Maelgwn Is Also Important In The Story Of Taliesin, In An Incident Which Doesn't Leave Him Or Taliesin

@usedtobeaduchess Triad 20 is where Arthur as Terror of the Sod comes from.

Arthur has superpowers too (Sort of)

From The Welsh Triads

From Layamon's Brut

From Don Quixote. (Too bad its Post-Camlann...)

Extra Points:

“The Elder Knight” by Dorothy L. Sayers

Note: the speaker is Galahad; the elder knight is Lancelot. This poem is one of my favorites. It’s unusual in that its version of Galahad is really, really spiteful, and the ending is unforgettable.   I.

I have met you foot to foot, I have fought you face to face,

I have held my own against you and lost no inch of place,

    And you shall never see

    How you have broken me.

You sheathed your sword in the dawn, and you smiled with careless eyes,

Saying "Merrily struck, my son, I think you may have your prize."

    Nor saw how each hard breath

    Was painfully snatched from death.

I held my head like a rock; I offered to joust again,

Though I shook, and my palsied hand could hardly cling to the rein;

    Did you curse my insolence

    And over-confidence?

You have ridden, lusty and fresh, to the morrow's tournament;

I am buffeted, beaten, sick at the heart and spent.—

    Yet, as God my speed be

    I will fight you again if need be.

               II.

A white cloud running under the moon

   And three stars over the poplar-trees,

Night deepens into her lambent noon;

   God holds the world between His knees;

Yesterday it was washed with the rain,

But now it is clean and clear again.

Your hands were strong to buffet me,

   But, when my plume was in the dust,

Most kind for comfort verily;

   Success rides blown with restless lust;

Herein is all the peace of heaven:

To know we have failed and are forgiven.

The brown, rain-scented garden beds

   Are waiting for the next year's roses;

The poplars wag mysterious heads,

   For the pleasant secret each discloses

To his neighbour, makes them nod, and nod—

So safe is the world on the knees of God.

             III.

I have the road before me; never again

   Will I be angry at the practised thrust

That flicked my fingers from the lordly rein

   To scratch and scrabble among the rolling dust.

I never will be angry — though your spear

   Bit through the pauldron, shattered the camail,

Before I crossed a steed, through many a year

   Battle on battle taught you how to fail.

Can you remember how the morning star

   Winked through the chapel window, when the day

Called you from vigil to delights of war

   With such loud jollity, you could not pray?

Pray now, Lord Lancelot; your hands are hard

   With the rough hilts; great power is in your eyes,

Great confidence; you are not newly scarred,

   And conquer gravely now without surprise.

Pray now, my master; you have still the joy

   Of work done perfectly; remember not

The dizzying bliss that smote you when, a boy,

   You faced some better man, Lord Lancelot.

Pray now — and look not on my radiant face,

   Breaking victorious from the bloody grips—

Too young to speak in quiet prayer or praise

   For the strong laughter bubbling to my lips.

Angry? because I scarce know how to stand,

   Gasping and reeling against the gates of death,

While, with the shaft yet whole within your hand,

   You smile at me with undisordered breath?

Not I — not I that have the dawn and dew,

   Wind, and the golden shore, and silver foam —

I that here pass and bid good-bye to you —

   For I ride forward — you are going home.

Truly I am your debtor for this hour

   Of rough and tumble — debtor for some good tricks

Of tourney-craft; — yet see how, flower on flower,

   The hedgerows blossom! How the perfumes mix

Of field and forest! — I must hasten on —

   The clover scent blows like a flag unfurled;

When you are dead, or aged and alone,

   I shall be foremost knight in all the world —

My world, not yours, beneath the morning's gold,

   My hazardous world, where skies and seas are blue;

Here is my hand. Maybe, when I am old,

   I shall remember you, and pray for you.

any platonic ships?

I like the wacky friendship between Galahad and the Grail Heroine. They’re both such weirdos (affectionate) that he thinks nothing of wearing a belt which she made of her own hair which she had previously been carrying around in a box because she had a prophecy. He needed a belt. She had hair. That’s just how they are. 

When it comes to not-canon-anywhere friendships in not-canon-anywhere timelines, I think that it would be entertaining if Galahad was also friends with Mordred but either Galahad strenuously denied it to himself until he couldn’t any longer or was somehow unaware of or unable to comprehend the absolute havoc wreaked by his friend.

