Chapter VII - The Welsh Romances

We have now given translations of more than fifty out of the seventy-seven pieces attributed to Taliesin. The re maining pieces would furnish no additional information necessary for deciding on the character and age of these compositions. Two of them, the “Gorchan Cynvelyn” and the “Gorchan Maelderw,” belong to the Gododin series; the “Mab Gyfreu,” “Buarth Beirdd,” “Addfwyneu Taliesin,” “Glaswawd Taliesin,” and “Cyffes Taliesin,” are of precisely the same character as those above given. The predictive pieces which carry their own date on the surface, are of no importance to the present inquiry; and the Dialogues, the Arthurian pieces, and the “Graves of the Warriors,” though of great interest, belong more to the discussion of the historical questions connected with the Prose Triads. Enough has been said on the fallacy of the Druidic theories, so long connected with these compositions; it only remains to add a word upon their dates and the sources whence thèir materials have been derived.

It seems reasonable to admit, that some of the songs in praise of Urien were originally composed by a veritable Taliesin, a bard of the sixth century, and have been rewritten in the twelfth or thirteenth century, though the piece entitled “Anrec Urien” shows us that not only the name of Taliesin, but that of the great Cumbrian chief, was borrowed by the bards of a later period. The great difficulty in recognizing the sixth century as the epoch of any one of these pieces, lies in the fact, that the language and orthography belong to the twelfth century at the earliest, and that it is impossible to say how much belongs to the bard who composed or to the clerk who transcribed the song.

Of the remaining poems which we have translated, none can be shown to be older than the twelfth century. All of them that arc not religious, or merely encomiastic, appear to belong to what may be called the series of the Hanes Taliesin. Perhaps it is to the great name of this bard that we owe their preservation ; for it seems impossible that this should have been the only romance in the Welsh language which had been reduced to that form of mixed prose and metrical recitation which adapted it to the use of the professional singers. Yet though, as we have seen, allusions and references to the other romances are sufficiently frequent, there is not one ballad or composition which has been framed upon either of them in the manner of those connected with the history of Taliesin.

For the most remarkable result of this examination of the earliest literature of the Welsh people, whatever date may be assigned to it, is, that in these, the oldest preserved specimens of Welsh poetry, there is, with the exception of those songs above mentioned which occur in the history of Taliesin, a total absence of anything like a tale, or the recital of an adventure, or even a love story. There is not, as far as I am aware, one single poem or ballad founded upon an incident or adventure, or which can be said to have a hero or heroine, if we except those descriptive of the actual combats, or written in praise of the heroic actions of historical persons. Allusions to the tales which are found in the Mabinogion collection, and to others either lost or known from fragmentary notices only, are, as we have shown, very numerous; but that we should possess a collection of more than a hundred songs without a single story of love or adventure, is very remarkable.

It is quite an unparalleled phenomenon in the history of literature and of man, to find a nation, of restless, warlike, and adventurous habits, of quick imagination and lively fancy, ao> tually overrun with bards, minstrels, singers, and musicians, who, nevertheless, have not handed down one single love-song, or one tale of adventure, one ballad relating the exploits of some fabulous hero, supreme in love as well as in war. All this has been done in prose, but not in poetry. Some of the pieces attributed to Llywarch Hen approach more nearly to the ballad form, but are no real exception to this general statement. The compositions which chiefly have the air of a ballad are, the “Song of the Horses,” which is spirited and lively, but treats of horses only; the “Preiddeu Annwn,” which alludes to some adventures of Arthur; and the “Mic Dinbych.”

The history of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, was, as we see from the Mabìnogion, a subject which occupied the attention of the Storiawr, and furnished them with abundant materials in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; yet not one of these adventures, so full of incident and marvel, has been made the subject of a song.

