Mabinogion Astronomy: The Royal Family

The Royal Family

Don.........................Cassiepiea

Math...........................Cepheus

Aranrhod................Andromeda

Lleu Llaw Gyffes..........Perseus

In order to understand the birth of Llew Llaw Gyffes it is first necessary to demonstrate the astronomical mechanics pertaining to the story of Perseus' rescue of Andromeda. Ovid tells the story the best and while Manilius' somewhat racy treatment is also good on the astronomy, the episode is more neatly summarized by Apollodorus:

Arriving in Ethiopia, which was ruled by Cepheus, he (Perseus) found the king's daughter Andromeda exposed as prey to a sea monster; for Cassiepeia, the wife of Cepheus, had claimed to rival the Nereids in beauty, boasting that she surpassed them all. The Nereids were enraged by this, and Poseidon, who shared there anger, sent a sea-flood and a monster against the land. Now Ammon had prophesied deliverance from this calamity if Cepheus' daughter Andromeda were offered as prey to the monster, and compelled by the Ethiopians, Cepheus had done so and tied his daughter to a rock. As soon as Perseus saw her, he fell in love, and promised Cepheus that he would destroy the monster if he would give him the rescued girl as his wife. When oaths had been sworn to this effect, Perseus confronted the monster and killed it, and set Andromeda free.

This cast of characters, Cepheus the king, Cassiepeia the queen, Andromeda the princess and Perseus the hero comprise the constellation group known to astronomers as The Royal Family, a fifth member of this group is the southern constellation Cetus, The Sea Monster.ⁱ The episode is clearly astronomical in origin, that is, it was composed in order to describe the movements of these constellations.

The sea monster approaches.............Perseus cofronts it, slays it.............and saves Andromeda

Perseus rescues Andromeda from Cetus

Welsh tradition, (even if our knowledge of this tradition comes to us from a comparatively late date) insists that the constellation of Cassiepiea was known in Wales as Don, the shadowy mother figure in Math. We also know from comparative mythology that Perseus and Llew are cognate figures and that it is likely, for the reasons I have given above, that in celtic Gaul and Ireland the constellation of Perseus was known as Lugus and Lugh Lamfhada respectively. I have also shown that although Aranrhod ferch Don was associated in Wales with the constellation Corona Borealis, this only refers to the sea-girt fortress or Caer of Aranrhod, and a close inspection of her tradition in Wales reveals a remarkably detailed resemblance to that of Andromeda, daughter of Cassiepiea, our Don, mother of Aranrhod. I also demonstrated that Math vab Mathonwy shares all his key characteristics with the constellation Cepheus. His very name Bearborn son of Little Bear, his ownership of a wand, his kingship of the North, the fact that he has his feet in the 'lap' of a virgin, his inability to do a 'circuit' of his realm, his occupation of the dragon throne and finally his residence at Caer Dathyl which stems from a word meaning 'to turn, in the north'; all of these statements are true for both Math and the constellation of Cepheus. Each of these identifications was arrived independently, i.e. without reference to each other, and so it was surprising to find that the principal characters in the Lleu episodes from Math vab Mathonwy are all identifiable with the constellations which represent the principal characters in the Perseus/Andromeda episode from the Greek version of 'The King and his Prophesied Death'. I say a little surprising because although we might expect the characters in Math to correspond with the characters from the Perseus myth, simply because they belong to the same tale type, the author of Math seems more concerned with describing the associated astronomy. But this is not stargazing and telling stories round the campfire, rather it is a sophisticated response to the figures who represent star formations on the classical stereographic projections or planispheric constellational charts. It turns out then, that these are not isolated identifications, on the contrary, they form a coherent group of celestial figures known as 'The Royal Family' who are intimately linked to the international popular tale 'The King and is Prophesied Death', a tale which underlies 'Math vab Mathonwy'.