Pryderi, Pwyll and Arawn

Pryderi, Pwyll and Arawn

'...and Pryderi the son of Pwyll was lord over twenty-one cantrefs in the south.'

Having found such a strong case for Math and Goewin as Cepheus and Ursa Minor it would seem inconsistent if the author did not intend that the figure of Pryderi ought similarly to be understood, that is, that the author also assigned a constellation to him. The fact that Math son of Mathonwy and Pryderi son of Pwyll are the two characters who are being juxtaposed in the very first sentence of the Fourth Branch, should, now, at least urge this suspicion. It took some time to fully understand the intentions of the author of the Four Branches in relation to the figure of Pryderi as we find him in Math, but when it did finally dawn on me what was going on, the full mechanism of the swine swindling saga, very quickly, began to unfold, almost literally, before my eyes. What I came to discover was completely extraordinary, and totally unexpected. I think that the identity of Pryderi is tied up with not one but two constellations. Two identical constellations – Orion and Hercules. To explain.

In Trioedd Ynys Prydein, (3rd Ed.) Rachel Bromwich translates triad 84 thus:

'Three Futile Battles of the Island of Britain:

One of them was the battle of Goddau: it was brought about because of the bitch, the roebuck and the plover'.

The other two battles do not concern us here. The reference in the triad is to the poem Kat Godeu attributed to Taliesin. In her notes to this triad Dr. Bromwich writes:

A fragment of a story about the battle, containing two early englynion, is preserved in a seventeenth-century manuscript, Pen. 98B, 81-2... In this passage it is stated, in words which recall the triad, that the battle was brought about, 'because of a white roebuck and a greyhound pup which came from Annwfn, and Amathaon (= Amaethon) vab Don caught them'. According to this account the battle was fought between Amaethon, assisted by his brother Gwydion, and Arawn king of Annwfn... It would appear, then, that there was a tradition about a mythological battle in which Lleu and the sons of Don took part, and it is tempting to connect the allusion to its cause, (i.e. to the animals which Amaethon brought from Annwfn) with the swine originating from Annwfn, which Gwydion steals in the tale of Math... Perhaps originally Gwydion won the swine, as well as the dog and the white roebuck, in a raid upon Annwfn itself rather than upon Dyfed.

In this Dr. Bromwich is at one with W. J. Gruffydd, who commented:

Whether this history of the mysterious Cad Goddeu correctly represents the tradition in every detail or not, we shall be justified in regarding Gwydion as concerned in an animal lifting raid upon Annwvn. It may be supposed therefore that the older tradition described Gwydion himself as the stealer of the swine, not from Dyfed, but from Annwvn. If that is so, then the choice of this particular method of causing war between Pryderi and the family of Don was obvious; it was already supplied by independent tradition.

But what this also suggests is that the roles in the Cad Godeu and in Math are identical, even if names have been changed. Gwydion is present in both and his role is the same in both, to defeat the king of the Otherworld, which he achieves through some form of trickery. The second role is that of Gwydion’s brother, who is the primary cause of the war in both stories - Amaethon in Cad Godeu and Gilvaethwy in Math. They are essentially the same character, and it could be argued that even their names bear a suspicious resemblance to one another, but more on this later. The third role is that of 'Lord of Annwfn' the king of the Otherworld who must be defeated, this part is played by Arawn Pen Annwfn in Cad Godeu and by the ’Powerful Swineherd’ Pryderi in Math. In the first episode of the First Branch the title 'Lord of Annwfn' is transferred from Arawn to Pwyll. Might it then be inferred that Pryderi may have inherited this role, if not the title, from his father? Or put another way; just as Pwyll plays the role of Lord of the Underworld in the First Branch so Pryderi plays the same role in the Fourth Branch. We therefore have a succession of ‘Lords of the Otherworld’ - Arawn - Pwyll - Pryderi. These three have something else in common - they are so similar in appearance that no-one can tell them apart. As Arawn King of Annwfn says to Pwyll:

“You will have my shape and manner, so that neither chamberlain, nor officer, nor any other who has ever followed me shall know that you are not I”. (Ford)

Later in the tale it is the uncanny physical likeness of Pryderi to Pwyll Pen Annwfn which allows Teyrnon to understand Pryderi’s true parentage:

In the matter of appearance, he (Teyrnon) began to realize that he had never seen a son so like his father as the boy was to Pwyll Pen Annwfn.(Ford)

And this ‘exceeding’ similarity is again made plain when Teyrnon presents the boy at the court in Arberth, when he announces:

‘And I believe…that there is none of all this company who will not recognise that the boy is Pwyll’s son.’ ‘There is none,’ said everyone, ‘who is not sure of it.’ (Ford)

Something of significance appeared to being hinted at here and it seemed worth taking a closer look at the opening episode of the First Branch to see what more, if anything, might be learned. The first thing that draws ones attention is the occurrence of 'Glyn Cuch' in both episodes. Also striking is the use of exactly parallel phraseology in the descriptions of Pwyll's journey to Glyn Cuch and Gwydion's flight from Glyn Cuch, as if deliberately inviting a comparison:

Math: 'And from there they went on, and that night they went as far as a commot in Powys which is called, also for the same reason, Mochnant, and they were there that night.