The long poem of Aneurin on the battle of Cattraeth is unrelieved by a single episode or incident in which the love of woman plays any part. The only woman supposed to be mentioned in the poem, according to Mr.Williams ab Ithel’s translation, was herself engaged in the combat, “fought, slaughtered, and burned,” and was ultimately slain. But this absence of the romantic element in these productions is not confined to the works of the Cynveirdd or supposed earliest bards, but also exists in those of the Gogynveirdd, or later bards, whose names and authorship of the productions assigned to them are sufficiently ascertained. Neither Meilyr, Gwalchmai, Cyn-ddelw, the princely bard Owain Cyveilliawg, Llywarch ab Llywelyn, or any one bard of the eleventh, twelfth, and following centimes, appears to have been capable of producing a work of pure fiction. Their subjects are all religious, or elegies on the deaths of the chieftains with whom they were connected, or descriptive pieces, not without considerable merit, with a few odes or sonnets in which love supplies the theme. Their compositions, however, show that they were not wanting in geuius or imagination, or the necessary poetic skill; while their frequent allusions to Taliesin, Arthur, and the personages of the romances, show that they had read and appreciated their native literature of fiction. We ought therefore, perhaps, to conclude, that the fault lies not so much with the Welsh minstrels as with the collectors or transcribers of the Welsh ballads in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. We can, of course, speak only from the published compositions in the collection of the Myvyrian Archæology; and it may be that in the many thousand Welsh MSS. still in existence, other romances, both prose and ballad, may yet exist. If we are to judge by what has hitherto been printed, we must assert that, unless the Gododin is such, there is not, besides the Hanes Taliesin, which itself does not fully satisfy the required conditions, a single metrical tale extant in the Welsh or Old British language.

If this be so, the question naturally arises, who were the authors of the romances contained in the Mabinogion? If the Welsh Bards, then we have the curious paradox, of a nation of poets and musicians, executing all their works of imagination in prose, and that prose abounding in poetic imagery, and displaying a most exuberant fancy. Without entering on a discussion which could not be satisfactorily pursued unless the whole circle of Welsh romance were carefully examined, we may observe that the materials of these tales are not peculiar to the Welsh. That part of the story of Taliesin, which relates to the gift of prophecy and inspiration in consequence of the accidental tasting by Gwion of the magic liquor intended for another, has its counterpart in both the Irish and the Scandinavian romances. In the first, the hero of the tale is Fionn, or Fingal; in the-other, the famous Sigurd of the Eddaic legends.

In the Welsh tale, Gwion, who was afterwards Taliesin, was left, it will be remembered, in charge of the Cauldron of Ce-ridwen. Three drops of the charmed liquor flew out of the cauldron, and fell upon the finger of Gwion.

“And by reason of their great heat, he put his finger to his mouth, and the instant he put those marvel-working drops into his mouth, he foresaw everything that was to come, and perceived that his chief care was to guard against the wiles of Ceridwen. And in very great fear, he fled towards his own land.”

The Irish story runs thus:—Fionn,^[1] being on the banks of the river Boyne, met with some fishermen who had been sent by his enemies to endeavour to take the “Salmon of Foreknowledge.” The fishermen took a salmon of great size and beauty, which they placed at the fire to broil, leaving it in charge of Fionn, who was to take care that it did not bum, on pain of losing his head. During the process of cooking, a spark flew from the fire, which raised a blister on the fish. Fionn applied his thumb to the scorched part, in order to force down the blister, but the heat burning his thumb, he thrust it into his mouth to relieve the pain. No sooner had he done so, than he became gifted with prophecy and foreknowledge; for this was the Salmon of Foreknowledge which he had been cooking; and he at once acquired the knowledge that the Xing of Tara, seven years before, had expressly sent these fishermen in quest of the Salmon of Foreknowledge, in order that he might ascertain where he, Fionn, had taken refuge, so that he might seize and slay him.^[2]

We have the same story, with different details, in the Scandinavian Saga of Sigurd, who, having slain the dragon Fafnir, is employed by Begin, to superintend the roasting of Fafnir’s heart, which Begin, aware of its virtues, intended to eat. Sigurd having accidentally touched the heart, and then placed his finger in his mouth, becomes instantly gifted with a knowledge of the language of birds, and by their advice slays Regin, and himself eats the heart of the monster Fafnir.

Of these three forms of the same tale, the Welsh, as we have it in the Hanes Taliesin, is certainly the least ancient. Whether Thomas the Priest modernized a more ancient form, or adapted an Irish tale, it would be difficult to say; but the details of the story in tbe Hanes Taliesin are all modern, and all Christian. The time of the stoiy is laid “in the beginning of Arthur’s time, and of the Round Table.” Gwion Bach, who afterwards becomes Taliesin, is stated to have been a man of IJanfair, i.e. the Church of the Virgin Mary in Caereinion in Powys; and the magical liquor consists of “three blessed drops of the Grace of the Spirit,” that is, the Holy Ghost, as we see in the definition of the “Awen,” by Llywelyn Sion in the “Cyfrinach y Beirdd.”