The funny thing is that in Knight of the Parrot, Arthur leaves KING LOT HIMSELF in charge and somehow everything turns out swell.

i’ll leave my nephew in control of the kingdom while i go to fight in rome it’ll be fine 

Wait a minute, I might have read a short story like that. If I can’t find it, I’m writing one. If I can find it, I’m still probably writing one.

Who is your favorite Arthurian POV to write in? Why?

That is the start of William F. Skene's translation of "Cad Goddeu". Here are others for comparison (with a couple more lines because I like them):

I was in a multitude of forms before I was unfettered: I was a slender mottled sword made from the hand. I was a droplet in the air, I was the stellar radiance of the stars, I was a word in writing, I was a book in my prime. I was the light of a lantern For a year and a half…"

--Marged Haycock

I was in many a guise before I was disenchanted. I am a grey-cowled minstrel : I believe in illusion. I was for a time in the sky : I was observing the stars. I was a message in writing : I was a book to my priest. I was the light of the altar-horns, for a year and a half.

--John Gwenogvryn Evans (who translated the title as "The Battle of the Scrub" rather than "The Battle of the Trees")

I was woven  in so many forms before this one.  I was a sword drawn, high and long against sky, and I was its tear in the air, the dullest of stars.   I was the word among letters, the story’s breath within the book, the light of lanterns.   For a year and a half I was the continuing bridge...

--Órlaith on Wordpress

There are a number of others out there; these are just a few which struck me as being distinctive in an interesting way.

‘I have been a multitude of shapes, Before I assumed a consistent form. I have been a sword, narrow, variegated, I have been a tear in the air, I have been in the dullest of stars. I have been a word among letters, I have been a book in the origin.’ Taliesin .. c. 534 – c. 599

for the ask game, 💚💛😤🗡️ !!!

I started writing this and realized that my quest/story arc answer could also work for the sibling dynamic one and vice versa, so the first two are both for both.

I’m very fond of The Story of the Crop-Eared Dog—which is to Arthurian lit what Lilly Onakuramara is to the Barden Bellas, only less important—and its weird anticlimax in which the sidekick shows up and reveals that he’s achieved their key goals by killing a vast number of people, including all of the naked monks on the Island of Naked Monks, then defeating but sparing the main antagonist. (The antagonist—the Knight of the Lantern, henceforth known as Lanny—is Alastrann’s—the sidekick’s—younger half-brother. Alastrann’s earlier speeches concerning Lanny can be briefly summarized as, “My baby brother is sooo talented and amazing, but he destroys everything he touches, so I’m going to kill all his friends and steal his stuff and hope that solves the issue.” Somehow, this works). There’s a lot more to unpack there, but it’s a complicated mess. A charming complicated mess.

Arthur’s sudden ascent to greatness, and the barriers that likely creates between the (formerly unwitting) foster brothers, has its own sort of pathos, but their dynamic in Cullwch and Olwen is heartbreaking and seems to get overlooked. (They aren’t referred to as brothers or foster brothers there, but I’ll count it anyway). They have a falling out over an extemporaneous song with which Arthur ridicules Cai’s tactics on a specific killing errand. It might be meant as a joke, but it angers Cai so much that he leaves, never to return or aid Arthur again. The twist is this: it’s already been said that when Cai is killed, Arthur avenges him by killing not only his killer but also his killer’s brothers. Arthur’s vengeance is brutal and unfair and a mark of extreme grief; clearly, he never stopped caring about his friend/brother, even though he was never able to make up with him in life. 

Your Most Specific Nitpick About Your Fave (anything from "Gareth would not have a beard" to "this is basically a different guy"):

One of my faves is Dinadan, and an adaptational/fandom nitpick of mine is when he gets shipped with random people. I personally headcanon him as aroace. There are some texts where I can understand reading him as being gay and having feelings for Tristan, but writing about, say, him and Mordred makes no sense to me and I find it aggravating. Aroaces (and aspec people in general) have such little representation as it is.

Who Are You Betting On In This Month's Tournament?

Assuming that Lanny is out of town, I’ll place a small bet on Dinadan. He doesn’t win often, so I could get great odds for him, and when he does win, it’s very funny. I also really like Dinadan.

