Britain and Blodeuedd

Dr. Shân Morgain

Only 18.5% of citizens in the Cymru identified as ‘British’ (2021 census). 9% identified as ‘English’. Seems like there’s a healthy whomping majority of 73% think as Welsh ahead of being ‘British’. Yma o Hyd!

In the halls of power over there on the right there has been concern for some time that ‘being British’ is not respected as it should be (or as they want it to be). Enter Blodeuedd to inspire us to feel ‘British’.

Gordon Brown when Chancellor in 2007, speaking at the Commonwealth Club London, made a valiant attempt to make ‘Britishness’ a matter of shared values. He asked

‘whether all the different countries of the union – Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland – all want to stay together, part of the union’.

He thought we did, claiming ‘I think Britain can lay claim to the idea of liberty.’

No comment.

Shiny, modern, exciting

We now have a generation of disaffected citizens of whom almost half say openly they know political parties lie and betray us.

Young men in particular are disillusioned because being white, male and ‘British’ no longer means privilege. For the uppers yes, but for lower class males they can’t even rely on bullying and abusing ‘their’ females. Shock!

A flurry of new projects has developed from ‘Circles’ (well-meaning, mature male mentors), ‘Prevent’ (surveillance catching angry young males to ‘educate’ them before they get violent), to building four new prisons to shut protest away.

The latest to persuade us that being British is shiny, modern, exciting and wonderful is a new set of eight first class stamps. Has anyone mentioned that native tradition long ago narrated a united Britain under one high-king? Thought not.

Anyway these dinky stamps only £13.20 the set of eight (£1.85 each) are illustrated with regional legends to make us all feel part of the British happy family. The artist is the suitably eminent Adam Simpson.

The series offers the Loch Ness Monster, Cornish Piskies, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Black Shuck, Beowulf & Grendel, Grindylow, a Selkie – and Blodeuedd.

Ambiguity

I guess Nessie is the most innocuous, never having hurt anyone, and affording loads of fun to her believers as a cousin of Schrödinger’s Cat. That is, she is up there in Alba but there again she isn’t.

Cornish Piskies down in Kernow are also ambiguous, but their other side is dangerous for they lead strangers astray on dark nights. Considering bogs and crags that could mean injury or death. Reminds me of our Tylwyth’s sense of humour.

Fionn mac Cumhaill is an odd choice (supposedly Northern Ireland). He’s a freedom fighter, leader of the formidable Fianna – who guard Eire from invasion by the likes of the English and their ‘Royal Mail’.

Fionn also roots back to the fraudulent manuscript ‘Ossian’. Again there but not there.

Black Shuck represents my childhood land of Anglia, an awesomely huge, black hound who can be friendly but can omen death. Another double wham.

A friend of mine got into trouble walking home over there with his black dog, both drunkenly howling at the moon. Neighbours did not take to it.

Beowulf and Grendel is a major claim to fame by the English, a hero literature with a doom-gifting mother-monster. Not a feminist tale. Except the famed Beowulf is not English but Danish. Hmm, bit more research chaps and chapesses at the Royal Mail?

Grindylow derives from Grendel, hails from Lancaster, and with sharp claws and teeth drags children into ponds to drown. Now that’s a real inspiration for local pride.

Selkie are beautiful, seductive seal-ladies from Alba and northern parts who entrance human males. The only way to make a Selkie stay at home with you is steal her sealskin, making her unhappy and trapped. An ugly, coerced marriage.

A good choice?

Finally the Cymry. We get Blodeuedd from the Mabinogi, entrancingly beautiful like Grendel’s Mama in a good mood, or a Selkie before she becomes a prisoner. Blodeuedd is a common selection to blazon out how intriguingly wonderful is the Mabinogi: She’s the ‘woman made of flowers’.

Yes but what flowers? All but one come from poisonous plants, and the farming audience of the original Mabinogi would know that right away. A warning.

Blodeuedd is false, a synthetic doll constructed to serve the bed of young hero Lleu. The two magicians who constructed her had publicly shamed and humiliated Lleu’s pregnant mother. So she rejected the (possibly incestuous) child and cursed him, banning any human wife.

Blodeuedd is a creature of raw sex who has no choice about her marriage. She makes what little bid for freedom she can by transferring her body to another lover. Who grooms her to murder her husband when he stands on a billy-goat I kid you not.

The husband survives and Blodeuedd in her turn is cursed to become an owl, supposedly a dreadful fate.

Yet owls are excellent hunters, loyal partners, efficient mothers, and famed as wisdom bringers. A step up for Blodeuedd perhaps?

She’s popular in poetry as a seductive sex doll is likely to be. But there are more interesting interpretations. In one, Blodeuedd the trapped wife dreams of her former green life, at one with nature. In another she declares owl life, flying free is far superior to mere humanity.

Is this mainly sex-doll robot created and possessed by males, what we want to represent the Cymru? Perhaps I should not complain as the rest of the series don’t rank high as inspiration either.

Given the choice I could propose Rhiannon and her wondrous pale horse, or Bendigeidfran protecting Britain with his ever-living Head. But Rhiannon is a tad strong-minded for the English and Bendigeidfran was protecting us from them anyway.

Plus I don’t want to contribute to any propaganda to sell the idea of Britishness. I’m definitely in that 73% who identify as Cymry.

Note. She was named/ baptised ‘Blodeuedd’ and is called Blodeuedd a number of times until right at the end of her tale when Gwydion transforms her into Blodeuwedd/an Owl.