Note 3 — Chapter XI · Folklore Philosophy

On either savage theory, that the soul is a material organism inside a bulkier organism, or the still lower one that it is an internal portion of the larger organism itself, the idea of death would be naturally much the same, namely, that it was what occurred when the body and the soul became permanently severed. I call attention to this because we have traces in Welsh literature of a very different notion of death, which must now be briefly explained. The Mabinogi of Math ab Mathonwy relates how Math and Gwydion made out of various flowers a most beautiful woman whom they named Blodeuweđ3, that is to say ἀνθώδης, or flowerlike, and gave to wife to Ỻew Ỻawgyffes; how she, as it were to prove what consummate artists they had been, behaved forthwith like a woman of the ordinary origin, in that she fell in love with another man named Gronw Pebyr of Penỻyn; and how she plotted with Gronw as to the easiest way to put her husband to death. Pretending to be greatly concerned about the welfare of Ỻew and very anxious to take measures against his death (angheu), she succeeded in finding from him in what manner one could kill (ỻađ) him. His reply was, ‘Unless God kill me … it is not easy to kill me’; and he went on to describe the strange attitude in which he might be killed, namely, in a certain position when dressing after a bath: then, he said, if one cast a spear at him it would effect his death (angheu), but that spear must have been a whole year in the making, during the hour only when the sacrifice was proceeding on Sunday. Blodeuweđ thanked heaven, she said, to find that all this was easy to avoid. But still her curiosity was not satisfied; so one day she induced Ỻew to go into the bath and show exactly what he meant. Of course she had Gronw with his enchanted spear in readiness, and at the proper moment, when Ỻew was dressing after the bath, the paramour cast his spear at him. He hit him in the side, so that the head of the spear remained in Ỻew, whilst the shaft fell off: Ỻew flew away in the form of an eagle, uttering an unearthly cry. He was no more seen until Gwydion, searching for him far and wide in Powys and Gwyneđ, came to Arfon, where one day he followed the lead of a mysterious sow, until the beast stopped under an oak at Nantỻe. There Gwydion found the sow devouring rotten flesh and maggots, which fell from an eagle whenever the bird shook himself at the top of the tree. He suspected this was Ỻew, and on singing three englyns to him the eagle came lower and lower, till at last he descended on Gwydion’s lap. Then Gwydion struck him with his wand, so that he assumed his own shape of Ỻew Ỻawgyffes, and nobody ever saw a more wretched looking man, we are told: he was nothing but skin and bones. But the best medical aid that could be found in Gwyneđ was procured, and before the end of the year he was quite well again.