The Irish stories which abound with magic and marvels, have come down from a time when the influence of Christianity was less strongly felt; and, though many have been corrupted and mixed up with Christian legends, it is to a much less extent than the Welsh. The Irish stories, moreover, contain the explanation of the fragmentary notices and allusions in the Welsh tales and ballads. In the story of “Pyll, Prince of Dyved,” no account is given of the mode in which the child of Rhiannon was abstracted, nor of the cause of his being found by Teirnyon Twryv Vliant, when the latter struck off the arm of the demon who was seizing the new-born colt. But in the tale of Fionn, we find that a Fomorach used to come and carry off the newly born infant of Fergus Fionnliath, seven years in succession; and on the seventh year his arm was bitten off by an enchanted hound. The monster described in a fragment in the Cad Goddeu^[3] was, no doubt, what the Irish legends call a Piast, and the description of the one slain by Fionn in Loch Cuan, resembles that given by the Welsh Bard in the Cad Goddeu.^[4]

Manawydan vab Llyr, in the Welsh romance, is the brother of Bran the Blessed, whom he accompanied in the unfortunate expedition to Ireland, and cousin of Caswallawn, the Cassi-belaunus of Cæsar. Under the name of Manannan mac Lir, he is well known in the Irish romance. When the three sons of Uisneach are decapitated, it is bj the sword of Naisi, “the sword which Manannan mac Lir gave me,” and the “Crann Buidhe, or Yellow Spear of Diarmuidh O’Duibhne,” was the gift of the same enchanter. In the story of Cormac Son of Art and the Faiiy Branch, the same personage appears as a necromancer of power, and indeed is represented in the Irish legends as chief of the Tnatha De Danann, or Fairy race of Ireland. Four of the children of Llyr, of whom we hear nothing in the Welsh romance, were changed into swans by the incantations of their stepmother, and their adventures compose one of the three “Sorrows of Story.” A whole passage of imagery, in which the contrast of colour formed by a raven drinking blood upon the snow is described, and which, in the tale of the Sons of Uisneach, is in natural connection with the rest of the story, has been borrowed and interpolated in the Welsh tale of Peredur mab Evrawc. These examples, which might be considerably multiplied, and numerous instances in which obscure or unintelligible allusions, as well in the prose tales of the Mabinogion as in the Myvyrian poems, receive elucidation on a perusal of the Irish legends, lead to the conclusion that the origin of the Welsh romances has not yet been sufficiently investigated. We speak here only of those romances which do not treat of the exploits and adventures of Arthur, for it is evident that the genuine Welsh traditions knew no more of Arthur than they did of the Druids. When Professor Schulz says,^[5] that in the ancient poems of Aneurin, Taliesin, Llywarch Hen, Merddin, &c., we have “a direct reflection of the person of Arthur and his companions in the wars against the Saxons,” he makes it evident he had never read these ancient poems; for it is by no means clear that the Welsh had ever heard of Arthur as a king before Rhys ab Tewdwr brought the Roll of the Round Table to Glamorganshire in the twelfth century. Moreover, there is not, except in the spurious verse^[6] added to the stanzas on the Battle of Longborth, a single poem extant which relates any warlike feats of Arthur against the Saxons.

We need feel no surprise at finding in the Irish legends, if not the source, at least the counterparts, of the Welsh tales of sorcery and adventure, since the most celebrated necromancers of Welsh story, Math ab Mathonwy, Gwydion ab Don, and Amaethon, were themselves Irish, and were the masters of North Wales and Anglesey before they were dispossessed by the sons of Cunedda W ledig. According to the Welsh legend, Don, Eing of Lochlyn and Dublin, led the Irish to Gwynedd A.D. 267, where they remained for one hundred and twenty-nine years. Don had a son called Gwydion, King of Mona and Arvon, who first taught literature from books to the Irish of Mona and Ireland; whereupon both these countries became pre-eminently famed for knowledge and saints.^[7] The number of romantic stories and legends yet extant in the Irish language is very considerable.

“Compositions of this nature,” says the learned editor of the Irish historical tale of the “Battle of Magh Rath,”^[8]

“were constantly recited by the poets before the Irish kings and chieftains at their public fairs and assemblies. The four higher orders of poets, namely, the Ollamh, the Anruth, Cli, and Cano, were obliged to have seven times fifty chief stories, and twice fifty sub-stories, to repeat for kings and chieftains. The subjects of the chief stories were demolitions, cattle-spoils, courtships, battles, caves, voyages, tragedies, feasts, sieges, adventures, elopements, and plunders. The particular titles of these stories are given in the work called Dinnsenchus, or History of Remarkable Places.”

