Myths & Legends of the Celtic RaceRolleston, T. W. (Thomas William)
Religion
Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race
Rolleston, T. W. (Thomas William)
Celts -- Religion; Mythology, Celtic
But Blodeuwedd was not worthy of her beautiful name and origin. One day
when Llew was away on a visit with Māth, 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
circumstances, 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 roof—if 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 Llew’s 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 Māth, and Gwydion set out to
find Llew. He came to the house of a vassal 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 bone—“no 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 passed 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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