Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/503

Rh Prince Kelyᵭon, with the latter word taken as the equivalent of a Caledo, in the sense of one of the Caledones or Caledonians; but there is no evidence for the existence of either Caledo or Kelyᵭon as a masculine singular. So it is preferable to treat Kelyᵭon Wledig as an archaism for Gwledig Kelyᵭon, which would mean Prince of Caledonians or of Caledonia. The story is chiefly interesting as a kind of parallel to Cúchulainn wooing and marrying Emer, daughter of Forgall king of Lochlann, as will be seen from the following abstract of it. Previous to the birth of Kulhwch, his mother lost her senses, and wandered Leto-like on the mountains: it was the fright caused her by a herd of swine that was the immediate cause of her being delivered. The swine-herd took the baby to his father's court, where men called him Kulhwch, or Him of the Pig-sty, because he had been found in a pig-sty. He was nevertheless noble; and when he was yet a stripling, his father, who had been for some time a widower, married a woman who had a daughter of her own. The step-mother wished Kulhwch to marry her daughter, but he excused himself on the score of his youth, whereupon the mother was much angered, and swore him a 'destiny' that he was to have no woman to wife but Olwen the daughter of Yspyᵭaden Pencawr, or Hawthorn Head-giant. The step-mother had every reason to believe that uncanny father likely to put an end to Kulhwch's life as soon as he came to him with a request for his daughter's hand; for it was known to her that no suitor ever returned from Yspyᵭaden's castle, as its giant-owner was to lose his life the day his daughter married. Kulhwch told his father what his step-mother had said as to his marrying