Creative Writing at The Haven - Goddesses 1

Celtic Myths - 5th October 2012 

This series of 6 workshops has an overarching theme of "Goddesses".  We began with the Celtic world.

The story of Ceridwen is well known, and like many other ancient myths it involves transformation: 

Legend

According to the late medieval Tale of Taliesin, included in some modern editions of the Mabinogion, Ceridwen’s son Morfran was hideously ugly, so Ceridwen sought to make him wise. She had a magical cauldron that could make a potion granting the gift of wisdom and poetic inspiration. The mixture had to be boiled for a year and a day. Morda, a blind man, tended the fire beneath the cauldron, while Gwion Bach, a young boy, stirred the concoction. The first three drops of liquid from this cauldron gave wisdom; the rest was a fatal poison. Three hot drops spilled onto Gwion's thumb as he stirred, burning him. He instinctively put his thumb in his mouth, and instantly gained great wisdom and knowledge.

Ceridwen chased Gwion. He turned himself into a hare. She became a greyhound. He became a fish and jumped into a river. She turned into an otter. He turned into a bird; she became a hawk. Finally, he turned into a single grain of corn. She then became a hen and ate him. When Ceridwen became pregnant, she knew it was Gwion and resolved to kill the child when he was born. However, when he was born, he was so beautiful that she couldn't do it. She threw him in the ocean instead, sewing him inside a leather-skin bag. The child did not die, but was rescued on a Welsh shore – near Aberdyfi according to most versions of the tale – by a prince named Elffin ap Gwyddno; the reborn infant grew to became the legendary bard Taliesin.

One writer gave us this in response:

She Became

(inspired by the legend of Ceridwen)

The fish that jumped

The otter that leapt

The hen that pecked

The child conceived

The child is born

The beautiful child, from a speck of corn

Yvette

As a keynote poem we looked at "Gloria" by Ruth Fainlight.  Here is part of it:

Gloria

Ruth Fainlight

(an extract)

However she’s personified

Or represented,

I won’t forget

How space expands inside me,

Can easily contain

A million goddesses or concepts.

Sophia, Anima, or Kali,

Black or white, death or wisdom,

The central fire

Or all-engulfing water:

My muse is in myself;

And as all past and future

Exist between my own two eyes,

My living need

Is symbolised

By her resplendent figure.

Other references:  The poem "The White Goddess" by Robert Graves; also the poem "The Song of Wandering  Aengus" by W.B. Yeats (they are strangely similar).