’In former times there was a man of noble descent in Penllyn.  His name was Tegid Voel, and his paternal estate was in the middle of the Lake of Tegid, and his wife was called Ceridwen.’

Nothing could well be simpler; but what Davies finds in this simple opening of Taliesin’s story is prodigious:-

’Let us take a brief view of the proprietor of this estate.  Tegid Voel—­bald serenity—­presents itself at once to our fancy.  The painter would find no embarrassment in sketching the portrait of this sedate venerable personage, whose crown is partly stripped of its hoary honours.  But of all the gods of antiquity, none could with propriety sit for this picture excepting Saturn, the acknowledged representative of Noah, and the husband of Rhea, which was but another name for Ceres, the genius of the ark.’

And Ceres, the genius of the ark, is of course found in Ceridwen, ’the British Ceres, the arkite goddess who initiates us into the deepest mysteries of the arkite superstition.’

Now the story of Taliesin, as it proceeds, exhibits Ceridwen as a sorceress; and a sorceress, like a goddess, belongs to the world of the supernatural; but, beyond this, the story itself does not suggest one particle of relationship between Ceridwen and Ceres.  All the rest comes out of Davies’s fancy, and is established by reasoning of the force of that about ‘bald serenity.’

It is not difficult for the other side, the Celt-haters, to get a triumph over such adversaries as these.  Perhaps I ought to ask pardon of Mr. Nash, whose Taliesin it is impossible to read without profit and instruction, for classing him among the Celt-haters; his determined scepticism about Welsh antiquity seems to me, however, to betray a preconceived hostility, a bias taken beforehand, as unmistakable as Mr. Davies’s prepossessions.  But Mr. Nash is often very happy in demolishing, for really the Celt-lovers seem often to try to lay themselves open, and to invite demolition.  Full of his notions about an arkite idolatry and a Helio-daemonic worship, Edward Davies gives this translation of an old Welsh poem, entitled The Panegyric of Lludd the Great:-

’A song of dark import was composed by the distinguished Ogdoad, who assembled on the day of the moon, and went in open procession.  On the day of Mars they allotted wrath to their adversaries; and on the day of Mercury they enjoyed their full pomp; on the day of Jove they were delivered from the detested usurpers; on the day of Venus, the day of the great influx, they swam in the blood of men; {29} on the day of the Sun there truly assemble five ships and five hundred of those who make supplication:  O Brithi, O Brithoi!  O son of the compacted wood, the shock overtakes me; we all attend on Adonai, on the area of Pwmpai.’

That looks Helio-daemonic enough, undoubtedly; especially when Davies prints O Brithi, O Brithoi! in Hebrew characters, as being ’vestiges of sacred hymns in the Phoenician language.’  But then comes Mr. Nash, and says that the poem is a middle-age composition, with nothing Helio-daemonic about it; that it is meant to ridicule the monks; and that O Brithi, O Brithoi! is a mere piece of unintelligible jargon in mockery of the chants used by the monks at prayers; and he gives this counter-translation of the poem:-