Manawyddan

Manawyddan, son of Llyr and brother of Bendigeid Fran, survives the catastrophic war in Ireland to become one of the few remaining men of his people. His place in the story is shaped by that survival: he must reckon with his brother’s death, the loss of a home and ruler, and the uncertain life that follows the burial of Bendigeid Fran’s head.

Identity and the Irish War

At the opening of the account, Manawyddan sits with Bendigeid Fran at Harlech, where the king watches thirteen ships approach from Ireland. Manawyddan is identified as the king’s brother; among those gathered are also their maternal half-brothers Nissyen and Evnissyen, whose contrasting temperaments foreshadow the strife that will engulf the family. The ships belong to Matholwch, king of Ireland, who seeks Branwen’s hand in marriage and an alliance between the two islands. Manawyddan’s presence at this reception places him within the royal household before its hospitality and political bond are undone by violence.

Survival and the Burial of Bendigeid Fran's Head

The Irish war leaves Manawyddan among only seven survivors from the Island of the Mighty. Pryderi is one of them, as are Gluneu Eil Taran, Taliesin, Ynawc, Grudyen son of Muryel, and Heilyn son of Gwynn Hen. Bendigeid Fran himself survives the fighting only to be wounded in the foot by a poisoned dart. Knowing he cannot recover, he commands the seven men to cut off his head and carry it to the White Mount in London, where it must be buried facing France. Manawyddan's survival thus brings him into a duty that is at once practical and ceremonial: he must help preserve his dead brother's presence while carrying out the burial his brother has prescribed.

Bendigeid Fran sets a long and carefully bounded journey before them. The company is to feast at Harlech for seven years, accompanied by the singing of the birds of Rhiannon, with the head remaining as pleasant company as it had been when attached to the king's body. At Gwales in Penvro, they may stay for eighty years with the head still uncorrupted. Their respite has one strict limit: they must not open the door facing Aber Henvelen and Cornwall. Once that door is opened, they must leave at once and continue straight to London. The head's preservation does not cancel the loss of the king; instead, it makes remembrance the travelers' continuing charge, held within a timetable and an injunction they must obey.

Branwen accompanies the seven as their eighth, and the party lands at Aber Alaw in Talebolyon to rest. Looking back towards Ireland and the Island of the Mighty, she grieves that both islands have been destroyed because of her; her groan is followed by her death. The survivors bury her in a four-sided grave on the banks of the Alaw, while the journey carrying Bendigeid Fran's head remains unfinished. The account closes this part of the story by joining the king's extraordinary posthumous company to the cost of the war: Manawyddan continues with the surviving band, bearing a duty shaped by loss rather than victory.

Dispossession, Dyved, and the Enchanted Mouse

After the survivors bury Bendigeid Fran’s head at the White Mount in London, Manawyddan looks over the city and his companions and is overcome by grief. He has no place to rest that night, and the prospect of living under a new ruler troubles him: even though the ruler is his cousin, Manawyddan cannot be happy in a dwelling occupied by someone in his dead brother’s place. Pryderi answers his despair with an offer of shelter and inheritance. He will give Manawyddan his seven cantrefs in Dyved, where his mother Rhiannon lives, and allow him and Rhiannon to enjoy the lands. Manawyddan accepts Pryderi’s friendship and agrees to go with him to see Rhiannon and the territory.

The security offered by Dyved proves fragile. When Pryderi fails to return from an expedition with his dogs, Manawyddan waits until late in the day and then goes back to the palace. He tells Rhiannon what has happened. She reproaches him for losing his companion and sets out for the castle in the direction he has described. There she finds Pryderi held fast to a golden bowl on a marble slab; when she takes hold of the bowl, she too is trapped and unable to speak. At night, thunder and mist descend, and the castle vanishes with both of them. The disappearance leaves Manawyddan and Kicva alone in the palace. Seeing Kicva despair, he assures her of his friendship and promises to keep faith with her and with Pryderi, even under their shared hardship.

Manawyddan responds to the loss of the seven cantrefs by working the land with Kicva. When a mouse is caught stealing from him, he makes a noose and prepares to hang it. A bishop arrives with attendants, sumpter-horses, and baggage, and tries to ransom the animal: first for seven pounds, then for twenty-four, and then with the horses and their seven loads of baggage. Manawyddan refuses each offer. Instead, he demands the release of Rhiannon and Pryderi and the removal of the enchantment from Dyved’s seven cantrefs. He further insists that no enchantment be cast on the land again and that neither he, Pryderi, nor Rhiannon suffer vengeance for what has happened.

Only after these demands does Manawyddan ask who the mouse is. The bishop reveals that she is his pregnant wife and identifies himself as Llwyd son of Kilcoed, who enchanted Dyved to avenge Gwawl. Llwyd explains that his household had taken mouse form to destroy Manawyddan’s crops, and that his wife was caught because her pregnancy made her slower. His account connects the desolation of Dyved to the earlier Badger in the Bag game played by Pwyll against Gwawl. Manawyddan has turned the apparent theft of his harvest into leverage: he refuses wealth and transport in favor of the restoration of his companions, his land, and its future security. The passage ends with Llwyd agreeing to the stated conditions, while Manawyddan’s insistence on knowing the captive’s identity makes clear that the bargain is not merely a ransom.

Narrative Role and Significance

Manawyddan links the catastrophe of the Irish war to the later enchantment of Dyved. His passage between these crises is not a return to security: the king’s death leaves him grieving and without a settled place, while the inheritance offered by Pryderi becomes a landscape emptied by magic. The shifts in his circumstances make survival itself the thread of his story, carrying obligations to the dead into a new struggle to protect the living and the land.

His conduct is marked by loyalty expressed as action. He cannot accept the new ruler’s household as a substitute for his brother’s, yet he accepts Pryderi’s friendship and later assures Kicva that hardship will not alter his faithfulness to her or to Pryderi. When the mouse becomes the means to negotiate with Llwyd, Manawyddan refuses increasingly valuable offers until the terms address the people and land harmed by the enchantment. The sequence presents him not as a conqueror who undoes loss, but as a survivor who turns patience, fidelity, and insistence on lasting terms into a limited restoration.