_Source_.--The _Mabinogi_ of Kulhwych and Olwen from the translation of
Lady Guest, abridged.
_Parallels_.--Prof. Rhys, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 486, considers that
our tale is paralleled by Cuchulain's "Wooing of Emer," a translation
of which by Prof. K. Meyer appeared in the _Archaeological Review_,
vol. i. I fail to see much analogy. On the other hand in his _Arthurian
Legend_, p. 41, he rightly compares the tasks set by Yspythadon to
those set to Jason. They are indeed of the familiar type of the Bride
Wager (on which see Grimm-Hunt, i. 399). The incident of the three
animals, old, older, and oldest, has a remarkable resemblance to the
_Tettira Jataka_ (ed. Fausböll, No. 37, transl. Rhys Davids, i. p. 310
_seq._) in which the partridge, monkey, and elephant dispute as to
their relative age, and the partridge turns out to have voided the seed
of the Banyan-tree under which they were sheltered, whereas the
elephant only knew it when a mere bush, and the monkey had nibbled the
topmost shoots. This apologue got to England at the end of the twelfth
century as the sixty-ninth fable, "Wolf, Fox, and Dove," of a rhymed
prose collection of "Fox Fables" (_Mishle Shu'alim_), of an Oxford Jew,
Berachyah Nakdan, known in the Records as "Benedict le Puncteur" (see
my _Fables Of Aesop_, i. p. 170). Similar incidents occur in "Jack and
his Snuff-box" in my _English Fairy Tales_, and in Dr. Hyde's "Well of
D'Yerree-in-Dowan." The skilled companions of Kulhwych are common in
European folk-tales (_Cf._ Cosquin, i. 123-5), and especially among the
Celts (see Mr. Nutt's note in MacInnes' _Tales_, 445-8), among whom
they occur very early, but not so early as Lynceus and the other
skilled comrades of the Argonauts.
_Remarks_.--The hunting of the boar Trwyth can be traced back in Welsh
tradition at least as early as the ninth century. For it is referred to
in the following passage of Nennius' _Historia Britonum_ ed. Stevenson,
p: 60, "Est aliud miraculum in regione quae dicitur Buelt [Builth, co.
Brecon] Est ibi cumulus lapidum et unus lapis super-positus super
congestum cum vestigia canis in eo. Quando venatus est porcum Troynt
[_var. lec._ Troit] impressit Cabal, qui erat canis Arthuri militis,
vestigium in lapide et Arthur postea congregavit congestum lapidum sub
lapide in quo erat vestigium canis sui et vocatur Carn Cabal."
Curiously enough there is still a mountain called Carn Cabal in the
district of Builth, south of Rhayader Gwy in Breconshire. Still more
curiously a friend of Lady Guest's found on this a cairn with a stone
two feet long by one foot wide in which there was an indentation 4 in.
x 3 in. x 2 in. which could easily have been mistaken for a paw-print
of a dog, as maybe seen from the engraving given of it (Mabinogion, ed.
1874, p. 269).
The stone and the legend are thus at least one thousand years old.
"There stands the stone to tell if I lie." According to Prof. Rhys
(_Hibbert Lect._ 486-97) the whole story is a mythological one,
Kulhwych's mother being the dawn, the clover blossoms that grow under
Olwen's feet being comparable to the roses that sprung up where
Aphrodite had trod, and Yspyddadon being the incarnation of the sacred
hawthorn. Mabon, again (_i.e._ pp. 21, 28-9), is the Apollo Maponus
discovered in Latin inscriptions at Ainstable in Cumberland and
elsewhere (Hübner, _Corp. Insc. Lat. Brit._ Nos. 218, 332, 1345).
Granting all this, there is nothing to show any mythological
significance in the tale, though there may have been in the names of
the _dramatis personae_. I observe from the proceedings of the recent
Eisteddfod that the bardic name of Mr. W. Abraham, M.P., is 'Mabon.' It
scarcely follows that Mr. Abraham is in receipt of divine honours
nowadays.