them. Manawyddan falls in love with Rhiannon (Pwyll dies mysteriously sometime before). Manawyddan, Rhiannon, Pryderi, and Pryderi’s wife Cigfa live happily together until one day…

They ascend Gorsedd Arberth, the same mound in which Pwyll first saw Rhiannon ride by, and a mist overtakes the land. When the mist is lifted, everyone is gone except the four companions. They travel to other cities and villages, but are run out when the villagers become envious of their crafting abilities. They return home until one day Pryderi and Rhiannon go missing in a strange castle. Mist shrouds the castle, and when the mist lifts, the castle and Pryderi and Rhiannon are gone. Manawyddan and Cigfa are left alone.

To survive, they plant a few fields of grain, but one by one they go missing, too. Manawyddan stays up one night and watches as an army of rats invade their fields and flee with all their grain. He captures one and swears to hang it. It’s clear Manawyddan is at wit’s end as he builds the gallows from which to hang the rat.

Three mysterious men just happen to be passing by, first a minstrel or bard, then a priest, then at last a bishop (or sometimes said to be an arch Druid), and each one successively offers to pay for the rat’s survival. The bishop pleas with Manawyddan, and finally confesses the rat is his wife in disguise. Manawyddan realizes this guy probably has something to do with the mist and the vanishing, so he barters the rat for his friends’ return.

We soon find out, after the deal is made, that this man has been hired by Gwawl to exact revenge on Pwyll’s family. You may remember Gwawl from the “Badger in the Bag” story in the first blog.

The song I wrote for this branch is called “Good Day to Hang a Rat,” and I highlight, again, the odd and absurd nature of the story. Manawyddan’s ridiculous rage and attempts to hang the rat makes this story fun in a kind of messed up way, so I made a light, fun tune to tell this story.

It always intrigued me how far the storyline stretches throughout the Mabinogi. From the Badger in the Bag incident until the end of the third branch, we have a story being built upon itself. And with Gwawl’s revenge stamped out and Rhiannon and Pryderi living happily ever after, you may think their story is over…

You’re wrong.

But we’ll continue that story in the next post when I cover the last of the four branches in the Mabinogi!

This blog post will be the first in a series of four posts exploring my upcoming album “Four Branches: Tales of the Mabinogi in Song.”

Since my album is based on the four branches of the Mabinogi, I felt it appropriate to have four posts; the four posts, however, will NOT be strictly following each branch. This first post will be going over the first branch, the second will be going over the second and third branches, the third will be going over the fourth branch, and the fourth will be going over the Independent Tales included on the album.

With each post will be an accompanying video where you can preview the songs mentioned and hear me speak about them.

If you don’t already know, the Mabinogi is a collection of Welsh legend and myth.

In the first branch, we follow a down-to-earth, everyday prince named Pwyll.

Now I know many people who would be able to break the stories apart and find esoteric meanings in the tales. To me, however, they are entertaining stories with deeper connotations hidden throughout. That is not to say they are just fun old stories. They actually mean a lot to me spiritually, and it’s because of the Mabinogion that I began following a Druidic path.

This album is the Mabinogi through my eyes, ears, and mind.

The first 4 songs on the album are dedicated to the first branch alone. They are Face Changer, Catch Me If You Can, Badger in the Bag, and Pryderi’s Birth.

When you listen to Face Changer, it’s a very dark and mysterious sounding song, (I hope). The first line in the song is “Beware the hounds with the glowing red ears, no telling what they might bring.” This, I think, is a perfect way to usher you into the album and into the tales of the Mabinogi. There’s an air of mystery and danger with it, and clear imagery of “otherworldly” happenings with the red-eared hounds of Annwn.

In the song, Pwyll must journey into the Otherworld and take the face of Arawn, the Otherworldy King. He’s repaying a debt owed to Arawn by killing Arawn’s arch nemesis Hafgan. And when he succeeds, he is rewarded with gold and pigs (which we shall see come into play way later).

