Part 29 (1/2)

*How Llew Took Arms*

The shoes went back immediately to sedges and seaweed again, and Arianrod, angry at being tricked, laid a new curse on the boy. He shall never bear arms till I invest him with them. But Gwydion, going to Caer Arianrod with the boy in the semblance of two bards, makes by magic art the illusion of a foray of armed men round the castle. Arianrod gives them weapons to help in the defence, and thus again finds herself tricked by the superior craft of Gwydion.

*The Flower-Wife of Llew*

Next she said, He shall never have a wife of the race that now inhabits this earth. This raised a difficulty beyond the powers of even Gwydion, and he went to Math, the supreme master of magic. Well, said Math, we will seek, I and thou, to form a wife for him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Blodeuwedd, or Flower-face. They wedded her to Llew, and gave them the cantrev of Dinodig to reign over, and there Llew and his bride dwelt for a season, happy, and beloved by all.

*Betrayal of Llew*

But Blodeuwedd was not worthy of her beautiful name and origin. One day when Llew was away on a visit with Math, a lord named Gronw Pebyr came a-hunting by the palace of Llew, and Blodeuwedd loved him from the moment she looked upon him. That night they slept together, and the next, and the next, and then they planned how to be rid of Llew for ever. But Llew, like the Gothic solar hero Siegfried, is invulnerable except under special circ.u.mstances, and Blodeuwedd has to learn from him how he may be slain.

This she does under pretence of care for his welfare. The problem is a hard one. Llew can only be killed by a spear which has been a year in making, and has only been worked on during the Sacrifice of the Host on Sundays. Furthermore, he cannot be slain within a house or without, on horseback or on foot. The only way, in fact, is that he should stand with one foot on a dead buck and the other in a cauldron, which is to be used for a bath and thatched with a roofif he is wounded while in this position with a spear made as directed the wound may be fatal, not otherwise. After a year, during which Gronw wrought at the spear, Blodeuwedd begged Llew to show her more fully what she must guard against, and he took up the required position to please her. Gronw, lurking in a wood hard by, hurled the deadly spear, and the head, which was poisoned, sank into Llews body, but the shaft broke off. Then Llew changed into an eagle, and with a loud scream he soared up into the air and was no more seen, and Gronw took his castle and lands and added them to his own.

These tidings at last reached Gwydion and Math, and Gwydion set out to find Llew. He came to the house of a va.s.sal of his, from whom he learned that a sow that he had disappeared every day and could not be traced, but it came home duly each night. Gwydion followed the sow, and it went far away to the brook since called Nant y Llew, where it stopped under a tree and began feeding. Gwydion looked to see what it ate, and found that it fed on putrid flesh that dropped from an eagle sitting aloft on the tree, and it seemed to him that the eagle was Llew. Gwydion sang to it, and brought it gradually down the tree till it came to his knee, when he struck it with his magic wand and restored it to the shape of Llew, but worn to skin and boneno one ever saw a more piteous sight.

*The Healing of Llew*

When Llew was healed, he and Gwydion took vengeance on their foes.

Blodeuwedd was changed into an owl and bidden to shun the light of day, and Gronw was slain by a cast of the spear of Llew that pa.s.sed through a slab of stone to reach him, and the slab with the hole through it made by the spear of Llew remains by the bank of the river Cynvael in Ardudwy to this day. And Llew took possession, for the second time, of his lands, and ruled them prosperously all his days.

The four preceding tales are called the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, and of the collection called the Mabinogion they form the most ancient and important part.

*The Dream of Maxen Wledig*

Following the order of the tales in the Mabinogion, as presented in Mr.

Nutts edition, we come next to one which is a pure work of invention, with no mythical or legendary element at all. It recounts how Maxen Wledig, Emperor of Rome, had a vivid dream, in which he was led into a strange country, where he saw a king in an ivory chair carving chessmen with a steel file from a rod of gold. By him, on a golden throne, was the fairest of maidens he had ever beheld. Waking, he found himself in love with the dream-maiden, and sent messengers far and wide to discover, if they could, the country and people that had appeared to him. They were found in Britain. Thither went Maxen, and wooed and wedded the maiden. In his absence a usurper laid hold of his empire in Rome, but with the aid of his British friends he reconquered his dominions, and many of them settled there with him, while others went home to Britain. The latter took with them foreign wives, but, it is said, cut out their tongues, lest they should corrupt the speech of the Britons. Thus early and thus powerful was the devotion to their tongue of the Cymry, of whom the mythical bard Taliesin prophesied:

Their G.o.d they will praise, Their speech they will keep, Their land they will lose, Except wild Walia.