As regards the Welsh poetry, however, I am acquainted only with one instance where the minstrel alludes to his acquaintance with Irish adventures not otherwise known from the Welsh romances. It occurs in the Elegy upon Corroi, the son of Daire, of whom nothing is known from Welsh tradition. He was a famous Irish chieftain, head of the Clanna Deagaidh, or forces of South Munster, and is reported to have lived in the first century. The ruins of his castle called Cathair Chonroi, are said still to stand on the mountain MÌ9, between the bays of Castlemaine and Tralee, in the county of Kerry; it is a huge cydopean building of dry-stone masonry.^[9]

According to the “particular account” of his death given by Keating, “as the genuine records of Ireland particularly mention,” Corroi, who was a distinguished magician and possessed the power of transforming his shape at pleasure, was treacherously slain by the celebrated Irish warrior Cuchullin, chief of the champions of the Red Branch. It is with reference to the slaughter of Corroi by Cuchullin that the Welsh minstrel, in his elegy on the death of the former, says:—

Tra fa vuddugre bore ddugrawr
Chwedleu am gwyddir o wir hyd lawr
Cyfranc Corroy a chocholyn
Llaws eu terfysg am eu terfyn.

Through the croaking of the raven in the morning,
I knew the tale of men stretched upon the ground;
In the combat of Corroi and Cuchullin,
Great was their violence around their boundaries.

The Cuchullin here mentioned, can be no other than the famous Irish chieftain of that name. We have here a poem ascribed to Taliesin in which the bard represents himself as being contemporary with this Irish chieftain of the first century of the Christian era. If we adopt the reasoning of Mr. Williams ab Ithel upon the authorship of the Elegy on Cu-nedda, we must believe that this is a composition of the first century of the Christian era. The subject of this piece has escaped the notice of all who have treated of these poems, or they could hardly have avoided adducing it as an instance of the great antiquity of some of these compositions.

Upon a review of all the sources of information on this subject, there can be no hesitation in asserting that the Druid is a figure altogether unknown to Welsh romance, and that at the time the Mabinogion and the Taliesin ballads were composed, no tradition or popular recollection of the Druids or the Druidical mythology existed in Wales. In the Mabino-ŷion, not in the Arthurian romances, but in the tales which have a genuine old Celtic origin, though there is a profusion of magic and sorcery, the word Druid does not once occur. In the Irish tales, on the contrary, the magician under the name of Draoi and Druidh, a magician or Druid, “draioideacht, druid-heact,” magic, plays a considerable part. But this part is a very different one from that assigned to their Druids by Dr. Owen Pughe and Mr. Edward Williams. The Druids of the latter have been restored, with imaginary embellishments, from the fragmentary notices left by Greek and Roman writers; the Irish Druids nre true and undoubted sorcerers and soothsayers. They were by no means men of peace and composers of tumult, but took their place as warriors in the battle, though they generally afforded supernatural assistance to the chieftains under whom they served. The Druids of opposing armies, in the Irish tales, perform counter-feats of magic, the one against the other. In the Irish edition of Nennius, the magicians of Vortigem are called Druids, “draidhe,” “druidhe”; in the Latin version, Magi; in the Welsh translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth the term employed is “dewinion,” diviners, which is a sufficiently correct rendering of Magi; but in the Brut Tysilio we actually have the “daydec Prifard,” the twelve chief Bards, the same class with whom Taliesin contended in the court of Maelgwn. If the reputation of Druids for wisdom had been such in Wales in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as Mr. Davies and Archdeacon Williams have supposed, we should certainly have found some mention of them either in the history, the romance, or the popular literature of the age. But beyond ft very few instances in the Taliesin ballads, where the word “derwyddon” occurs in the sense of “sages,” “philosophers,” or even “Magi,” without any necessary connection with Druids, we hear nothing of them. The “syweddyd,” or astrologer, is a far more important personage.

It is generally assumed that this word Derwydd is connected with “dar” and “derw,” an oak. Archdeacon Williams supposes also the word “darogan,” to prophesy, to have the same derivation. In the latter word, however, “dar” is merely an intensive prefix of very common employment, and so Dr. Owen esteems it in this word. We have a much more probable derivation for “derwydd,” in the word “der,” “dera,” a fiend, an evil spirit, a devil, from whence “derwydd” would mean a person having a familiar spirit, a conjurer, or magician. But in the story of Lludd and Llevelys, the only one of the Mabinogion in which a magician or evil spirit, other than a witch, is expressly introduced, he is called “gwr lleturithawc,” “a man capable of enlarging or changing his form,” a paraphrase which seems to indicate the absence of a single word for expressing the idea of necromancer or magician.

