A To Z Blogging Challenge 2020: O Is For ... Olwen!

O is for Olwen. The name means “white tracks” because wherever she goes, white trefoils  spring up behind her. 

White clover. Creative Commons.

Olwen is the amazingly beautiful daughter of an amazingly ugly giant, Yspaddaden. She appears in Culhwch And Olwen, which I have mentioned in my C post, as the love interest for the young prince Culhwch, whose stepmother has put a curse on him, that he will never have a wife unless it is Olwen. Upon hearing this curse, the boy immediately falls in love with a girl he has never met, a bit like  Tamino and Pamina in The Magic Flute...

The lady must have decided on this girl because she knows how unlikely Culhwch is to win her. Her father has set about thirty-nine impossible tasks to win her hand in marriage, for the very good reason that he knows that when she marries he will die. For some reason, unlike in the fairy tales, he hasn’t locked her in a tower, so when Culhwch and his companions arrive near his castle she is able to come out and meet them. 

Olwen and Culhwch. Public Domain.

She turns out to have been worth the wait. There is a detailed description of Olwen on her approach, from her red-gold clothes to her skin, white as snow, soft as - well, you get the point. Personally, I’d be thinking anyone that white would be leprous, but when the story was written, in Europe, White was Wonderful.

Olwen is not dumb, either. Despite not being locked up in a tower and needing rescue, she doesn’t simply run off with Culhwch. She tells him that if he wants her, he has to speak to her father. Which, of course, means doing all the tasks he will be set. 

Maybe this is why she hasn’t been locked away. She must be pretty fed up with the whole situation, but she is prepared to follow the rules. 

The story of a maiden who has to be won via apparently impossible tasks, or  seemingly impossible tasks given to a girl who wants to get back her lost husband, such as Cupid And Psyche or East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon,  is not unusual. There is even one mentioned in Culhwch And Olwen, the story of Creiddylad and her two suitors, who have to fight for her every first day of May till the end of the world. The winner then gets the girl. Now, she must be really annoyed! 

It does sound downright mythological, doesn’t it? And it has been suggested that Olwen might also have started as a solar goddess. 

It’s entirely possible. She turns up in another story, as an otherworldly being who becomes the mother of the bard Taliesin. Taliesin has his own lot of wonder stories. 

While Olwen isn’t in much modern fiction, Terry Pratchett’s heroine Tiffany Aching finds flowers sprouting wherever she walks, when she unintentionally takes the place of the Summer Lady in the novel Wintersmith. Terry Pratchett knew his folklore and made good use of it in his Discworld novels. Wintersmith especially uses quite a lot of folklore and myth, including going to the Underworld to bring back the real Summer Lady. 

Is Olwen a Summer Lady? Whatever she is, Olwen is, I believe, more than just another princess needing to be won by the hero. Who, incidentally, doesn’t do many of those bride-winning tasks in this story, but leaves it to his Arthurian superhero companions! 

What do you think?