lives when their daughters marry. But I pass over this to make a remark or two on the mothers of the heroes respectively. Now Kulhwch' s mother was daughter of Anlawᵭ Wledig or Prince Anlawᵭ, of whom we know nothing, and she was sister to the wife of Custennin, brother and herdsman to Yspyᵭaden: her own name was Goleuᵭyᵭ, or Light-as-Day, and her sister was the mother of the twenty-four youths slain all but one by Yspyᵭaden. The number twenty-four points pretty clearly, in my opinion, to the twenty-four hours of the day, and we equate the twenty-four sous of Custennin with the twenty-four ladies liberated from the stronghold of the Perverse Black Knight by Owein ab Urien.[1] This last description of them as imprisoned ladies is more in harmony with Greek mythology, which also made them such and called them the Hours, keepers of heaven's cloud-gate and ministers of the gods. It is not likely that twenty-four was the original number in Welsh mythology; and the Irish story of the three Sons of Dóel Dermait opposes to it those three and their sister. The latter, whom I take to represent night, was not brought back by Cúchulainn, who released her three brothers from captivity, just as Kulhwch was the means of saving the life of the only surviving son of his aunt's two dozen children, who thus lived to see the wedding of Kulhwch and Olwen, that is to say, the time when the sun was about to rise to illumine the world for another day. The Irish myth was consistent in not making Cúchulainn bring back the hours of darkness, but only those of light; and the fixing their number as three refers probably to
- ↑ R. B. Mab. pp. 191-2; Guest, i. 82-3.