In the Welsh version of the Bible, the word employed for the magicians of Pharaoh is “swynwyr,” a charmer, or enchanter : “Ar swynwyr a wnaethant felly, trwy eu swynion,”^[10] “and the magicians did so with their enchantments.” This word, which is of precisely the same form and meaning as “medicine-man” of the Americans, we also find in these ballads.

We have also “gwybion,” seers, and “gwidon,” “gwiddan,” a hag or witch, probably from the root “gwid” or “chwid,” “a quick turn or revolution,” or, as Dr. Owen thinks, from “gwidd,” dry, withered, “a hag.”

Whoever may have been the authors of the documents from which Geoffrey of Monmouth drew up his British History (and it is clear that they were derived from British sources, even if through a Bretonic channel), they knew nothing, at least have related nothing, of the Druids or Druidic worship in Britain. In the passage where Cassibelaunus, elated by his victory over Julius Cæsar, assembles all the nobility of Britain with their wives at London, “in order to perform solemn sacrifices to their tutelary gods,” at which solemnity they sacrificed 40,000 cows, 100,000 sheep, and 30,000 wild beasts, besides fowls without number, we hear nothing of the celebrated Druids. In the time of Lucius, the first convert to Christianity, Geoffrey of Monmouth knows only of Elamens and Arch-Flamens as the priests of the idolaters; and neither he nor the compiler of the Brut Tysilio has anything to say about the Druids, whose privileges were transferred to the Christian Church. Mr. Herbert, struck with this silence of the chronicler on the subject of the Druidic hierarchy, thought there was a systematic concealment of the truth; but the inference is plain, that the Druid extinguished by Paulinus in a.d. 58, had not been resuscitated in the tenth century.

From other terms significative of supernatural beings, and from numerous allusions in the Welsh romances, we know that there must have existed a widely spread belief, the source of abundant tradition and romance, in the existence of supernatural and demoniacal beings of various characters and classes. We find, moreover, that the traditions which have descended from a remote period of what may be called the fairy mythology of Wales, are still living in the mouths of the people, and see traces of their existence in the names of places, of rocks, of stones, of wells, and mountain recesses. If the memory of the Druids and their mystic ceremonies, their circles of stone, their places of sacrifice, and courts of justice, lived in the popular traditions of the sixth century, we must find them now, such is the undying character of these associations with natural or artificial objects. I am not able to state how many instances occur in Wales in which the name of Druid is attached to such objects; but of twenty-one monumental stones, stone circles, and mounds, noticed by Dr. Jones in his History of Wales , there is not one which bears this epithet.

Of the 208 hundreds and commotes into which Wales was divided by Edward I. in the thirteenth century, though many have names significant of events and of natural objects, and names of persons, not one is called after any Druidical establishment, or Druidical object.

In a list of the Welsh names of nearly 800 plants collected in Richards’s Boianology, there is not one to which the name of Druid is attached, though we find “Fairy Fingers,” “Fairy Food,” “Dwarf’s Mantle,” “Taliesin’s Flower,” “Arthur’s Sweat,” “Devil's Milk,” &c. Neither the Mistletoe nor the Vervain are, in the familiar Welsh names of those plants, connected with the Druid. Nor is any mention made in the Welsh poems of another celebrated symbol of Druidism, the “Glain,” or Ovum Anguinum, which, according to the account preserved by Pliny,^[11] was produced from serpents. The serpents, twisting themselves together in great numbers, produced this egg, and then threw it up in the air with loud hisses, upon which the Druids, who were on the watch for this event, caught it in a cloak before it fell. They then fled away on horseback pursued by the serpents, until they had reached some river, when the pursuit ceased. It is certain that such a fable was current in Gaul; and these talismans, which Mr. Herbert very reasonably concludes to have been balls of glass, were in vogue during the Roman domination, since Claudius Cæsar, who repressed the practices of Druidism, condemned to death a Roman knight who had possessed himself of one of these talismans with a view to the successful issue of a lawsuit in which he was engaged. Among the Welsh poems preserved, however, no trace of any such superstition, if it ever existed in Britain, has survived. Mr. Herbert thought that an allusion to the Anguine egg was to be found in some lines of the fragment relating to the Cattraeth combat which is mixed up with the “Dyhuddiant Elphin,”—

Bleid y vyuyt
Oed bleidyat rhyd
Yn y deuredd Pubal
Peleidyr Penyr pryd neidyr
O luch nadredd;

which he translated,^[12]—

Vivid his aspect,
Impetuous was he over the ford ;
That which exercised his prowess
Was the quick glancing ball,
The adder’s bright precious produce,
The ejaculation of serpents.”

