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hrjI’m being good. I’m being very very good. Once the comment thread on “Hoywverch” had moved from administrative stuff to people commenting on the story, I’ve kept off of it because I firmly believe in the rule about authors butting out of discussions of their work. But just by pure coincidence *cough* I've written a column on two topics that showed up there: the question of matrilineal names and inheritance in medieval Welsh literature, and the question of whether a sexual relationship between foster-siblings could be considered incest.
On Names
It has been questioned why Elin bears a surname based on her father’s name rather than her mother's, based on a perception that characters in the Mabinogi bore metronyms reflecting the matrilineal inheritance also seen in that society.
There is one family in the Mabinogi that uses metronyms: the children of Don in the fourth branch (the tale of Math vab Mathonwy). This is also the family where we see a possible implication of matrilineal inheritance in that Gwydion is his uncle Math’s heir. (Though the latter situation is ambiguous, given that Math has no direct descendents in the story.) The children of Don, however, are the only individuals in all the four branches who bear metronyms. No other individuals in the stories do so, including minor characters in the fourth branch, and possibly even including Math vab Mathonwy himself (Mathonwy is more likely to have been a male name than a female one).
Looking at the principle characters of the other three branches:
1. Pwyll is given no relationship byname, but his son Pryderi is named “vab Pwyll” after his father, and Rhiannon is also known by a patronym (verch Heveydd Hen). All the minor characters named after their parentage bear patronyms.
2. All the children of Llyr (Bran, Branwen, and Manawyddan) are called with a patronym (it is explicit in the text that Llyr is their father, as a contrast is made with their mother’s sons by a different father). The minor characters named after their lineage all bear patronyms.
3. The main characters in this story have all appeared in a previous branch and carry the same names.
So the overall answer is: no, unless you are specifically a child of Don, you don’t use a metronym and you don’t inherit from your mother’s brother.
On Fosterage
This one kind of took me by surprise because I’m so used to the various medieval approaches to fosterage that it didn’t occur to me anyone would think in terms of the semi-adoptive sense of the word in modern use. But I wouldn’t have changed the story if it had occurred to me, because the story reflects historic usage.
There are several different manifestations of fosterage, but the basic concept was for a child to be raised by non-blood relatives for some portion of its life, for the purpose of creating affective (and legal) bonds that might be useful later in life. T. M. Charles-Edwards’ Early Irish and Welsh Kinship is a useful starting place for the underlying system. Some of these details are taken from Irish practice, where the records are clearer.
The normative age for fostering was around 7-14 years of age (with the implication that it ended with puberty). The foster parents would raise, support, and educate the child (in exchange for a token gift) and there was an expectation of loyalty and close emotional ties thereafter. We aren't talking about orphans who are being permanently added to a surrogate family; this is a temporary arrangement negotiated between both sets of parents. The foster parents might be of lower social status and clients of the parents, or the fosterage might occur between families of equal rank in order to build alliances. Children of very high status might be sent out for multiple shorter periods of fosterage in order to increase the number of these ties and therefore to increase future social resources.
These ties were established not only between the two sets of parents, and between the child and their foster parents, but also between the foster child and the biological children of their foster parents. This could create for the adult a lasting cohort that provided political and social support. There are anecdotal examples from Welsh records of the loyalty of foster-brothers superseding that of genetic brothers. The 12th century writer Giraldus Cambrensis notes this and considers it a destabilizing practice.
There could also be lasting financial obligations based on fosterage, with the child having some type of inheritance rights and the foster parents of a girl having a right to part of her bride-price. We hear less about the fostering of girls in stories and historical texts, but they're regularly mentioned in legal texts alongside the boys. There's one mention in the Welsh version of the Peredur (Percival) story of the title character encounter a woman who claims to be a foster-sister of his, though he's never met her before, and therefore has a claim on his help because of it.
Now, none of this explicitly speaks to the question of marriage between foster-siblings (which would be the parallel case for comparison here). But given that the most significant relationship between foster-brothers was one of alliance and affection, it seems reasonable that fosterage might also have been used to establish ties of alliance that could be converted into marriage. In various important ways, it is clear that foster-sibling relationships were decidedly not equivalent to blood relationships. Therefore absent direct evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to think it would be considered a prohibited relationship.
