Pennod 18 – Marchocffordd Peredur

Peredur’s Marchocffordd

In this episode we discuss ‘Historia Peredur fab Efrog’ and suggest that it describes the relationship between Peredur and his mother in a remarkably human and tender fashion. There is an obvious contrast between the violent male worldview of Peredur’s father and the wisdom of his mother. However, while his mother tries to raise him in a femine world far from any mention of weapons and warfare, and although she tells him that the knights he sees one day are ‘angles’, the young lad insists on following the armed men on the marchocffordd – meaning the ‘bridle path’ or ‘horse path’ but also in our reading of the text, ‘the way of a knight’ – and learn to be a knight himself. This is a medieval text which questions the same macho behaviour it appears to promote.