Amaethon fab Dôn

Also Known As: Welsh, from amaeth, “farmer” or “ploughman”; spelled Amathaon in the late prose note on the Battle of the Trees
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Celtic Mythology, Welsh Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He is the one husbandman able to break and sow ground too wild for any other, and he will not do it for anyone who tries to force him.
Role in Mythos: A son of Dôn and brother of Gwydion and Gofannon, he is named as an impossible labour in Culhwch and Olwen and as the man whose theft from Annwn started the Battle of the Trees.
Relation to Humans: The giant Ysbaddaden sets his unwilling service as one of the tasks a mortal suitor must achieve before he can marry. In the later tradition the animals he carried off from the Otherworld cost the lives of the men who fought over them.

The hill is too wild to plough. That is the whole problem, and the giant Ysbaddaden Bencawr lays it out with some relish. Culhwch has come to his fort to ask for his daughter Olwen, and before the wedding can happen the old man wants bread and drink made from a single impossible harvest. The great hill in front of them must be rooted up, the grubbings burned to manure the ground, the land ploughed and sown in one day, and the grain ripe by nightfall. No husbandman can till that land, the giant says, so wild is it, except Amaethon son of Dôn. He will not come of his own free will, and Culhwch will not be able to compel him.

That is nearly everything the old prose tells about him, and every clause of it counts. Culhwch and Olwen is among the oldest Arthurian prose in Welsh, surviving complete in the Red Book of Hergest of about 1400 and in part in the older White Book of Rhydderch. Its long list of tasks is the spine of the story. Amaethon is followed at once by his brother Gofannon son of Dôn, who must come to the headland to clean the iron of the plough and who works for no one but a rightful king. Then come the oxen: the two dun oxen of Gwlwlyd yoked together, a yellow bull and a brindled one, and two horned oxen, one beyond the peaked mountain and one on this side, who were once the men Nynniaw and Peibaw until God turned them into beasts for their sins. The picture is of a plough team assembled from the edges of the world, cold iron and heavy yokes and the smell of scorched roots, with Amaethon’s hands on the handles.

Culhwch answers every task the same way. It will be easy, he says, although the giant may think it will not. The tale then forgets about the ploughing altogether. Only a few of the tasks are ever shown being done, the hunt of the boar Twrch Trwyth takes over the story, and the wild hill is never ploughed on the page. Amaethon is never seen agreeing, refusing, or even arriving.

His name tells what he was for. Amaeth is the ordinary Welsh word for a farmer or ploughman, and Lady Charlotte Guest, translating the tale in 1849, glossed him simply as the husbandman. The word is usually traced to the same Celtic root as the Gaulish ambactos, and Julius Caesar, describing the Gauls, wrote that each powerful noble kept as many ambacti, retainers, about him as he could. A servant who became a ploughman who became a son of the gods is a fair career for a word.

The family is better known than he is. Dôn is the mother, or at least the name, behind the magician Gwydion, his brother Gilfaethwy, their sister Arianrhod and the smith Gofannon, and the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi is largely their story. Amaethon never appears in it. His name surfaces instead in a genealogical list of the Children of Dôn of Arfon, where he stands among fourteen names, several of them ordinary Welsh words dressed as people. He had a surname and a job. The storytellers mostly kept the job.

The one tale that gives him a deed comes from much later. A short prose note printed in the Myvyrian Archaiology in 1801 introduces two verses said to be sung at the Battle of Goddeu, the Battle of the Trees, which the note says others called the Battle of Achren. It explains that the battle was fought over a white roebuck and a whelp belonging to Annwn, the Otherworld, which Amathaon son of Dôn had carried off. So Amathaon fought Arawn, king of Annwn. On Arawn’s side stood a man who could not be beaten unless his name was guessed, and on the other a woman called Achren, whose name had to be found out before her side could lose. It was Gwydion who guessed the man’s name and sang it. The man was Brân, the crow, and one line of the englyn names him by the high sprigs of alder on his shield. With the name spoken, Amaethon’s side won.

The note is late and rough, and the Victorian scholar John Rhys, who put it into English in his Hibbert Lectures, delivered in 1886, called its language inaccurate and doubted the part about Achren, suspecting a copyist who thought the quarrel needed a matching woman on each side. Rhys still took it for the echo of an old story. The Welsh Triads know the battle too, listing it among the Three Frivolous Battles of the Island of Britain, fought over a bitch, a roe and a lapwing. The trees themselves belong to the famous poem Cad Goddeu in the Book of Taliesin, where Gwydion’s craft sends the forest into war. The prose note keeps the older grievance under it: a dog barking in a strange hall, a pale deer taken from a king’s land, and a farmer’s son who wanted them.

Rhys went further and made Amaethon the culture hero of Welsh agriculture, the brother who with Gwydion brought useful animals up out of the Otherworld for the benefit of people. It is an attractive reading, and it is his, set down in those same lectures. No medieval text states it outright.

What Amaethon can do follows from his trade. He can turn ground that defeats every other ploughman, and a giant who wants a wedding feast from bare rock and scrub knows it. His limits come from the same place. He cannot be ordered or dragged to the field, and a hero who can only ask may never get him. In the one story where he acts on his own account, the thing he took from Annwn brought a war, and it took his brother’s cleverness, not his own strength, to end it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Amaethon in Welsh mythology?

Amaethon is a son of Dôn in medieval Welsh tradition, and a brother of the magician Gwydion and the smith Gofannon. His name comes from the Welsh word amaeth, meaning farmer or ploughman. He is best known as the only husbandman able to plough the giant Ysbaddaden’s wild hill in the tale Culhwch and Olwen.

What task does Amaethon have in Culhwch and Olwen?

The giant Ysbaddaden demands that a great hill be uprooted, ploughed, sown and harvested in a single day to feed Culhwch and Olwen’s wedding. He says no ploughman can till that land except Amaethon son of Dôn, who will not come willingly and cannot be forced. The tale never shows the ploughing being done.

What did Amaethon steal from Annwn?

According to a late prose note printed in the Myvyrian Archaiology in 1801, Amaethon carried off a white roebuck and a whelp belonging to Annwn, the Welsh Otherworld. This led to a battle between Amaethon and Arawn, king of Annwn, known as the Battle of the Trees or Cad Goddeu. The Welsh Triads list it among the Three Frivolous Battles, fought over a bitch, a roe and a lapwing.

How was the Battle of the Trees won?

In the prose note, a man on Arawn’s side could not be defeated unless his name was guessed. Amaethon’s brother Gwydion guessed that the man was Brân and sang his name in two verses, and Amaethon’s side won. The scholar John Rhys doubted part of the note but treated it as the echo of an older story.

Is Amaethon an agricultural god?

Amaethon’s name means ploughman, and his one task in Culhwch and Olwen is ploughing, so his association with farming is built into the sources. The fuller idea that he was a culture hero of Welsh agriculture comes from the Victorian scholar John Rhys in his lectures of 1886 rather than from any medieval text. No surviving myth shows him being worshipped.