Editing Rhiannon (section)

==Interpretation as a goddess==
[[Image:MULO-Epona Freyming.jpg|thumb|upright|Rhiannon is often associated with [[Epona]]]]

When Rhiannon first appears she is a mysterious figure arriving as part of the [[Otherworld]] tradition of Gorsedd Arberth. Her paradoxical style of riding slowly, yet unreachably, is strange and magical, though the paradox also occurs in mediaeval love poetry as an erotic metaphor. Rhiannon produces her "small bag" which is also a magical paradox for it cannot be filled by any ordinary means. When undergoing her penance, Rhiannon demonstrates the powers of a giantess, or the strength of a horse, by carrying travellers on her back.

Rhiannon is connected to three mystical birds. The Birds of Rhiannon ([[Adar Rhiannon]]) appear in the Second Branch, in the Triads of Britain, and in Culhwch ac Olwen. In the latter, the giant Ysbaddaden demands them as part of the bride price of his daughter. They are described as "they that wake the dead and lull the living to sleep." This possibly suggests Rhiannon is based on an earlier goddess of [[Celtic polytheism]].

[[William John Gruffydd|W. J. Gruffydd]]'s book ''Rhiannon'' (1953) was an attempt to reconstruct the original story. It is mainly focused on the relationship between the males in the story, and rearranges the story elements too liberally for other scholars' preference, though his research is otherwise detailed and helpful. Patrick Ford suggests that the Third Branch "preserves the detritus of a myth wherein the Sea God mated with the Horse Goddess."<ref>Patrick K. Ford, ''The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales'' (1977).</ref> He suggests "the mythic significance may well have been understood in a general way by an eleventh century audience." Similar euhemerisms of pre-Christian deities can be found in other medieval Celtic literature, when Christian scribes and redactors reworked older deities as more acceptable giants, heroes or saints.  In the ''[[Táin Bó Cúailnge]]'', [[Macha]] and [[The Morrígan]] similarly appear as larger-than-life figures, yet never described as goddesses.

[[Proinsias Mac Cana|Proinsias Mac Cana's]] position is that "[Rhiannon] reincarnates the goddess of sovereignty who, in taking to her a spouse, thereby ordained him legitimate king of the territory which she personified."<ref>Mac Cana, p. 56.</ref> [[Miranda Green (academic)|Miranda Green]] draws in the international folklore motif of the [[calumniated wife]], saying, "Rhiannon conforms to two archetypes of myth ... a gracious, bountiful queen-goddess; and ... the 'wronged wife', falsely accused of killing her son."<ref>Green, p. 30.</ref>