The journey into the Otherworld, to me, would be mysterious and dangerous (and ultimately life changing), hence the “mood” of the song.

This one actually took me a few years to nail, and it went through many rewrites and a much different sound, but I love how it turned out and can’t think of any way better to represent both the story and the introduction to the Four Branches.

The second song is “Catch Me If You Can,” and follows Pwyll on a journey of love. Quite a change of pace from the first song. This song is light and passionate and hopefully romantic, at least I hope so. He’s pursuing his interest in a woman named Rhiannon, whom Pwyll can’t quite catch up to. Her horse, even though it’s only ambling along, stays out of reach of Pwyll’s speeding steed, until Pwyll finally shouts. She stops and informs Pwyll that she’s been looking for him.

This is where the third song begins. At their wedding feast, Rhiannon is tricked away from Pwyll by a nasty dude named Gwawl. But Pwyll won’t give up. Instructed by Rhiannon, he takes a bag and tricks Gwawl to climb into it. Then, the beating begins. When asked what was in the bag, he said, “Oh, tis a badger!” And thus the first game of “badger in the bag” was played. And of course, Pwyll wins Rhiannon and they live happily ever after (for now).

This song is easily my favorite off the album, and for me captures the absurd, strange dreamlike imagery I find throughout the Mabinogi. It’s a fun story, so I felt compelled to make it a fun song. With a title like Badger in the Bag, how can it not be fun?

The fourth and last song of the first branch is Pryderi’s Birth. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage…right? Well, when Pwyll and Rhiannon have their kid, it’s randomly stolen by a monster, and Rhiannon’s maids quickly lay blame on the mother, saying she had eaten it. She’s punished by having to admit her crime to every guest of the city and carrying them on her back.

But the kid is not dead, and a stranger (named Teyrnon) finds him when he’s fending off the monster from his horse’s newborn foals. He and his wife raise him only to realize that it is, indeed, Pwyll and Rhiannon’s lost kid. They return him, and FINALLY they live happily ever after (for now).

This is another fun story, so it’s another fun song with tongue-in-cheek humor (“You were taken by some spell…and you ate the baby up! La la la la la la!”).

Oddly, Badger in the Bag and Pryderi’s Birth were some of the first songs I wrote out of the twelve on this album, and they remain some of my favorite.

Over all, the first branch offers us a wide range of moods, from mysterious, to light and passionate, to the downright fun. And this is where the first branch ends. I don’t know why I spend four songs on one branch when the second and third only get one song each…maybe I like the first branch more? Who knows.

We’ll delve into the second and third branches in the next post. Stay tuned!

I’ve been pretty silent about this, and only a handful of people know about this. I feel it is maturing enough for me to speak about it.

I’m recording an album.

Four Branches is the title for my upcoming album. It explores the stories of the Four Branches of The Mabinogion in song.

I’m recording the album in my home studio, and it should be near completion in a few months. It’s really a labor of love, and I honestly don’t have much faith in my ability to play. Some days I feel so stoked about this, and some days I feel like a sham, deluded into thinking I can make music. I’m an amateur, it’s true, but I do it because I love it, and I want to share this as a gift with those who are willing to tolerate my imagination.

I set out to record an album nearly a year ago, setting down ideas. For the last few years I’ve written song after song, and it wasn’t until a year ago when I realized I had enough songs to tell almost all of the Mabinogion. I knew I had to put them together in an album of some sort!

In the grand tradition of folk storytelling, this album tells the story of the Mabinogion through my eyes, and I try to tell the tale in a way similar to how I view it.

If you aren’t familiar with The  Mabinogion, it is a book of Welsh myth and legend telling the tales of the likes of Pwyll, Rhiannon, Pryderi, Bran the Blessed, Lleu Llaw Gyffess, Blodeuwedd, Gwydion, Math, Ceridwen, Taliesin…the list goes on. To me it truly is an epic tale. It’s been one of the biggest influences of my pagan and Druidic path. This album is my attempt to tell the stories.