Pwyll: 'This is the part of his realm he wished to hunt - Glyn Cuch .and he set out that night from Arberth, and he came as far as Penn Llwyn Diarwya, and he stayed there that night'.

This was an encouraging start. But it is the following passage, which describes the appearance of the hounds of Arawn which started a train of thought which was to lead to the stellar identities of all three Lords of Annwfn:

        And of all the hounds he had seen in the world, he had never seen dogs of this colour - they were a gleaming shining white, and their ears were red. And as the whiteness of the dogs shone so did their ears.

Canis Major & Canis Minor

Such  is the description of the hunting dogs of Arawn. Now the usual explanation for the white shininess and the red-ears of these dogs of Annwfn and for that matter other shiny white, red eared boars, horses, cattle and hinds etc., (which appear numerously in Welsh and Irish medieval literature), is that this is how the animals of the Otherworld were traditionally described. Or put differently, this red and white shininess acted as a signal enabling a contemporary medieval audience or readership to identify and anticipate imminent magical contact with the Otherworld. This has always seemed to me not so much an explanation as a tautology. It does not tell us anything about why these unearthly creatures are ‘gleaming shining white, or why their ears are shiny and red. It was noticed in the section on Culhwch and Olwen that Drudwyn the whelp of Greid son of Eri or Fierce-White the whelp of Scorcher son of Eri was a barely underhand reference to Canis Major the Great Dog and the brightest star Sirius the 'Scorcher' son of(?) Orion, which Aratus described in the Phenomena '… the tip of its jaw is inset with a formidable star, that blazes most intensely: and so men call it the Scorcher. So, it occurred to me that in the description of Arawn's hounds in Math we have a similar reference, but now to both hunting dogs of Orion, the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor - the Greater Dog and the Lesser Dog. Canis Major contains Sirius the brightest, shiniest star in the sky and his ears are marked by two red stars. Canis Minor contains Procyon, the fifth brightest star and is commonly depicted as a spaniel, or such-like, with a white coat and red ears. It seemed to me that the author of the First Branch had clearly provided as obvious a clue as he possibly could that Arawn the hunter and the ‘Cwn Annwfn’ are to be associated with the constellations depicting the celestial hunter Orion and his hounds, Canis Major and Canis Minor. Welsh tradition places the presence in the night sky of the Cwn Annwfn in the late Autumn, Winter and early Spring, precisely the months when Orion and his hounds dominate the southern night sky. The fact that it is Gwynn ap Nudd who is usually said to be the hunter who leads the Cwn Annwfn, may only reflect a separate, perhaps earlier insular tradition about these constellations.

The similarity in the names Orion and Arawn is undeniable and this becomes even more striking in the pronunciation; Orion -uh-rahy-uhn, Arawn -A-ra-oon. Clearly then, it seems not unlikely that Arawn is a Welsh rendering of the Greek Orion. Who then is Pwyll? If Arawn can be identified with Orion, who does he exchange places with? Consider the position of Orion as he appears on Ptolemaic constellation charts. Firstly, he is entirely below the Ecliptic, (the apparent path of the sun, moon and the planets) he is also neatly dissected through the three stars of his belt by the Celestial Equator, (this is the Earth's Equator extended out into space). Thus he occupies the liminal space between the Heavens above (the Northern celestial hemisphere) and the Underworld, (the Southern celestial hemisphere).This is most obviously illustrated in the charts which were drawn up by Schaubach towards the end of the 18th century, but based upon the Eratosthenean and Ptolemaic catalogues compiled in the 3rd Century BC and the 2nd Century AD, respectively.

