Cerridwen

Ceridwen or Cerridwen ( Ke-RID-wen) 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 Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake) in north Wales. Medieval Welsh poetry refers to her as possessing the cauldron of poetic inspiration (Awen) 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== Marged Haycock catalogues various forms of the name in the early texts, and in less detail in her edition of the Taliesin poems. These mainly occur in manuscripts which have been dated to the 13th century, though they may, of course, be using earlier forms or 13th century adaptations of earlier forms. The Black Book of Carmarthen gives ‘’. Peniarth 3 gives ‘’, The Book of Taliesin variously gives ‘’, ‘’ and ‘’, while The Red Book of Hergest gives ‘’. So ‘-fen’ is the most common termination (a mutated form of archaic ‘’ : ‘woman’). The variant forms ‘fen’, ‘uen’ and ‘ven’ are all due to variant scribal practices in the spelling of the sound in the modern letter ‘v’, as is the letter ‘w’, which was also sometimes used for this sound, causing the final syllable to be confused with ‘’ as a mutated form of Gwen (fair, blessed) a common ending to Welsh names. So ‘’ as a modern Welsh form of the name. Similarly, the difference between the ‘C’ and the ‘K’ initial consonant is clearly simply a matter of a different spelling convention to represent the hard ‘c’ sound. But the following vowel, ‘y’ or ‘e’ could well represent a shift in actual pronunciation of the vowel sound. Sir Ifor Williams asserted that ‘’ is the most likely original form from ‘’ (bent, angled), so ‘woman with a crooked back’, fitting the stereotype of a witch. Marged Haycock accepts ‘’ but questions the first syllable as ‘cyr’, suggesting other possible alternatives which could relate to ‘’ (shake or shiver), or ‘’ (passionate, fierce, powerful), but also notes her daughter Creirwy, with the first syllable a form of ‘’ (belief) and so, by analogy, her mother’s name as Credidfen would mean ‘woman to be believed in’, making the mother’s and daughter’s name stems a pair.