Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/514

498 Rhiannon daughter of Hyveiᵭ the Old, and when they had lived together two years without any issue, the nobles of the land began in the third year to demand that he should choose another wife that he might have an heir. He persuaded them to wait another year, in the course of which a son was born to Rhiannon. But the night he was born his mother slept, and so did the six nurses who had been engaged to watch, and when they woke in the morning the boy was nowhere to be found, for it was the eve of the Calends of May, when all evil spirits and uncanny things roam at large. The nurses, to avoid being burnt alive for their negligence, conspired to swear that Rhiannon had devoured her son, so they smeared her face with the blood of some puppies they found in the house. This could not be concealed, and it went forth to the country that Rhiannon had destroyed her own baby, and the nobles again wanted Pwyỻ to put her away; but he replied that they could not demand this, unless she continued without offspring, which was not the case, and that if she had done wrong she should be punished. Rhiannon sent for doctors and wise men, so that rather than contend with the lying nurses she might undergo penance. The penance fixed was, that she should remain for seven years sitting daily by the horse-block near the gate, that she should tell her story to every one who came or was thought by her to be ignorant of it, and that she was to offer to all guests and strangers to carry each of them on her back to the hall: it was, of course, a rare thing for anybody to accept such an offer. This was at a place called Arberth, in the present county of Cardigan, where Pwyỻ held his court. At that time, Nether Gwent,