Three things you get from the day you join.

A growing library of recorded courses. Years of teaching, filed by subject, to watch at your own pace. It grows every week, because every live session is recorded and added to it.

Weekly live teaching. A new thread each season, taught live on Sunday evenings, 7pm UK Time. This year we follow the figure of The Teller of Tales from the deepest roots we can reconstruct all the way to Merlin (see below for the full sylabus).

The Mabinogi books. The serialised Cyfarwydd: The Storyteller's Mabinogi. A finished chapter each month with its scholarly companion and a monthly live discussion. Normally £10/month on its own but included with this membership.

The library, in more detail

The library tends to be larger than people expect. It already holds in-depth courses on:

- The Goddess of Sovereignty

- Y Tylwyth Teg, the Welsh fairy tradition

- The Irish Mythological Cycle

- The Celtic Rites

- Tales of Fionn

- Native Tales

- The Picts

- The Arthur of the Welsh

- Taliesin Origins

- The Mabinogi essays

And, coming out this September as library courses in their own right:

- Four in-depth courses, one on each branch of the Mabinogi. Eight weeks each, and the deepest treatment of the branches we've ever done.

- The Welsh Bardic Craft. A full thirty-six weeks on cynghanedd, the intricate sound-craft at the heart of Welsh poetry.

- The Mabinogi of the Tylwyth Teg. Tracing the threads that run from the Mabinogi into the later Welsh fairy tales

- The Head and the Grail. Following the Second Branch out into Arthurian romance.

You don't have to work through any of this in order, or on any schedule. It's a library you can visit whenever you're ready.

This season's live thread: The Teller of Tales

The live part of the membership is the weekly session, and this year it tells one long story across three terms.

We follow the figure of the poet-seer, the Teller of Tales, from the oldest related traditions we can reach, through the living lore of Wales and Ireland, into the medieval imagination where poet, seer and druid blur together and finally takes shape as the Welsh Myrddin before his next transformation into the Anglo-Norman Merlin. Throughout, we stay close to the primary sources and let them speak for themselves.

And there is a second figure, without whom the first means nothing. In tradition after tradition, inspiration itself is imagined as feminine: the presence who grants the poet vision, purpose and craft. She is Vãk and Saraswati and the Muses; Ceridwen at her cauldron; Brigid, to whom the Irish poets prayed. The Teller only speaks because of her.

Autumn (from 20 September 2026)

Origins: The Indo-European Poet (8 weeks). The poet before the Celts: the Vedic seer, the Homeric singer, the Norse skald, and what they share.

The Celtic Expression: Discipline, Ceremony and Sacred Office (4 weeks). Turning those archetypes toward the Celtic world, and what the calling may really have involved.

Winter (from 3 January 2027)

The Poet Archetype: Cosmology and Mystery in the Insular Traditions (8 weeks). Wales and Ireland read together: awen, imbas, the cauldron, and where inspiration comes from.

Myrddin: The Wild Man in the Wood (4 weeks). Taliesin's overshadowed counterpart, through his own poems and his northern and Irish cousins.

Summer (from 18 April 2027)

The Making of Merlin (8 weeks). The figure travelling out of Wales through Geoffrey, Robert de Boron and the French cycles, into Malory, and the enchantress at the centre of it all.

Sessions are Sunday evenings, 7–8:30pm UK. Miss one and it's in the archive by the time you next sit down.

Who's teaching this

I'm Gwilym Morus-Baird. I hold a PhD in the Welsh Bardic Tradition, and I've spent 25 years studying and teaching these traditions, to complete beginners and long-time readers alike. I studied at Bangor School of Welsh and I've taught online for the past 14 years.

I mention it because it's the whole point. A great deal is written about Celtic myth by people who never went to the sources. My work is the opposite: staying close to the oldest texts we have, reading them carefully in translation, and being transparent about what we actually know, what we're reconstructing, and where we can only guess.

I'm also a Welsh speaker and a musician working in the language, so these aren't distant subjects to me: they're the tradition I come from.

That's the aim here: depth you can trust, taught by someone qualified to teach it, without ever losing the wonder that brought you to these stories in the first place.

How it works

A good number of members never attend a live session, and use the library alone. The recordings aren't a bonus tucked behind the live teaching. For a lot of people over the years they are the membership: a deep, browsable library to dip into in their own time.

So if live calls aren't for you, or your Sundays are spoken for, that's completely fine. Log in to the library and watch what interests you. Come to the live sessions when it suits you

When you can join, the weekly Sunday session is where the current thread is taught in real time, and where you can ask questions, share what you think, and hear what others have to say. It's the same source-led teaching as the recordings. Nothing is gated behind attendance; every session is recorded and filed, usually within a day or two.

The membership runs from the moment you start until you cancel it. A new course thread begins each season, but you needn't be there at the start, just join whenever you like and catch up through the library.

Your books arrive each month

Your membership includes the whole Cyfarwydd books subscription. Each month a new chapter of the serialised Mabinogi arrives, a finished chapter of the main book, its scholarly companion chapter, and a dedicated discussion session on the third Sunday.

What members say