As tangential evidence, Giraldus Cambrensis goes on a bit of a rant about how lax the Welsh are regarding consanguinity laws, with even third cousins marrying each other if the families decided the alliance was important. As Giraldus makes no reference to foster siblings in the context of the various prohibited types of kinship with regard to marriage, and as he has previously criticized certain aspects of fosterage, one might conclude that the situation was not problematic from the point of view of the church. (Catholic consanguinity prohibitions sometimes were considered to cover relationships via godparents--an institution that had difficulty in gaining a foothold in early Ireland and Wales, in part due to fosterage covering many of the same social functions.) While I have not exhaustively combed the historic record (and the relevant relationships may not always be mentioned given the pitifully small attention paid to women), I would be unsurprised to find instances in medieval Welsh history where a child fostered into a family of equivalent status later married a foster-sibling (whether the child of the foster parents, or another co-fostered child).
Within the context of the story “Hoywverch” the implication is that Morfyth’s parents were of slightly lower rank to Elin’s parents, and likely even direct clients of theirs. Elin was fostered with them for a number of years before returning home, possibly with the intended side benefit of establishing affective ties between the two girls (who might then be expected to influence the loyalty and support of husbands). In this context, if Elin had been a boy, I postulate that a direct marriage alliance between the two families would have been considered a coup for Morfyth’s parents. As it is, there was clearly some unease over the marriage to Garvan because, in the context of the expected bond of fosterage, the failure to invite a powerful friend and neighbor (and possible overlord?) stands out like a sore thumb. The implication is that they were aware of the unusually close bond between the two girls and expected interference. I have other in-story plot-ideas on this topic, but the situation in which Elin has inherited and rules in her own right is fictitious[*] and therefore further speculation on the real-history legal consequences is somewhat pointless.
[*] There is at least one reference in medieval Welsh law to a "female lord", but it's unclear that this is anything more than a lawyer's thought-experiement (of which the texts include many). On a practical basis, control of land was so critical that the claims of a woman who was, in theory, a sole heir would not go unchallenged. But this is fiction and I'm allowed a few divergences.
On Names
It has been questioned why Elin bears a surname based on her father’s name rather than her mother's, based on a perception that characters in the Mabinogi bore metronyms reflecting the matrilineal inheritance also seen in that society.
There is one family in the Mabinogi that uses metronyms: the children of Don in the fourth branch (the tale of Math vab Mathonwy). This is also the family where we see a possible implication of matrilineal inheritance in that Gwydion is his uncle Math’s heir. (Though the latter situation is ambiguous, given that Math has no direct descendents in the story.) The children of Don, however, are the only individuals in all the four branches who bear metronyms. No other individuals in the stories do so, including minor characters in the fourth branch, and possibly even including Math vab Mathonwy himself (Mathonwy is more likely to have been a male name than a female one).
Looking at the principle characters of the other three branches:
1. Pwyll is given no relationship byname, but his son Pryderi is named “vab Pwyll” after his father, and Rhiannon is also known by a patronym (verch Heveydd Hen). All the minor characters named after their parentage bear patronyms.
2. All the children of Llyr (Bran, Branwen, and Manawyddan) are called with a patronym (it is explicit in the text that Llyr is their father, as a contrast is made with their mother’s sons by a different father). The minor characters named after their lineage all bear patronyms.
3. The main characters in this story have all appeared in a previous branch and carry the same names.
So the overall answer is: no, unless you are specifically a child of Don, you don’t use a metronym and you don’t inherit from your mother’s brother.
On Fosterage
This one kind of took me by surprise because I’m so used to the various medieval approaches to fosterage that it didn’t occur to me anyone would think in terms of the semi-adoptive sense of the word in modern use. But I wouldn’t have changed the story if it had occurred to me, because the story reflects historic usage.
