Modron.' The latter was the mother's name, and is a word of the same origin as the Latin matrōna, though it would have sounded in early Celtic matrŏna, which, as the name of the river in France now called, by a shortened form of the word, the Marne, was its pronunciation. One cannot help suspecting that in Mabon and Modron—the father's name is never mentioned—we have the exact equivalents of Grannos and Sirona, and one's curiosity is at once roused to inquire what Welsh literature has to say about the former. We are, however, doomed in part to disappointment: the few allusions to Modron are so obscure that they have not yet succeeded in teaching us anything definite as to her attributes; but the story of Kulhwch tells us the following things about her son. He was a great hunter, who had a wonderful hound, and rode on a steed swift as a wave of the sea: when he was three nights old he was stolen from between his mother and the wall, no one knew whither: numberless ages later, it was ascertained by Arthur that he was in a stone prison at Gloucester, uttering heartrending groans and undergoing treatment with which Apollo's bondage in the house of Admetus could not compare in severity: Arthur and his men succeeded in releasing him to engage in the mythic hunt of Twrch Trwyth that could not take place without him:[1] and lastly, he distinguished himself by riding into the waters of the Bristol Channel after Twrch Trwyth and despoiling him of one of his trinkets.[2]
