<HTML>For those familiar with grail terminolgy and related symbolism, here's a little research quest I undertook a year or so ago
Nanteos Mansion – Capel Seion - Cardiganshire
Nanteos Mansion was the resting place for over 300 years for the, so called, Grail Cup. The Cup which was the same one used in the Last Supper, made of olive wood. Legend tells that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Cup to Glastonbury where it remained until the 16th century when the seven Monks of Glastonbury at the Dissolution escaped with it and left it in the safe keeping of the Cistercian Monks of Strata Florida. It was then given to the Stedman Family by the last remaining monk when they escaped to the original house, Nant Eos and were looked after until, one by one, they died. Later Stedman married into the Powell family who built Nanteos Mansion in the 1730's. Strangely, Richard Wagner was a visitor to Nanteos Mansion and it was from this place that the opera 'Parsifal' was originally conceived.
The cup is now held in the museum in Aberystwyth.
Nanteos: the name consists of two Welsh words meaning "stream of the nightingales."
..Nant Eos means "Stream of Eos" who was the Greek God of Dawn or Daybreak/morning -.... so it could also be the stream of the first light
Or maybe Nanteos really does mean £stream of the nightingale” after all....
Dafydd ap Gwilym was described by his fellow-poet Madog Benfras as eos Dyfed, "the nightingale of Dyfed".
Dafydd was born sometime between 1320 and 1330 and died around 1380. He was a member of one of the most influential families in South Wales, and was buried at Strata Florida like many of the princes of Dyfed.
Consequently he felt no need to look up to the English conquerors. Neither was he dependent on the patronage of noble families, unlike most of his contemporaries. This was to have a profound effect on the subject matter of his poetry, which is lighter, and more playfully risqué than the other works of his age.
It is believed that he was educated in the court of his Uncle Llywelyn ap Wilym ab Einion, a man of great learning. He was to be surrounded by the greatest European works of the time, from which he borrows a great deal of his subject matter and style. Dafydd skilfully ties this in with the Welsh tradition - a master of 'cynghanedd' and the 'awdl' he was to create works of great beauty and merit.
His poems are often merry and playful. His tales of the adventures experienced whilst trying to court young ladies, Morfudd and Dyddgu in particular, are truly hilarious. Dafydd also wrote extremely beautiful nature poetry, and there is a general consensus that he is one of, if not the greatest of Welsh poets and of European stature.
Dafydd ap Gwilym, Wales' greatest poet (and lover!), is a fascinating yet shadowy figure from the past. He was born in the early part of the fourteenth century, a contemporary of Boccaccio and some thirty years older than Chaucer. He spent his early years in Llanbadarn with his parents and with his uncle Llywelyn in Castell Newydd Emlyn. He spent much of his later life in exile, and, so popular belief has it, was buried in Strata Florida, near Tregaron.
Llywelyn was described by Dafydd as a warrior, as Lord of Dyfed, and also as a poet, a scholar, a linguist and a teacher. Llywelyn and Dafydd were learned and cultured: they probably spoke several languages and were versed in both contemporary and in classical literature. Dafydd describes Llywelyn's house, Cryngae, as a white-washed house perched on a hill, with lamps burning brightly, with seats covered with silk brocade, and in which fine French wine was drunk from cups of gold.
<a href="[
www.wordshop.org.uk] ">cups of gold</a>
His family originated from the cantref of Cemais in Pembrokeshire, and it had in earlier generations included several officials who had held positions of high authority in the same area under the English crown. The few datable allusions which Dafydd makes to contemporary events all point to the middle years of the 14th century as his period of maximum poetic output: he may thus have been born about 1320 - a slightly older contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Tradition places Dafydd's birth at Brogynin in the parish of Llanbadarn Fawr, a few miles north-east of Aberystwyth, in a substantial mansion or plasty which lay adjacent to a farmhouse still retaining this name. It is believed that he lies buried not far away, near Pontrhydfendigaid, within the precincts of the monastery of Strata Florida. Several poems indicate that the neighbourhood of Aberystwyth and north Ceredigion was more familiar to Dafydd than any other part of Wales, yet he appears to have travelled widely throughout the length and breadth of the country, and to have been well-acquainted with places in Anglesey such as the borough of Rhosyr or Newborough, and with Bangor and Caernarfon in Gwynedd. He may also have visited Chester, whose famous Cross is the subject of a poem which has latterly come to be accepted as belonging to the canon of his work; but there is no indication other than this that Dafydd ever travelled beyond the borders of Wales.
