The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Mythology of the British Islands, by Charles Squire

350. Book of Taliesin VIII, Vol. I, p. 276, of Skene. I have followed Skene’s translation, with the especial exception of the curious line referring to the bean, so translated in D. W. Nash’s Taliesin. If a correct rendering of the Welsh original, it offers an interesting parallel to certain superstitions of the Greeks concerning this vegetable.

351. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, note to p. 245.

352. Lady Guest’s translation in her notes to Kulhwch and Olwen.

353. The following episode is retold from Lady Guest’s translation of the Mabinogi of Mâth, Son of Mathonwy.

354. Now called Pen y Gaer. It is on the summit of a hill half-way between Llanrwst and Conway, and about a mile from the station of Llanbedr.

355. Said to have been at Rhuddlan Teivi, which is, perhaps, Glan Teivy, near Cardigan Bridge.

356. Poem XIX in the Black Book of Caermarthen, Vol. I, p. 309, of Skene.

357.

“In Aber Gwenoli is the grave of Pryderi,

Where the waves beat against the land.”

358. A poem in praise of Geraint, “the brave man from the region of Dyvnaint (Devon) ... the enemy of tyranny and oppression”, is contained in both the Black Book of Caermarthen and the Red Book of Hergest. “When Geraint was born, open were the gates of heaven”, begins its last verse. It is translated in Vol. I of Skene, p. 267.

359. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 8.

360. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, pp. 40-41.

361. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 7.

362. “It is worthy of remark that the fame of Arthur is widely spread; he is claimed alike as a prince in Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Cumberland, and the Lowlands of Scotland; that is to say, his fame is conterminous with the Brythonic race, and does not extend to the Gaels”.—Chambers’s Encyclopædia.

363. For Arthurian and Fenian parallels see Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands.

364. See chap. I of Rhys’s Arthurian Legend—“Arthur, Historical and Mythical”.

365. A triad in the Hengwrt MS. 536, translated by Skene. It was Trystan who was watching the swine for his uncle, while the swineherd went with a message to Essylt (Iseult), “and Arthur desired one pig by deceit or by theft, and could not get it.”

366. See note to chap. XXII—“The Treasures of Britain”.

367. Book of Taliesin, poem XXX, Skene, Vol. I, p. 256.

368. In a probably very ancient poem embedded in the sixteenth-century Welsh romance called Taliesin, included by Lady Guest in her Mabinogion.

369. “The existence of a sixth-century bard of this name, a contemporary of the heroic stage of British resistance to the Germanic invaders, is well attested. A number of poems are found in mediæval Welsh MSS., chief among them the so-called Book of Taliesin, ascribed to this sixth-century poet. Some of these are almost as old as any remains of Welsh poetry, and may go back to the early tenth or the ninth century; others are productions of the eleventh, twelfth, and even thirteenth centuries.”—Nutt: Notes to his (1902) edition of Lady Guest’s Mabinogion.

370. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, p. 551.

371. “There can be little doubt but that the sixth-century bard succeeded to the form and attributes of a far older, a prehistoric, a mythic singer.”—Nutt: Notes to Mabinogion.

372. I have been obliged to collate four different translators to obtain an acceptable version of what Mr. T. Stephens, in his Literature of the Kymri, calls “one of the least intelligible of the mythological poems”. My authorities have been Skene, Stephens, Nash, and Rhys.

373. A form of the name Gwydion.

374. The name of Arthur’s ship.

375. Revolving Castle.

376. Four-cornered Castle.

377. The Cold Place.

378. Castle of Revelry.

381. Castle of Riches.

382. Meaning is unknown. See chap. XVI—“The Gods of the Britons”.

383. Meaning is unknown. See chap. XX—“The Victories of Light over Darkness”.

384. Unless they should be “the yellow and the brindled bull” mentioned in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen.

385. Book of Taliesin, poem XIV. The translation is by Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 301.

386. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 325.

387. Rhys: ibid., chap. I.

388. Malory’s Morte Darthur, Book II, chap. II.

389. Historia Britonum, Book VIII, chap. XX.

390. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 169.

391. Rhys: ibid., p. 169.

392. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 13.

393. Rhys: ibid., pp. 19-23.

394. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, p. 168.

395. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, p. 167.

396. See Rhys’s exposition of the mythological meaning of the Red Book romance of the Dream of Maxen Wledig, in his Hibbert Lectures, pp. 160-175.

397. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, pp. 192-195.

398. Historia Britonum, Book VIII, chaps. IX-XII.

399. See chap. IV and Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, p. 194.

400. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, pp. 158, 159.

401. Ibid., p. 155.

402. Plutarch: De Defectu Oraculorum.

403. The Seint Greal, quoted by Rhys: Arthurian Legend, pp. 61-62.

404. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 59.

405. Elton: Origins of English History, p. 269.

406. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 12.

407. Ibid., p. 70.

408. The name March means “horse”.

409. Morte Darthur. Book X, chap. XXVII.

410. Called Labraid Longsech.

411. Rhys: Arthurian Legend. See chap. XI—“Urien and his Congeners”.

412. Ibid., p. 260.

413. Ibid., p. 261.

414. Ibid., p. 256.

415. Red Book of Hergest, XII. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, pp. 253-256.

416. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 247.

418. The Death-song of Owain. Taliesin, XLIV, Skene, Vol. I, p. 366.

419. Book of Taliesin, XXXII. Skene, however, translates the word rendered “evening” by Rhys as “cultivated plain”.

420. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 345.

421. Both by Malory and Geoffrey of Monmouth.

422. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 256.

