Note 110.1 — Chapter XIX · THE MEDUSA-WITCH IN MÄRCHEN.

In the glorious mabinogi of Kulhwch and Olwen the hair is put to its more ordinary use. Among the tasks laid upon Kulhwch as a condition precedent to his marriage with Olwen, the fair daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr, is that of procuring a leash made from the beard of Dillus Varvawc, the son of Eurei, for Drudwyn, the cub of Greid, the son of Eri. No other leash in the world would hold the cub; and for this purpose it was to be plucked with wooden tweezers while Dillus Varvawc was yet alive, otherwise it would be brittle. The episode of the quest of this leash furnishes an explanation of a snatch of song, probably an old popular rhyme, imbedded in the tale and attributed to King Arthur.110.1 Here it is the supernatural strength of the hair which constitutes its value, as in the stories already passed in review in this and earlier chapters. So too Kerza, in a Slavonic tale, takes a hair from the long white beard of a dwarf magician and therewith binds the magician’s wicked wife, who has taken the form of a wooden pillar the better to carry out her evil ends, and binds her so effectually that she is thenceforth unable to resume her proper shape, or to use her magical powers.110.2