Math fab Mathonwy

Also Known As: (Middle Welsh Math uab Mathonwy, “Math son of Mathonwy”; also written Math ap Mathonwy). Mathonwy is generally read as a mother’s name rather than a father’s.
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Welsh Mythology, Celtic Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He carries a wand that changes the shape of whoever he strikes with it, and he hears any whisper the wind has touched.
Role in Mythos: He is the lord of Gwynedd in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, the judge who punishes the rape of his footholder and the enchanter who helps call a woman out of flowers.
Relation to Humans: He rules a real medieval landscape and settles the wrongs done inside his own household with a magistrate’s care, taking the victim’s justice before his own. He also cannot move about his kingdom without a woman fixed to his feet, so his subjects mostly meet his deputies instead of him.

The hall at Caer Dathyl kept an odd shape at its centre. An old king sat with his shoes off and his bare feet folded into the lap of a young woman, and the whole of Gwynedd was arranged around that posture. When the meat came in she was already seated. She stayed there through the drinking and the harping and the long guttering down of the fire, and she did not get up until he slept.

Math son of Mathonwy could not live any other way. The single exemption was uproar: while the commotion of war was on the land he could stand and walk about like anyone else, and the moment the fighting stopped he needed the lap again. The maiden who held him was Goewin daughter of Pebin, of Dol Pebin in Arfon, and the tale says plainly that she was the most beautiful woman known in that country in her day.

The office itself was not invented. Welsh law knows a court officer called the troediog, the footholder, whose job was to hold the king’s feet in his lap from the moment the king sat down to eat until he went to bed, to scratch him, and for all that time to guard him from harm. He had his land free and his horse in attendance, his woollen clothing from the king and his linen from the queen. The law assumes a man. Math’s footholder is a woman, she has to be a virgin, and his life hangs off her. A piece of ordinary court furniture has been turned a few degrees and become a curse.

He had a second peculiarity, and it was the one that mattered. Whatever whisper there might be between two people, however small, once the wind had met it, Math knew it. Nobody could conspire against him indoors. Gilfaethwy son of Dôn, his nephew, worked that out the hard way while he was going grey with love for Goewin and losing his colour so badly that his own brother did not recognise him. It was the brother who found the loophole. Gwydion listened to the problem and concluded that if a whisper cannot get past the wind, then the thing to do is make a noise loud enough to drown it.

So Gwydion invented a war. He told Math about a new kind of animal in the south, small, better eating than oxen, sent to Pryderi son of Pwyll out of Annwn by Arawn its king, and offered to go and ask for them. He went to Rhuddlan Teifi in the guise of a bard, told stories all evening until the court adored him, then asked for the pigs. Pryderi was bound by an agreement not to give them or sell them until they had bred twice their number in his land. Gwydion produced twelve horses, twelve black greyhounds with white breasts and twelve golden shields, every scrap of it gold to the eye and all of it conjured out of toadstools, and proposed an exchange instead. The bargain was struck. Then he ran, because the magic would not last from one day to the next, and the drove north went so fast that the pens they left behind put their names on the map: Mochdref after Mochdref, Mochnant, the sty at Creuwyrion.

Pryderi mustered twenty-one cantrefs behind him, which was the point. Math armed and took the field at Pennardd, and that night Gwydion and Gilfaethwy slipped back to the emptied court, put the maidens out of the chamber, and Gilfaethwy raped Goewin in Math’s own bed. The war went on without them until morning. It cost Pryderi his life; Gwydion killed him in single combat by strength and valour and enchantment, and he was buried above Uelen Rhyd.

Math came home and ordered his place made ready. Goewin stopped him. You will have to find another virgin to go under your feet, she said, because I am a woman now. Then she named both nephews, said the thing had been done openly, and pointed out that there was nobody in that court who did not know about it. Math’s reply is the best thing he is given to say. He would get her justice first and his own second: she would be his wife, and the authority of his country would pass into her hands.