He describes himself, no doubt fancifully, as a member of the clêr: these were the Welsh equivalents of the clerici vagantes or "wandering scholars" of other countries, and Dafydd may indeed have qualified at an early period in his life for minor religious orders - a not uncommon practice. But the indications are that he was a man of birth and breeding, and of no fixed occupation, who had sufficient means to travel at will through town and country, visiting the taverns in the Norman boroughs, and the homes of his cultivated friends over a wide area of Wales. And in both tavern and plasty there were no doubt to be found audiences fully capable of appreciating the cywyddau which, in their different kinds, he composed for their entertainment.
Dafydd's range of personal contacts included his fellow-poet Gruffudd ab Adda, Madog Benfras, and Gruffudd Gryg - the last being an Anglesey poet with whom Dafydd exchanged a sequence of cywyddau in the form of a debate concerning the proper subjects to be treated of in the newly-introduced cywydd verse-form. Among his friends and acquaintances were also uchelwyr or men of hereditary station in Ceredigion and further to the south - men such as Rhydderch ab Ieuan Llwyd of Glyn Aeron and his family, and his uncle Llywelyn ap Gwilym, the constable of Newcastle Emlyn, who appears to have been a powerful educational influence upon the poet's early life.
Dafydd's uncle may, perhaps, have been the first to have introduced Dafydd to the "two cultures" - that is to the native bardic tradition as well as to the language and poetry and romances of the Anglo-Norman world. There was in addition Dafydd's friend and patron Ifor ap Llywelyn or "Ifor Hael" of Basaleg in present-day Gwent.
To all of these men he addressed praise-poems which by the very fact of their existence provide an authentic framework, however exiguous and inadequate, for the bare facts of the poet's life. For in all his other compositions but these few poems, fantasy intermingles with fact to such an extent that it is impossible to distinguish the one from the other, or to estimate the degree of reality which lies behind what Dafydd ruefully presents as his perpetually thwarted love-affairs. Love and Nature are the prime subjects of his poetry, and the two are very frequently blended, for he presents his love-theme most characteristically in an idealised woodland setting, in which he imagines himself as building a deildy or house of leaves and branches in which to shelter with his chosen sweetheart - "Morfudd" or "Dyddgu" or some other un-named girl, making his retreat with her in the wilderness, as an escape from the hampering restrictions of conventional society.
An ancient yew within the churchyard that stands opposite the abbey, is said to be the grave of the medieval bard Dafydd ap Gwilym. He is famed as the greatest poet in the Welsh language.Goredi or Fishtraps
If you look out to sea as you travel from Aberarth to Aberaeron. If the tide is just over halfway out you may notice two semicircular stone "walls". They are now only the low foundations of the last two Goredi or fishtraps once fairly common along the Cardigan Bay coast. The first record of them is in 1184 of Rhys ap Gruffydd granting the goredi "on the land and in the sea between the Aeron and the Arth" to the Cistercian monks of Strata Florida Abbey. "The Red Book of Hergest", a thirteenth century jumble of 58 poems, one of which is the Romance of Taliesin tells the legend of how Cerridwen gave birth to a child which she disposed of by sewing him into a leather bag and throwing him into the sea. He got caught in a Gored between Aberystwyth and Aberdovey and was recued by Elphin son of Gwyddno Garanhair, king of Cantre'r Gwaelod - the lost land of Cardigan Bay. This is legend handed down by Bards whose origin is lost in time. It is thought that the traps may have been in use in the sixth century.
“My Great, Great, Grandfather Richard Wagner was a visitor to Nanteos Mansion and it was from this place that the opera 'Parsifal' was originally conceived. Nanteos Mansion was the resting place for over 300 years for the, so called, Grail Cup. The Cup which was the same one used in the Last Supper, made of olive wood.
Joseph of Arimathea brought the Cup to Glastonbury where it remained until the 16th century when the seven Monks of Glastonbury in the Dissolution escaped with it and left it in the safe keeping of the Cistercian Monks of Strata Florida. It was then given to the Stedman Family by the last remaining monk when they escaped to the original house, Nant Eos and were looked after until, one by one, they died.”
<a href="[
www.mediaquest.co.uk] ">link</a>
<a href="[
www.castlewales.com] ">castlewales</a>
<a href="[
red-dragon-wales.50megs.com] ">red dragon</a>
The Cistercians first entered Wales, by way of the Norman conquerors. In 1131, Walter de Clare, established a monastery on his lands near Chepstow Castle, for a group of French Cistercians from the house of L'Aumône. Tintern Abbey, the second Cistercian foundation in Britain, had two distinct characteristics that set it apart from the rest of the Welsh foundations: "its associations with some of the greatest names in English feudal history and its complete lack of Welsh associations."
