![]() ![]() This is the setting of Alan Garner's novel The Owl Service, adapted for TV by the author in 1969. Blodeuwedd's punishment for infidelity and murder (and it's only one more incident in a tale soaked from the start in blood, murder and rape) is to become an owl, forever. Gronw hides behind a stone, but Lleu hurls his spear with such force it makes a neat hole through the stone and breaks Gronw's back, killing him. ![]() ![]() The magician Gwydion restores him to life. She convinces Gronw to kill Lleu with a poisoned spear, but Lleu shrugs off the dying, poisoned flesh and becomes an eagle. But Blodeuwedd is unfaithful, falling in love with Gronw Pebyr of Penllyn. The story of Math Son of Mathonwy, fourth branch of the Mabinogion ends with an account of how Lleu Llaw Gyffes, cursed by his mother Arianrhod to have no human wife, marries Blodeuwedd, who the magician-king Math 1 made from flowers. Here is a service of plates with a floral design reminiscent of owls. It writes itself into the story of the community, and it's always the tragedies that seem to cling the tightest to the land, wrapping themselves around the remnants of something very old. The thing about mythology, or at any rate the mythology of place, is that it is cyclic, is that it is doomed to repeat itself, over and over. She wants to be flowers, but you made her owls. ![]()
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