I would, too.

Movie/Tv Show/Anime idea: An Action Adventure where Aliens invade Earth but it’s way back in the past, Specifically Camelot during the height of Arthur’s Reign. Now instead of eliminating or toning down the more mystical aspects of Arthurian Legend we lean into them.

Sir Kay grabs his sword and starts heating it up to make a makeshift lightsaber before growing to his giant size and slicing through alien ground troops like they’re paper.

Gawain and Ironside (the Red Knight) are just tossing aliens around like nothing with their superhuman strength. Then when the sun sets and the aliens think they have the upper hand over Gawain who loses his incredible strength at night, they hear a wolf’s howl before being attacked by Sir Marrok the werewolf.

Sir Bedwyr piercing the Aliens’ superior technology with his magic lance before darting away like the Flash, Sir Ywain using his battle lion to defend the court, etc.

Even Merlin gets in on the action, using his extensive magic to create illusions and fireballs. Morgan Le Fay even comes out of the woodwork to help, summoning lightning to attack the aliens’ ships.

Arthur, still in possession of Excalibur’s scabbard, tries to initially greet the invaders, only for them to blast him with a plasma cannon. As the smoke clears, Arthur is unharmed but his horse is a pile of ash. Arthur just looks at the alien spaceship and says, “that was my favorite horse.”

In the final battle, right when it seems like the aliens have the upper hand, one of their spaceships crashes to the ground unexpectedly. Out of the crashed spaceship comes Sir Galahad wielding a sword clearly made out of alien technology. Turns out what Sirs Percival and Bors thought was Galahad ascending to Heaven was actually him being abducted by aliens, and he stowed away when he found out they were coming back to destroy Camelot. The Knights, now emboldened by Galahad’s return start pushing the invading forces back. Galahad actually goes to the Round Table at some point, finds the Siege Perilous, and breaks the back of it off to make a makeshift shield/vaporizing weapon.

Anyway the Knights win, Galahad decides he needs to go back to free all the Aliens’ captives and lead a rebellion against their oppressive empire. He also says he’ll tell all the stars what awaits them should anyone try to invade the Earth.

I’d watch that.

I'm sure he meant this as a compliment but it could just as easily be a grievous insult.

(from "The Dialogue of Myrddin and Taliesin" in The Black Book of Carmarthen)

I can remember, a few years back, getting in a taxi with my grandfather in New York City. He’s one of the kindest, most courteous to strangers people I’ve ever known and was able to establish a good rapport with the taxi driver until the taxi driver put his subtly Jewish name and face together and started blasting a radio channel saying that “all Jews are donkeys”. Even then, even in New York City, you could turn your head and there was antisemitism.

In middle school, I had been spat at and called slurs—but only after I told the other students that I was a Jew. My father’s Scottish surname and ambiguous appearance give me the option of invisibility. I’ve never chosen to hide who I am, but it’s also not immediately obvious, and that made a difference even before the current horrific spike in antisemitism.

Non-Jews, yes, it really is a serious problem. It really should go without saying at this point. It should have gone without saying an incredibly long time ago, but my cousins are receiving death threats and there was a pogrom in California and a twelve-year-old girl got raped and the people doing these horrific (that word doesn’t seem strong enough but I can’t think of a stronger one) things still somehow think they’re in the right and all I can do is try striking metaphorical matches in the dark while knowing the matches are almost certainly dead and that even if they light it’s unlikely that anyone will open their eyes whose eyes weren’t open already.

Jews, stay strong. We will survive this. I hope.

"Ashkenazi" doesn't mean "white-passing." My mother's husband has pale pink skin, blue eyes, and light brown hair. And he is INCREDIBLY visibly Jewish, even before he opens his mouth. His hair is a super curly mess and his facial features are very, very obviously Jewish. When he says anything at all, you can tell that he's a New York City Jew. No kippah, no Magen David (though that might change soon), but his appearance is JEW.

I have been living in fear every day since October 7th. It never occurred to me before then to be afraid for my mother and her husband because of his visible Jewishness in New York City. Yeah, if they were driving through Alabama or something. But in NYC? If someone had suggested it to me, I'd have laughed.

Now I just want to cry.