(vide Miss Marie Trevelyan, Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales, pp. 47–54), which are regarded as an omen of death, a fact which speaks in favour of our conception of Annwvn. It may, of course, be objected that this modern belief may be a later development of the folk-belief, but we must acknowledge, on the other side, that the idea of Death as Hunter (cf. our hunting scene in Mabinogi) is a very old and very common one; and so it is quite clear that the King of Annwvn is represented as a king of the country of Death. But this region was not always described as a beautiful and desirable country (e.g. Procopius, De bello Gothico, iv. 20. 24), but as the belief was never homogeneous, death appeared sometimes as a horrible demon and sometimes as a good man (so e.g. in the tales, Death as a Godfather).[1]
Pwyll is probably an ancestor of some Dyved (Demetae) tribe, but he is at the same time in a very close connection with the Under World, so we find in old Welsh poems (Skene, ii. 181; Book of Taliesin, 25 b):
Bu kyweir Karchar Gweir yg Kaer Sidi
Trwy ebostol Pwyll a Phryderi;
and (Skene, ii. 155):
Ys kyweir vyg Kadeir yg Kaer Sidi
.......Ys gwyr Manawyt a Phryderi,
which makes it probable that Pwyll is a supernatural being, penn Annvyn, chief of the Under World, and the tale is told to account for this title and to explain how Pwyll penndevic Dyvet was at the same time penn Annwvn.
[The name Pwyll means "sense" (Irish cíall). Such a name as an ancestor-name is not unique. The indigenous Bohemian kings derived their origin from a mythic ancestor (ploughman), Přemysl, which means a "thoughtful one."]
- ↑ Brown, Harvard Studies, viii. 48/7, suggests that Arawn is here used instead oi Manawyddan (Ir. Manannán); about this suggestion vide infra.