The first Welsh Cistercian foundation that could be accurately labeled Welsh, was Whitland, also called Alba Landa and Blanchland. Whitland was founded in 1140, but did not settle in its permanent location until 1151, when the monks settled near the River Taf at Y Ty Gwyn ar Daf (the White House on the Taf). Whitland was a daughter house of Clairvaux, and mother house or grand-mother house to the remaining seven purely Welsh Cistercian houses : Cwmhir, Strata Florida, Strata Marcella, Cymmer, Aberconway, Llantarnum, and Valle Crucis.
The first Norman bishop of St. Davids, Bernard, was Whitland's founder. Bernard invited Clairvaux to send a colony of monks to Wales. Between 1140 and 1144, little is known about the colony, but in 1144 the monks were settled at Treffgarn, near Haverfort West, on land provided by Bernard. The lands for the refoundation near the River Taf were provided by John of Torrington. Although its founder and first patron were Norman, with the Welsh reconquest under Rhys of Deheubarth, the Welsh began to join and patronize the new monastery, which, unlike the prior foundations of the Benedictines, was a full and independent abbey.
In 1143 an abortive attempt was made at sending a colony to Maelienydd in North Wales. This meant that in just three years Whitland had grown enough to support a daughter house. This daughter house was Cwmhir, it's founder was Maredudd ap Maelgwn, a prince of Maelienydd. According to Lloyd this prince cannot be found in records at that time, but a Maredudd ap Madog did rule the region from 1140 to 1146.
In 1164 the second daughter of Whitland was founded on the banks of the river Fflur: Strata Florida (Ystrad Fflur). Strata Florida became "the foremost monastic community in Wales." Strata Forida's founder was also a Norman: Robert fitz Stephen, "the chief personage in the Clare lordship of Ceredigion."
By 1165 Whitland had a native abbot, Cynan. Lloyd states that for this reason the Lord Rhys, prince of Deheubarth, began to protect and then to give lands to the abbey. Rhys also sent his son Maredudd, blinded as a child while a hostage of Henry II, to be a monk at Whitland.
Bernard set out at the head of twelve other monks and chose, as the site for his new monastery, a valley not far from Bar-sur-Aube and adjoining the territory of his kinsmen. It was known as the Valley of Wormwood; soon it became even better known as the Valley of Light, or Clairvaux.
Alarming news came at this time from the East. Edessa had fallen into the hands of the Turks, and Jerusalem and Antioch were threatened with similar disaster. Deputations of the bishops of Armenia solicited aid from the pope, and the King of France also sent ambassadors. The pope commissioned Bernard to preach a new Crusade and granted the same indulgences for it which Urban II had accorded to the first. A parliament was convoked at Vezelay in Burgundy in 1134, and Bernard preached before the assembly. The King, Louis le Jeune, Queen Eleanor, and the princes and lords present prostrated themselves at the feet of the Abbot of Clairvaux to receive the cross. The saint was obliged to use portions of his habit to make crosses to satisfy the zeal and ardour of the multitude who wished to take part in the Crusade. Bernard passed into Germany, and the miracles which multiplied almost at his every step undoubtedly contributed to the success of his mission. The Emperor Conrad and his nephew Frederick Barbarossa, received the pilgrims' cross from the hand of Bernard, and Pope Eugenius, to encourage the enterprise, came in person to France. It was on the occasion of this visit, 1147, that a council was held at Paris, at which the errors of Gilbert de la Porée, Bishop of Poitiers, were examined. He advanced among other absurdities that the essence and the attributes of God are not God, that the properties of the Persons of the Trinity are not the persons themselves in fine that the Divine Nature did not become incarnate. The discussion was warm on both sides. The decision was left for the council which was held at Reims the following year (1148), and in which Eon de l'Etoile was one of the judges. Bernard was chosen by the council to draw up a profession of faith directly opposed to that of Gilbert, who concluding by stating to the Fathers: "If you believe and assert differently than I have done I am willing to believe and speak as you do". The consequence of this declaration was that the pope condemned the assertions of Gilbert without denouncing him personally. After the council the pope paid a visit to Clairvaux, where he held a general chapter of the order and was able to realize the prosperity of which Bernard was the soul.
The last years of Bernard's life were saddened by the failure of the Crusade he had preached, the entire responsibility for which was thrown upon him. He had accredited the enterprise by miracles, but he had not guaranteed its success against the misconduct and perfidy of those who participated in it. Lack of discipline and the over-confidence of the German troops, the intrigues of the Prince of Antioch and Queen Eleanor, and finally the avarice and evident treason of the Christian nobles of Syria, who prevented the capture of Damascus, appear to have been the cause of disaster. Bernard considered it his duty to send an apology to the pope and it is inserted in the second part of his "Book of Consideration". There he explains how, with the crusaders as with the Hebrew people, in whose favour the Lord had multiplies his prodigies, their sins were the cause of their misfortune and miseries. The death of his contemporaries served as a warning to Bernard of his own approaching end The first to die was Suger (1152), of whom the Abbot wrote to Eugenius III: "If there is any precious vase adorning the palace of the King of Kings it is the soul of the venerable Suger".
