THE GODS OF THE BRITONS
The descriptions and the stories of the British gods have hardly come
down to us in so ample or so compact a form as those of the deities of
the Gaels, as they are preserved in the Irish and Scottish manuscripts.
They have also suffered far more from the sophistications of the
euhemerist. Only in the “Four Branches of the Mabinogi” do the gods of
the Britons appear in anything like their real character of supernatural
beings, masters of magic, and untrammelled by the limitations which
hedge in mortals. Apart from those four fragments of mythology, and from
a very few scattered references in the early Welsh poems, one must
search for them under strange disguises. Some masquerade as kings in
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s more than apocryphal _Historia Britonum_. Others
have received an undeserved canonization, which must be stripped from
them before they can be seen in their true colours. Others, again, were
adopted by the Norman-French romancers, and turned into the champions of
chivalry now known as Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. But, however
disguised, their real nature can still be discerned. The Gaels and the
Britons were but two branches of one race—the Celtic. In many of the
gods of the Britons we shall recognize, with names alike and attributes
the same, the familiar features of the Gaelic Tuatha Dé Danann.
The British gods are sometimes described as divided into three
families—the “Children of Dôn”, the “Children of Nudd”, and the
“Children of Llyr”. But these three families are really only two; for
Nudd, or Lludd, as he is variously called, is himself described as a son
of Beli, who was the husband of the goddess Dôn. There can be no doubt
that Dôn herself is the same divine personage as Danu, the mother of the
Tuatha Dé Danann, and that Beli is the British equivalent of the Gaelic
Bilé, the universal Dis Pater who sent out the first Gaels from Hades to
take possession of Ireland. With the other family, the “Children of
Llyr”, we are equally on familiar ground; for the British Llyr can be
none other than the Gaelic sea-god Lêr. These two families or tribes are
usually regarded as in opposition, and their struggles seem to symbolize
in British myth that same conflict between the powers of heaven, light,
and life and of the sea, darkness, and death which are shadowed in
Gaelic mythology in the battles between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the
Fomors.
For the children of Dôn were certainly gods of the sky. Their names are
writ large in heaven. The glittering W which we call “Cassiopeia’s
Chair” was to our British ancestors _Llys Dôn_, or “Dôn’s Court”; our
“Northern Crown” was _Caer Arianrod_, the “Castle of Arianrod”, Dôn’s
daughter; while the “Milky Way” was the “Castle of Gwydion”, Dôn’s
son.[282] More than this, the greatest of her children, the Nudd or
Lludd whom some make the head of a dynasty of his own, was the Zeus
alike of the Britons and of the Gaels. His epithet of _Llaw Ereint_,
that is, “of the Hand of Silver”, proves him the same personage as Nuada
the “Silver-Handed”. The legend which must have existed to explain this
peculiarity has been lost on British ground, but it was doubtless the
same as that told of the Irish god. With it, and, no doubt, much else,
has disappeared any direct account of battles fought by him as sky-god
against Fomor-like enemies. But, under the faint disguise of a king of
Britain, an ancient Welsh tale[283] records how he put an end to three
supernatural “plagues” which oppressed his country. In addition to this,
we find him under his name of Nudd described in a Welsh Triad as one of
“the three generous heroes of the Isle of Britain”, while another makes
him the owner of twenty-one thousand milch cows—an expression which
must, to the primitive mind, have implied inexhaustible wealth. Both
help us to the conception of a god of heaven and battle, triumphant, and
therefore rich and liberal.[284]
More tangible evidence is, however, not lacking to prove the wide-spread
nature of his worship. A temple dedicated to him in Roman times under
the name of Nodens, or Nudens, has been discovered at Lydney, on the
banks of the Severn. The god is pictured on a plaque of bronze as a
youthful deity, haloed like the sun, and driving a four-horsed chariot.
