Efnisia

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Efnisien , also Efnisyen [ ev'nisjen ] or Ev-Nissyen ( Cymric : "the non-peaceful", "the contentious") is the son of Penarddun and Euroswydd in Celtic mythology . His twin brother is the peaceful Nissyen , his half siblings are Bran the Blessed , Branwen and Manawydan . The legend Branwen ferch Llŷr ("Branwen, the daughter of Llŷr") is recorded in the second branch of the Mabinogi .

mythology

Matholwch , King of Ireland, comes to Bran, King of Britain , to ask for the hand of his sister Branwen. Branwen's half-brother Efnisien is upset that he was not asked permission. In revenge, he massacres Matholwch's horses, which almost leads to a fight.

And then he went to the horses, cut their lips to the teeth, their ears to the head and their tails to the back. and wherever he got hold of her eyelids, he cut her to the bone.

Bran manages to calm the heated minds again by giving the Irish, among other things, new horses and a cauldron that brings the dead back to life.

Efnisia blows up the cauldron

Matholwch marries Branwen and together they travel to Ireland, where their son Gwern is born. Nevertheless, the marriage is not happy and when his subjects learn of the Efnisiens massacre of horses, Matholwch banishes Branwen to the kitchen, where she has to work hard and is beaten. Horrified by the fate of his sister, Bran gathers his men around him and moves to Ireland. When the news of a hiking mountain in the Irish Sea reaches Matholwch, he gets scared because he suspects that it is the giant Bran who is hiking through the sea. To calm him down, he has a palace built that is big enough for the giant for the first time. He also promises to make his son Gwern king.

At a party in the newly built palace, Irish nobles who disagree with the way things are hiding in sacks of flour to overpower the Welsh people. Efnisien suspects their plan and suffocates the men in the sacks, but when he throws his nephew Gwern into the fire, the fight breaks out. Efnisien dies in the destruction of the cauldron that keeps the fallen Irish alive. He jumps in and expands so much that the kettle bursts with him. Bran is mortally wounded and Matholwch also falls in the fight. Eventually, only seven Welsh and five pregnant Irish women survive, whose children repopulate the country. The Welsh return home with Branwen and the severed head of Bran.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernhard Maier: The legend book of the Welsh Celts. The four branches of the Mabinogi . P. 39.
  2. ↑ Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 , p. 682.
  3. ↑ Bernhard Maier: The legend book of the Welsh Celts. The four branches of the Mabinogi . P. 36 ff.
  4. ↑ Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 , p. 820 f.