St. Bernard wrote "De Laudibus Novae Militiae", addressed to Hughes de Payns, first Grand Master and Prior of Jerusalem (1129). This is a eulogy of the military order instituted in 1118, and an exhortation to the knights to conduct themselves with courage in their several stations.
The tales of the Mabinogion are not the product of any single hand; evolving over the centuries, passed from storyteller to storyteller, until some master bard put them together around the twelfth century. Its contents draw upon the myths and history of Celtic Britain: four branches of a storyline set largely within the confines of Wales and the otherworld.
The tales create a dreamlike atmosphere and preserve much of the primitive, fascinating world of Celtic myth. They exemplify the heroic and idealistic world of Celtic literature.
The Mabinogion does not seem to have been very well known until its translation into English in1849 when Lady Charlotte Guest's version appeared. The tales comprise an ensemble of parts, the first four "Pwyll", "Branwen", "Manawydan", and "Math" comprising the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. It was Lady Charlotte who supplied the title Mabinogion. Previously, the tales were simply identified as part of this or that manuscript. Each of the Four Branches ends with the term 'So ends this Branch of the Mabinogi.' The Welsh word 'mab' means 'son'. Lady Charlotte concluded that 'mabinogi' was a noun meaning 'a story for children' and that the word 'mabinogion' was its plural. Another interpretation is that the word mabinog refers to "a student in the bardic class" and mabinogi (pl. mabinogion) therefore being "a tale belonging to the mabinog's repertoire".
The Mabinogion are found in the "Red Book of Hergest", a large fourteenth-century manuscript kept at Jesus College, Oxford. An earlier manuscript called 'The White Book of Rhydderch' (c. 1325) is incomplete but more than likely contained all the tales when it was whole. Fragments of these tales appear elsewhere, the earliest of which is believed to be 'Peniarth 6' which dates to c. 1225.
They tell the storys of people in celtic times, some of the stories have been placed from approx 500 BC.
1.Owain or The Lady of the Fountain
2.Peredur the Son of Evrawc
3.Geraint the Son of Erbin
4.Kilhwch and Olwen
5. The Dream of Rhonabwy
6. Pwyll Prince of Dyved
7.Branwen the Daughter of Llyr
8. Manawyddan the Son of Llyr
9. Math the Son of Mathonwy
10.The Dream of Maxen Wledig
11. The Story of Lludd and Llevelys
12.Taliesin
<a href="[
www.webmesh.co.uk] ">Mabinogian homepage</a>
The stories were probably drawn up in their present shape towards the end of the twelfth century, but the stories are of much greater antiquity, some belonging even to the more distant past of Celtic paganism and to the period of Gallo-Breton unity. Welsh scholars tend to favour an earlier amalgamation, wanting to maximize the extent of their ancestors' contribution to The Mabinogion, while French scholars argue for 1200 - 1250 CE with the same thing in mind. Ifor Williams proposed 1060 CE as a likely date and gives a number of arguments: the occurrence of outdated word forms in the text, the scarcity of French words, references to extinct customs, and the peaceful period 1055-63 which was a time of bards from north and south to exchange and tell their tales.
It is interesting to note that in the main "Four Branches" there is no mention of Arthur.
[However he does appear, with Kai, in others...]
Besides these four tales, the Mabinogion includes two from romantic British history ("The Dream of Maxen Wledig" and "Lludd and Llevelys"), two more interesting ones ("Rhonabwy's Dream" and "Kilhwch and Olwen"), "Taliesin", and, finally, three tales ("Owain or The Lady of the Fountain", "Gereint the Son of Erbin", "Peredur ab Evrawc") which show a marked kinship with certain medieval French tales.
The three-volume edition with English translation by Lady Charlotte Guest was printed by Llandovery in 1849 with the English translation alone appearing in an edition of 1879. The Welsh text has been printed in a diplomatic edition, "The Red Book of Hergest", by J. Rhys and J. Gwenogfryn Evans (Oxford, 1887). Lady Guest's translation has been re-edited with valuable notes by Alfred Nutt (London, 1902).
<a href="[
camelot.celtic-twilight.com];
I spoke with the Curator of the museum in Aberystwyth who explained that the cup has never been in the possession of the museum, but is in private ownership. That makes far more sense to me.
Jaq</HTML>