Then he took the wand. Gilfaethwy he struck into a hind and Gwydion into a stag, and told them to go and live as the beasts whose shapes they were wearing, and to be back in a year. A year later the dogs of the court set up a racket under the chamber wall, and outside in the wet there were three animals, a stag, a hind and a sturdy fawn. He carried the fawn indoors to be baptised and struck the parents again, boar and sow this time, then wolf and she-wolf the year after, and each year another child was brought in out of the mud: Hydwn, Hychdwn, Bleiddwn. In the third year he gave them their own flesh back, had a bath prepared and their heads washed, and told them they had taken punishment enough, since each of them had borne the other’s children. The punishment is exact, and that is what makes it cruel.

The rest of the branch belongs to Gwydion, but Math’s wand keeps surfacing in it. He bent it and made Arianrhod step over it to prove she was still a maiden, and she dropped a yellow-haired boy on the floor and something smaller besides, which Gwydion snatched up and hid in a chest at the foot of his bed. Later, when Arianrhod had sworn her son would never get a wife of any race on earth, it was Math who said that the two of them would conjure him one out of flowers. They took the flower of the oak, the flower of the broom and the flower of the meadowsweet, and called a woman out of them, and named her Blodeuedd. That went badly. He also handed Lleu the cantref of Dinoding to live on, which went better.

His power is the wand and the wind, and both are absolute inside their range and useless outside it. He cannot ride his own circuit; his nephews do it for him, which is precisely the cover the conspiracy needed. His hearing fails at the exact moment somebody starts a war, so the one man clever enough to start one can beat him whenever he chooses. And the Welsh triads record the last turn of the knife. Among the Three Great Enchantments of the Island of Britain is the Enchantment of Math son of Mathonwy, which he taught to Gwydion son of Dôn. He trained his own ruin and then handed him the keys to the kingdom.

Nobody ever says what he looked like. Not his height, not his age, not his face. The tale gives him a posture and a voice and leaves everything else empty, which is either carelessness or tact. His origins are just as thin: Mathonwy is usually taken for his mother’s name rather than his father’s, in the same shape as Gwydion son of Dôn, which would put the kingship of Gwynedd in this story into the female line, and the name Math has been compared with the Irish word behind the personal name Mathgamain, though none of it is settled. He gets no death either. The branch closes with Lleu ruling Gwynedd after him, and Math is simply not mentioned again, an old man last seen sitting down and putting his feet in somebody’s lap.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Math fab Mathonwy?

Math fab Mathonwy is the lord of Gwynedd and the title character of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, the last of the four medieval Welsh tales. He is an enchanter as much as a king, and the branch turns on his magic wand, his uncanny hearing and his judgement on his own nephews. His name means Math son of Mathonwy.

Why did Math have to rest his feet in a virgin’s lap?

The tale states it as a plain condition of his life: Math could not live unless his feet were folded in a maiden’s lap, and the only thing that released him was the commotion of war. It is a twist on a real Welsh court office, the troediog or footholder, who by law held the king’s feet in his lap from the start of the feast until the king went to sleep. In the law the footholder is a man; Math’s is a virgin, and his survival depends on her.

How did Math punish Gwydion and Gilfaethwy?

He struck them with his wand and turned them into a mated pair of animals for three years, a stag and a hind, then a boar and a sow, then a wolf and a she-wolf, swapping which brother took the female form each time. Each year they produced a child, which Math took away and had baptised as Hydwn, Hychdwn and Bleiddwn. He punished them this way because they had contrived a war so that Gilfaethwy could rape Goewin, Math’s footholder.

Did Math create Blodeuwedd?

Yes, together with Gwydion. When Arianrhod swore that her son Lleu would never have a wife of any race on earth, Math proposed that he and Gwydion conjure one out of flowers, and they made her from the blossom of the oak, the broom and the meadowsweet. She was named Blodeuedd, and she later conspired with Gronw Pebyr to kill Lleu.

What powers did Math fab Mathonwy have?

Math had a magic wand that transformed anyone he struck with it, and he could hear any whisper carried to him on the wind, which made plotting against him almost impossible indoors. He could also create life, since he and Gwydion called a woman out of flowers. The Welsh triads name his enchantment as one of the Three Great Enchantments of the Island of Britain, and record that he taught it to Gwydion.