Flying spirits, typifying the winds, accompany him; while his power over
the sea is symbolized by attendant Tritons.[285] This was in the west of
Britain, while, in the east, there is good reason to believe that he had
a shrine overlooking the Thames. Tradition declares that St. Paul’s
Cathedral occupies the site of an ancient pagan temple; while the spot
on which it stands was called, we know from Geoffrey of Monmouth, “Parth
Lludd” by the Britons, and “Ludes Geat” by the Saxons.[286]
Great, however, as he probably was, Lludd, or Nudd occupies less space
in Welsh story, as we have it now, than his son. Gwyn ap Nudd has
outlived in tradition almost all his supernatural kin. Professor Rhys is
tempted to see in him the British equivalent of the Gaelic Finn mac
Cumhail.[287] The name of both alike means “white”; both are sons of the
heaven-god; both are famed as hunters. Gwyn, however, is more than that;
for his game is man. In the early Welsh poems, he is a god of battle and
of the dead, and, as such, fills the part of a _psychopompos_,
conducting the slain into Hades, and there ruling over them. In later,
semi-Christianized story he is described as “Gwyn, son of Nudd, whom God
has placed over the brood of devils in Annwn, lest they should destroy
the present race[288]”. Later again, as paganism still further
degenerated, he came to be considered as king of the _Tylwyth Teg_, the
Welsh fairies,[289] and his name as such has hardly yet died out of his
last haunt, the romantic vale of Neath. He is the wild huntsman of Wales
and the West of England, and it is his pack which is sometimes heard at
chase in waste places by night.
In his earliest guise, as a god of war and death, he is the subject of a
poem in dialogue contained in the Black Book of Caermarthen.[290]
Obscure, like most of the ancient Welsh poems,[291] it is yet a spirited
production, and may be quoted here as a favourable specimen of the
poetry of the early Cymri. In it we shall see mirrored perhaps the
clearest figure of the British Pantheon, the “mighty hunter”, not of
deer, but of men’s souls, riding his demon horse, and cheering on his
demon hound to the fearful chase. He knows when and where all the great
warriors fell, for he gathered their souls upon the field of battle, and
now rules over them in Hades, or upon some “misty mountain-top”.[292] It
describes a mythical prince, named Gwyddneu Garanhir, known to Welsh
legend as the ruler of a lost country now covered by the waters of
Cardigan Bay, asking protection of the god, who accords it, and then
relates the story of his exploits:
_Gwyddneu._
A bull of conflict was he, active in dispersing an arrayed army,
The ruler of hosts, indisposed to anger,
Blameless and pure his conduct in protecting life.
_Gwyn._
Against a hero stout was his advance,
The ruler of hosts, disposer of wrath,
There will be protection for thee since thou askest it.
_Gwyddneu._
For thou hast given me protection
How warmly wert thou welcomed!
The hero of hosts, from what region thou comest?
_Gwyn._
I come from battle and conflict
With a shield in my hand;
Broken is the helmet by the pushing of spears.
_Gwyddneu._
I will address thee, exalted man,
With his shield in distress.
Brave man, what is thy descent?
_Gwyn._
Round-hoofed is my horse, the torment of battle,
Fairy am I called, Gwyn the son of Nudd,[293]
The lover of Creurdilad, the daughter of Lludd.
_Gwyddneu._
Since it is thou, Gwyn, an upright man,
From thee there is no concealing:
I am Gwyddneu Garanhir.
_Gwyn._
Hasten to my ridge, the Tawë abode;
Not the nearest Tawë name I to thee,
But that Tawë which is the farthest.[294]
Polished is my ring, golden my saddle and bright:
To my sadness
I saw a conflict before Caer Vandwy.[295]
Before Caer Vandwy a host I saw,
Shields were shattered and ribs broken;
Renowned and splendid was he who made the assault.
_Gwyddneu._
Gwyn, son of Nudd, the hope of armies,
Quicker would legions fall before the hoofs
Of thy horse than broken rushes to the ground.
_Gwyn._
Handsome my dog, and round-bodied,
And truly the best of dogs;
Dormarth[296] was he, which belonged to Maelgwyn.
_Gwyddneu._
Dormarth with the ruddy nose! what a gazer
Thou art upon me because I notice
Thy wanderings on Gwibir Vynyd.[297]
_Gwyn._
I have been in the place where was killed Gwendoleu,
The son of Ceidaw, the pillar of songs,
When the ravens screamed over blood.
I have been in the place where Brân was killed,
The son of Iweridd, of far extending fame,
When the ravens of the battle-field screamed.
I have been where Llacheu was slain,
The son of Arthur, extolled in songs,
When the ravens screamed over blood.
I have been where Meurig was killed,
The son of Carreian, of honourable fame,
When the ravens screamed over flesh.
I have been where Gwallawg was killed,
The son of Goholeth, the accomplished,
The resister of Lloegyr, the son of Lleynawg.
I have been where the soldiers of Britain were slain,
From the east to the north:
I am the escort of the grave.[298]
I have been where the soldiers of Britain were slain,
From the east to the south:
I am alive, they in death!
