Welsh Myth and Legend and Magic

#WyrdWednesday Centuries before Lovecraft ever dreamed his tentacled nightmares, the great bard Taliesin had already given us his own version of cosmic horror. In the poem Cad Goddeu - the Battle of the Trees - a horde of Otherworldly creatures invade. In a scene that surely inspired Tolkien, the wizard Gwydion animates a forest of trees to repel them.

#MythologyMonday Two tales in the Mabinogion centre on visions that come to the protagonists while they sleep: The Dream of Rhonabwy, and The Dream of Macsen Wledig. Interestingly, both dreams also feature the ancient Welsh board game of Gwyddbwyll, a name that survives in modern Welsh as the word for chess!

#WyrdWednesday In the ancient Welsh poem Preiddeu Annwn, or The Spoils of Annwn, King Arthur journeys to the Otherworld in search of magical treasures. He finds there a castle made of black glass and guarded by 6000 silent sentinels, a cauldron that feeds only the brave, warmed by the breath of nine maidens, and a tortured soul imprisoned in front of a pile of riches and forced to sing for all eternity. Of the three boat-loads of knights that Arthur took with him, only seven men would return.