This gave her occasion to extract from him all the news about Kulhwch and his party, when Custennin said she would see them very shortly. She was filled with two feelings, one of joy at the coming of Kulhwch, whose mother she stated to have been her sister; and the other of sadness at the thought that the youth was not likely to escape alive from Yspyᵭaden's hands. Custennin's wife was a fit consort for that mighty herdsman, and at the coming of Kulhwch she rushed, overjoyed by their approach, to embrace him; but Kei, who as the leader of the party had his eyes open, adroitly reached her a bundle of fire-wood he found close by: the woman's fond hugging instantly reduced it to the dimensions of a withy. 'Ah, lady,' said Kei, 'had it been I that were so squeezed, nobody else would ever have a chance of loving me.' In the course of their stay at Custennin's house, she opened a stone chest near the fireplace, and out came a yellow-haired, curly-headed youth. This, she said, was the only one left of her twenty-four sons, who were one by one destroyed by Yspyᵭaden, and she had no hope of his escaping any more than his brothers; but Kei advised her to let this her surviving son cling to him and his friends. She then prayed them not to go to Yspyᵭaden: they would not be dissuaded, but would wait until Olwen herself arrived, for they had learned that it was her habit to come to wash herself every Saturday at Custennin's house, where she and her maid always left behind them all their rings and jewels. Then follows a curious description of Olwen, in which it is stated, among other things, that her hair was yellower than the flower of the broom, and her skin whiter than the foam of the billow; that wherever she trod there sprang up four white
