Math fab Mathonwy

One story from the Mabinogion. Taken beyond the dragon.

When I created Emrys: The Great Welsh Dragon, I explored the stories of the Mabinogion as part of the mythology running through the sculpture.

But one of those stories wouldn't leave me alone.

Math fab Mathonwy — the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi.

Of all the tales I researched for Emrys, this was the one I wanted to take further. It had a wonderfully sinister undertow. Deception, punishment, sexual violence, revenge, manipulation, magic and transformation run right through it. Men are turned into animals. A woman is made from flowers to become somebody's wife. A husband is betrayed and transformed into an eagle. And finally, the woman created from flowers is transformed into an owl.

It was dark, strange and visually loaded.

In other words, it suited my aesthetic perfectly.

So I took the story out of Emrys and gave it room to become something in its own right.

Rather than illustrating one scene, I built the narrative into the sculpture. The story begins across a carved map of Wales before climbing into the painted panels, with the characters, transformations and consequences unfolding as you travel around it.

Originally, I would have loved to do this with all eleven stories of the Mabinogion.

And part of me still would.

The problem is rather practical: where the hell would I put them?

Each story would inevitably take on a life of its own. They wouldn't be small pieces. Once I started researching, sketching and pulling apart the symbolism, I know exactly what would happen — one sculpture would become another, and another, until I had an entire sculptural Mabinogion and nowhere left to walk.

Realistically, creating all eleven at this level would probably become a three-year project.

It is the sort of project I would need to be commissioned to undertake, with somewhere for the completed collection to live afterwards.

Now that would be a project.

For the moment, Math fab Mathonwy stands alone — one dark, extraordinary Welsh tale pulled from the mythology inside Emrys and allowed to become its own world.

Don't just look at it. Read it.

Complete Math fab Mathonwy mixed-media sculpture by Welsh artist Julia O’Sullivan, telling the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi through a carved map of Wales and narrative painted panels.

Math fab Mathonwy — A Welsh Legend in Sculpture

The completed Math fab Mathonwy sculpture brings the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi into one continuous piece of narrative art.

The story begins beneath the sculpture on a carved map of Wales before travelling upwards through the painted panels. Gwydion’s deception, Math’s punishment, Arianrhod’s curses, the creation of Blodeuedd, Lleu’s betrayal and his transformation into an eagle all become part of the structure.

I did not want to illustrate a single moment from the legend. I wanted to build the story itself — something you could walk around, follow and read.

The tale also appears in my book Emrys: The Great Welsh Dragon Odyssey, where I retold the Fourth Branch in rhyme. Here, those words become images.

Carved map of Wales forming the base of Julia O’Sullivan’s Math fab Mathonwy sculpture, showing castles, pigs, a mushroom, magical horses and greyhounds from Gwydion’s deception of Pryderi.

The Deception That Starts Everything

The story begins at the base.

Gilfaethwy desires Goewin, the young woman who attends Math, but Math will not leave her. So his brother Gwydion devises a deception that will draw Math away from his court.

The carved map follows the brothers south to the kingdom of Pryderi, where Gwydion asks for his prized pigs.

When Pryderi cannot simply give them away, Gwydion uses magic. From a decaying toadstool he conjures magnificent horses and greyhounds and offers them in exchange. By the time the illusion disappears, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy are already heading north with the pigs.

Pryderi pursues them. Math is drawn into war.

And that was exactly what Gwydion intended.

While Math is away, Gilfaethwy returns to the court and assaults Goewin.

The castles, route, pigs, mushroom, horses and greyhounds carved into the map are therefore not decoration. They show the deception travelling physically across Wales — and setting everything above it in motion.

Painted panel from Math fab Mathonwy showing Math with Goewin at his feet as Gwydion and Gilfaethwy face punishment and magical transformation for their actions.

Math’s Judgement — The Brothers Are Punished

The deception has had terrible consequences.

Pryderi is dead. Men have been lost in the fighting. Goewin has been assaulted while Math was away.

When Gwydion and Gilfaethwy finally return, Math summons them to answer for what they have done.

I placed Goewin at Math’s feet because she is the reason this judgement is taking place. Behind him stand the two brothers, about to discover that Math’s punishment will force them into lives very different from their own.

He raises his wand and transforms them.

For three years they must live as mating pairs of animals — changing sex as well as species — and each year they return to Math with the offspring they have produced.

Their punishment has begun.

After their punishment the next part of the story play out:
Gwydion and Gilfaethwy return to human form, but Math now requires another maiden to attend him.

