“She rules her life like a fine skylark / And when the sky is starless / All your life you’ve never seen a woman / taken by the wind,” wrote Stevie Nicks in her song “Rhiannon.”
Penned for the Welsh goddess of the moon, horses and, yes, birds, Nicks’ song asks the proverbial question: “Will you ever win?” For hard-luck deity Rhiannon, coming out on top was an uphill battle—so much so that the birth of her son was called not the Nativity, nascency or blessed event, but “the time of roughness.” Smooth passage or not, Rhiannon’s childbearing is celebrated as the Celtic Midwinter, or Solstice.
What’s intriguing about the mythology surrounding this medieval, pre-Christian tale are the handful of commonalities it shares with the Biblical birth story (there are key animal players, the child is considered sacred, his reappearance is cause for celebration) and also its ties to other prodigal-child myths, such as that of Persephone.
Here, Xpress recounts the legend of Rhiannon and her son Pryderi.
Rhiannon wins
It all began as a perfectly ordinary day. Rhiannon awoke in her palatial room, stretched, thought about goddess-y stuff, and then decided to haul her butt out of bed. Goddesses can’t be no-account lay-abouts, after all. So, she went to her closet, picked out one of her many resplendent golden gowns, fussed with her cascading mass of fiery curls, and decided to take a ride. Of all the goddess-y things that Rhiannon did on a daily basis, riding her lightning-fast horses was among her favorite.
Out across the Welsh landscape she raced, the wind barely able to keep up as Rhiannon’s gleaming white stallion carried her past sparkling lakes and over green passes. The goddess was planning on reaching the forest for a bit of bird watching (she liked birds nearly as well as horses), but before the tree line was in sight she happened upon a group of men.
The leader of these was Pwyll—she recognized him despite the speed at which she was riding. Rhiannon had no interest in being chatted up, but Pwyll caught sight of the woman on horseback, her golden gown scattering sunlight, and had to check her out.
“Go catch her and bring her back to me,” he told his horsemen, but no matter how fast they went, they were no match for Rhiannon. Finally, Pwyll realized that if he was to meet this beauty, he’d have to chase her himself. Still, Rhiannon wasn’t about to let any man outride her—that was, until Pwyll, tired from the race, swallowed his pride a bit and entreated her to stop. Because it was good manners, Rhiannon did. Besides, the adrenaline rush of the chase had her brain working overtime and she’d concocted a scheme.
See, the goddess was promised to a man called Gwawl whom she didn’t like one bit. He was coarse, rude, and his name had altogether too many confusing sounds. In contrast, Pwyll seemed a decent guy: far better marriage material. So, Rhiannon struck up a pact with her new beau. If he’d help her to trick nasty Gwawl into climbing into a magical sack, then she’d be free to become Mrs. Pwyll. And though it’s inadvisable to start a relationship with a criminal act, the goddess and her new man were instantly thick as thieves.
Rhiannon batted her eyes and suggested Gwawl come up and see her sometime. He immediately turned into a slobbering fool, practically tripping himself in his haste to get to her boudoir. There (of course) he was met with a club to the head. Pwyll and Rhiannon stuffed him into the sack and dumped him like an unwanted dog on the side of the road in the neighboring town, where he was wanted for spitting, jaywalking and disorderly conduct.
Free of her former intended, Rhiannon jumped into Pwyll’s arms and ... shortly thereafter she was complaining of swollen ankles and rubbing her very pregnant belly. Actually, cankles aside, it looked like things were going very well for the goddess. She had her baby—a healthy little boy—and passed out from the effort of childbirth, trusting her six ladies-in-waiting to look after the newborn.
Unfortunately, the girls were dumb as stumps and got all involved in some morsel of gossip. Gwawl, still smarting from Rhiannon’s snub, decided to get even by kidnapping her child. He managed to sneak in without anyone the wiser. When the ladies-in-waiting returned to their post, they saw the infant missing—but instead of sounding some alarm, they cooked up a plan to cover their own butts. One of them killed some poor furry critter and the rest smeared the blood around the sleeping goddess so that when she awoke, she’d be blamed for offing her own kid.
Rhiannon protested her innocence, but palace law was strict. Pwyll told her that, for seven years, she’d have to sit by the gate telling her story to anyone who’d listen. Then, adding insult to injury, she had to offer them a piggy-back ride to the court.
Meanwhile, Gwawl carried the baby off as far as the stables of one King Teyron. It was there that the cast-off suitor caught wind of a nasty diaper, or perhaps was scared by a sound. At any rate, he dropped the child and ran for the hills. It turned out Teyron’s mare had just given birth and he was checking on the horse, so there he found the newborn. The good king adopted the child and raised him for seven years.
Being of immortal stock, the baby grew exponentially, reaching adulthood by his seventh birthday. And on that day, the surrogate father looked at his foster child and realized he was the spitting image of Rhiannon and Pwyll. Being a noble man, he gave the boy a horse and sent him home to his real parents. On the day that Rhiannon’s punishment was over, her own child came riding through the palace gate, exonerating his mother. It was a joyous reunion, and to commemorate the occasion, Rhiannon named her kid Pryderi, which means “worry,” probably, because she’d been doing a lot of that very thing for seven long years.
With her worries behind her, the goddess settled in for a happily-ever-after. And indeed it was. For a while, at least.
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