How Culhwch won Olwen - The Tale of Twrch Trwyth

The nation prayed they would be blessed with a son, but when Goleuddydd fell pregnant a fog fell on her mind and she was driven mad, refusing to enter any house until the time was near.

One day she was in the forest and came across a swineherd and his pigs. Such was her fear of the animals that she went into labour and gave birth to a son.

The boy was named Culhwch because he had been born in a pigsty and he was first cousin to King Arthur.

Goleuddydd’s illness worsened and Culhwch was sent out to be nursed soon after birth.

Knowing that her fate was sealed and fearing Kilydd would disinherit his son when he remarried, Goleuddydd called her husband to her bedside.

“I shall die soon and you shall take another wife,” she told him, “but do not take another until you see a two-headed thorn growing on my grave.”

Kilydd agreed, but Goleuddydd was wily and once her husband had departed she ordered her most loyal servant to tend her grave each day and ensure that nothing grew.

Each morning after Goleuddydd died, the servant secretly carried out his lady’s wishes.

Each afternoon, Kilydd sent a boy to the grave to see what grew there.

For seven long years the ritual continued and Culhwch remained with his nursemaid, but eventually the servant neglected his promise and wild plants began to grow.

With thorns flourishing on Goleuddydd’s grave, Kilydd killed King Doged and took his wife to be his own.

Culhwch was summoned to meet his new stepmother who told him he must take one of her daughters as his wife.

When the boy said he was too young to wed his stepmother grew angry.

“I swear this destiny upon you,” she told him. “You shall never touch a woman until you win the hand of Olwen, daughter of the chief giant Ysbaddaden.”

Despite his tender years, Culhwch’s heart was filled with love for this girl he had never seen.

He spoke with his father who told him he must visit his cousin, Arthur, and have his hair trimmed by the king himself before asking Ysbaddaden for his daughter’s hand.

So Culhwch journeyed to King Arthur’s court where a great host of knights and lords were gathered, and the chieftain of all Britain cut the boy’s hair with silver-handled scissors and a comb of purest gold.

Arthur sent out his knights to discover the whereabouts of fair Olwen, of whom he had not heard, but a whole year passed and the knights returned no wiser than when they had departed.

So Arthur, his knights and the boy set out together and eventually they reached a great plain where stood the strongest fortress that any had beheld.

On the plain, a shepherd tended a flock without beginning or end and he welcomed Arthur’s retinue for he had been cursed by Ysbaddaden.

He told them that no man who dared ask for Olwen’s hand had survived Ysbaddaden’s fury, but that the princess visited his wife each week and left a ring of gold.

Culhwch asked the shepherd’s wife to contact Olwen and ask that she might visit.

When Olwen came, his love for her grew even stronger, but she warned that Ysbaddaden would never let her marry as he would die the day she wed.

When Olwen returned to her father’s fortress, Culhwch, Arthur and the knights followed, killing nine gatekeepers before entering the hall.

Eventually they were confronted by the chief giant who vowed to let Culhwch marry Olwen, but only after the boy completed 39 impossible challenges, all of which he must prove by collecting some unique object.

To each of the giant’s tasks, Culhwch repled: “That will be easy for me, though you think otherwise.”

And so Ysbaddaden made each challenge more difficult than the last.

He told them that for his daughter’s wedding day he would need his hair and beard trimmed.

“In all the world there is no comb or shears that can cut my tangled hair save for those that lie between the ears of Twrch Trwyth, son of Taredd, and he will not give them of his own free will,” the giant king warned.

And so, after completing many of the tasks he had been set, Culhwch asked Arthur to hunt Twrch Trwyth – who had once been a king but whom God had turned into a boar as punishment for his sins.

Arthur gathered around him all the knights of Britain, France and the southern countries and began to hunt the fearsome Twrch Trwyth in Ireland, where he and has his piglet sons lived.

They fought for two days and nights, destroying one fifth of the country, but the knights could not overcome Twrch Trwyth.

Then King Arthur singlehandedly fought the boar for nine days and nights, but still could not claim the comb and shears.

Instead Twrch Trwyth escaped and made for Wales to cause “the greatest damage”.

Arthur and his men followed the trail of death and devastation the boar left in his wake across South Wales.

Each time a party of the knights grew close, Twrch Trwyth would fight and kill them until at last Arthur himself drew level with the boar and chased him to the top of Betws mountain and down into the Amman Valley.

The battle raged and knights and piglets fought to the death, but still Arthur and his men could not retrieve the comb and shears for Culhwch.

With only his sons Grugyn Silver Bristle and Llwydawg the Killer still alive, Twrch Trwyth fought with Arthur’s knights all along the valley and up towards the Towy and back again along the Amman’s banks.

Grugyn and Llwydawg were slain in battle and Twrch Trwyth ran east until the hunters and the hunted reached a great river where one of the knights pulled the shears from between the boar’s ears, but he could not grasp the comb.

Arthur’s men chased Twrch Trwyth to Cornwall where at last they got the comb and drove the enchanted boar into the sea.

And so Culhwch took the comb, the shears and the other treasures he had gathered back to Ysbaddaden’s fortress and presented them to the giant chief, who handed over his daughter for her marriage.

And that is how Culhwch won Olwen for his wife.