A line in this poem allows us to see Gwyn in another and less sinister
rôle. “The lover of Creurdilad, the daughter of Lludd,” he calls
himself; and an episode in the mythical romance of “Kulhwch and Olwen”,
preserved in the Red Book of Hergest, gives the details of his
courtship. Gwyn had as rival a deity called Gwyrthur ap Greidawl, that
is “Victor, son of Scorcher”.[299] These two waged perpetual war for
Creurdilad, or Creudylad, each in turn stealing her from the other,
until the matter was referred to Arthur, who decided that Creudylad
should be sent back to her father, and that Gwyn and Gwyrthur “should
fight for her every first of May, from henceforth until the day of doom,
and that whichever of them should then be conqueror should have the
maiden”. What satisfaction this would be to the survivor of what might
be somewhat flippantly described as, in two senses, the longest
engagement on record, is not very clear; but its mythological
interpretation appears fairly obvious. In Gwyn, god of death and the
underworld, and in the solar deity, Gwyrthur, we may see the powers of
darkness and sunshine, of winter and summer, in contest,[300] each
alternately winning and losing a bride who would seem to represent the
spring with its grain and flowers. Creudylad, whom the story of “Kulhwch
and Olwen” calls “the most splendid maiden in the three islands of the
mighty and in the three islands adjacent”, is, in fact, the British
Persephoné. As the daughter of Lludd, she is child of the shining sky.
But a different tradition must have made her a daughter of Llyr, the
sea-god; for her name as such passed, through Geoffrey of Monmouth, to
Shakespeare, in whose hands she became that pathetic figure, Cordelia in
“King Lear”. It may not be altogether unworthy of notice, though perhaps
it is only a coincidence, that in some myths the Greek Persephoné is
made a daughter of Zeus and in others of Poseidon.[301]
Turning from the sky-god and his son, we find others of Dôn’s children
to have been the exponents of those arts of life which early races held
to have been taught directly by the gods to men. Dôn herself had a
brother, Mâth, son of a mysterious Mâthonwy, and recognizable as a
benevolent ruler of the underworld akin to Beli, or perhaps that god
himself under another title, for the name Mâth, which means “coin,
money, treasure”,[302] recalls that of Plouton, the Greek god of Hades,
in his guise of possessor and giver of metals. It was a belief common to
the Aryan races that wisdom, as well as wealth, came originally from the
underworld; and we find Mâth represented, in the Mabinogi bearing his
name, as handing on his magical lore to his nephew and pupil Gwydion,
who, there is good reason to believe, was the same divine personage whom
the Teutonic tribes worshipped as “Woden” and “Odin”. Thus equipped,
Gwydion son of Dôn became the druid of the gods, the “master of illusion
and phantasy”, and, not only that, but the teacher of all that is useful
and good, the friend and helper of mankind, and the perpetual fighter
against niggardly underworld powers for the good gifts which they
refused to allow out of their keeping. Shoulder to shoulder with him in
this “holy war” of culture against ignorance, and light against
darkness, stood his brothers Amaethon, god of agriculture, and Govannan,
a god of smithcraft identical with the Gaelic Giobniu. He had also a
sister called Arianrod, or “Silver Circle”, who, as is common in
mythologies, was not only his sister, but also his wife. So Zeus wedded
Heré; and, indeed, it is difficult to say where otherwise the partners
of gods are to come from. Of this connection two sons were born at one
birth—Dylan and Lleu, who are considered as representing the twin powers
of darkness and light. With darkness the sea was inseparably connected
by the Celts, and, as soon as the dark twin was born and named, he
plunged headlong into his native element. “And immediately when he was
in the sea,” says the Mabinogi of Mâth, son of Mâthonwy, “he took its
nature, and swam as well as the best fish that was therein. And for that
reason was he called Dylan, the Son of the Wave. Beneath him no wave
ever broke.” He was killed with a spear at last by his uncle, Govannan,
and, according to the bard Taliesin, the waves of Britain, Ireland,
Scotland, and the Isle of Man wept for him.[303] Beautiful legends grew
up around his death. The clamour of the waves dashing upon the beach is
the expression of their longing to avenge their son. The sound of the
sea rushing up the mouth of the River Conway is still known as “Dylan’s
death-groan”[304]. A small promontory on the Carnarvonshire side of the
Menai Straits, called _Pwynt Maen Tylen_, or _Pwynt Maen Dulan_,
preserves his name.[305]
The other child of Gwydion and Arianrod grew up to become the British
sun-god, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, the exact counterpart of the Gaelic Lugh
Lamhfada, “Light the Long-handed”. Like all solar deities, his growth
was rapid. When he was a year old, he seemed to be two years; at the age
of two, he travelled by himself; and when he was four years old, he was
as tall as a boy of eight, and was his father’s constant companion.
