Mythstories artist in residence Dez Quarréll reports back on the completion of the left panel of The Dream of Rhonabwy Triptych…
Dez says, “The left hand panel of The Dream of Rhonabwy Triptych shows three lieutenants / Knights of Owain ap Urien coming to deliver bad news to their leader.
Incidentally Owain ap Urien or Owain mab Urien aka Ywain in the later Arthurian canon, is the son of King Urien of Gorre (North Cumbria and Northumberland) and the enchantress Modron aka the sorceress Morgan Le Fay; and for fans of the museum was the bump in processional giant Morgan’s tummy, see https://mythstories.com/museum-exhibits/bertilak-morgan-processional-giants/.
Owain ap Urien in the central panel is ensconced in a game of gwyddbwyll with King Arthur and apparently the game has come to life on the nearby fields with Owain’s Ravens (warriors) battling with Arthur’s Knights, although the two leaders are, in fact, allies.
Each of Owain’s Knights bring increasingly worrying news for Owain, who implores Arthur to stop his Knights harassing his Ravens. Arthur’s response is always to tell Owain to stick to the game in hand, saying, “your move”.
Painting this story persists in presenting temporal challenges. Arthur is a 5th Century leader from the immediate post Roman era in Britain, although he and his Knights are often portrayed as Chivalric Knights of the middle ages because their stories were not committed to paper (or parchment) until the 12th Century.
I wanted to, as much as possible, show the Arthurian story as unfolding in the late 5th Century so needed to find a way of interpreting the text which is so prescriptive on the nature and colour of the clothing and equipment of its protagonists, to be relevant to post Roman Britain rather than the Romantic Knights of the middle ages.
The middle image depicts Gwgawn Red Sword but the text doesn’t tell us why ‘Red Sword’ became attached to his name, although he is said to have ‘a scabbard of red deer-hide, tipped with gold’. Maybe he was such a fierce warrior that his sword was always blood red when he returned from battle. I have added red garnet jewels to the hilt of his sword and a large garnet decorates the pommel, but this is simply my imaginings.
I chose a heraldic style Red Lion for the pendant on his tent as I wasn’t at all certain that a 6th Century Briton would have ever seen a lion in the flesh. It is possible that the Romans may have imported some African Lions into the Arenas and Amphitheaters in Britain in previous centuries but very unlikely that any would have survived into the 6th Century.
However the part of Gwgawn’s description in the text that made me stop dead was… “and on his feet were hose of fine white buck-ram, and buskins of black leather were over his hose, whereupon were golden clasps.” I am in my seventieth year but I had never heard of buskins, a sure sign of a misspent life I thought and began to search the internet. Wikipedia gave me a definition, ‘A buskin is a knee- or calf-length boot made of leather or cloth, enclosed by material, and laced, from above the toes to the top of the boot, and open across the toes.‘ I also found out that buskins were worn by the Ancient Greeks and the Romans, and they were still a fairly normal footwear in Medieval times up to the 16th Century. I chose a pair of Roman army surplus buskins for Gwgawn being closest to his time period.
The lower image of Gwres of Rheged presented me with a more semantic puzzle. What exactly did ‘speckled’ suggest? Gwres was the possessor of ‘a tent speckled yellow, the largest ever seen’, also he had ‘a mighty lance, speckled yellow’. What does speckled mean to you? Speckles are not exactly spots, probably smaller I hypothesized, maybe a little more ill-defined around their edges, and most notable for their proliferation. One can have a spot but I’ve never heard of anyone having just one single speckle. After a little musing I decided that speckles on something like a large Roman style Military tent would be larger than those on the shaft of a mighty lance.
Later in Gwres description I was halted in my tracks again by ‘hose of fine Totness’. I knew hose was stockings or long socks, and I also knew that Totnes was a place in Devon, surely the extra ‘s’ on the end was just a typographical error, but I had no idea what ‘hose of fine Totness’ would look like. Despite the lateness of the hour I sent a text to a curator of textiles I knew and she was able to tell me that these stockings would have been woven using fine quality wool. Totnes was a centre of the wool and weaving trade and the phrase ‘hose of fine Totnes’ would mark out their wearer as man of quality, who only wore the best available stockings.
The eagle on Gwres tent I have based on a Roman Legionary eagle. There have been many stories about Legions losing their eagles during tours of duty in Britain – a mark of real humiliation for the Roman Army and a true prize for any Celtic Tribe lucky enough to claim the eagle as booty. No eagles have ever been discovered in Britain but maybe Gwres just might have had one.
After Gwres delivered his woeful message to Owain he was sent to the battlefield to hoist his banner at the point where the battle was at its fiercest. And when he did suddenly the tables miraculously started to turn, and Owain’s dead Ravens came back to life to renew the fight.
Now I can move on to the right hand panel of the triptych, hopefully as a wiser man, but I’m sure that panel will pose new problems for someone brave enough to try to picture The Dream of Rhonabwy.”
