The Island of the Mighty : The Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion (1936)

This has reawakened in me a great longing to reread The Chronicles of Prydain.

At the same time it's a very different thing in its own right, halfway between epic and novel, shaped by an embryonic partriarchy undermining the rights attending matrilineal customs. Our Heroes, through their heroic deeds, successively create rape; forced pregnancy; and the prison of marriage; overhanging all is the darkening fate of a bloody sunset.

The original title may seem uninspired, but is better than this one. Someone someday may think of one better than both. ( )

The last branch of the Mabinogon was the first redacted by Evangeline Walton. It was finished and published in 1934 and the text shows it. There's an element of the "Celtic Twilight", the revelling in the tragedy of the lost world. Thus it is to me, the least successful of the Walton redactions. But for completeness, it was read, and it's still a good time. This branch deals with the shrinking of the world of the Celtic demigods, and the advance of the world of men, with their pettiness.
Math Fab Mathonwy (Math, son of Mathonwy), is the King, but his family dissolves in a welter of adulteries, rapes, and murders. It's rather like the home life of David, king of Israel, and reminds us to keep our emotional lives as tidy as possible. I've read it twice, in 1975, and 2008. ( )