One day, Gwydion took him to the castle of Arianrod—not her castle in
the sky, but her abode on earth, the still-remembered site of which is
marked by a patch of rocks in the Menai Straits, accessible without a
boat only during the lowest spring and autumn tides. Arianrod had
disowned her son, and did not recognize him when she saw him with
Gwydion. She asked who he was, and was much displeased when told. She
demanded to know his name, and, when Gwydion replied that he had as yet
received none, she “laid a destiny upon” him, after the fashion of the
Celts, that he should be without a name until she chose to bestow one on
him herself.
To be without a name was a very serious thing to the ancient Britons,
who seem to have held the primitive theory that the name and the soul
are the same. So Gwydion cast about to think by what craft he might
extort from Arianrod some remark from which he could name their son. The
next day, he went down to the sea-shore with the boy, both of them
disguised as cordwainers. He made a boat out of sea-weed by magic, and
some beautifully-coloured leather out of some dry sticks and sedges.
Then they sailed the boat to the port of Arianrod’s castle, and,
anchoring it where it could be seen, began ostentatiously to stitch away
at the leather. Naturally, they were soon noticed, and Arianrod sent
someone out to see who they were and what they were doing. When she
found that they were shoemakers, she remembered that she wanted some
shoes. Gwydion, though he had her measure, purposely made them, first
too large, and then too small. This brought Arianrod herself down to the
boat to be fitted.
While Gwydion was measuring Arianrod’s foot for the shoes, a wren came
and stood upon the deck. The boy took his bow and arrow, and hit the
wren in the leg—a favourite shot of Celtic “crack” archers, at any rate
in romance. The goddess was pleased to be amiable and complimentary.
“Truly,” said she, “the lion aimed at it with a steady hand.” It is from
such incidents that primitive people take their names, all the world
over. The boy had got his. “It is no thanks to you,” said Gwydion to
Arianrod, “but now he has a name. And a good name it is. He shall be
called Llew Llaw Gyffes[306].”
This name of the sun-god is a good example of how obsolete the ancient
pagan tradition had become before it was put into writing. The old word
_Lleu_, meaning “light”, had passed out of use, and the scribe
substituted for a name that was unintelligible to him one like it which
he knew, namely _Llew_, meaning “lion”. The word _Gyffes_ seems also to
have suffered change, and to have meant originally not “steady”, but
“long”[307].
At any rate, Arianrod was defeated in her design to keep her son
nameless. Neither did she even get her shoes; for, as soon as he had
gained his object, Gwydion allowed the boat to change back into
sea-weed, and the leather to return to sedge and sticks. So, in her
anger, she put a fresh destiny on the boy, that he should not take arms
till she herself gave them him.
Gwydion, however, took Lleu to Dinas Dinllev, his castle, which still
stands at the edge of the Menai Straits, and brought him up as a
warrior. As soon as he thought him old enough to have arms, he took him
with him again to Caer Arianrod. This time, they were disguised as
bards. Arianrod received them gladly, heard Gwydion’s songs and tales,
feasted them, and prepared a room for them to sleep in.
The next morning, Gwydion got up very early, and prepared his most
powerful incantations. By his druidical arts he made it seem as if the
whole country rang with the shouts and trumpets of an army, and he put a
glamour over everyone, so that they saw the bay filled with ships.
Arianrod came to him in terror, asking what could be done to protect the
castle. “Give us arms,” he replied, “and we will do the best we can.” So
Arianrod’s maidens armed Gwydion, while Arianrod herself put arms on
Lleu. By the time she had finished, all the noises had ceased, and the
ships had vanished. “Let us take our arms off again,” said Gwydion; “we
shall not need them now.” “But the army is all round the castle!” cried
Arianrod. “There was no army,” answered Gwydion; “it was only an
illusion of mine to cause you to break your prophecy and give our son
arms. And now he has got them, without thanks to you.” “Then I will lay
a worse destiny on him,” cried the infuriated goddess. “He shall never
have a wife of the people of this earth.” “He shall have a wife in spite
of you,” said Gwydion.
