Celtic Lore: the tales that might have inspired Star Wars and Harry Potter

#2 of 5

Blodeuwedd: the false flower-woman of Welsh tales 

Blodeuwedd appears in the ‘Fourth Branch’ of the Welsh Mabinogion. She was not mortal, but was conjured from wild flowers (the oak, meadowsweet and broom) by two magicians, Math and Gwydion, for their kinsman Lleu Llaw Gyffes (the ‘Bright one of the Skilful Hand’).
Because he was illegitimate, Lleu’s mother Arianrhod cursed him at birth, denying him a name, weapons or a wife unless she herself gave them to him. The boy’s uncle Gwydion [although it is elswehere suggested that Gwydion is actually also Lleu Llaw Gyffes’ father] tricked his sister into endowing the child with both a name and weapons, but getting him a wife proved trickier, so he and Math got round the problem by creating Blodeuwedd.
But because she was not a mortal woman and was thus without morals (the Christian influence is perhaps showing here!), Lleu’s flower-wife betrayed him with another man, Gronw, and the lovers plotted his death. Lleu himself was clearly a hero or even a god, for he could only be killed in a peculiar, ‘impossible’ way; he had to be neither inside nor outside a house, naked or clothed or on water or land, and only a spear made during the hours that smithing was not permitted could kill him.
By huge cunning (together with a certain dimness on Lleu’s part), Blodeuwedd persuaded her husband to act out the only circumstances in which he was vulnerable: by making a bath for Lleu on a riverbank and erecting an arched roof above it, then thatching it so that it let in no water. She brought a billy goat and stood next to the bath, and then Lleu placed one foot on the back of the goat and the other on the edge of the bath. Whoever struck Lleu while he was in that position would be able to kill him.
Then, Gronw smote him with his spear. As he was struck, Lleu uttered a ghastly shriek, turned into an eagle and flew into an oak-tree. There Gwydion found him and restored him, but Blodeuwedd he cursed, turning her into an owl, and condemning her to hunt alone at night, shunned by all other birds, for eternity.