What do you know about Blodeuwedd? (A to Z)

6 Comments | April 4, 2008 at 11:18 pm by mahud
Filed under A to Z of Mythological Figures, Celtic Mythology

Every week or so, I’ll pick a Deity/or a human character from myth (in alphabetical order), and from memory write all I can remember from myth, archaeology, experience, or elsewhere, relating to that Deity. It would be great if you could play along in the comments. Also, feel free to add or correct any of the given info.

Here’s my attempt…

Amazingly I can spell her name. Not too sure on the pronunciation. I think it’s something like blod-e-weth. Arianrhod, in an attempt to deprive her son Lleu Llaw Gyffes on attaining his manhood placed three curse on him: 1) He would remain nameless, unless Arianrhod named him; 2) He would not bear arms unless she armed him; 3) and he would never marry a natural born woman. With the help of Gwydion…

(Gwydion adopted him, although recently when I researching Arianrhod, I kept reading that he was married to Arianrhod, who was also his sister, and that Lleu was his natural son. I’m not sure if that’s correct or not. I’ve always understood that Lleu was the magically conceived and instantaneously born son of Math and Arianrhod (admittedly that my own personal interpretation). Although, what I interpret as as a magical act of sex without them actually doing it, strictly speaking it was a test to see if Arianrhod was a virgin or not after she had applied for the job of ‘royal foot-holder.’ When she on the spot gave birth to twins, that kind of gave the game away and she returned to Caer Arianrhod (Arianrhod, means something like ’silver circle.’))

…, who was something of a magician, Lleu overcame the first two curses. The third, required the help of King Math (from whose branch of the Mabinogi, the myth comes from). Together, Math and Gwydion created a wife for Lleu from a combination of (six kinds of ?) flowers (If you can name them I’ll be impressed. I remember one was meadowsweet). Blodeuwedd meaning something like ‘flower face/aspect/persona.’

At first Lleu and Blodeuwedd were happily married, but while Lleu was away somewhere, Blodeuwedd fell in love with someone else (Can’t remember his name). The lovers decided to figure out how to kill Lleu, and one day Blodeuwedd manged to get Lleu to reveal how he might be killed….

(This is a pretty common theme in mythology and folktales, and it crops up a few times in Celtic myths alone. The myth of Blodeuwedd and Lleu has a close parallel in Egyptian myth in the tale of ‘Bata and his brother.’)

Lleu seemed to think he was indestructible, and told her that he could only be killed if he was both inside a house and outside, with one foot on a bath…

(The ‘Bath Murder’ is another reoccuring theme. Agamemnon was said to of been killed by Clytemnestra while taking a bath. In the romance of ‘Tristan and Iseult,’ Iseult tries to kill the already wounded Tristan in a bath, after discovering that he had killed her father. The boat that Tristan was set adrift in is again related to the symbol of the bath, as if the floating chest/coffin/ark/ (also Vishnu’s couch) of various mythologies, that are related to the old-and-new-moon boat that floats upon the cosmic ocean symbolic of the Goddess’s womb. The bath symbol kind of re-inverts this mythic image of the ocean vessel, which is itself a womb symbol, where the dying/wounded/drunk/asleep god, caught within the threshold of death and life of the cycle, be it monthly, yearly, or the entire cosmic manifestation of cyclic existence, dies and is reborn.)

…and the other on a mule, with a spear that was created on sunday (the day of rest), implying that his death was somehow impossible. However, Blodeuwedd took him seriously, and after (a year and a day?), her lover had fashioned the forbidden spear, and Blodeuwedd convinced Lleu to act out his paradoxical death stance. Lleu was speared, but instead of dying, he was transformed into an eagle and flew away, which was good enough for the two lovers.

Gwydion searched the land for Lleu, until one day he came across a swineherd who told him that every day his sow would disappear ever morning and return again at night, and was puzzled as to her whereabouts. Gwydion followed the sow to a tree upon a hill, where there was perched an eagle, who dropped bits of rotting meat to the sow below, who devoured them. Gwydion summoned up his magical power in verse and struck the eagle with his staff, which transformed back into Lleu. After Lleu had regained his former health, he compelled his wife’s lover to accept his fate, and assume the same impossible death stance, and Lleu killed him with the spear. Blodeuwedd was transformed into an owl… (’Wide-eyed’ Athene was also an owl, and was depicted as such on Greek coins, as (I think) was Lilith)), …fated to remain in the darkness of night forever, shunned by all other birds.