of his head: that annoyed him rather more than the woundings on the previous days; so on the fourth day he thought it proper to sit down with his would-be son-in-law and go into details. He stipulated that Kulhwch was to have Olwen to wife provided he could fulfil certain conditions which he named: these last involved so many apparent impossibilities and the intervention of so many mythic heroes, that their chief interest may be said to consist in their forming a catalogue of the subjects of so many tales, most of which have been lost. With the aid of Arthur and his men, Kulhwch procures all the impossibilities; Yspyᵭaden's castle is stormed by Goreu, the only one surviving of Custennin's twenty-four sons; the giant himself, like Forgall on a similar occasion, loses his life; and the marriage of Olwen is consummated.
This tale, which I have been compelled to abridge very considerably, contains a number of things of interest to the student of mythology; but I need only allude to one or two of them. The clover-blossoms that were wont to spring up in Olwen's track recall the roses that grew where Aphrodite trod, and the former's giant-father's name Yspyᵭaden, meaning 'hawthorn,' reminds one of the thorn of winter, the pricking of which makes Sigrdrifa fall asleep, and of the mistletoe which, thrown by his blind brother, gives Balder his fatal wound; but the story of Kulhwch is to be read briefly in the Norse Lay of Skirni, which relates how Gerᵭr Gymir's daughter was successfully wooed for the love-smitten Frey by his messenger; how the latter had asked of the shepherd that 'sat on the ho we watching all the ways,' which he should take in order to visit Gerᵭr in spite of her father's hounds; and how the shepherd thought him a