They suggest their sister Arianrhod.

She claims to be a virgin.

Math places his wand upon the floor and tells her to step across it as a test. As she does, a child falls from her.

Humiliated, Arianrhod runs from the room.

Gwydion takes the child and raises him, but Arianrhod’s anger will follow her son. When he eventually comes before her, she refuses even to give him a name.

The child who entered the world beside Math’s wand is about to become the centre of another battle of magic and wills.

Painted panel showing Gwydion and Gilfaethwy transformed by Math into a stag and hind during the first year of their punishment in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi.

First Transformation — Stag and Hind

For the first year, Math transforms Gwydion into a stag and Gilfaethwy into a hind and sends them into the wild together.

A year later they return with a young fawn.

Math takes the animal child, touches it with his wand and changes it into a human boy named Hyddwn.

But the brothers’ punishment is far from finished.

Math changes their forms again and sends them back into the wild.

Painted panel showing Gwydion and Gilfaethwy as wolves during the third and final year of Math’s punishment, completing their three magical animal transformations.

Third Transformation — The Wolves

For their third and final year of punishment, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy become wolves.

Once more they return with a child, and Math changes the wolf cub into the boy Bleiddwn.

Three years. Three transformations. Three children.

At last Math raises his wand and restores Gwydion and Gilfaethwy to human form.

Their punishment is over.

But in the Mabinogi, one story rarely ends without beginning another.

Math now needs a new maiden to attend him — and Gwydion suggests his sister, Arianrhod.

That decision opens the next chapter of the sculpture.

Painted panel showing Gwydion’s shoemaker trick in which Arianrhod unknowingly names her son Lleu Llaw Gyffes after seeing his skill striking a wren.

The First Curse Broken — Lleu Gets His Name

Arianrhod declares that her son will have no name unless she gives it to him.

Gwydion responds in the way he always does: not by breaking the rules, but by finding a way around them.

He disguises himself and the boy as shoemakers and creates a magical ship. They make shoes for Arianrhod — first too large, then too small — until she is forced to come to them to have her foot measured.

While she is there, a wren appears.

The boy strikes it with extraordinary skill and Arianrhod unknowingly remarks upon his fair appearance and deft hand.

She has done exactly what she swore she would not do.

She has named him.

Lleu Llaw Gyffes.

Painted Math fab Mathonwy panel showing Arianrhod unknowingly arming Lleu after Gwydion creates the magical illusion of an approaching army.

The Second Curse Broken — Lleu Is Armed

Furious that Gwydion has tricked her into naming Lleu, Arianrhod places another restriction upon her son.

He shall never bear arms unless she herself gives them to him.

So Gwydion tricks her again.

Disguised as travelling bards, Gwydion and Lleu arrive at her court. During the night Gwydion uses magic to create the sounds of an approaching army.

Believing her court is under attack, Arianrhod brings out weapons and armour.

And she arms Lleu herself.

The illusion disappears.

There is no invading army.

Once again, Gwydion has obeyed the exact words of Arianrhod’s restriction while completely defeating its purpose.

Now her anger produces a third and far more difficult curse.

Lleu shall never have a wife from any race upon the earth.

Painted panel showing Math and Gwydion using magic to create Blodeuedd from oak, broom and meadowsweet flowers as a wife for Lleu Llaw Gyffes.

A Woman Made from Flowers

Arianrhod’s final restriction appears impossible.

If Lleu cannot marry a woman from any race living upon the earth, then Math and Gwydion decide they will create someone who belongs to no human race at all.

Using their magic, they gather flowers of oak, broom and meadowsweet.

From them they fashion a woman.

Blodeuedd.

She is beautiful, extraordinary — and created for one purpose: to become Lleu’s wife.

But this is where the story becomes far more complicated than a simple magical romance.

Blodeuedd has not chosen Lleu.

She has not chosen marriage.

She has not even chosen to exist.

Math and Gwydion have defeated Arianrhod’s curse, but in doing so they have created a woman whose life has already been decided for her.

And Blodeuedd is about to make a choice of her own.

Painted panel showing Blodeuedd and Gronw falling in love and beginning the plot to discover how her husband Lleu can be killed.

Blodeuedd Meets Gronw — The Betrayal Begins

While Lleu is away visiting Math, a hunting party passes Blodeuedd’s home.

Their leader is Gronw Pebr.

Blodeuedd invites the hunters inside, and when she and Gronw see one another they fall in love.

