Peredur son of Efrawg is one of the Three Welsh Romances associated with the Mabinogion. It tells a story roughly analogous to Chrétien de Troyes' unfinished romance Perceval, the Story of the Grail, but it contains many striking differences from that work, most notably the absence of the French poem's central object, the grail.
Synopsis
The central character of the tale is Peredur, son of Efrawg. As in Chrétien's Percival, the hero's father dies when he is young, and his mother takes him into the woods and raises him in isolation. Eventually, he meets a group of knights and determines to become like them, so he travels to the court of King Arthur. There he is ridiculed by Cei and sets out on further adventures, promising to avenge Cei's insults to himself and those who defended him. While travelling, he meets two of his uncles. The first educates him in arms and warns him not to ask the significance of what he sees. The second reveals a salver containing a man's severed head. The young knight does not ask about this and proceeds to further adventure, including a stay with the Nine Witches of Gloucester and the encounter with the woman who was to be his true love, Angharad Golden-Hand. Peredur returns to Arthur's court, but soon embarks on another series of adventures that do not correspond to material in Percival. In the end, the hero learns the severed head at his uncle's court belonged to his cousin, who had been killed by the Nine Witches. Peredur avenges his family by helping Arthur and others destroy the Witches, and is celebrated as a hero.
Manuscripts and dating
Versions of the text survive in four manuscripts from the 14th century: the mid-14th century White Book of Rhydderch or Aberystwyth, NLW, MS :Category:Peniarth collection|Peniarth 4; MS Peniarth 7, which dates from the beginning of the century, or earlier, and lacks the beginning of the text; MS Peniarth 14, a fragment from the 2nd quarter of the 14th century, and the Red Book of Hergest, from the end of the same century. The texts found in the White Book of Rhydderch and Red Book of Hergest represent the longest version. They are generally in close agreement and most of their differences are concentrated in the first part of the text, before the love-story of Angharad. MS Peniarth 7, the earliest manuscript, concludes with Peredur's the hero's 14-year stay in Constantinople, reigning with the Empress. This has been taken to indicate that the adventures in the Fortress of Marvels, which follow this episode in the longest version, represent a later addition to the text. On orthographic grounds, Glenys Goetinck postulates a date in the 12th century. Many other scholars, however, have favoured a later date.
