The provenance file on Math
Catalogue entry — Math. Every claim below carries its chain of custody.
Provenance
1. The attestation. —, from the tradition's own record. On record: Mabinogion (Fourth Branch: Math fab Mathonwy), Togail Bruidne Da Derga, Ifor Williams, Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi, Sioned Davies, The Mabinogion (Oxford).
2. The narrative record. The Geas of the Footholder — Math son of Mathonwy was lord over Gwynedd, and the tale's first fact about him is the condition of his life: except when the turmoil of war prevented it, he could not live unless his feet lay in the lap of a virgin. The office of footholder went to Goewin daughter of Pebin of Dôl Pebin in Arfon, the fairest maiden of her generation; and while Math kept the lap, his sister's sons Gwydion and Gilfaethwy ruled the realm in his stead. The War for the Swine — Pryderi of Dyfed held the hobeu, the swine sent him from Annwfn by its king Arawn — the first pigs ever brought to Wales. Gwydion went south in the guise of a poet, conjured twelve stallions with golden harness, twelve greyhounds with golden collars, and twelve golden shields, traded the day's glamour for the herd, and was gone before the illusion faded.
3. The physical record. Math is a textual figure with no pre-Christian material attestation: no inscription, votive object, or image names him. His witnesses are manuscripts — the White Book of Rhydderch (Aberystwyth, NLW Peniarth 4–5, c. 1350) and the Red Book of Hergest (Oxford, Jesus College MS 111, c. 1400), the two codices in which the Fourth Branch survives. The epigraphic witness belongs to the root rather than the man: Gaulish personal names such as Matugenos, 'bear-born', attest the *matu- element in the onomastics of the continental Celts. The tale's own geography is real Gwynedd terrain — Dôl Pebin in Arfon, where Goewin's father held his land — and the branch's southern war-road runs to the maenor of Penardd, where Pryderi fell.
4. The current holding. The temple at /sites/math/, classified Tier 2. Tier-2 here means one preserved truth — not less important, just singular. The temple shows it and names it.
5. The documented resonances. Leadership, Governance & Public Administration, History, Archives & Records, Legal, Justice & Compliance — seats argued and weighted in the pattern atlas, read through the myths in this temple's Resonance File.
6. The continuing record. Math's afterlife is quieter than his nephews', but the Fourth Branch carried him far. In the twentieth century the branch was remade twice over: Evangeline Walton's The Virgin and the Swine (1936) retells his story as a tragedy of old religion and new, with the geas and the three animal years as its moral engine, and Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain made Math son of Mathonwy the aged High King of Prydain for a generation of young readers — the geas laid aside, the grave authority kept.
At a Glance
- Restored name: Math
- ASCII form: math
- Meaning: "Bear"
- Domain of influence: Magic, Kingship
- Pantheon: Celtic
- Classification: Tier 2
- Original script: —
- Series: The Restoration Files, No. 221 of 397
The File Continues
Read the founding dispatch for the name's full story, the Resonance File for the archetype at work — or the whole archive in one sitting.
Continue the series — previous file: Māra (read it here) · next file: Matholwch (read it here).
The Restoration Files are written from the same canonical record as the temples themselves: the lexicon, the lore catalog, the pattern atlas, and the cited scholarly sources. If a file ever disagrees with its temple, the temple is right — tell us, and the file will be corrected.