The White Trail

New Tales from the Mabinogion #5

by Fflur Dafydd

Cilydd's wife Goleuddydd, who is nine months pregnant, seems to vanish into thin air at a supermarket one wintry afternoon. Cilydd convinces his cousin, Arthur--a private eye who has never solved a single case--to help him with the investigation. So begins a tale of intrigue and confusion that concludes with a wild boar chase and a dangerous journey to the House of the Missing. Transforming a medieval Welsh Arthurian myth into a 21st-century quest, this is a lyrical look at love, grief, and father-son relationships set in a land that is at once contemporary and mystical.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Arthurian, Retellings, Mystery

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 2011

About the author

Fflur Dafydd is a novelist from Carmarthen who publishes in both Welsh and English. Since publishing her first novel, Lliwiau Liw Nos in 2005, she has published six fiction volumes. Two of her Welsh-language novels, Atyniad (Y Lolfa, 2006) and Y Llyfrgell (Y Lolfa, 2009) have been awarded the major fiction awards at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, the Prose Medal (2006) and the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize (2009), making her the only female writer, and the youngest writer to date to have won both awards. Her first English language novel, Twenty Thousand Saints (Alcemi, 2008) – an innovative reworking and adaptation of the Welsh-language novel, Atyniad, also won the inaugural Oxfam Hay Emerging Writer of the Year Award at the Hay Festival 2009. As a result of these successes, she was chosen by the British Council as the first ever Welsh participant in the prestigious, world-renowned International Writing Program at Iowa University. She also holds an MA in Creative Writing from UEA, a PhD from Bangor University, and currently lectures in Creative Writing at Swansea University.

She is also a prominent singer-songwriter, who has produced 4 albums to date – and she was awarded the title of ‘Female Artist of the Year’ in the BBC Radio Cymru awards in 2010. She performs regularly in Wales and has also appeared in major festivals in America and Europe.

Reviews

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A magical tale of a man Cilydd who loses his pregnant wife one day in mysterious and possibly supernatural circumstances and gradually over the years moves on with his life until the arrival of a mysterious boy. We are introduced to a villain, a mysterious house, an attempted rescue and a girl with gifts and by the last third of the book I was quickly turning pages to find out what happened next.

This is one of a series by the Seren publishing house of novels based on the Mabinogion which I am not familiar with but at the end of the book there is an interesting essay by Fflur Dafydd about the tale this is based on and how she adapted it for the twentieth century. If this one is anything to go by, I’d be keen to try more as well as reading more of Dafydd whose writing is lyrical and compelling.

[MattandCathy Brandley · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book the author modern take on Celtic mythology story is quit entertaining and an enjoyable read

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this one. I'm deeply familiar with 'Culhwch and Olwen', since it's one of my dissertation books, but Fflur Dafydd takes quite a clever direction with this, focusing it not on Culhwch or Arthur, but on Cilydd, Culhwch's father. I liked this direction -- it gave Dafydd space to invent, rather than have to stick too close to the legend or be compared to it in too much detail, while at the same time making little references back to the original: the cutting of Culhwch's hair, for example.

For such a short book, this one really absorbed me. Possibly my favourite of the Seren Mabinogion retellings so far.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love these Seren series of books retelling myths and stories from the Mabinogion. The story-telling is so good and so driven in this novella, that you almost don't require the backdrop of the myth; and yet it's there and adds a complexity and a beauty that adds so much more. Such an interesting take on how families change and evolve and ideals/ideas of manhood and fatherhood.

[Anwen Hayward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any retelling of the Mabinogion that features a woman disappearing in a supermarket, a horde of magic feminist birds, and Arthur as a disgraced private detective is going to be brilliant. If you're going to retell one of the weirdest texts in existence, you have to match its freak. Fflur Dafydd understood the assignment. This book is, as it ought to be, super weird, and I loved it.

[beyond_blue_reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this - a contemporary adaptation of 'Culhwch ac Olwen' from the Mabinogion, focusing on Culhwch's father, Cilydd. Has the same magical weirdness of the original without being an exact retelling, the writing is clean and easy, and there's an interesting essay at the end where Fflur describes her approach and how she adapted it from the original.

Also think it's unlocked a new obsession with the Birds of Rhiannon: 'They're Rhiannon's birds after all, they're conditioned to respond better to women. Or to those on the margins. Lonely people, yes, they like their lonely people.'

[Emma Radford · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting retelling of Culwch ac Olwen. Impressed by the poetic quality of Fflur Dafydd’s writing - definitely want to read more of her work!

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cilydd loses his wife and the police say that his unborn child has been cut from her womb, her body found in a pig sty. When his son appears fifteen years later, it turns Cilydd's life upside down.

An updating of one of the tales of the Mabinogion, Dafydd creates a strong sense of time, space and character.

[Rob Withers · Rating 4 out of 5]

An inventive retelling of one of the stories from the Mabinogion that takes the setting of the original as a starting point.

[Keegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book for my sister as a Christmas present this past year. I was studying in Wales at the time, and as I like to get books for her, I felt something particularly Welsh was a good fit. That was really all I knew about it. After she finished, she passed it along to me.

So, to say I was surprised is a bit of an understatement. I really knew nothing of this book, this author, or the original story that it re-imagines. What I found was a really engaging story by a really talented author.

The whole series, New Tales of the Mabigonion, is a collection of medieval Welsh fairy tales reshaped for a modern audience. That is, the old characters are given a modern face-lift with new settings, new jobs and new(ish) stories. Their core, however, was meant to remain the same. The core of the story - the moral of the tale, if you will - remains the same.

What I was most impressed by was Dafydd's voice. There is a poetry and ease of narration to the book. Some of the descriptions are elegant and well-formulated, the word choice is immaculate, and the narrator easily slips and moves through time and space. I felt like the narrator was genuinely concerned for the central character, Cilyiad, and that the narrator did a good job of showing the lost befuddlement which he seemed to walk through life covered in. In short, the story was quite engaging and quite well-written.

I have two concerns: 1) The book had a lot of Welsh names in it which I was not really sure how to pronounce. This is my own fault, mind (it's not the author's job to know that I can't read Welsh names), but a pronunciation guide would have been helpful. I'm sure that, even to some native Welsh, Gwelw is a hard name to pronounce (and that was one of the shorter ones). Yes, I get that the book was to be connected to the original tale and I am sure the names were left unmolested. I understand that choice artistically; I just would have liked a little help is all. 2) The book was not very long, I found myself tearing through the book, due in part to the author's style and in larger part to the generous margins and spacing. At £8.99 (or roughly $14), I felt like I was owed more to read. With George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones books, I was given over 800 pages for about $9.00 (¢1.125 per page). It might have been nice for the publisher, Seren, to lump some of the books together and package them so that the reader gets more for the dollar (or pound, as the case may be).

In the end, though, I was neither too put off by the use of old, hard to pronounce names, nor the price per experience. I was really pleased, pleasantly surprised even, by the book, and I would read more from this series and from Fflur Dafydd.

[David Hebblethwaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the latest titles in Seren’s series of books reworking tales from the Mabinogion. Fflur Dafydd’s contribution is based on the myth of ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’; but, rather than a straightforward modern retelling, the author sends her story off in a different direction grown out of filling in gaps in the beginning of the original tale. Dafydd’s protagonist is Cilydd, who’s searching for his missing pregnant wife when he finds evidence that she is dead and the baby has been stolen. Cilydd becomes involved with a missing persons charity, and is settling into a new relationship, when his son Culhwch reappears, with the story of his strange upbringing, and the desire to rescue a beautiful girl named Olwen from the father who keeps her prisoner.

The White Trail examines what drives Cilydd to go on as he does, how far it’s genuine concern and compassion, and how far the need to fill holes in his life. The book also explores the rights and wrongs of looking for people who may not want to be found, and this is where Dafydd uses the fantastic to great effect. The opening section on Cilydd’s life is firmly grounded in the reality of contemporary Wales, but the novel slides towards fantasy when Culhwch appears on the scene; this is imagined so convincingly that it’s a quite a jolt to be pulled back into quotidian reality at the end – and that jolt represents the way that characters’ actions and motivations which seemed reasonable to us at the time suddenly appear less so when the circumstances change. It’s a wonderful moment in a fine piece of work.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up whilst in Wales, from a series of books where authors re-tell old myths and tales. I wasn't familiar with the original story of "How Culhwch Won Olwen" but there are ample notes at the back of the book on this. The first half of the book I enjoyed, but then it took a rather more confused turn with a bit too much mumbo jumbo/ magical realism type stuff going on for my tastes. Interesting though

[Sarah Churchill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great adaptation of Cylhwch ac Olwen, taking the story in a new direction while retaining some subtle (and some not so subtle) nods to the original. I particularly liked the progression from a modern day missing person mystery into full blown magical realism, which personally I think is the best way to tackle a retelling. Read in one sitting, and really enjoyed it.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this took me straight back to my childhood; gave me the experience of having a story told to me that reading did then. Fables, fantasies, myths are far outside my usual reading, and a small part remained resistant throughout (exacerbated by the unfamiliarity of the names) , but so very, very good was the writing that it was impossible to stop reading until I reached the end of the tale.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mystical, often baffling, modern retelling of 'How Culhwch won Olwen' from the Mabinogion. It begins with an intriguing hook and becomes fairly absorbing, all the while demonstrating a very fine poetic tone, but lacks a certain punch.

[Tammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on a story from the Welsh legends from the Mabinogion this was a short novel that had an edge of fantasy mixed with thriller in it.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirkily brilliant retelling of "Culhwch and Olwen"

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The White Trail is one of Seren Books' New Stories from the Mabinogion, a retelling of the medieval Welsh tale of Culhwch ac Olwen. This early Arthurian story described the quest of Culhwch (pronounced Kilhookh) for Olwen, a girl he had fallen violently in love with the moment he had heard about her. But to gain her hand he has to fulfill several impossible tasks set for him by Olwen's father, tasks he is only able to complete with the help of Arthur and his knights.

It is the longest of the native tales contained in the collection known as the Mabinogion and is a rich and complex narrative, with elements of folklore, fairytale, placename onomastics, Rabelaisian lists, black humour, grotesquery, puns and ritual all thrown in. A modern retelling will have to work very hard to include even a handful of these elements whilst also making it relevant and comprehensible to the reader. Fflur Dafydd makes a fair stab at this, to the extent that she reinterprets the action in a way that throws new light on the Dark Age tale but sensibly excises details that anchor Culhwch only to pre-modern times; on the other hand there are aspects of her narrative that for me technically don't work, whatever genre you choose to call it.

The closest genre that The White Trail approaches is magic realism. It makes sense to adopt this mode because its model can be similarly considered in its 11th-century context: at a time when Wales was nominally Christian Culhwch ac Olwen includes much primitive matter of a pagan nature involving ritual slaughter, magical beasts, giants and so on. To transform the fairytale feel into total realism would be to lose all sense of dream and wonder and magic, quite apart from rendering the story totally beyond credence.

The original was tripartite in structure: there was an introduction narrating the circumstances of Culhwch's birth, upbringing and his seeking help from his cousin Arthur to woo Olwen; this is followed by Olwen's father Ysbaddaden Pencawr ("Chief Giant") setting tasks for Culhwch to achieve before the marriage can take place; finally, the tasks are accomplished with the help of Arthur and his men, the Giant overcome and killed and Olwen won at last. Dafydd retains a three-part structure for her version but refocuses the story by making Culhwch's father Cilydd (pronounced something like Killith) the main protagonist and the only character whose point of view we are party to: thus Cilydd dominates the first section, then Culhwch enters Cilydd's life, and finally Cilydd precipitates the climactic events that occur in Ysbaddaden's mansion.

At this point I should point out the significance of some of the various names we encounter, as they are not only inherent in the medieval tale but are transferred unchanged to The White Trail. Culhwch literally means 'narrow sow' but the reason he's given this name is because he's born, unexpectedly, in a pig-run. Cilydd's father takes his name simply from a traditional Welsh name for a fellow or companion. Cilydd's first wife Goleuddydd means 'light of day' -- so when she dies the light literally goes out of his life. Meanwhile, the white flowers that bloom in Olwen's footsteps are supposed to explain the meaning of her name, 'white trail'; but I suspect that there might be older pan-Celtic roots behind it and that she originally took the form of a white swan (as in all those fairytales). Olwen's father Ysbaddaden (pronounced Usbah-thad-en) derives from Welsh ysbyddaden, which is the Welsh for 'hawthorn'; the tree is known for its prickles of course, but the haw or fruit of the hawthorn is known to have sedative properties, a fact which Fflur Dafydd seems to have grasped and used to some effect in the final section.

That's the background explanations done with, so now for some critique. Dafydd has successfully transplanted these principal characters to a modern-day Wales -- though a Wales with unidentified topography -- and has infused a degree of psychology into Cilydd's character. He is tormented first by his wife's disappearance, then by discovering she has died from some crude caesarian operation in a pigsty. His cousin Arthur, an unsuccessful private eye, promises to keep searching for the missing son. Cilydd, meanwhile, throws himself into supporting a missing-persons organisation but still finds himself in a downward spiral and so attempts suicide, with unforeseen repercussions. He now has guilt to add to his sense of deep loss.

The White Trail thus begins as a mystery story, but when we come to the sections with Culhwch and then Ysbaddaden it rapidly shifts into magic realism mode. Everything starts to blur into a dream-like state, with time becoming elastic, inexplicable phenomena manifesting themselves and a mysterious mansion in a forest taking on the semblance of a Celtic Otherworld, only with modern architecture. I didn't mind the gradual shift towards unreality but for me much of the prose didn't gel: the conversations were too static, I didn't engage with many of the characters, and character motivations though explained didn't seem credible. The outline of the 21st-century overlay sometimes disappeared into the fairytale narrative underlying it, meaning that I found this a less than convincing piece of fiction.

I felt that the author's hope of a retelling "charging on ahead in bold realist strides with surreality [sic] trailing at its heels" was a brave attempt, but that it was actually reality that was trailing at the heels of that surrealism. I welcomed the spotlight on the figure of Cilydd but the view I had of the novella, sadly, was of staring down the wrong end of a telescope. But if it directs the reader -- as it does me -- back to its principal inspiration, Culhwch ac Olwen, then that I feel would be its main virtue.

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