Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/357

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IV. THE CULTURE HERO.
341

nant. In fact, this proved the means of stamping the friendship between Pwyỻ and Arawn with the seal of endurance; and afterwards, the one used to send the other presents of what he most thought would rejoice his friend's heart, such as horses, greyhounds and falcons; to which may be added from another tale that the same relation of friendliness continued between Arawn and Pwyỻ's son Pryderi, who got from Hades the swine that Gwydion coveted. Thus Pwyỻ and Pryderi were able to get by friendship from the powers below what Gwydion was only able to procure by craft and to retain by force of arms. But of the two ways of procuring boons from Hades, the one in Gwydion's story is probably the older, with this difference: Pwyỻ, whose name means sense, intelligence, deliberation, is in the one tale the counterpart of Gwydion in the other; so, likewise, is Pryderi that of Gwydion's son Llew. When, however, these heroes of parallel myths are brought into contact with one another, a complication arises, which the Mabinogi indicates in a sense when it states, that when Pwyỻ made it known that he had ruled Hades for a year and reduced the two kingdoms to one, his title of Pwyỻ Prince of Dyved came to be superseded by that of Pwyỻ Head of Hades. So when Pryderi meets Gwydion, we have to treat the former just as if he had always been one of the dark powers, and such is the rôle one has to assign him elsewhere; but it raises a question of considerable difficulty, which I cannot solve.

Let us now turn to some of the Irish stories that correspond in a manner to that of Pwytt's doings in Hades.

    lation (Vol. iij. pp. 42 and 45), which makes the tale consequently unintelligible.