Pwyll’s conflict with Gwawl

Pwyll’s conflict with Gwawl is a contest over Rhiannon’s marriage, shaped first by a promise Pwyll makes without knowing what it will cost him, and then by the ingenious plan Rhiannon devises to defeat the claim. Pwyll captures Gwawl during a feast using a small, inexhaustible bag, but the confrontation ends not in killing: Rhiannon and Heveydd Hen counsel a settlement that frees Gwawl and his followers under a pledge against retaliation.

The Promise and Gwawl’s Claim

At the palace of Heveydd Hen, Pwyll attends a feast with Rhiannon beside him and Heveydd Hen on his other side. A tall, auburn-haired youth of royal bearing enters and asks Pwyll for a boon. Pwyll promises to grant what he can, before learning what is being asked. Rhiannon immediately recognizes the danger in that open-ended pledge: Gwawl, son of Clud, uses it to request the woman he loves as his bride that very night. Pwyll’s answer has been given in front of the nobles, so simply refusing would bring shame upon him. Rhiannon explains that Gwawl is the man she had been expected to marry against her will. She tells Pwyll to grant the request for now, while assuring him that she can prevent Gwawl from ever possessing her. Her response turns Pwyll’s careless promise into a problem to be managed rather than a final surrender. She arranges for the feast and banquet to be given to the people of Dyved and Pwyll’s household, and agrees that a banquet will be prepared for Gwawl a year later. Pwyll accepts the delay and keeps the tryst, though he conceals from his companions the nature of his dealings with Rhiannon.

Rhiannon’s Plan and the Second Feast

Rhiannon’s plan depends on the same promise that constrained Pwyll. A year later, Pwyll is to return with a hundred knights, wait in the orchard, and enter the palace alone in ragged clothes. He is to carry a small bag and ask only for food. Rhiannon predicts that no amount of meat and drink placed inside it will fill it. When Gwawl asks whether the bag can ever be full, Pwyll is to say that it cannot be full until a man of noble birth and great wealth stands on the food with both feet and declares that enough has been put in. Gwawl’s status and his appetite for the promised feast will draw him into the trap. The conditions of the second feast make the reversal possible. Gwawl arrives expecting the banquet prepared for him, while Pwyll comes in coarse, ragged garments and large, clumsy old shoes. Pwyll asks for the bag to be filled with food, and the attendants repeatedly add provisions without making it appear any fuller. When Gwawl asks about this, Pwyll describes the condition that would make the bag full. Rhiannon urges Gwawl to rise, and he willingly puts both feet into it. Pwyll turns the sides of the bag over Gwawl’s head, knots its thongs, and blows the horn that signals the knights waiting outside.

Capture, Reversal, and the Bag Game

Pwyll’s hundred knights rush into the palace and seize Gwawl’s company, placing them in Gwawl’s own prison. Pwyll then casts off his disguise. His knights strike the captive Gwawl’s bag, one after another, with a foot or a staff, calling their sport the Game of Badger in the Bag. The episode converts a formal feast into a scene of public humiliation: Gwawl, who had come as a suitor expecting to receive Rhiannon and the banquet, is now helpless inside the bag while Pwyll’s men control the hall. The comic punishment nevertheless approaches a more serious outcome. Gwawl asks to be heard and says he does not deserve to be killed inside the bag. Heveydd Hen agrees that Pwyll should listen. Rhiannon then proposes a penalty that answers the imbalance without turning capture into execution: Gwawl must satisfy suitors and minstrels in Pwyll’s place and provide a pledge that he will never seek revenge for what has been done to him. Pwyll accepts her counsel, as well as Heveydd Hen’s support for hearing Gwawl, and Gwawl agrees to the terms.

Sureties and the Settlement

Gwawl is released from the bag, and his liegemen are freed. Heveydd Hen serves as surety until Gwawl’s own men can answer for him, and he arranges the sureties required by the covenant. Pwyll does not insist on imposing a harsher agreement; he accepts the settlement on the terms Rhiannon proposed. Gwawl says that he is badly hurt and bruised and asks leave to go to his possessions to be anointed. Pwyll allows him to depart, with nobles left behind to answer for whatever may be required. The settlement changes the relation from an immediate struggle over Rhiannon into a binding accommodation. Gwawl has been defeated and subjected to a humiliating reversal, but he is neither killed nor held indefinitely. His promise not to take revenge, secured by sureties, gives the conflict a formal close. Afterward the hall is set in order for Pwyll, his host, and the palace company; they eat and feast in mirth and tranquillity, as they had at the gathering a year earlier. The next morning, Rhiannon tells Pwyll to begin giving gifts to the minstrels and to refuse no one who claims his bounty. The return to feasting and generosity marks the end of the confrontation, while the bag’s role in it preserves the episode as a story of how a public promise can be countered by a carefully staged reversal.