Teyrnon Twrf Liant- Celtic FigureMortal"Lord of Gwent Is Coed"

The May Eve Vigil

Teyrnon Twrf Liant, Lord of Gwent Is Coed, possessed the finest mare in Britain, but each year on the eve of May (Calan Mai) the mare would foal and by morning the foal would vanish without trace. Year after year the pattern repeated, and no one could explain what took the foals or where they went.

Determined to solve the mystery, Teyrnon armed himself and kept watch in the stable on May Eve. The mare foaled a large, handsome colt, and as Teyrnon moved to tend it, a great clawed arm thrust through the window and seized the newborn. Teyrnon struck with his sword and severed the arm at the elbow. A terrible shriek sounded from outside, and when Teyrnon ran to the door, he could see nothing in the darkness. But on his threshold lay a swaddled infant boy, wrapped in silk.

The connection between the stolen foals and the abandoned child is never fully explained in the First Branch. The monstrous creature is not named or described further. The narrative presents the events as linked by the supernatural logic of the Mabinogi, where losses and restorations follow their own mysterious order.

The Foster-Son

Teyrnon and his wife took the child in and raised him as their own son. The boy grew with supernatural speed: by the age of one he was walking; by two he was as large as a six-year-old; by four he was bargaining with the grooms to be allowed to tend the horses. Teyrnon gave him the colt that had been born on the same night, binding the fates of child and horse together.

As the boy grew, Teyrnon and his wife noticed his increasing resemblance to Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed. They had heard that Pwyll and Rhiannon's infant son had been stolen from his cradle on the night of his birth, and that Rhiannon had been falsely accused of killing the child and sentenced to carry visitors on her back at the mounting block of Arberth.

The Return to Dyfed

Recognizing that their foster-son was almost certainly the lost heir of Dyfed, Teyrnon and his wife made the painful decision to return him. They traveled to Pwyll's court at Arberth and presented the boy. The resemblance to Pwyll was immediately recognized by the court, and Rhiannon was freed from her punishment at last.

Rhiannon named the child Pryderi, from her exclamation "Pryder" (anxiety or care), marking the end of her years of suffering. Teyrnon was honored as the boy's foster-father and maintained a close bond with Pryderi. His role in the First Branch is that of the good lord who does the right thing at personal cost, surrendering a beloved child when duty and justice demand it. The narrative praises him without reservation, a rarity in the morally complex world of the Mabinogi.