I’m afraid some people might get lost in my retelling of the Mabinogion in song, but I also hope the tales I sing about inspires others to go read it and explore the tales for themselves. This is, by the way, how I came to the Mabinogion, through the songs of Damh the Bard and Spiral Dance and Emerald Rose that tell the tales from the Mabinogion. I would hear a song (for example, Damh’s Oak, Broom, and Meadowsweet), and be entranced by the names and events taking place. I needed to know where this came from! And so I searched and found that it came from a book with a confusing title, The Mabinogion. I was hooked. So I hope this album of mine might do the same, and also for those who do know the Mabinogion, I hope this adds another layer to the experience of it.

Some of the songs are somber and haunting, like Face Changer, Bran’s Head, and The Owl and the Eagle.

Some are more romantic and mellow, like Catch Me if You Can, Invocation of Blodeuwedd, and The Awen.

Others, however, stand out to me as the backbone of the Four Branches, the tales that tell strong stories with superb imagery. These stories, to me, are what the Mabinogion is all about. The stories they tell are filled with oddities and absurdities that make you laugh, grin, and shake your head in a mixture of amazement and a sense of “What in Ceridwen’s Cauldron did I just experience?” They’re wacky and “out there,” and in the end just plain fun.

These stories I try to capture in the same fun, wild moods in such songs like Badger in the Bag, Pryderi’s Birth, Steady Hand Lion, Pigs Pigs Pigs, and, Good Day to Hang a Rat.

Together, I hope the songs blend together to create an audio painting of one of my favorite stories. Together, the songs bring together what the Mabinogion looks like to me.

10 of the 11 songs on the album tell the tale of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, but I couldn’t stop there. I had to throw in just one more from the uncollected stories included in the Mabinogion.

So check back here for more information on the upcoming album and extra goodies to follow.

Track List for Four Branches:

Face Changer

Catch Me If You Can

Badger in the Bag

Pryderi’s Birth

Bran’s Head

Good Day to Hang a Rat

Pigs Pigs Pigs!

Steady Hand Lion

Invocation of Blodeuwedd

The Owl and the Eagle

(bonus song)

The Awen

It seems Spring has come here on the plains of Kansas, and just in the nick of time! It seemed just like yesterday we were lingering somewhere between 0 and the teens. Now we’ve been steadily hitting the mid 60s, birds are making their debut, and I’ve got gardening on my mind! (Let’s hope my thumb gets a bit greener this year!)

And along with the warming air and the sunnier days, I find myself reflecting on how I feel. I always knew Winter always had me reaching for the coffee pot in desperation, but WOW did I feel it this year. It felt as if gravity had doubled near the end of the cold season, and I just wanted to crawl up into a ball and sleep for years. Now, the sun is out and the air is actually warm. And my energy levels have sky rocketed. I don’t know if this is just SAD or what, but all I know is that my body and mind take their tolls when the seasons change!

I can’t wait to see what Spring brings us, the colors and the smells and the vibrancy. Winter has its charms, don’t get me wrong, but It’s high time Blodeuwedd woke up and showed her face. And it’s high time I woke up too.

In honor of Spring, here’s one of my very own songs!

I just finished reading The Druid Revival Reader edited by John Michael Greer, and in the introduction to the essay selection by Ross Nichols (the founder of OBOD), Greer explains Nichols’s take on what modern Druidry’s role should play in our lives:

“Relating to nature through archaic tools of poetry, vision, and myth, Nichols proposed, was not simply a luxury of the past that present-day romantics might choose to imitate. It was a crucial necessity in a society that desperately needed a more meaningful connection with the natural world that sustains human life. The mythic vision that could create that connection need not come intact from the past, he argued, and in some sense could not do so; though roots in the past experience of a people were essential, so was the creative freedom to adapt traditional images to the needs of a new time.”

