
Welsh Treasures An interview with Catherine Fisher
Tanja Jennings interviews Catherine Fisher.
Award winning Newport born Welsh author and celebrated poet Catherine Fisher became a weaver of words at an early age. She shares with me the origins of her first story, ‘It was a fantasy novel set in Dark Age Wales called The Midnight Land,’ joking that she hasn’t moved on very far.
Ever inventive and imaginative, Catherine is deft at creating exciting other worlds, as with her first novels, written in the 1990s [later published as The Glass Tower trilogy] and her complex Book of the Crow quartet. She expresses herself in beautifully nuanced, layered, lyrical writing effortlessly fusing genres in a melange of folk, fairy tale and fantastical science fiction. Her immersive Chronoptika quartet played with these elements mixing in time travel with a frosting of Shakespeare while Incarceron created a startling living prison and her enchanting, shapeshifting Clockwork Crow trilogy won the Tir Na N’og Welsh Children’s Book Award.
Now her story quest has led her to a project close to her heart. Inspired by the fiction of Alan Garner and Robert Holdstock, Catherine has always been fascinated by Celtic myths, the lore of King Arthur and the legends of the land of Wales. Published by Cadno, the imprint of Graffeg specialising in stories for Middle grade, Catherine’s vivid retelling of Culhwch and Olwen [pronounced as Kill hook and Oll when], a classic quest tale from Welsh medieval manuscripts penned by a mysterious scribe who may have been a literate bard or a monk, breathes new life into a lost legend. Commonly referred to as The Mabinogion, the result of a Victorian mistranslation, the preferred scholarly term is The Four Branches of the Mabinogi.
Catherine unpicks its complex origins, ‘It is the name for a collection of eleven medieval Welsh tales. They are extant in two manuscripts, the Red book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch. They may date to the 12th century, but possibly the stories are much older. The term Mabinogi derives from the Welsh language and can be translated as stories of young men.’
Culhwch and Olwen fits this mould. Recognisable fairytale tropes abound as the eponymous hero, born in a pigsty, but of a noble demeanour, must undergo a series of impossible tasks if he is to win the hand of the fearsome giant Ysbaddaden’s daughter who trails flowers in her wake. To succeed in his endeavour, he needs the assistance of the magical court of King Arthur.
Jettisoning the fragmentation and verbosity of the original texts, Catherine’s version radiates with vibrant verse, wonderment and cartoon style humour. There is a beautiful contrast of light and dark intermingled with Arthurian exploits, elements of fairytale, folktale, the forces of nature and the universal themes of birth, courage, marriage and death. ‘I always wanted to write my own version of this classic tale’ says Catherine. ‘I’m just hooked and fascinated by enigmatic Welsh legends. I feel there are many lost tales and part of the attraction of this material is the sense of mystery, of a lost pattern of legends that can only be guessed at now. For me their significance is that they are our heritage, also they are fascinating stories, full of adventure, overcoming adversity, love and fear. Culhwch and Olwen is held inside a framework. It’s a tapestry, a tangle, a hedgerow of stories. Because of this it has a broad range of styles – comedy, sly puns, pastiche, weirdness, folklore, suspense, romance and pure magic, and it ends with the great hunt of a ferocious Boar-king.’
Changes Catherine made included giving this fearsome, enchanted, symbolic boar, the Twrch Trwyth, who is at the centre of an exhilarating chase sequence, a poetic voice, as he has none in the original. Integral to the story’s resolution, Catherine sees his pursuit from Ireland across South Wales, through Pembrokeshire and her home place of Gwent to the River Severn, as ‘enchanting the landscape of the present day with the fantasies of the past.’
Catherine also wanted to make her retelling accessible to schools. In deciding how to make a medieval quest tale appeal to a middle grade audience, both additions and omissions were necessary,
‘Certain aspects fall naturally into chapters. I wanted a text that would resonate with Welsh children broken into manageable chunks for study in schools. It was easy to find separate sections of the story, especially for the Tasks, for instance. Culhwch and Olwen needed to have a more prominent and active role. The hardest thing to leave out was the mighty Court List, which is so wonderful and full of puns but would have been too long.’
What Catherine found most intriguing while reinterpreting the text were ‘the gaps and holes in the narrative, the doubles and inconsistencies.’ They gave her a rich story scape to reshape,
‘Culhwch and Olwen have episodes where something is missing, or a connection has been lost, or half-remembered. Filling these gaps with interpretations of my own is a way of making the story partly mine, of contributing to its long history, and adds to the pleasure of the re-telling.’
Certain episodes are never explained. Catherine believes they are open to speculation. Could Cuhlwch possibly be born of a God as his mother’s name Goleuddydd suggests divinity and is translated as daylight? To provide an opposite Catherine named his stepmother, the unwilling bride, Tywyllwch, meaning darkness. This contrast is evident in the accompanying fairytale vs Gothic style illustrations by Efa Lois which Catherine feels capture the ethereal nature of the text.
Culhwch and Olwen also celebrates the sagacity and ingenuity of the animal world. One of Catherine’s favourite sections is, The Oldest Animals, which she believes has a universal message, ‘It’s a patterned, oral section. I have the feeling it could be very old, and maybe originally a separate tale. The animals have all the wisdom and knowledge and have to be consulted – a good message for us today.’
Another beguiling aspect of Cuhlwch and Olwen is its capacity for reinvention. Catherine visualises it as ‘an amazing treasury of wonder, which should be an action movie, a game, a fantasy series, an opera, a musical comedy, or a cartoon.’
Her version of Cuhlwch and Olwen could not have so much power without the magic of her verse. Passionate about poetry, her surreal work has garnered many accolades, exploring identity and voyages into other dimensions. With her influences including Welsh poets Dafydd ap Gwilym, David Jones, Sheenagh Pugh and Paul Henry, she felt it was ‘vital to use poems to break up the text and to put passages of heightened description back into verse’. Her poetic invention also personalised her experience while enabling her to comment on the text.
The branches of the Mabinogi are a rich tapestry of tales to reimagine. Following Cuhlwch and Olwen, Catherine intends to explore the Holy Grail legend of Peredur [Perceval] contained in The White Book of Rhydderch. She believes the idea of the elusive cup ‘ignites the imagination and makes the reader want to follow the trail of secrets to see where the story goes.’
For those looking for translations, Catherine recommends, ‘Gwyn and Thomas Jones’ Everyman version for its poetics, and Sioned Jones’ Oxford version for its elegant clarity.’
Everything Catherine writes is done with a great understanding of how a story has the power to transport readers to visionary worlds of infinite possibilities. Her next Middle Grade adventure will be published by Firefly in September. Starspill, which she had great fun writing, will introduce readers to ‘a town covered in sentient Fog, where a boy is ordered by the local cats to steal a precious object.’
For now, she hopes her retelling of a medieval heroic quest will, ‘bring Cuhlwch and Olwen to a new audience of children and adults, who will go on to read the original, in Welsh or in translation, and enter the amazing and comic realm of Arthur’s Court, of talking animals and stolen swords, bone-crushing women and little lame ants.’
Tanja Jennings is a judge of the Cilip Carnegie Medals, a dedicated school librarian, children’s book reviewer and creative book blogger from Northern Ireland.
Cuhlwch and Olwen by Catherine Fisher, illustrated by Efa Lois, is published by Graffeg, 978-1802586459, £8.99 pbk.