Culhwch ac Olwen, it has been said, is ‘a tale to be heard’. Indeed, from the outset it would seem that, more than any other tale of the Mabinogion corpus, it was composed with a vocalised performance in mind. Of course, most medieval literature was ultimately written ‘to be heard’ – manuscript texts would be read out aloud to a listening audience. The demands of such a practice, together with the influence of the oral storytelling tradition, has certainly left its mark on the style and structure of the native tales of medieval Wales, as I have shown elsewhere. Without a doubt, Culhwch ac Olwen needs to be performed if one is to do justice to the tale – as I hope to show in the course of this chapter, the voice is deeply inscribed into the work, and vocality is central to our understanding of the text.

The essence of the tale is the international theme of the Giant's Daughter: the hero seeks the maiden but her father is unwilling to give his consent and threatens to kill the hero or attempts to prove him by setting him difficult, if not impossible tasks. With the maiden's help, or sometimes with the assistance of magical helpers, the hero succeeds and ultimately kills the giant. In the Welsh version of the tale, the theme is linked with that of the Jealous Stepmother – it is she who places a curse on the young hero, Culhwch, stating: