"With a feast of wine and a banquet of mead,
Did his mother Hwrraith
At the first fall of the dew (_cyn llaith_) enrich
The energetic Eidol."
{160a} The hill on which the vanguard was stationed.
{160b} Waiting their prey.
{160c} "Cynydaw" (cnydiaw) to yield a crop. Cynydaw means also to rise;
and we may thus construe the passage,--
"The foremost spearmen spring up around him."
Another reading gives "cwydaw" to fall, in allusion to the slaughter of
the men; adopting this expression, it would seem that "arnaw" was more
applicable to "racvre," the mount of the van.
{160d} "Glas heid," (glas haidd) green barley. It is rather singular
that the words, without the slightest alteration, will admit of another
simile equally beautiful and appropriate, viz.--_glas haid_, a blue swarm
of flies. The word _glas_ may be indicative of the prevailing colour of
the dress or armour of the men,
"As from the rocky cliff the shepherd sees
Clustering in heaps on heaps the driving bees,
Rolling, and blackening, swarms succeeding swarms,
With deeper murmurs and more hoarse alarms;
Dusky they spread, a close embodied crowd,
And o'er the vale descends the living cloud." (Pope's Homer, b. ii.
l. 111.)
{161a} "Hedin;" this word seems of kindred nature with haidd (barley)
and is here translated accordingly; (hedeg, to shoot out, or to ear, as
corn.) Another version gives "hediw," (_heddyw_, today.)
{161b} It is still very common in Wales to call the cause or origin of
any thing by the name of mam: thus, for instance, we say "mam y drwg" of
the chief instigator of mischief. What we are to understand by the
"mother of the lance" it is not very easy to determine; it might have
been courage or the sense of wrong, or quarrel, or any other cause which
excited the Britons to fight.
{161c} Al. "They marched and chanted, clad in coat of mail."
{162a} "Vawr dru," &c. Al. "miserable hero."
{162b} This confirms the view we have taken of the "milcant a thrychant"
at line 86.
{162c} "Gloew dull;" in bright array. It may refer also to the viands.
{162d} "Mai;" Taliesin, in like manner, says of Urien, that he was,--
"Un yn darwedd
Gwin a mal a medd."
One who was generous of wine, and bounty, and mead.
"Mal," properly speaking, seems to have been a certain tribute, as above.
Thus we read in Welsh legends;--
"He gave his domain of Clynog to God and to Beuno for ever, without
either contribution or tax (heb na mal nac ardreth.") (Buch. Beuno.)