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established) focuses on the relationship between the material and other social systems, in particular rites of passage.
Social structure is also central to my analysis of Llud a Lleuelys, for this text has been previously analysed by Georges Dumézil (1968), who believed that the myth demonstrated a triadic structure, which is reflective of an ancient triadic organisation of society. In this chapter, I explore Dumézil’s hypothesis and compare his findings to my own. As a consequence of this process, four interrelated theoretical questions are examined: (1) Is the extant material reflective of the period in which it circulated or the period it is hypothesised to have been first composed? (2) Can the material be seen as reflective, at a structural level, of a society that existed long before either its first redaction or the earliest extant text? (3) Do structures change as they move geographically and temporally? (4) To what extent must comparative analysis be built upon the firm foundations of detailed noncomparative analysis?
These questions are all, to some extent, approached in the methodology chapter; however, the methodology outlined in that chapter is largely theoretical, and, therefore, it must be substantiated by detailed ethnographic examination. That chance is given, in part, by the exploration of Llud a Lleuelys, which not only tests the ability of the approach outlined in the methodology to yield results but also offers a chance to assess the results yielded by two similar yet differing methodologies when applied to the same group of myths. This test is perhaps more important than may at first be presumed, for Dumézil’s approach is not so distinct from my own as to be irrelevant to it.7 Dumézil was not approaching the work as art, nor did he claim that his insights were merely adding an extra level of interpretation to the material. He was seeking to explore how the material is reflective of a concrete—indeed, perhaps too concrete— society other than his own. Thus, at a fundamental level, the approaches of Dumézil and of this work are united. However, both our perceptions of what that other society is and how to go about uncovering abstract information relating to the society are fundamentally opposed.
The focus on the relation between the structure suggested by my analysis of the myths and that found in other social systems and expressions