So Gwydion went to Mâth, his uncle and tutor in magic, and between them
they made a woman out of flowers by charms and illusion. “They took the
blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of
the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most
graceful that man ever saw.” They called her Blodeuwedd (Flower-face),
and gave her to Lleu as his wife. And they gave Lleu a palace called Mur
y Castell, near Bala Lake.
All went well until, one day, Gronw Pebyr, one of the gods of darkness,
came by, hunting, and killed the stag at nightfall near Lleu’s castle.
The sun-god was away upon a visit to Mâth, but Blodeuwedd asked the
stranger to take shelter with her. That night they fell in love with one
another, and conspired together how Lleu might be put away. When Lleu
came back from Mâth’s court, Blodeuwedd, like a Celtic Dalilah, wormed
out of him the secret of how his life was preserved. He told her that he
could only die in one way; he could not be killed either inside or
outside a house, either on horseback or on foot, but that if a spear
that had been a year in the making, and which was never worked upon
except during the sacrifice on Sunday, were to be cast at him as he
stood beneath a roof of thatch, after having just bathed, with one foot
upon the edge of the bath and the other upon a buck goat’s back, it
would cause his death. Blodeuwedd piously thanked Heaven that he was so
well protected, and sent a messenger to her paramour, telling him what
she had learned. Gronw set to work on the spear; and in a year it was
ready. When she knew this, Blodeuwedd asked Lleu to show her exactly how
it was he could be killed.
Lleu agreed; and Blodeuwedd prepared the bath under the thatched roof,
and tethered the goat by it. Lleu bathed, and then stood with one foot
upon the edge of the bath, and the other upon the goat’s back. At this
moment, Gronw, from an ambush, flung the spear, and hit Lleu, who, with
a terrible cry, changed into an eagle, and flew away. He never came
back; and Gronw took possession of both his wife and his palace.
But Gwydion set out to search everywhere for his son. At last, one day,
he came to a house in North Wales where the man was in great anxiety
about his sow; for as soon as the sty was opened, every morning, she
rushed out, and did not return again till late in the evening. Gwydion
offered to follow her, and, at dawn, the man took him to the sty, and
opened the door. The sow leaped forth, and ran, and Gwydion ran after
her. He tracked her to a brook between Snowdon and the sea, still called
Nant y Llew, and saw her feeding underneath an oak. Upon the top of the
tree there was an eagle, and, every time it shook itself, there fell off
it lumps of putrid meat, which the sow ate greedily. Gwydion suspected
that the eagle must be Lleu. So he sang this verse:
“Oak that grows between the two banks;
Darkened is the sky and hill!
Shall I not tell him by his wounds,
That this is Lleu?”
The eagle, on hearing this, came half-way down the tree. So Gwydion
sang:
“Oak that grows in upland ground,
Is it not wetted by the rain? Has it not been drenched
By nine score tempests?
It bears in its branches Lleu Llaw Gyffes.”
The eagle came slowly down until it was on the lowest branch. Gwydion
sang:
“Oak that grows beneath the steep;
Stately and majestic is its aspect!
Shall I not speak it?
That Lleu will come to my lap?”
Then the eagle came down, and sat on Gwydion’s knee. Gwydion struck it
with his magic wand, and it became Lleu again, wasted to skin and bone
by the poison on the spear.
Gwydion took him to Mâth to be healed, and left him there, while he went
to Mur y Castell, where Blodeuwedd was. When she heard that he was
coming, she fled. But Gwydion overtook her, and changed her into an owl,
the bird that hates the day. A still older form of this probably
extremely ancient myth of the sun-god—the savage and repulsive details
of which speak of a hoary antiquity—makes the chase of Blodeuwedd by
Gwydion to have taken place in the sky, the stars scattered over the
Milky Way being the traces of it.[308] As for her accomplice, Lleu would
accept no satisfaction short of Gronw’s submitting to stand exactly
where Lleu had stood, to be shot at in his turn. To this he was obliged
to agree; and Lleu killed him.[309]
There are two other sons of Beli and Dôn of whom so little is recorded
that it would hardly be worth while mentioning them, were it not for the
wild poetry of the legend connected with them. The tale, put into
writing at a time when all the gods were being transfigured into simple
mortals, tells us that they were two kings of Britain, brothers. One
starlight night they were walking together. “See,” said Nynniaw to
Peibaw, “what a fine, wide-spreading field I have.” “Where is it?” asked
Peibaw. “There,” replied Nynniaw; “the whole stretch of the sky, as far
as the eye reaches.” “Look then,” returned Peibaw, “what a number of
cattle I have grazing on your field.” “Where are they?” asked Nynniaw.