(John Michael Greer, The Druid Revival Reader p 190-191)

I definitely feel that Nichols had a sense of what spiritual traditions need to be doing for us in the present. Instead of attempting to uphold an ancient tradition for ancient tradition’s sake, I think he recognized the need for a spiritual philosophy that actively helped us connect to nature in a modern day context (because ultimately it will help us begin to help the world and help each other, and that’s what I think is the most important part of any spiritual practice), and that while the philosophy might have “roots in the past experience,” the adaptation to modern times of those traditions is an important step I think some people overlook. Indeed, I believe a few people have even become vehemently (and violently) opposed to the idea that people call themselves or their practice Druid(ic), because, as they believe, they’re not upholding to the actual ancient traditions of the ancient druids.

While I’d love to learn more about the ancient druidic philosophies, I feel Nichols had it right when he mentioned “the creative freedom to adapt traditional images to the needs of a new time.” Modern day people have different problems and needs than those of the past, and if our spirituality didn’t naturally evolve with the needs of the present, in my opinion it’s not worth it.

According to Nichol’s biography Journeys of the Soul written by Philip Carr-Gomm, Nichols used to sign his letters with “Peace to all beings.” I think this simple phrase really reflects the idea Nichols found most important in modern Druidry: this is about everyone, not just us. It’s about helping each other and bringing about a better world. What could be better than that?

On New Year’s Eve I attended an Interfaith event “World Peace Meditation,” in which a dozen or so different faiths were represented. The goal of the event was to focus on world peace and interfaith dialogue. It was very heartwarming to see the Jewish man and the Muslim man take hands and call each other friend with a genuine smile, as well as the Buddhist and the Sikh, the Catholic and the Hindu. Just such an air of love and tolerance that went beyond the scope of “Oh, ok, fine, believe whatever you want. I don’t care,” to a genuine feeling of “I accept you, I may not share the same beliefs, but I accept you and love you as a dear friend.”

This event got me thinking about world peace and New Year’s resolutions. most resolutions go like “I’m going to lose such-and-such weight,” or “I’m going to finally write that book” or “I’m going to scale Mount Everest blindfolded,” or whatever. And sometimes they work.

But more often than not, the resolution is not, in fact, resolved. And why is that? I think attacking the new year with high hopes is dangerous. A year is a long time. 365 days long, to be precise.

And another thing is, New Year’s Day is just a popularized marker, saying “Okay, it’s been a year since last time we said it was a new year.” The truth is that it’s like making a point on a circle and saying, “THIS is the real beginning of the new circle.”

The fact of the matter is that EVERY DAY is a new beginning of a new year.

So this got me thinking…what about New Day’s Resolutions? We wake up and tell ourselves, “Oh, gotta do laundry,” or “Gotta buy groceries,” “Gotta go to work.” So why don’t we use THIS motivation for change? Wake up and tell yourself what you want to achieve, and day by day you will eventually reach the end goal of what a New Year’s resolution may have been.

For me personally, I think we’d benefit the most from these New Day’s Resolutions by resolving to change the world. Cultivate peace, help your fellow earthlings out in some way or another, practice compassion, smile, recycle. If you have an anger problem, tell yourself every morning you’ll be kind and patient when faced with adversity. If you’re stressed, tell yourself you’ll be cool and collected.

Hey, it might just work.

For me, I’ll vow daily to remain mindful, to practice compassion and patience. Just to be a better human.

If more and more people began purposefully practicing compassion and mindfulness, especially out in the world around strangers, I think world peace isn’t too far out there of an idea. It might still be an idealistic goal, and I think that’s some people’s problems. They think, “We’ll never be able to have world peace.”

Sure, we might never have world peace, but if we try really, really hard, we might just have that much more peace in the world. If you try really, really hard at being the best athlete or the best writer, you probably won’t be able to get there in your lifetime, but you know what? Because of all that practice and trying, you’re that much better of an athlete, better of a writer. So why not? Let’s try to have the best peace possible.