The upper body of Orion is positioned at the edge of the Northern chart, whilst the lower torso and legs appear at the edge of the Southern chart. The figure of Orion can only be resolved if the two circular charts are placed one above the other and turned around their centres so that the two halves of the figure are joined where the charts touch at the celestial equator. With the maps so arranged it will be observed that directly above Orion, at the top of the Northern chart is another figure almost indistinguishable from Orion. This is the constellational figure of Hercules. Both figures are the same size. The pose is the same; right leg bent under, the left leg bent up but with the foot apparently to the ground. Both figures hold a club in the right hand, held high above the head. Both figures wear a lionskin. Traditionally, both are hunters, but strangely both have also been envisaged as the prey which they hunt, i.e. the stag, (Allen). The spatial relationship is also striking. To all intents and purposes these two constellational figures are identical. This resemblance is certainly not illusory and is well known to historians of Astronomy. In her book 'The Stargazers Guide', Emily Winterburn (former Curator of Astronomy at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich) notes of Orion:

              'It's hard to ignore the similarity to the Hercules story ... Our hero is set impossible tasks, he destroys the relationship with the woman he loves while in a state of diminished responsibility and turns to the oracle for redemption. He even wears a lionskin, although it isn't commented upon in the Orion story. These similarities have provoked some commentators to suggest that both characters derive from the same source.

            The name Orion comes from Sumerian Uru-anna meaning 'light of heaven'. This is different from the Sumerian name for Hercules, Gilgamesh; so the Sumerians, who pre-date the Greeks and are the source for much of Greek mythology, must have had separate characters too. What is puzzling is that Orion is depicted wearing a lionskin and fighting Taurus, the bull. No myth appears to exist in which Orion kills a lion or fights a bull; but both the Greek Hercules and the Sumerian Gilgamesh do'.

Hercules and Orion as Pwyll and Arawn in Branch One, and as the double identity of Pryderi in Branch Four

It is important to be aware that this correspondence between the two constellation figures has nothing whatsoever to do with the appearance of their respective stars which they overlie and represent. Orion is probably the brightest and most recognisable of all the stellar groupings, whilst Hercules contains no bright stars and is not easily made out without reference to nearby constellations. It is crucially important to make the distinction between a constellation or 'star group' and the figure which traditionally represents that group of stars. The visual similarity between Orion and Hercules is only apparent in the context of constellational charts. The point is that if one were to 'cut and paste' Orion into Hercules' position and vice versa, nobody would know the difference. Says Arawn to Pwyll: "I shall arrange that no man or woman in your realm realizes that I am not you, and I will take your place". (Davies)

This notion of the two figures changing places may be based on the astronomical observation that when, during the winter months Orion dominates the night sky, rising to his highest point in the South, Hercules is in the North and setting below the horizon. Conversely during the Summer Hercules dominates the Northern celestial dome, whilst Orion has now returned to his realm beneath the Southern horizon. Indeed, the ’man who was Arawn’s’ defeat of Hafgan (Summer-white) at the ford has led some commentators to suggest a seasonal allegory behind this episode. There is an evident similarity, which has not gone unnoticed elsewhere, with this single combat and that between Pryderi and Gwydion in the Fourth Branch, both take place at a ford, (The Milky Way) victory is achieved in each case by the use of force and of magic, but here in a complete reversal, it is the son of the ’man who was Arawn’ who is defeated and Gwydion/Cygnus, The (white) Swan of Summer, who is the victor.

It is therefore, this ability of Hercules/Pwyll and Orion/Arawn to interchange magically, pictorially, seasonally and astronomically, explicit in the First Branch, which informs us of the double identity of Pryderi in the Fourth Branch. In the first case an audience would see Pryderi son of Pwyll Pen Annwfn as Orion, the dominant figure of the 21 constellations of the southern hemisphere, as Pryderi is the dominant figure of the 21 cantrefs of the South. He is the inheritor of the role Lord of Annwfn, which his (identical) father, Pwyll, in turn inherited from his (identical) friend Arawn, (Orion).

Later in the tale when the twelve northern bards go to south Wales (or otherwise Annwfn, the southern celestial hemisphere), Pryderi will now be seen to be Hercules being entertained by Gwydion with his harp, (Cygnus and Lyra). Later still during the fight at the ford (The Milky Way), both Hercules (now upside down) and Orion (now split in two) combine to show how Gwydion defeated Pryderi by strength and by magic.

The tale does not mention the number of cantrefs in the north, but historically Gwynedd combined with Powys make up 26 cantrefs, just 1 short of the constellations of Ptolemy's northern hemisphere. Within the first few paragraphs of Math a remarkable relationship between the geopolitical cartography of early medieval Wales and the Ptolemaic charts emerges, this theme of 'as above so below' pervades Math and finds it's most astonishing articulation in the form of Gwydion's circuitous route with the pigs and afterwards in the naming of Llew Llaw Gyffes.

Gwydion/Cygnus disguised as a Pencerdd or Chief Poet, wearing his swan-feather tugen and playing his crwth or lyre as he entertains Pryderi in his guise as Hercules.