“All the stars that you can see,” replied Peibaw, “every one of them of
fiery-coloured gold, with the moon for a shepherd over them.” “They
shall not feed on my field,” cried Nynniaw. “They shall,” exclaimed
Peibaw. “They shall not,” cried Nynniaw, “They shall,” said Peibaw.
“They shall not,” Nynniaw answered; and so they went on, from
contradiction to quarrel, and from private quarrel to civil war, until
the armies of both of them were destroyed, and the two authors of the
evil were turned by God into oxen for their sins.[310]
Last of the children of Dôn, we find a goddess called Penardun, of whom
little is known except that she was married to the sea-god Llyr. This
incident is curious, as forming a parallel to the Gaelic story which
tells of intermarriage between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomors.[311]
Brigit, the Dagda’s daughter, was married to Bress, son of Elathan,
while Cian, the son of Diancecht, wedded Ethniu, the daughter of Balor.
So, in this kindred mythology, a slender tie of relationship binds the
gods of the sky to the gods of the sea.
The name _Llyr_ is supposed, like its Irish equivalent Lêr, to have
meant “the Sea”.[312] The British sea-god is undoubtedly the same as the
Gaelic; indeed, the two facts that he is described in Welsh literature
as Llyr Llediath, that is, “Llyr of the Foreign Dialect”, and is given a
wife called Iweridd (Ireland)[313], suggest that he may have been
borrowed by the Britons from the Gaels later than any mythology common
to both. As a British god, he was the far-off original of Shakespeare’s
“King Lear”. The chief city of his worship is still called after him,
Leicester, that is, Llyr-cestre, in still earlier days, Caer Llyr.
Llyr, we have noticed, married two wives, Penardun and Iweridd. By the
daughter of Dôn he had a son called Manawyddan, who is identical with
the Gaelic Manannán mac Lir.[314] We know less of his character and
attributes than we do of the Irish god; but we find him equally a ruler
in that Hades or Elysium which the Celtic mind ever connected with the
sea. Like all the inhabitants of that other world, he is at once a
master of magic and of the useful arts, which he taught willingly to his
friends. To his enemies, however, he could show a different side of his
character. A triad tells us that—
“The achievement of Manawyddan the Wise,
After lamentation and fiery wrath,
Was the constructing of the bone-fortress of Oeth and Anoeth”,[315]
which is described as a prison made, in the shape of a bee-hive,
entirely of human bones mortared together, and divided into innumerable
cells, forming a kind of labyrinth. In this ghastly place he immured
those whom he found trespassing in Hades; and among his captives was no
less a person than the famous Arthur.[316]
“Ireland” bore two children to Llyr: a daughter called Branwen and a son
called Brân. The little we know of Branwen of the “Fair Bosom” shows her
as a goddess of love—child, like the Greek Aphrodité, of the sea. Brân,
on the other hand, is, even more clearly than Manawyddan, a dark deity
of Hades. He is represented as of colossal size, so huge, in fact, that
no house or ship was big enough to hold him.[317] He delighted in battle
and carnage, like the hoodie-crow or raven from which he probably took
his name,[318] but he was also the especial patron of bards, minstrels,
and musicians, and we find him in one of the poems ascribed to Taliesin
claiming to be himself a bard, a harper, a player on the crowth, and
seven-score other musicians all at once.[319] His son was called
Caradawc the Strong-armed, who, as the British mythology crumbled,
became confounded with the historical Caratacus, known popularly as
“Caractacus”.
Both Brân and Manawyddan were especially connected with the Swansea
peninsula. The bone-fortress of Oeth and Anoeth was placed by tradition
in Gower.[320] That Brân was equally at home there may be proved from
the Morte Darthur, in which storehouse of forgotten and misunderstood
mythology Brân of Gower survives as “King Brandegore”.[321]
Such identification of a mere mortal country with the other world seems
strange enough to us, but to our Celtic ancestors it was a quite natural
thought. All islands—and peninsulas, which, viewed from an opposite
coast, probably seemed to them islands—were deemed to be pre-eminently
homes of the dark Powers of Hades. Difficult of access, protected by the
turbulent and dangerous sea, sometimes rendered quite invisible by fogs
and mists and, at other times, looming up ghostlily on the horizon,
often held by the remnant of a hostile lower race, they gained a mystery
and a sanctity from the law of the human mind which has always held the
unknown to be the terrible. The Cornish Britons, gazing from the shore,
saw Gower and Lundy, and deemed them outposts of the over-sea Other
World. To the Britons of Wales, Ireland was no human realm, a view
reciprocated by the Gaels, who saw Hades in Britain, while the Isle of
Man was a little Hades common to them both. Nor even was the sea always
necessary to sunder the world of ghosts from that of “shadow-casting
men”. Glastonbury Tor, surrounded by almost impassable swamps, was one
of the especial haunts of Gwyn ap Nudd. The Britons of the north held
that beyond the Roman wall and the vast Caledonian wood lived ghosts and
not men. Even the Roman province of Demetia—called by the Welsh Dyfed,
and corresponding, roughly, to the modern County of Pembrokeshire—was,
as a last stronghold of the aborigines, identified with the mythic
underworld.
