Pryderi

The May-Eve Vanishing

Pryderi is born to Pwyll and Rhiannon after the nobles of Dyfed have pressed for an heir, and on the night of his birth the six women set to watch all fall asleep — and the child is gone. Terrified of the blame, the women kill the pups of a hound, smear the blood on Rhiannon's face, lay the bones beside her, and swear she has destroyed her own son; her penance at the horse-block begins, and it will last until the boy comes home. The child, meanwhile, has fallen into the strangest rescue in Welsh prose. Teyrnon Twrf Liant, a lord of Gwent Is Coed by the sea, loses a foal every May-eve; keeping watch over his mare, he sees a great clawed hand reach through the window to seize the newborn foal, and strikes it off with his sword. Outside the door he finds a baby boy wrapped in silk brocade. He and his wife rear the child as their own and call him Gwri Wallt Euryn — Gwri of the Golden Hair.

The Naming at Arberth

Gwri grows with uncanny speed — at the end of his first year sturdier than a child of three, at two like a boy of six — and year by year he bears the very likeness of Pwyll. When Teyrnon hears of Rhiannon's penance, he knows what he must do, and he and his wife bring the boy to Arberth. The court sees the likeness at once, and Rhiannon says that if this is true, her pryder — her care, her anxiety — is lifted from her. Pwyll declares that the boy should take his name from the word his mother spoke when the news was brought to her, and so the child is named Pryderi. The penance ends; Teyrnon will take no reward beyond the boy's friendship; and Pryderi is fostered with Pendaran Dyfed until he is of age, when Pwyll gives him the realm.

One of the Seven

When Bendigeidfran — Brân the Blessed — leads the host of Britain into Ireland to answer the wrong done to Branwen, the war ends in near-total ruin: the Irish are destroyed, and of the host of the Island of the Mighty only seven men come back alive, bearing Brân's wounded head. The tale names them, and the first two it names are Pryderi and Manawydan, with Glifieu, Taliesin, Ynawg, Gruddieu, and Heilyn. With the others Pryderi feasts seven years at Harlech, where the Birds of Rhiannon sing, and eighty years at Gwales in Penfro in the Assembly of the Wondrous Head — a man who has sailed out of his own branch into the middle of someone else's tragedy, and who carries its grief home into the Third.

The Enchantment of Dyfed

After Pwyll's death, Pryderi rules Dyfed and gives his mother Rhiannon in marriage to Manawydan fab Llŷr; with his wife Cigfa, the four come home to Arberth. There comes a peal of thunder and a fall of mist, and when it lifts, Dyfed is emptied — not a soul, not a dwelling, not a beast remains. After years of hand-craft that English market towns punished for making work too good to allow, a shining white boar leads Pryderi and Manawydan to a fortress that was never there before. Against Manawydan's counsel Pryderi goes in, lays hold of a golden bowl hanging by chains above a marble fountain — and his hands stick to the bowl, his feet to the slab, and speech leaves him. Rhiannon goes in after him, takes hold of the same bowl, and is caught beside him; fort, bowl, and both prisoners vanish.

Manawydan undoes the spell by patience: he catches the one slow mouse stripping his third ripe field of wheat, condemns it to hang as a thief, and names his price to the bishop sent to beg it off — Pryderi and Rhiannon released, the enchantment lifted, no vengeance taken. The mouse is the wife of Llwyd fab Cilcoed, who had laid the spell to avenge his friend Gwawl, the suitor Rhiannon refused. Pryderi comes home with a gate-hammer about his neck, Rhiannon with the collars of asses about hers; the land wakes, and the Third Branch ends with the four feasting as they began. The myth is the cycle's thesis in parable: what enchantment took, only patience could restore.

The Swine and the Fatal Combat

Among Pryderi's treasures are the hobeu, the first swine ever brought to Wales — a gift to his house from Arawn of Annwn, which Pryderi had sworn neither to sell nor to give until the herd had bred twice its number. Gwydion fab Dôn comes to his court in the guise of a poet, is refused the pigs, and conjures twelve stallions with golden harness, twelve greyhounds with golden collars and leashes, and twelve golden shields — apparitions good for a day and gone by morning — and trades them for the herd. When the glamour fades, Pryderi musters Dyfed and comes north, and the war that follows forces the crime Gwydion and Gilfaethwy commit against Goewin. At the peace-talks Pryderi demands single combat, for it was because of him the hosts had come; at Y Felenrhyd, the tale says, Gwydion slew him 'by strength and valour, and by magic and enchantment'. They buried Pryderi there, at Maen Tywynog above Y Felenrhyd — and his grave, the Fourth Branch says, is there.