The existence in these poems of a testimony to the currency in Britain of the fable relating to the talismanic “glain” would be a matter of considerable interest. It is, however, qnite clear that this testimony exists not in the original lines, but in Mr. Herbert’s translation of them. The fragment to which they belong, evidently a portion of a Gododin or Cattraeth poem, is extremely corrupt, and difficult to translate. But, on examining the passage in question, we see at once that the line preceding those quoted by Mr. Herbert,

Bu edryssed,

belongs to and forms part of the sentence, and gives the key to the meaning of the whole. It is apparent that the lines contain a description of a warrior, not of a Druid, and that the “glancing snake” applies to the bright spear-head of a chieftain, not to the talisman of a necromancer. The meaning of the passage runs thus:—

There was abundance
Of food for the wolf;
He was liberal to wolves
In his valour;
Stout was his spear;
Its head was like a snake
Amid glancing snakes.

We have therefore no allusion in the old Welsh compositions to any of the celebrated symbols of the Druidic priesthood, nor the slightest testimony in support of the fables promulgated as to the character, institutions, rites, and ceremonies of this famous hierarchy.

These are facts which must outweigh all the speculations possible, founded upon Cæsar's Commentaries and Pliny’s Natural History.

In the descriptions of the boundaries of the lands given to the church of Llandaff by various personages, from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, a number of natural and artificial objects, trees, stones, earns, mounds, dykes, &c., are mentioned, with their specific names. Thus, we have the Brook of the Grave of the Strangers, the Stone in the Variegated Moors, the Long Stone, the Spotted Stone, the Stone of Cinahi, the Cam Erchan; “the road along the highway upwards to the ash, from the ash across the road direct to the hawthorn “ along Mynwy to the Red Pool, upwards to the front of the hill, downwards by the fork stone, to the influx of the Geffat;” “along the ridge of the mountain to the shaft of the Cross of Guerionj” the Stone of Lybiau, the Spring of Crug Lewyrn, the Mound of Cyfall Scoti, &c. In the great number of objects thus designated as boundary marks throughout the diocese of Llandaff, from the Severn and the Wye to the western portion of Caermarthenshire, there is only one object which can be supposed to be connected with a tradition of the Druids. This occurs in the grant of Iddon, son of Ynyr Gwent, of lands in Monmouthshire to St. Teilo, Bishop of Llandaff, in the sixth century. The boundary line runs along the Gavenny river downwards to the ford of Llechawg, “or rit dirlechluit in cruc braed diguera idrution,” that is, “from the ford to the grey stone in Crag Braed, to Gwem y Dru-tion,” which may possibly mean “the Alder-trees, or the Swamp of the Druids.” Druids, however, are not particularly connected with swamps, and it is much more probable that it refers to some traditionary combat, and means the “Swamp of the Warriors.” If it be taken to have the former meaning, we may compare it with the “Cerrig y Druidion,” or Rock of the Druids, in Denbighshire. Both “Drution” and “Druidion” are very different forms from “Derwyddon,” especially if the word gwydd, “ knowledge,” enters into the composition of the latter. In considering these questions, we ought to recollect that the country now occupied by the Welsh or Cymry was, both North and South Wales, in possession of tribes of the Irish or Gadhelic branch of the Celtic race, before the invasion of the Northern Cumbrian Britons under the sons of Cunedda, or the conquest represented by their names. It would be impossible to enter upon a satisfactory examination of this subject without also undertaking a critical examination of the Historical Triads and the Mabinogion, compared with the Irish sources of history and tradition; and in this place we have only to deal with the poetry of the Welsh. The evidence of the ancient occupation of the Principality by Irish tribes has been very ably discussed by the Rev. Basil Jones,^[13] and shows very clearly that the history of Britain for the latter part of the Roman dominion, and the two following centuries, yet remains to be written.

It is certainly not without significance, that the only place in Britain in which there is any distinct evidence from the Roman authorities of the existence of Druids, should be the Isle of Anglesey, the seat of the Irish population, before the migration of the Cumbrian tribes, the ancestors of the modern Welsh.

In conclusion, we may observe, that had the works of the old Welsh Bards abounded with references to some unknown mythology, and allusions to the divinities of some national but forgotten creed, a sound judgment would have afforded some more rational explanation of the occurrence, than that of the persistence of pagan superstitions, in all their force and vitality, at such an epoch, in the western and southern pro* vinces of Britain.

