The Mabinogion · 52 of 192 · tr. Lady Charlotte Guest
Tale PEREDUR THE SON OF EVRAWC}
And he destroys the branches of the best trees in the forest, and he kills every animal that he meets with therein; and those that he doth not slay perish of hunger.
And what is worse than that, he comes every night, and drinks up the fish-pond, and leaves the fishes exposed, so that for the most part they die before the water returns again.” “Maiden,” said Peredur, “wilt thou come and show me this animal?” “Not so,” said the maiden, “for he has not permitted any mortal to enter the forest for above a twelvemonth.
Behold, here is a little dog belonging to the Empress, which will rouse the stag, and will chase him towards thee, and the stag will attack thee.” Then the little dog went as a guide to Peredur, and roused the stag, and brought him towards the place where Peredur was.
And the stag attacked Peredur, and he let him pass by him, and as he did so, he smote off his head with his sword.
And while he was looking at the head of the stag, he saw a lady on horseback coming towards him.
And she took the little dog in the lappet of her cap, and the head and the body of the stag lay before her.
And around the stag’s neck was a golden collar.
“Ha!
chieftain,” said she, “uncourteously hast thou acted in slaying the fairest jewel that was in my dominions.” “I was entreated so to do; and is there any way by which I can obtain thy friendship?” “There is,” she replied.
“Go thou forward unto yonder mountain, and there thou wilt find a grove; and in the grove there is a cromlech; do thou there challenge a man three times to fight, and thou shalt have my friendship.” So Peredur proceeded onward, and came to the side of the grove, and challenged any man to fight.
And a black man arose from beneath the cromlech, mounted upon a bony horse, and both he and his horse were clad in huge rusty armour.
And they fought.
And as often as Peredur cast the black man to the earth, he would jump again into his saddle.
And Peredur dismounted, and drew his sword; and thereupon the black man disappeared with Peredur’s horse and his own, so that he could not gain sight of him a second time.
And Peredur went along the mountain, and on the other side of the mountain he beheld a castle in the valley, wherein was a river.
And he went to the castle; and as he entered it, he saw a hall, and the door of the hall was open, and he went in.
And there he saw a lame grey-headed man sitting on one side of the hall, with Gwalchmai beside him.
And Peredur beheld his horse, which the black man had taken, in the same stall with that of Gwalchmai.
And they were glad concerning Peredur.
And he went and seated himself on the other side of the hoary-headed man.
Then, behold a yellow-haired youth came, and bent upon the knee before Peredur, and besought his friendship.
“Lord,” said the youth, “it was I that came in the form of the black maiden to Arthur’s Court, and when thou didst throw down the chessboard, and when thou didst slay the black man of Ysbidinongyl, and when thou didst slay the stag, and when thou didst go to fight the black man of the cromlech.
Themes
◆Animismcosmology
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The narrative features spirits and magical entities inhabiting specific landscape features, such as the stag in the forest and the black man arising from beneath the cromlech, reflecting a worldview where natural places and objects possess inherent spirit or personality.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The supernatural dog acts as a guide sent by the Empress to direct Peredur's path, suggesting an active ordering of human affairs by divine or preternatural agents toward a specific end.
Form-mutability as a constitutional property of divine and preternatural beings — gods, heroes, spirits, and their human practitioners possessing inherent capacity to alter form across human, animal, plant, or elemental states. Loki and Odin's transformations in Norse, Math's pigs and Blodeuwedd's owl-shape and Pwyll's exchange with Arawn in the Mabinogion, the Greek Proteus, the Indian dasavatara, Vainamoinen's bird-flight in the Kalevala, Ovid's metamorphoses, the shamanic and witch's capacity for ritual form-change. Distinct from anthropomorphism (divine taking specific human form, single embodiment) in that anthropomorphism establishes a stable form whereas this concept establishes form's plurality and instability.
The passage culminates in the revelation that the yellow-haired youth was previously the black maiden, the stag, and the black man of the cromlech, explicitly demonstrating form-mutability as a property of these preternatural beings.