Ceridwen or Cerridwen was an enchantress in Welsh medieval legend. She was the mother of a hideous son, Morfran, and a beautiful daughter, Creirwy. Her husband was Tegid Foel and they lived near Bala Lake in north Wales. Medieval Welsh poetry refers to her as possessing the cauldron of poetic inspiration and the Tale of Taliesin recounts her swallowing her servant Gwion Bach who is then reborn through her as the poet Taliesin. Ceridwen is regarded by many modern pagans as the Celtic goddess of rebirth, transformation, and inspiration.
Etymology
The earliest documented spelling of the name Kerdwin is Cyrridven, which occurs in the Black Book of Carmarthen. Sir Ifor Williams translates this name as "crooked woman", although the precise meaning of the stemscyrrid and cwrr is uncertain. Ben/ven means "woman" or "female". If wen is not a corruption of either of these, then it may derive from the adjective gwyn, meaning "fair", "beloved", "blessed", or "sacred". Wen is sometimes suffixed to the names of female saints. In 19th century literature and etymology the name Ket, Ked and variants were assumed to relate to the goddess Ceridwen.
Legend
According to the late medieval Tale of Taliesin, included in some modern editions of the Mabinogion, Ceridwen's son, Morfran, was hideously ugly – particularly compared with his beautiful sister Creirwy – so Ceridwen sought to make him wise in compensation. She made a potion in her magical cauldron to grant the gift of wisdom and poetic inspiration, also called Awen. The mixture had to be boiled for a year and a day. She set Morda, a blind man, to tend the fire beneath the cauldron, while Gwion Bach, a young boy, stirred the concoction. The first three drops of liquid from this potion gave wisdom; the rest was a fatal poison. Three hot drops spilled onto Gwion's thumb as he stirred, burning him. He instinctively put his thumb in his mouth, and gained the wisdom and knowledge Ceridwen had intended for her son. Realising that Ceridwen would be angry, Gwion fled. Ceridwen chased him. Using the powers of the potion he turned himself into a hare. She became a greyhound. He became a fish and jumped into a river. She transformed into an otter. He turned into a bird; she became a hawk. Finally, he turned into a single grain of corn. She then became a hen and, being a goddess, she found and ate him without trouble. But because of the potion he was not destroyed. When Ceridwen became pregnant, she knew it was Gwion and resolved to kill the child when he was born. However, when he was born, he was so beautiful that she could not do it. She threw him in the ocean instead, sewing him inside a leather-skin bag. The child did not die, but was rescued on a Welsh shore – near Aberdyfi according to most versions of the tale – by a prince named Elffin ap Gwyddno; the reborn infant grew to become the legendary bard Taliesin.
Later interpretations
It has been suggested that Ceridwen first appeared as a simple sorceress character in the Tale of Taliesin. Its earliest surviving text dates from the mid-16th century, but it appears from its language to be a 9th-century composition, according to Hutton. References to Ceridwen and her cauldron found in the work of the 12th century Gogynfeirdd or Poets of the Princes he thus considers later, derivative works. In them, according to Hutton, Ceridwen is transformed from a sorceress into a goddess of poetry. Citing this and a couple of other examples, Hutton proposes that the Gogynfeirdd substantially created a new mythology not reflective of earlier paganism. Nonetheless, references to Ceridwen's cauldron are also to be found in some of the early mythological poems attributed to the legendary Taliesin in the Book of Taliesin. The Victorian poet Thomas Love Peacock also wrote a poem entitled the Cauldron of Ceridwen. Later writers identified her as having originally been a pagan goddess, speculating on her role in a supposed Celtic pantheon. John Rhys in 1878 referred to the Solar Myth theory ofMax Müller according to which "Gwenhwyfar and Ceridwen are dawn goddesses." Charles Isaac Elton in 1882 referred to her as a "white fairy". Robert Graves later fitted her into his concept of the Threefold Goddess, in which she was interpreted as a form of the destructive side of the goddess. In Wicca, Ceridwen is a goddess of change and rebirth and transformation and her cauldron symbolizes knowledge and inspiration.
