Peredur

Peredur. Welsh Arthurian hero of one of the 13th-century Three Romances, Tair Rhamant, which bears his name; the other two are Geraint ac Enid and Owain. Obviously related to the story of Percevel, Peredur has been called ‘the Grail legend without the Grail’. Manuscripts of the narrative survive in the White Book of Rhydderch (c.1325), the Red Book of Hergest (c.1382–1410), and two other collections. Lady Charlotte Guest included it in her translation of The Mabinogion (1846), although it is not one of the four branches of the Mabinogi.

After the death of his father, Efrawg [cf. ModW Efrog, York], Peredur, a seventh son, lives a quiet life with his mother; he none the less grows strong and swift. His mother does not want him to become a knight, fearing the dangers encountered, but nothing can keep him from the goal. Still, she instructs him in the knightly code, and he leaves home for Arthur's court, expecting to be dubbed. Peredur's awkwardness and naïvety evoke amusement at court, but he soon establishes a reputation for a pure heart and valour. Gradually he also acquires skill and polish in hunting, war, and love. To avenge Cei's insult to a dwarf, he enters upon a long series of adventures, led by Etlym Gleddyfcoch [red sword], that bring out his innate chivalry. Two unclescontinue his education. The first, who is lame, tells him never to ask about the significance of what he sees. At the court of the second, a fisher-lord, he sees a bleeding lance and a severed head upon a salver being carried in a procession. The head is that of Peredur's cousin, whom he is asked to avenge. He proceeds to the court of the witches of Caerloyw [Gloucester], who instruct him in weaponry. On another day, towards dusk, Peredur is greeted by a hermit in a snowy valley, when a hawk attacks a wild duck and a crow settles on the prey. The juxtaposition of the crow, the blood, and the snow, the black-red-white motif, reminds him of the ideal of feminine beauty, as she will also combine these colours: black hair, white skin, red lips. But this love he will not know. After a return to Arthur's court, Peredur embarks on another series of adventures, culminating with his fourteen-year sojourn with the ‘Empress of Constantinople’ (Cristinobyl, etc.), an episode containing remnants of the sovereignty story. In an abrupt return to Arthur's court, Peredur is berated by a loathly lady for failing to seek the meaning of the marvels he has seen at his second uncle's castle, which would have restored his king to health and his land to prosperity. After still more adventures, Peredur learns that the witches of Caerloyw had beheaded his cousin and wounded the first uncle, and that Peredur is fated to avenge them.

The relationship between Peredur and Percevel is extraordinarily complicated. Although Chrétien's Perceval (c.1182) is earlier than the Red Book manuscript (c.1382–1410), the Welsh story is not necessarily a variation of the French. The order of events is different in the two stories, with the severed head replacing the Grail; the fourteen-year sojourn is not found in Chrétien. Independent references to Peredur exist in Welsh tradition before the writing of the Red Book (the Annales Cambriae put the death of Peredur, seventh son of Eilffer, in AD 580), and it is possible that Peredur is a retelling of lost Welsh material found in, or used by, Chrétien, conflated with native traditions about the hero.

See Idris Llewelyn Foster, ‘Peredur’, in R. S. Loomis (ed.), Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1959), 199–205; Glenys Goetinck, ‘Historia Peredur’, Llên Cymru, 6 (1960/1), 138–53; Peredur: A Study of Welsh Traditions in the Grail Legends (Cardiff, 1975). See also PERONNIK.