423. See chap. XVIII—“The Wooing of Branwen and the Beheading of Brân”.

424. He is called Ogyrvran the Giant.

425. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 326.

426. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, pp. 268-269.

427. Rhys: Lectures on Welsh Philology, p. 306. But the derivation is only tentative, and an interesting alternative one is given, which equates him with the Persian Ahriman.

428. The enumeration of Arthur’s three Gwynhwyvars forms one of the Welsh triads.

429. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 342.

430. See chap. XI—“The Gods in Exile”.

431. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, chap. II—“Arthur and Airem”.

432. In the mysterious Lancelot, not found in Arthurian story before the Norman adaptations of it, Professor Rhys is inclined to see a British sun-god, or solar hero. A number of interesting comparisons are drawn between him and the Peredur and Owain of the later “Mabinogion” tales, as well as with the Gaelic Cuchulainn. See Studies in the Arthurian Legend.

433. Morte Darthur, Book XXI, chap. I.

434. The fullest list of translated triads is contained in the appendix to Probert’s Ancient Laws of Cambria, 1823. Many are also given as an appendix in Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales.

435. Black Book of Caermarthen XIX, Vol. I, pp. 309-318 in Skene.

436. This is Professor Rhys’s translation of the Welsh line, no doubt more strictly correct than the famous rendering: “Unknown is the grave of Arthur”.

437. “History of the Britons”, § 50.

438. Geoffrey of Monmouth. Books IX and X, and chaps. I and II of XI.

439. Translated by Lady Guest in her Mabinogion.

440. See chap. XIV—“Finn and the Fenians”.

441. Chap. VIII—“The Gaelic Argonauts”.

442. The list will be found, translated from an old Welsh MS., in the notes to Kulhwch and Olwen, in Lady Guest’s Mabinogion.

443. Chap. VIII—“The Gaelic Argonauts”.

444. Pronounced Keelhookh.

445. The following pages sketch out the main incidents of the story as translated by Lady Guest in her Mabinogion.

446. In Welsh, Yspaddaden Penkawr.

447. I.e. She of the White Track. The beauty of Olwen was proverbial in mediæval Welsh poetry.

448. In his notes to his edition of Lady Guest’s Mabinogion. Published 1902.

449. So says the text. But a triad quoted by Lady Guest in her notes gives the “Three Paramount Prisoners of Britain” differently. “The three supreme prisoners of the Island of Britain, Llyr Llediath in the prison of Euroswydd Wledig, and Madoc, or Mabon, and Gweir, son of Gweiryoth; and one more exalted than the three, and that was Arthur, who was for three nights in the Castle of Oeth and Anoeth, and three nights in the prison of Wen Pendragon, and three nights in the dark prison under the stone. And one youth released him from these three prisons; that youth was Goreu the son of Custennin, his cousin.”

450. See Rhys: Celtic Folklore, chap. X—“Place-name Stories”.

451. The “big knife” was, we are told in the story, “a short broad dagger. When Arthur and his hosts came before a torrent, they would seek for a narrow place where they might pass the water, and would lay the sheathed dagger across the torrent, and it would form a bridge sufficient for the armies of the three islands of Britain, and of the three islands adjacent, with their spoil.”

452. Tennyson’s Idylls of the King; Guinevere.

453. Ibid. To the Queen.

454. Morte Darthur, Book I, chap. X.

455. Gresholm Island, the scene of “The Entertaining of the Noble Head”.

456. Morte Darthur, Book XX, chap. VIII.

457. Ibid., Book I, chap. III.

458. Morte Darthur, Book I, chap. VIII.

459. Ibid., Book I, chap. XVI.

460. Ibid., Book I, chap. II.

461. Ibid., Book IV, chap. IV.

462. Ibid., Book I, chap. XXIV.

463. Ibid., Book I, chap. II.

464. Ibid., Book II, chap. XVIII.

465. Ibid., Book V, chap. II; Book VIII, chap. IV; Book XIX, chap. XI.

466. Ibid., Book XI, chap. II.

467. Morte Darthur, Book XI, chap. II.

468. Ibid., Book XVII, chap. V.

469. Ibid., Book XI, chap. II.

470. Ibid., Book XII, chap. V.

471. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 283.

472. Morte Darthur, Book IV, chap. XXIII.

473. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 284 and note.

474. The subject is treated at length by Professor Rhys in his Arthurian Legend, chap. XII—“Pwyll and Pelles”.

475. Morte Darthur, Book II, chap. XV.

476. Morte Darthur, Book I, chap. XII.

477. Ibid., Book I, chap. XV.

478. Ibid., Book I, chap. IX.

479. Ibid., Book XIII, chap. XII.

480. Ibid., Book XIX, chap. XI.

481. Ibid., Book XIX, chap. II.

482. Ibid., Book XIII, chap. X.

483. Ibid., Book XIV, chap. IV.

484. Morte Darthur, Book XIV, chap. IV.

485. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 11.

486. Op. cit., pp. 21-22.

487. Morte Darthur, Book IV, chap. XVIII.

488. Ibid., Book I, chap. VIII.

489. Rhys: Arthurian Legend, p. 23.

490. Morte Darthur, Book IV, chap. I.

491. See chap. XVII—“The Adventures of the Gods of Hades”.

492. Morte Darthur, Book IV, chap. I.

493. Ibid., Book I, chap. II.

494. Ibid., Book III, chap. XV.

495. Whose story is told by Tennyson in the Idylls, and by Malory in Book XVIII of the Morte Darthur.