THE MAB makes a cornerstone of Welsh literature vivid & accessible again

Colourfully presented, with an eloquent and imaginative foreword from Michael Sheen, The Mab is a concise and accessible collection of the stories of the medieval Mabinogion, that foundation-stone of Welsh (indeed, British) literature. With 11 fables presented, variously in English and Welsh, it offers a fresh opportunity for parents to share these tales with their children, or for young readers to delve into a world of magic and myth themselves. 

As vivid and attractive a work as The Mab is, replete with brightly coloured illustrations, it’s impossible to shake the sense that these stories are just inherently too grim to really work in this light-hearted, child-friendly format. There’s an incongruity between, say, the endearing silliness of Pwyll’s “adventure trousers, made from the very finest action-silk” and a couple of pages later, the distressing image of a traumatised Rhiannon awaking, covered in gore from a mutilated puppy, to be told that she had murdered her new-born son in the night.  

Ultimately, the stories are the stories and the basic plots must remain – these tales were how our ancestors made sense of their hard lives – but for all that, I would urge caution before turning to The Mab as a bedtime story source for all but the most strong-stomached of children.