Birds Of Rhiannon: A Grove Play

1930. Music by Edward Harris. Birds of Rhiannon is the twenty-ninth Grove Play of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco. The action of the play is laid in legendary Britain of the Sixth Century, A.D. This is the Britain of King Arthur; and, whilst the present play is wholly imaginative, there has been a free use of characters from both the Welsh and the French streams of the Arthurian legend. Taliessin, Adaon, Aneirin and the bardic hierarchy derive altogether from the Welsh; Dagonet, occurring nowhere in the Welsh Arthuriad, is a minor character of the French; Merlin and Kay are importantly of both. Rhiannon's fabulous birds antedate by uncounted centuries the appearance of the Arthurian motif in Welsh mythology. Against this enchanted background the present grove play attempts a development of the major theme of the fellowship of man.