Manawyddan Son of the Boundless: a gay Theosophist writes about two boys in love

 

Around fifth or sixth grade, I found a book in the Denkmann Elementary School Library, Hero Tales from Many Lands: short vignettes from the lives of Beowulf, Achilles from the Iliad, Sigurd from the Volsunga Saga,  Rustem from the Shah Nameh, and many others. 

Most were unreadable due to the old-fashioned writing style or silly subject matter  -- "How Cuchulain wooed his wife"?  Why not tell about his heroic deeds? 

But "Manawyddan, Son of the Boundless," from the Welsh  Mabinogion,  brought that moment of ecstatic joy that I knew from Rich and Sean in The Secret of Boyne Castle

Barnabas Collins and Willie Loomis on Dark Shadows

Ray and Cho in Operation Time Search

 Chekov and Sulu on Star Trek

It was about two boys together:

The gods are thinking of raising Pwyll Prince of Dyfed to godhood, but first they give him some trials to see if he's worthy.  They remove his memories -- he will be called Dienw, Nameless -- and send him out into the wilderness.  

After wandering for years, hungry, tired, and "knowing all sorrow," Dienw stumbles upon "a youth of great beauty" harping a song so beautiful that the animals stop to listen. He introduces himself as Goreu fab Ser, Son of the Stars.

When I was ten years old, this was the  most beautiful picture I had ever seen.

They travel from Ireland to Wales together.  

When they are crossing the Menai Strait, between Anglesey Island and mainland Wales, their coracle capsizes, and Goreu can't swim!  Dienw drags him kicking and struggling to the shore, and then, overcome by exhaustion, dies.  

Goreu carries him to to Mount Wyddfa (Mount Snowden, the highest mountain in Wales), where the gods live, and immerses him in the Cauldron of Life, Pair Dadeni.  

Dienw awakens to "one of immortal beauty, whose forehead shone like the Morning Star. " Goreu, revealed to be the God Gwydion ap Don, hugs him and says that his new name is Manawyddan, son of the Boundless.

Same-sex love not only exists, it carries with it a spark of the Divine!  

In junior high my friend Darry and I started writing a fantasy novel that, we claimed, was absolutely not imitating Tolkien.  I borrowed the Cauldron of Life and the last scene, where Jim awakens and Rai greets him with a hug, directly from the story.  

And I wanted to know more.  What happened next? Did Manawyddan and Gwydion ap Don rule together?  Did they have more adventures?  

More adventures after the break

When I was in high school, I found an English translation of The Mabinogion, by Gwyn and Thomas Jones, at Readmore Book World.  The story of Manawyddan and Gwydion isn't there. 

Lady Charlotte Guest's 1877 translation in the Augustana College library:  not there.

I checked a lot of reference books.  Gwydion ap Don has no connection to Pwyll Prince of Dyfed, who has no connection to the God Manawyddan fab Llyr.  And they all spend a lot of time wooing women.

Where did the gay-subtext story come from? It remained a mystery.

In the young adult novel, Manawydan Jones y Pair Dadeni (2022),  the 15-year old boy gets a mysterious visitor who tells him that he is the Chosen One.  It sounds like the story of Manawyddan and Gwydion, but it's in Welsh, so I can't be sure. 

Recently I was working on "Golden Cities, Far," recalled the story, and searched online for a copy of Hero Tales from Many Lands, compiled by Alice Isabel Hazeltine, published by Abington Press in 1961.

The "Manawyddan Son of the Boundless" story comes from The Book of Three Dragons, published in 1930 by Kenneth Morris.

So who was this guy who accidentally provided one of the most significant queer moments of my childhood?

Kenneth Morris, born in 1879, spent his childhood in Australia,  but moved to Dublin in 1896, where he started running with the Irish Renaissance crowd.   This was the era of the Aesthetes and Decadents, Oscar Wilde's green carnation, Aubrey Beardsley's homoerotic drawings,  the "love that dare not speak its name" in The Yellow Book

Many of the men in his social circle were gay or gay-light, like the American president's grandson Chester A. Arthur III, early gay rights advocate Edward Carpenter, and George Russell, who wrote under the pen name AE

AE turned Kenneth on to Theosophy, a New Age group that sought to synthesize all philosophies and religions into an esoteric whole: "there is no greater religion than the truth."   He began publishing articles and books on Theosophy, and in 1908 moved to the Theosophical Society headquarters in Point Loma, California to become a professor of history and literature.

. He published a number of books retelling Celtic and Toltec myths, including The Fate of The Princes of Dyfed (1914), where Dienw becomes Manawyddan Son of the Boundless as an allegory of "man's ascent to godhood." An abridged version was published as  The Book of the Three Dragons (1930), a Junior Literary Guild Selection, which was copied into Hero Tales from Many Lands.

I found a copy of the original 1914 book online at the Theosophical Society.  It doesn't add any new adventures, but the story is more overtly homoerotic.  Gwydion calls Manawyddan "dear" and refers to other men as "beautiful" often.  They hug constantly.  And the nine maidens guarding the Cauldron of Life in Welsh myth become "nine beautiful youths."  

After the stock market crash of 1919, the Theosophical Society Headquarters went bankrupt, so Kenneth moved to Wales, where he founded more theosophical lodges and continued to write and lecture. He died in 1937, but the Theosophical Society continued to publish his works: Golden Threads in the Tapesty of History (1975),  Through Dragon Eyes (1980), and The Chalchiuhite Dragon (1991). 

He never married, but the Theosophical Society biography mentions "a friend," Emmett Small.

The author of one of the iconic moments of my childhood was gay.  It makes sense.

See also: Billy Howle: A serious actor, crazy cute, with frequent nude scenes. Do you need anything else? With bonus Tommy Knight d*ck

The Men of Man: 12 nude dudes with tree-trunk calars. Plus bondage, archaeology, boggarts, fun runs, and a gay god

Golden Cities, Far: My friend and I write a heroic fantasy novel

Andre Norton: Gay Subtext Science Fiction in My Junior High Library