W.B. fo, 191 a, A Rhiannon a vydei a mynweireu yr essynn wedy bydyn(t) yn kywein gweir am y mynwgyl hitheu); that is again a degradation to a mule. These two incidents relating to the same fact are probably two different ways of explaining some aspect of Rhiannon's character, about which we cannot say anything more.[1]
There are, however, two situations belonging to another quite different cycle, viz. (α) Pwyll's men were complaining of Rhiannon's barrenness. Pwyll asked a respite of one year, and at the end of this time Rhiannon was delivered of a son. (β) Gwri Wallt Euryn (=Pryderi) was given the horse born on the night the child was found.
According to the first passage we should expect that Rhiannon was barren, and that this barrenness was in some way removed. Stories of removed barrenness are very frequent in fairy lore. Sometimes the childless parents get a remedy from a mysterious being, but they are to give up the firstborn (son), who, after having been given to the demon, breaks the shrine-taboo (vide M‘Culloch, Childhood of Fiction, 410–415). One might therefore suppose that Rhiannon was barren, and that the being who gave her the remedy was identical with the owner of the Mysterious Hand, but this combination does not, after all, appear quite probable, because there is a fact which speaks strongly against this point of view, i.e. the Hand takes every born (not only the firstborn) creature. Or is this a dim relic of some form of old belief?
The second incident is frequent in the Supernatural Birth stories: the wife is given a meal, of which also some house animals partake; the wife then has a child, the bitch has a puppy, and the mare a foal; the wonderchild and the animals are a continuation (or rebirth) of the being incarnated in the meal (and so the animals become his brothers).[2]