As such, Dyfed was ruled by a local tribe of gods, whose greatest
figures were Pwyll, “Head of Annwn” (the Welsh name for Hades), with his
wife Rhiannon, and their son Pryderi. These beings are described as
hostile to the children of Dôn, but friendly to the race of Llyr. After
Pwyll’s death or disappearance, his widow Rhiannon becomes the wife of
Manawyddan.[322] In a poem of Taliesin’s we find Manawyddan and Pryderi
joint-rulers of Hades, and warders of that magic cauldron of
inspiration[323] which the gods of light attempted to steal or capture,
and which became famous afterwards as the “Holy Grail”. Another of their
treasures were the “Three Birds of Rhiannon”, which, we are told in an
ancient book, could sing the dead to life and the living into the sleep
of death. Fortunately they sang seldom. “There are three things,” says a
Welsh triad, “which are not often heard: the song of the birds of
Rhiannon, a song of wisdom from the mouth of a Saxon, and an invitation
to a feast from a miser.”
Nor is the list of British gods complete without mention of Arthur,
though most readers will be surprised to find him in such company. The
genius of Tennyson, who drew his materials mostly from the Norman-French
romances, has stereotyped the popular conception of Arthur as a king of
early Britain who fought for his fatherland and the Christian faith
against invading Saxons. Possibly there may, indeed, have been a
powerful British chieftain bearing that typically Celtic name, which is
found in Irish legend as Artur, one of the sons of Nemed who fought
against the Fomors, and on the Continent as Artaius, a Gaulish deity
whom the Romans identified with Mercury, and who seems to have been a
patron of agriculture.[324] But the original Arthur stands upon the same
ground as Cuchulainn and Finn. His deeds are mythical, because
superhuman. His companions can be shown to have been divine. Some we
know were worshipped in Gaul. Others are children of Dôn, of Llyr, and
of Pwyll, dynasties of older gods to whose head Arthur seems to have
risen, as his cult waxed and theirs waned. Stripped of their godhead,
and strangely transformed, they fill the pages of romance as Knights of
the Table Round.
These deities were the native gods of Britain. Many others are, however,
mentioned upon inscriptions found in our island, but these were almost
all exotic and imported. Imperial Rome brought men of diverse races
among her legions, and these men brought their gods. Scattered over
Britain, but especially in the north, near the Wall, we find evidence
that deities of many nations—from Germany to Africa, and from Gaul to
Persia—were sporadically worshipped.[325] Most of these foreign gods
were Roman, but a temple at Eboracum (now York) was dedicated to
Serapis, and Mithras, the Persian sun-god, was also adored there; while
at Corbridge, in Northumberland (the ancient Corspitium), there have
been found altars to the Tyrian Hercules and to Astarte. The war-god was
also invoked under many strange names—as “Cocidius” by a colony of
Dacians in Cumberland; as Toutates, Camulus, Coritiacus, Belatucador,
Alator, Loucetius, Condates, and Rigisamos by men of different
countries. A goddess of war was worshipped at Bath under the name of
Nemetona. The hot springs of the same town were under the patronage of a
divinity called Sul, identified by the Romans with Minerva, and she was
helped by a god of medicine described on a dedicatory tablet as “Sol
Apollo Anicetus”. Few of these “strange gods”, however, seem to have
taken hold of the imagination of the native Britons. Their worshippers
did not proselytize, and their general influence was probably about
equal to that of an Evangelical Church in a Turkish town. The sole
exceptions to this rule are where the foreign gods are Gaulish; but in
several instances it can be proved that they were not so much of Roman,
as of original Celtic importation. The warlike heaven-god Camulus
appears in Gaelic heroic myth as Cumhal, the father of Finn, and in
British mythical history as Coel, a duke of Caer Coelvin (known earlier
as Camulodunum, and now as Colchester), who seized the crown of Britain,
and spent his short reign in a series of battles.[326] The name of the
sun-god Maponos is found alike upon altars in Gaul and Britain, and in