Upon this point the observations of Mr. Beale Poste are worthy of attention. This learned writer, though misled by the translations of Mr. Davies into believing that this Druidism existed in the Welsh poems, offered a very reasonable explanation of the supposed phenomenon.

“The productions of the British Bards,” he says,^[14]

“seem to be redolent with the ideas and dogmas of Druidism, though at the date of the poems of Aneurin and Taliesin, Christianity had prevailed in Britain for several centuries. Worn out as it was, they retained it conventionally in their compositions, appearing to think that its fictions and imagery worked up well in poetry. This is a parallel case with the reception of classic mythology among modem writers. Even down to the present times, heathen mythology may be found introduced in works of imagination, the same as if really existing. The poet invokes Phcebus, Diana, Pan, and other deities, meaning nothing by it all the time. There is likewise a further parallelism to be suspected. As we find the modems frequently err in what they imagine the details of classic mythology, the same may have been the case with the Bards and their Druidism. At any rate, thus dealing with a defunct superstition; entering indeed but little on topics unconnected with their favourite mythology, and being at all timeB very mystical and obscure, the less fact can be extracted from them, and their value is proportionably diminished.”

We may illustrate the above sensible and judicious observations of Mr. Poste by pointing out, that upon the principle which has usually been employed in the consideration of these poems, there would be no difficulty in proving the existence of a pagan mythology in England in the nineteenth century, from the works of the poets of that epoch. If Mr. Macaulay’s New Zealander, writing, in a future age, an essay on this subject, were to support his views of the paganism of the nineteenth century by such quotations as,^[15]

God of the Thunder! from whose cloudy seat
The fiery winds of desolation flow,
Father of vengeance! that with purple feet,
Like a full wine-press, tread’st the world below;

and

God of the Bainbow! at whose gracious sign
The billows of the proud their rage suppress,—

without reference to the context and general scope of the poem, to the author who wrote, the people who read, or the social condition of the age in which the poem was written,— he would do for British poetry of the nineteenth century, very much what Mr. Davies and others have done for that of the old Welsh minstrels. We have, however, the satisfaction of finding that, when the works of our British ancestors are fully examined and fairly translated, if they exhibit no great amount of wisdom or philosophy, they are entirely free from the imputation of having inculcated the worship of Pagan deities, or having revelled in the description of mysterious abominations in the midst of a Christian people, and while exhibiting an outward conformity to the doctrines and precepts of Christianity.

If we find in the oldest compositions m the Welsh language no traces of the Druids, or of a pagan mythology, still less do we find evidence of the existence of any peculiar philosophical or theological doctrines, such as it has been the fashion to represent as lying concealed in these compositions under the somewhat vague title of Bardic mysteries. The whole tenor of the result of an investigation into the supposed evidences of this mystery leads to the conclusion that the Welsh Bards neither of the sixth nor of the twelfth century had any mysteries to conceal, beyond the secrets, such as they were, of their profession.

The “Cyfrinach,” or secret of the Bards, was an artistic and not a religious mystery. It related not to the heavenly or the infernal regions, to the nature of the soul or the condition of man, but simply to the arts of music and song. They knew of no other mystery, nor of any mystic creed, unknown to the rest of the Christian world. Their writings, as we see, contain no evidence of any esoteric doctrines, either Pagan or Christian. In the sixth century the minds of the Welsh Christians were agitated with the Pelagian controversy; in the twelfth and thirteenth, they held the doctrines of the Church of Rome of that day. Their views of the Deity, of a future state of existence, of a system of rewards and punishments, were those of the general body of Christians of that age, and contained no admixture of tenets drawn from a remote patriarchal or heathen source. The notion of the “Bardic mysteries” is a mere fable founded on a mistaken view of the productions of the Welsh Bards of the middle ages; and the demonstration of the want of any foundation for a belief in the existence of such mysteries is, we may fairly hope, a step in advance towards a true understanding of the history of the period in question. The compositions of the Welsh of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which have come down to us, and especially the romance tales in which the poetic genius of the nation is so richly displayed, are sufficiently valuable,without investing them with an interest derived from a fictitious mystery, which seems only to throw around them a needless and perplexing obscurity. The Welsh nation, instead of standing aloof from Christian Europe during the period which is embraced between the sixth and thirteenth centuries, as a people holding, hardly in secret, while in outward conformity to the Christian Church, a most portentous heresy, returns to the pale of ordinary religious belief and the common Christianity of the age.

