Romance Rhamant

Shân Morgain

As the shy sun sends gently renewed warmth and light into our lives, traditions centre on Love ‘n Romance. But there’s more to it than that because Romance means a lot more than a love story.

It even governs the cut and thrust of modern gamers.

As Nation.Cymru shared recently, Gŵyl Ffraed, celebrated on 1 February, is patroness of lovers, and our Welsh aspect of Brigid.

Brigid was a much travelled lady probably originally from Eire/ Ireland.

Her churches appear near coasts and rivers all around our south, and then across to London. There she ran the Bridewell on the Thames, once a women’s monastery of learning, later a women’s prison.

She turns up as far away as Sweden. Her wide dispersal suggests a vigorous spirituality spread by travelling priestesses, later nuns, founding places of veneration.

St. Brigid of Eire is a beautiful tradition of Fire, triple flames. One lights the vision of the bards and poets. One aids the healers. The third powers technology, including the sparking electricity of computers.

Before she was Brigid with orders of nuns, she was Goddess Brighde, with exactly the same associations and customs. Nineteen priestesses, later nineteen nuns, guarded her eternal flame, burning in a grove of thorn bushes.

Eternal flame

A modern network of women now keeps Brigid’s eternal flame going and can be joined online. Brighde/ Brigid can act as the balance to the sacred midwinter boy child at Yule. Her particular date is February 2nd.

A mighty healer, Brighde/ Brigid knew that healing needs to cut through the crap. She healed a leper, one of two leper friends. He joyfully thanked her so she asked him to touch his friend to pass it on.

Horrified at his friend’s leprous ugliness he refused. She promptly returned him to leprosy and healed his friend.

A sweeter tale has baby Brighde/ Brigid lying kicking in the fresh air. Suddenly a mighty pillar of flame roared from her forehead to the sun in the sky.

Janet McCrickard ‘Sinead Sula Grian’ wrote about Brighde/ Brigid, of how Celtic tradition had little to do with the Moon and saw the Sun as female where Greek and Latin legends have a male Sun.

Soon now the commercial giants will smash us with selling strategies around ‘Valentine’s Day’. That’s an eastern import which celebrates romance. Cards and pretties will offer ways to please the beloved, or else add to their anibendodd clutter.

St. Valentine just joins the group to reinforce the importance of romance.

Imbolc

For it’s still gaeaf/winter. Chilly still, and Ffraed’s sunshine is no more than a delicate promise of more to come. The Gaelic name for the February festival is Imbolc/ Oimelc, meaning ‘sheep’s milk’.

That’s because sheep are now birthing the first lambs a joyful sign of new life. Sheep milk tastes sweet; before modern fridges gave us food out of season this was the first fresh sustenance after the ‘hungry gap’ since Yule.

Taste of Ffraed/ Brighde’s milk by slightly warming milk with a dollop of honey and a tiny dash of cinnamon. I prefer goat milk as it is cleaner and healthier (the poor cows are full of antibiotics which overwhelms our reaction to them). Goat milk tastes lighter than cow: try it first in coffee or tea.

Well what of Romance? Rhamant is not just about lovers and kisses though they are included. Back in the 18thC (1700s) Welsh scholars were keen to study and reclaim our ancestors’ history. They looked at the old stories to see how ancient society was described (excellent research by Diana Luft)..

Since this is me talking, of course the Mabinogi has to appear somewhere. One of the chief story groups scholars studied for historical information was the Mabinogi. But they also asserted these were the original tales of the Romance tradition of Europe.

ROMANCE according to Luft, meant ‘a text composed in one of the vernacular [ordinary] languages descended from Latin’.

By the 18thC it meant ‘medieval narrative in general, especially those texts characterized by a high level of wonder and fantasy’

This is why Charlotte Guest linked the old tales of her Mabinogion to King Arthur, knights and quests, and the Courts of Love.

Of course the original Arthur of the Cymru was not the later courtly ideal which became popular as an English tradition. We know Arthur was a jealous bandit chief. Check Triad 37 for how he dug up Bendigeidfran’s protective Head and laid us open to invasion.

The important thing is the origin of all prose tales (i.e. not poetry), all our novels, stories, plays and gaming scripts, descend from the ancestral Welsh tales. Everything.

RHAMANT romance (tale of chivalry, &c.), tale, (love) story; heroism, feat, excellence, wonder (GPC – the big dictionary, ‘Geiriadur Pryfysgol Cymru’)

Rhamant/ Romance is as much about brave adventures, courage, heroines and heroism as it is about candlelight and kisses.

We could consider that Romance calls to bring out the very best in us, our courage and loyalty, our questing determination, and of course the gentleness of the true lover.

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Diana Luft, 2012. ‘Lewis Morris and the Mabinogion’, British Library Journal
Janet McCrickard, 1987. Brighde: Her History, Folklore and Mythology.
Janet McCrickard, 1990. Eclipse of the Sun: Investigation into Sun and Moon Myths.
Out of print but available from libraries.