Welsh mythical figure features in new set of Royal Mail stamps

Stephen Price

As well as Blodeuwedd, further images in the eight stamps feature Beowulf and Grendel, the Loch Ness Monster, Cornish piskies, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Black Shuck, a grindylow and a selkie.

The stamps were illustrated by London-based artist Adam Simpson.

David Gold, director of external affairs and policy at Royal Mail, said: “For some parts of the UK, local myths and legends are as much a part of their identity as the local landmarks and architecture.

“These beautifully illustrated stamps celebrate a fascinating aspect of British culture and custom.”

Blodeuwedd

Blodeuwedd (meaning “Flower-Faced” -a composite name from blodau “flowers” and gwedd “face”) is married to Lleu Llaw Gyffes in Welsh mythology.

She was made from the flowers of broom, meadowsweet and oak by the magicians Math and Gwydion, and is a central figure in Math fab Mathonwy, the last of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi.

The hero Lleu Llaw Gyffes has been placed under a tynged (“doom”) by his mother, Arianrhod, that he may never have a human wife.

To counteract this curse, the magicians Math and Gwydion:

[take] the flowers of the oak, and the flowers of the broom, and the flowers of the meadowsweet, and from those they conjured up the fairest and most beautiful maiden anyone had ever seen. And they baptised her in the way that they did at that time, and named her Blodeuwedd.

The narrative adds:

“Blodeuwedd” means “owl” in the language of today. And it is because of that there is hostility between birds and owls, and the owl is still known as “Blodeuwedd”.

The Owl Service

With a rise in interest in Welsh folklore and mythology, Blodeuwedd’s popularity is on the up – something in no small part due to Alan Garner’s classic novel, The Owl Service – a favourite of many to this day, including Liz Saville Roberts who previously shared her love for the novel and its importance in sparking her love of Wales.

Writing in the Sunday Times, she shared: “The reason why I learnt Welsh is a story about books. Bookishness is a family trait: my great-uncle wrote a series of stories for young adults, and my father’s parents kept bookshops. He would read Tolkein aloud to me. And then I discovered Alan Garner, whose The Weirdstone of Brisingamen led to Elidor, and then to The Owl Service.”

Liz Saville Roberts added: “I owe a debt of gratitude to Alan Garner, although I cannot read The Owl Service without cringing at the recollection of my teenage self, who found it both inspirational and terrifying. Garner centred the action of his 1967 novel in Bryn Hall, Llanymawddwy, Meirionnydd.

“It involves the interplay of three young people – two English incomers spending the summer in a grand holiday home and the Welsh-speaking son of the local housekeeper – caught up as unwilling actors recreating the tragic love triangle of the last book of the Mabinogi. At his best, Garner gathers up the threads of Celtic mythology, and remakes them into stories that haunt their modern landscapes.

“This was the story that drew me in. Then my father bought me the Everyman’s Library edition of The Mabinogion, translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, for my fifteenth birthday. And that is what caught me fast: I went to University of Wales, Aberystwyth to follow Celtic Studies, which entailed learning Welsh and Irish, and, by the second year, writing faltering, error-ridden essays in Welsh.”

The power of books, and an enduring tale for the ages.