The Welsh minstrelsy, instead of dating from a time beyond the limits of history, or deriving its materials from a source hidden in the obscurity of a prehistoric age, enters the circle of the romantic literature of Europe during the tenth and succeeding centuries, and will probably be found to have received more from, than it communicated to its continental neighbours. It is, however, no small merit which must be conceded to the Welsh romance-writers, that what they borrowed from others they stamped with the impress of their own genius, and gave currency, under their own peculiar national form, to the treasures derived from the mines of the stranger. In the hands of the Welsh, every tradition, every legend, no matter from what source, became Welsh,—the events localized in Wales, and the heroes admitted into the cycle of the Welsh heroic genealogies; and it is probably to this process of naturalization that we owe the preservation of the Welsh romances. The Welsh poems, such as we find them in the Myvyrian collection, we have shown to be replete with references to the extant tales, and to others of a similar nature not now known to exist; but of any.other mysteries than such as can be explained by reference to the current religious philosophy of the age, or to these romantic tales, not a particle of evidence can be discovered.

Wherever such evidence has hitherto been supposed to have been discovered, investigation has demonstrated it to be a fallacy, originating in an erroneous conception of the meaning of the passages produced, or derived from documents tainted with the suspicion of modern forgery and fraud.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

It is worthy of remark that Fionn and Gwion are the same word, according to the constant interchange of gw for f in the two dialects of the Celtic.

[2]:

See the “Feis Tighe Conan Ceann Shleibhe,” in Trans, of Ossiauic Society, 1854.

[3]:

Translated, page 228.

[4]:

See the “Song of the Chase of Sliabh Truim,” Transaction of the Ossianie Society, vol. ii. 1854.

[5]:

“An Essay on the Influence of Welsh Tradition upon the Literature of Germany,Prance, and Scandinavia,” which obtained the prize of eighty guineas at the Abergavenny Cymreigyddion Society in 1840.

[6]:

Yn Llongborth Iks i Arthur
Gwyr dewr cymmynynt a dur
Ammherawdyr lly wiawdyr llavur.

I call this verse spurious , because all the stanzas in the composition except this and the preceding one have the same form, “Yn Llongborth gwelais;” and in the Paul Panton MS. this stanza also commences in that form. It has, therefore, undergone some alteration. The Llongborth stanzas properly conclude with the preceding one, describing the death of Geraint, the subject of the poem; and Arthur’s name is introduced without any reasonable connection with the rest of the piece. If the stanza were genuine, there can be little doubt that it stood originally either,

Yn Llongborth gwelais Arthur,

or

Yn Llongborth y lias Arthur;

which last would be contraiy to every other tradition on the subject. The construction, “slain to Arthur,” is forced and unnatural. Lastly, it is very improbable that the title of Emperor, “Ammherawdyr,” was given to Arthur before the introduction of the Arthurian romances in the twelfth century. The most famous British princes receive the title of “Gwledig,” not “Ammherawdyr ,” and no such title is given to Arthur by Nennius. It is given to Arthur in the tale of the “Countess of the Fountain,” though Lady Charlotte Guest has translated it “king” in that instance, and “emperor” where it occurs in the “Dream of Maxen Wledic.” If the reputation of Arthur had risen to such a height in the sixth century, it is incredible that the Welsh bards of this and the following three centuries should have left no other notices of him; and that Gildas and Bede should both have ignored his existence. It must always be recollected that at least 500 years intervene between the supposed date of the compositions, and the earliest MS. in which they are found. The death of Arthur took place in 542. Llywarch Hen was his contemporary; yet we have a poem attributed to him, composed on the death of Cadwallon son of Conan, who died about 646, or, according to some chronicles, in 676. The death of Geraint is supposed to have taken place in 530. It is no doubt, possible, that Llywarch Hen may have written both elegies, though 116 years elapsed between the two events.

[7]:

Iolo MSS. p. 468.471.

We have here a specimen of the chronology of these legends. In the romances, Gwydion ab Don is contemporary with Pryderi, Pryderi with Caswallon, Caswallon with Julius Cæsar. In the legend we have Don the father of Gwydion with his date gravely affixed at the year A.D. 267.

[8]:

Edited for the Irish A r chaeological Society, by Mr. J. O’Donovan. 1842.

[9]:

Transactions the Ouianic Society, vol. i.

[10]:

Exodus viii.

[11]:

Hist. Nat. xxix. 12.

[12]:

Ess ay on the Neo-Druidic Heresy, p. 61.

[13]:

Vestiges qf the Gael in Gwynedd. London, 1851.

[14]:

Britannie Researches , p. 281. London, 1858.

[15]:

Mìlman’s Belshazzar .