handmaid helped Gwydion to put on his arms, Arianrhod herself put arms on the younger man. When she had done, Gwydion asked if his friend had been completely equipped; she answered that he had, whereupon she was told that there would be no further need of the arms, since the hostile fleet and forces had disappeared. Her anger then was greater than the other time; and she laid the boy under another destiny, to the effect that he should have no wife of the race then inhabiting the earth. Gwydion went away somewhat disconcerted at this, and journeyed to his uncle, the master magician Mâth, complaining bitterly of Arianrhod. They resolved to fashion a woman out of flowers to be Llew's wife: they called her Blodeueᵭ,[1] a name which meant flowers in a collective sense. She was the fairest of the women of her time; nor was she less faithless than the most notorious of those utilized by poets to point a moral or adorn an epic. She fell in love with another prince, who advised her to ascertain from Llew in what way he could be killed. She found out at length that it could only be done if a bath were made for him beneath a thatched roof in the open air, and if he stood with one foot on the side of the bath and the other on the back of a he-goat: if he were wounded in that position, it would be his death.
- ↑ Another account of her origin is given by the poet D. ab Gwilym, who makes her daughter of March ab Meirchion; see poem clxxxiii. p. 365 of the (London) edition of 1789. She is more commonly called Blodeuweᵭ, which may he explained as Antho-cides or Flower-like: this, as the more generally intelligible, is probably the later of the two. The name translated is that of Fflûr, Caswallawn's leman (p. 153); but whether Fflûr, directly represents flôs, flôris, 'flower, blossom,' or Flôra, the name of an Italian goddess of no better morals than Blodeueᵭ, is not easy to decide, as fflûr occurs in the sense of bloom.