*The Story of Lludd and Llevelys*

This tale is a.s.sociated with the former one in the section ent.i.tled Romantic British History. It tells how Lludd son of Beli, and his brother Llevelys, ruled respectively over Britain and France, and how Lludd sought his brothers aid to stay the three plagues that were hara.s.sing the land.

These three plagues were, first, the presence of a demoniac race called the Coranians; secondly, a fearful scream that was heard in every home in Britain on every May-eve, and scared the people out of their senses; thirdly, the unaccountable disappearance of all provisions in the kings court every night, so that nothing that was not consumed by the household could be found the next morning. Lludd and Llevelys talked over these matters through a brazen tube, for the Coranians could hear everything that was said if once the winds got hold of ita property also attributed to Math, son of Mathonwy. Llevelys destroyed the Coranians by giving to Lludd a quant.i.ty of poisonous insects which were to be bruised up and scattered over the people at an a.s.sembly. These insects would slay the Coranians, but the people of Britain would be immune to them. The scream Llevelys explained as proceeding from two dragons, which fought each other once a year. They were to be slain by being intoxicated with mead, which was to be placed in a pit dug in the very centre of Britain, which was found on measurement to be at Oxford. The provisions, said Llevelys, were taken away by a giant wizard, for whom Lludd watched as directed, and overcame him in combat, and made him his faithful va.s.sal thenceforward.

Thus Lludd and Llevelys freed the island from its three plagues.

*Tales of Arthur*

We next come to five Arthurian tales, one of which, the tale of Kilhwch and Olwen, is the only native Arthurian legend which has come down to us in Welsh literature. The rest, as we have seen, are more or less reflections from the Arthurian literature as developed by foreign hands on the Continent.

*Kilhwch and Olwen*

Kilhwch was son to Kilydd and his wife Goleuddydd, and is said to have been cousin to Arthur. His mother having died, Kilydd took another wife, and she, jealous of her stepson, laid on him a quest which promised to be long and dangerous. I declare, she said, that it is thy destinythe Gael would have said _geis_not to be suited with a wife till thou obtain Olwen daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr.(239) And Kilhwch reddened at the name, and love of the maiden diffused itself through all his frame. By his fathers advice he set out to Arthurs Court to learn how and where he might find and woo her.

A brilliant pa.s.sage then describes the youth in the flower of his beauty, on a n.o.ble steed caparisoned with gold, and accompanied by two brindled white-breasted greyhounds with collars of rubies, setting forth on his journey to King Arthur. And the blade of gra.s.s bent not beneath him, so light was his coursers tread.

*Kilhwch at Arthurs Court*

After some difficulties with the Porter and with Arthurs seneschal, Kai, who did not wish to admit the lad while the company were sitting at meat, Kilhwch was brought into the presence of the King, and declared his name and his desire. I seek this boon, he said, from thee and likewise at the hands of thy warriors, and he then enumerates an immense list full of mythological personages and detailsBedwyr, Gwyn ap Nudd, Kai, Manawyddan,(240) Geraint, and many others, including Morvran son of Tegid, whom no one struck at in the battle of Camlan by reason of his ugliness; all thought he was a devil, and Sandde Bryd Angel, whom no one touched with a spear in the battle of Camlan because of his beauty; all thought he was a ministering angel. The list extends to many scores of names and includes many women, as, for instance, Creiddylad the daughter of Lludd of the Silver Handshe was the most splendid maiden in the three Islands of the Mighty, and for her Gwythyr the son of Greidawl and Gwyn the son of Nudd fight every first of May till doom, and the two Iseults and Arthurs Queen, Gwenhwyvar. All these did Kilydds son Kilhwch adjure to obtain his boon.

Arthur, however, had never heard of Olwen nor of her kindred. He promised to seek for her, but at the end of a year no tidings of her could be found, and Kilhwch declared that he would depart and leave Arthur shamed.

Kai and Bedwyr, with the guide Kynddelig, are at last bidden to go forth on the quest.