The White Goddess by Robert Graves Page B

gw for f )of Fionn, or Finn, the Irish hero of a similar tale. Fionn son of Mairne, a Chief Druid’s daughter, was instructed by a Druid of the same name as himself to cook for him a salmon fished from a deep pool of the River Boyne, and forbidden to taste it; but as Fionn was turning the fish over in the pan he burned his thumb, which he put into his mouth and so received the gift of inspiration. For the salmon was a salmon of knowledge, that had fed on nuts fallen from the nine hazels of poetic art. The equivalent of Gwreang is Freann, an established variant of Fearn, the alder. Gwion is thus claiming oracular powers as a spiritual son of the Alder-god Bran. His adoption of a pseudonym was justified by tradition. The hero Cuchulain (‘hound of Culain’) was first named Setanta and was a reincarnation of the god Lugh; and Fionn (‘fair’) himself was first named Deimne. Bran was a most suitable father for Gwion, for by this time he was known as the Giant Ogyr Vran, Guinevere’s father – his name, which means ‘Bran theMalign’ ( ocur vran ), 1 has apparently given English the word ‘ogre’ through Perrault’s Fairy Tales – and was credited by the bards with the invention of their art and with the ownership of the Cauldron of Cerridwen from which they said that the Triple Muse had been born. And Gwion’s mother was Cerridwen herself.
    It is a pity that one cannot be sure whether the ascription of the romance in an Iolo manuscript printed by the Welsh MSS. Society ,to one ‘Thomas ap Einion Offeiriad, a descendant of Gruffydd Gwyr’, is to be trusted. This manuscript, called ‘Anthony Powel of Llwydarth’s MS.’, reads authentically enough – unlike the other notices of Taliesin printed by Lady Guest, on Iolo Morganwg’s authority, in her notes to the Romance of Taliesin :
    Taliesin, Chief of the Bards, the son of Saint Henwg of Caerlleon upon Usk, was invited to the court of Urien Rheged, at Aberllychwr. He, with Elffin, the son of Urien, being once fishing at sea in a skin coracle, an Irish pirate ship seized him and his coracle, and bore him away towards Ireland; but while the pirates were at the height of their drunken mirth, Taliesin pushed his coracle to the sea, and got into it himself, with a shield in his hand which he found in the ship, and with which he rowed the coracle until it verged the land; but, the waves breaking then in wild foam, he lost his hold on the shield, so that he had no alternative but to be driven at the mercy of the sea, in which state he continued for a short time, when the coracle stuck to the point of a pole in the weir of Gwyddno, Lord of Gredigion, in Aberdyvi; and in that position he was found, at the ebb, by Gwyddno’s fishermen, by whom he was interrogated; and when it was ascertained that he was a bard, and the tutor of Elffin, the son of Urien Rheged, the son of Cynvarch: ‘I, too, have a son named Elffin,’ said Gwyddno, ‘be thou a bard and teacher to him, also, and I will give thee lands in free tenure.’ The terms were accepted, and for several successive years he spent his time between the courts of Urien Rheged and Gwyddno, called Gwyddno Garanhir, Lord of the Lowland Cantred; but after the territory of Gwyddno had become overwhelmed by the sea, Taliesin was invited by the Emperor Arthur to his court at Caerlleon upon Usk, where he became highly celebrated for poetic genius and useful, meritorious sciences. After Arthur’s death he retired to the estate given to him by Gwyddno, takingElffin, the son of that prince, under his protection. It was from this account that Thomas, the son of Einion Offeiriad, descended from Gruffyd Gwyr, formed his romance of Taliesin, the son of Cariadwen – Elffin, the son of Goddnou – Rhun, the son of Maelgwn Gwynedd, and the operations of the Cauldron of Ceridwen.
     
    If this is a genuine mediaeval document, not an eighteenth-century forgery, it refers to a muddled tradition about the sixth-century poet Taliesin and