Math Son of Mathonwy and the Foot-holder

The king of Gwynedd must keep his feet in a virgin’s lap whenever he is not at war.

This is Math’s condition: a consequence of his nature, or a geis placed at his birth, or simply the way things are for Math Son of Mathonwy. He sits in his hall with his feet in the lap of Goewin, who is the finest maiden in Wales, and she holds his feet and he governs his kingdom. This arrangement is the prerequisite of his survival.

His nephews — the magician Gwydion and his brother Gilfaethwy — have a problem. Gilfaethwy has become infatuated with Goewin. She cannot be approached while Math lives, because approaching her would require removing Math’s feet from her lap, and removing them outside of wartime would kill the king. There is, therefore, no way to reach Goewin without starting a war.

Gwydion starts a war.

He fabricates a diplomatic crisis with Pryderi of Dyfed — using a magic transformation to create livestock from fungus, presenting it as a genuine trade, and then allowing the fungus-animals to dissolve into mushrooms after Pryderi has exchanged his genuine pigs for them. Pryderi, understanding the trick, pursues into battle. Math goes to war.

While Math is away, Gilfaethwy reaches Goewin.

Math returns from the war. He finds out. The story is very plain about what happened and also very plain about what Math understands: the war was manufactured to remove him, the foot-holder was assaulted, the whole elaborate structure of his kingship was violated as a means to an end. Goewin tells him herself.

Math does two things immediately: he marries Goewin, restoring her honor and her position. And he summons his nephews.

The punishment he pronounces is both terrible and precise. He strikes them with his wand and transforms them into animals. They will live three years as mated pairs of deer, then three years as boars, then three years as wolves — switching sex each year so that each brother must be both the male who does and the female who receives, alternating who holds power and who does not, bearing each other’s offspring as the year requires.

At the end of three years each returns to human form carrying the specific knowledge of what it meant to be the one without the power, to be the one to whom things are done.

Gwydion and Gilfaethwy stand in Math’s hall after nine years, two men who have been six different animals and each other’s mates and the parents of six children between them. Math looks at them and then at the three deer-boar-wolf offspring, who become fully human. He accepts the returned nephews back into his household.

The punishment was not vengeance. It was education in the curriculum their crime required. Math, who has spent his life with his feet in a woman’s lap, has an unusually clear understanding of what it means to depend on another person’s body for your own survival, and what it costs when that dependence is violated.

He chooses a new foot-holder. Her name is Arianrhod, Gwydion’s niece. This choice will create an entirely new set of disasters, which is the way the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi works: each resolution contains the seed of the next complication.