The Rantin’ Raven: Who Was Mabon?
In the 1970s Aidan Kelley tagged the Autumn Equinox with the name Mabon, and it took — in large part because Starhawk repeated it in her hugely popular first book, “The Spiral Dance.” There’s still a lot of debate over whether that’s an appropriate name for it, mostly because we don’t know much about the persona behind the name. Quite a few people believe the problem is simply that the myths don’t support the timing at the Autumn Equinox, but I think they do.
Unlike most of our Celtic names for Sabbats, Mabon is Welsh, meaning simply, Son. In full, Mabon ap Modron, Son, son of Mother.
H.R. Ellis-Davidson quotes the Venerable Bede as translating Modron as the Mothers — plural. Modern translators give it as the Mother — singular. Linguistic evidence may well support the plural interpretation, for although Mabon ap is unequivocally Welsh, Modron may not be: in Germanic languages the singular of Modron becomes Modr — recognizably mother. Suddenly we have, not as was always believed a corruption of the Latin Matrona, but good Germanic, most likely Saxon. All very scholarly, but it doesn’t tell us much about Mabon, does it?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/agora/2015/09/the-rantin-raven-who-was-mabon/
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