There are several different manifestations of fosterage, but the basic concept was for a child to be raised by non-blood relatives for some portion of its life, for the purpose of creating affective (and legal) bonds that might be useful later in life. T. M. Charles-Edwards’ Early Irish and Welsh Kinship is a useful starting place for the underlying system. Some of these details are taken from Irish practice, where the records are clearer.
The normative age for fostering was around 7-14 years of age (with the implication that it ended with puberty). The foster parents would raise, support, and educate the child (in exchange for a token gift) and there was an expectation of loyalty and close emotional ties thereafter. We aren't talking about orphans who are being permanently added to a surrogate family; this is a temporary arrangement negotiated between both sets of parents. The foster parents might be of lower social status and clients of the parents, or the fosterage might occur between families of equal rank in order to build alliances. Children of very high status might be sent out for multiple shorter periods of fosterage in order to increase the number of these ties and therefore to increase future social resources.
These ties were established not only between the two sets of parents, and between the child and their foster parents, but also between the foster child and the biological children of their foster parents. This could create for the adult a lasting cohort that provided political and social support. There are anecdotal examples from Welsh records of the loyalty of foster-brothers superseding that of genetic brothers. The 12th century writer Giraldus Cambrensis notes this and considers it a destabilizing practice.
There could also be lasting financial obligations based on fosterage, with the child having some type of inheritance rights and the foster parents of a girl having a right to part of her bride-price. We hear less about the fostering of girls in stories and historical texts, but they're regularly mentioned in legal texts alongside the boys. There's one mention in the Welsh version of the Peredur (Percival) story of the title character encounter a woman who claims to be a foster-sister of his, though he's never met her before, and therefore has a claim on his help because of it.
Now, none of this explicitly speaks to the question of marriage between foster-siblings (which would be the parallel case for comparison here). But given that the most significant relationship between foster-brothers was one of alliance and affection, it seems reasonable that fosterage might also have been used to establish ties of alliance that could be converted into marriage. In various important ways, it is clear that foster-sibling relationships were decidedly not equivalent to blood relationships. Therefore absent direct evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to think it would be considered a prohibited relationship.
As tangential evidence, Giraldus Cambrensis goes on a bit of a rant about how lax the Welsh are regarding consanguinity laws, with even third cousins marrying each other if the families decided the alliance was important. As Giraldus makes no reference to foster siblings in the context of the various prohibited types of kinship with regard to marriage, and as he has previously criticized certain aspects of fosterage, one might conclude that the situation was not problematic from the point of view of the church. (Catholic consanguinity prohibitions sometimes were considered to cover relationships via godparents--an institution that had difficulty in gaining a foothold in early Ireland and Wales, in part due to fosterage covering many of the same social functions.) While I have not exhaustively combed the historic record (and the relevant relationships may not always be mentioned given the pitifully small attention paid to women), I would be unsurprised to find instances in medieval Welsh history where a child fostered into a family of equivalent status later married a foster-sibling (whether the child of the foster parents, or another co-fostered child).
Within the context of the story “Hoywverch” the implication is that Morfyth’s parents were of slightly lower rank to Elin’s parents, and likely even direct clients of theirs. Elin was fostered with them for a number of years before returning home, possibly with the intended side benefit of establishing affective ties between the two girls (who might then be expected to influence the loyalty and support of husbands). In this context, if Elin had been a boy, I postulate that a direct marriage alliance between the two families would have been considered a coup for Morfyth’s parents. As it is, there was clearly some unease over the marriage to Garvan because, in the context of the expected bond of fosterage, the failure to invite a powerful friend and neighbor (and possible overlord?) stands out like a sore thumb. The implication is that they were aware of the unusually close bond between the two girls and expected interference. I have other in-story plot-ideas on this topic, but the situation in which Elin has inherited and rules in her own right is fictitious[*] and therefore further speculation on the real-history legal consequences is somewhat pointless.
[*] There is at least one reference in medieval Welsh law to a "female lord", but it's unclear that this is anything more than a lawyer's thought-experiement (of which the texts include many). On a practical basis, control of land was so critical that the claims of a woman who was, in theory, a sole heir would not go unchallenged. But this is fiction and I'm allowed a few divergences.
