Going out on Tuesday night

I could have gone to two different events in Hay last night.

The one I chose was the talk in the Library - The Myth of the Mabinogion, by Lyn Webster Wilde. She teaches the creative writing course, and several people who have been on the course were there. In fact, most of the audience was female, with the notable exception of Rob Soldat who, as a storyteller, had a professional interest.
As we only had an hour, and the Mabinogion is a fiendishly complicated body of stories, Lyn concentrated on Math, Son of Mathonwy, which turned into the story of Llew Llaw Gyffes, which turned into the story of Blodeuwedd, lady of flowers - which is where she stopped. The Welsh myths are like that - a whole nest of interlinked stories that go off at tangents to each other. The discussion afterwards covered comparative mythology, and we considered the problem of Math's footwarmer, a young lady who had to hold his feet whenever he was not at war - what was going on there?
After the talk, I went down to the Crown with Alen and Rob and another lady from the creative writing course, to carry on the discussion. Alen was a complete novice in the field of Welsh myth, and wanted to know more - like what happened to Blodeuwedd? (The poor girl got turned into an owl at the end, after plotting to kill her husband and run off with her lover). Rob knows a lot about Welsh history, and told us about the Princess that the Mabinogion was probably written down for, after spending many centuries as oral legends. She was Gwenllian, whose father was imprisoned at Chester by the Normans, and who kept himself sane by telling himself the stories. Her son was the Lord Rhys, who began the first organised, regular Eistedfodds at Cardigan Castle - so an interest in literature ran in the family.
Lyn told us about the various versions of the legends that are available in print now, and said that her favourite was the Victorian one by Lady Charlotte Guest (though it does gloss over some of the sexy bits). It turns out that Revel Guest (sp?) is a direct descendant of Lady Charlotte, and she now lives in Clyro and helps to organise the Hay Festival!

Later, I took Islay out for her evening walk, and passed Kilvert's. It was packed out for open mic night, and someone was singing as I walked past.