Their affair creates another problem.

If they are to be together, Lleu must be removed.

But Lleu cannot be killed in any ordinary way.

Blodeuedd therefore begins questioning her husband, pretending that she fears for his safety. Trusting her concern, Lleu reveals the extraordinary circumstances under which he can die.

A spear must be made over the course of a year.

And Lleu must be standing in an almost impossible position — with one foot upon a goat and the other beside a bath.

Blodeuedd passes the secret to Gronw.

For an entire year, he prepares the spear.

The spear is ready.

Now Blodeuedd needs only to manoeuvre Lleu into the position he described.

She asks him to demonstrate how anyone could possibly stand with one foot upon a goat and the other beside a bath.

Lleu obliges.

Gronw is waiting.

He throws the spear and strikes Lleu.

But Lleu does not die.

At the moment he is wounded, his body changes.

He becomes an eagle and flies away, disappearing into the sky.

Blodeuedd and Gronw believe they have succeeded and take possession of Lleu’s lands.

But transformation has saved him.

Somewhere in Wales, the eagle still lives.

Painted Math fab Mathonwy panel showing Gwydion finding the wounded Lleu transformed into an eagle high in an oak tree after following a sow into the Nantlleu valley.

Gwydion Finds Lleu

When Math and Gwydion discover that Lleu has vanished, Gwydion begins searching for him.

Eventually he hears of a strange sow that disappears every morning and returns each evening.

He follows her.

She leads him into the Nantlleu valley and stops beneath an oak tree, where she begins eating what is falling from its branches.

Gwydion looks up.

High in the tree sits a wounded eagle.

Its body is wasting away. Rotten flesh and maggots fall from it to the ground below.

But Gwydion recognises what others would see only as a dying bird.

It is Lleu.

He begins to sing to him, coaxing him slowly down through the branches.

The search is over.

Now the magic that transformed Lleu must be reversed.

Final painted panel of Julia O’Sullivan’s Math fab Mathonwy sculpture showing Gwydion using magic to transform Blodeuedd into an owl as punishment for betraying Lleu.

The Final Transformation — Blodeuedd Becomes an Owl

Gwydion brings the wounded eagle down from the oak and restores Lleu to human form.

After a year of care, Lleu recovers and returns with Math’s men to reclaim his land.

Blodeuedd flees.

Gwydion eventually finds her and decides that he will not kill her.

Instead, he transforms her.

The woman who was once fashioned from flowers becomes an owl, condemned to live by night and to be shunned by the other birds.

And this is where I leave her.

Because Blodeuedd has never seemed to me to be a simple villain.

She betrayed Lleu. She discovered the secret of how he could be killed and helped Gronw carry out the attack.

But before any of that happened, Math and Gwydion created her for somebody else. She was made to be Lleu’s wife without being asked whether she wanted that life at all.

The Fourth Branch is filled with transformations — men into animals, flowers into a woman, a man into an eagle and finally a woman into an owl.

But beneath all that magic lies something far more human:

what happens when people decide they have the right to control somebody else’s life.

FROM WORDS TO SOMETHING YOU CAN WALK AROUND

What fascinated me most about creating Math fab Mathonwy was finding a way to turn a story told in words into something that could be physically explored.

The map, the paintings, the structure and the sculpture all have a job to do. Nothing is there simply to fill a space. One scene leads to another, characters change, consequences travel forward and the story gradually reveals itself as you move around the piece.

That is what I love about narrative art.

I don't want to give you one beautiful image and tell you what it means.

I want to give you clues.

I want you to notice something you missed the first time. To wonder why something is there. To follow one image into another and gradually realise that you are not simply looking at a piece of art.

You are reading it.

And if Math fab Mathonwy sends you back to the Mabinogion wanting to know more about these wonderfully strange old Welsh stories, then it has done exactly what I wanted it to do.

DON'T JUST LOOK AT THE ART. READ IT.

READ THE STORY BEHIND EMRYS

Math fab Mathonwy grew from the research behind Emrys: The Great Welsh Dragon, my 2.8-metre sculpture exploring the history, mythology, industry and identity of Wales.

The full journey — including my rhyming retelling of the Mabinogion — continues in my book:

Jupigio-Artwork-Gallery

Rare - Unusual - Unforgettable

Math fab Mathonwy

One story from the Mabinogion. Taken beyond the dragon.

FROM WORDS TO SOMETHING YOU CAN WALK AROUND

READ THE STORY BEHIND EMRYS