The Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi in The Mabinogion, translated by Sioned Davies

Another story of metamorphosis, of shape-shifting. A woman who is made from flowers to please a man, and who is subsequently unfaithful to him. Of course she has to be punished for her transgression, and is transformed from flowers to an owl. This was the inspiration for Alan Garner’s The Owl Service, but the original 12^th Century Welsh tale fascinates in the way the characters’ motivations are both accessible to us and utterly strange in its account of magic, and compression of time and place.

Oxford University Press, 2007