YMMV / Mabinogion

• Funny Moments:
  • After watching a woman twist a branch with her bare hands, Cai mumbles "Had you squeezed me like that, it would be useless for anyone else to make love to me."
  • Rhiannon's exasperation at her chosen husband Pwyll's foolishness: "Be silent for as long as you like. Never has a man been more stupid than you have been." Pwyll means "wisdom".
• Moment of Awesome: The end of Math, fab Mathonwy. Lleu, one of the main protagonists, tracks down Gronw Pebr, the man who plotted to run off with his wife and to have him killed. Lleu aims a spear at Gronw, who takes cover behind a stone. The throw is so powerful that the spear travels through the stone, killing Gronw instantly.
• Moral Event Horizon: After brutally mutilating a herd of innocent horses and then cheerfully slaughtering a hundred Irish soldiers by crushing their skulls with his bare hands (and then singing a little song about it), Efnisien really does enter this territory when he kills his infant nephew by throwing him into the fire.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The description of Matholwych's horses after Efnisien's Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Some versions tone it down to "only" cutting off their ears and tails, but short of Bowdlerization, it's really hard to get around the fact that he's mutilating horses.
    And thereupon he rushed under the horses and cut off their lips at the teeth, and their ears close to their heads, and their tails close to their backs, and wherever he could clutch their eyelids, he cut them to the very bone, and he disfigured the horses and rendered them useless.
  • At the end of Culhwch and Olwen, Ysbaddaden finally gets "shaved": A minor character shows up just to flay the giant's face down to the bone. Ysbaddaden's Major Injury Underreaction makes it a little less nightmarish, but no less gruesome.
• The Woobie: Lleu Llaw Gyffes. The boy was born as a misshapen lump of flesh that fell from his mother when she failed her virginity test, and was subsequently raised by his uncle Gwydion. When Lleu was around four, Gwydion brought him to his mother, but, regarding him as a shameful reminder of her failure, she instead cursed him so that he will not be named, armed, or find a wife. Gwydion managed to trick his sister into naming and arming her son, then crafted an Artificial Human named Blodeuwedd to be his wife, while his grand-uncle Math gave him some land to rule. Unfortunately, Blodeuwedd fell in love with another man, and conspired to kill Lleu, although he managed to survive by transforming into an eagle and flying away. When his uncle found him, he was Nothing but Skin and Bones, and his injuries had festered to the point where it's constantly dropping piles of rotten flesh and maggots. Thankfully, he gets better.

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