Welsh literature as Mabon, a follower of Arthur; while another Gaulish
sun-god, Belinus, who had a splendid temple at Bajocassos (the modern
Bayeux), though not mentioned in the earliest British mythology, as its
scattered records have come down to us, must have been connected with
Brân, for we find in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History “King Belinus” as
brother of “King Brennius”,[327] and in the Morte Darthur “Balin” as
brother of “Balan”.[328] A second-century Greek writer gives an account
of a god of eloquence worshipped in Gaul under the name of Ogmios, and
represented as equipped like Heracles, a description which exactly
corresponds to the conception of the Gaelic Ogma, at once patron of
literature and writing and professional strong man of the Tuatha Dé
Danann. Nemetona, the war-goddess worshipped at Bath, was probably the
same as Nemon, one of Nuada’s Valkyr-wives, while a broken inscription
to _athubodva_, which probably stood, when intact, for _Cathubodva_, may
well have been addressed to the Gaulish equivalent of Badb Catha, the
“War-fury”. Lugh, or Lleu, was also widely known on the Continent as
Lugus. Three important towns—Laon, Leyden, and Lyons—were all anciently
called after him _Lugu-dunum_ (Lugus’ town), and at the last and
greatest of these a festival was still held in Roman times upon the
sun-god’s day—the first of August—which corresponded to the _Lugnassad_
(Lugh’s commemoration) held in ancient Ireland. Brigit, the Gaelic
Minerva, is also found in Britain as Brigantia, tutelary goddess of the
Brigantes, a Northern tribe, and in Eastern France as Brigindo, to whom
Iccavos, son of Oppianos, made a dedicatory offering of which there is
still record.[329]
Other, less striking agreements between the mythical divine names of the
Insular and Continental Celts might be cited. These recorded should,
however, prove sufficiently that Gaul, Gael, and Briton shared in a
common heritage of mythological names and ideas, which they separately
developed into three superficially different, but essentially similar
cults.
-----
Footnote 282:
Lady Guest’s _Mabinogion_, a note to _Math, the Son of Mathonwy_.
Footnote 283:
_The Story of Lludd and Llevelys._ See chap. XXIV—“The Decline and
Fall of the Gods”.
Footnote 284:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 128.
Footnote 285:
See a monograph by the Right Hon. Charles Bathurst: _Roman Antiquities
in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire_.
Footnote 286:
chap. XXIV—“The Decline and Fall of the Gods”.
Footnote 287:
_Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 178, 179.
Footnote 288:
So translated by Lady Guest. Professor Rhys, however, renders it, “in
whom God has put the instinct of the demons of Annwn”. _Arthurian
Legend_, p. 341.
Footnote 289:
Lady Guest’s _Mabinogion_. Note to “Kulhwch and Olwen”.
Footnote 290:
Black Book of Caermarthen, poem XXXIII. Vol. I, p. 293, of Skene’s
_Four Ancient Books_.
Footnote 291:
I have taken the liberty of omitting a few lines whose connection with
their context is not very apparent.
Footnote 292:
Gwyn was said to specially frequent the summits of hills.
Footnote 293:
This line is Professor Rhys’s. Skene translates it: “Whilst I am
called Gwyn the son of Nudd”.
Footnote 294:
I have here preferred Rhys’s rendering: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 364.
Footnote 295:
A name for Hades, of unknown meaning.
Footnote 296:
Dormarth means “Death’s Door”. Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 156-158.
Footnote 297:
Rhys has it:
“Dormarth, red-nosed, ground-grazing—
On him we perceived the speed
Of thy wandering on Cloud Mount.”
—_Arthurian Legend_, p. 156.
Footnote 298:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 383. Skene translates: “I am alive, they
in their graves!”
Footnote 299:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 561.
Footnote 300:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 561-563.
Footnote 301:
Dyer: _Studies of the Gods in Greece_, p. 48.
Gwyn, son of Nudd, had a brother, Edeyrn, of whom so little has come
down to us that he finds his most suitable place in a foot-note.
Unmentioned in the earliest Welsh legends, he first appears as a
knight of Arthur’s court in the _Red Book_ stories of “Kulhwch and
Olwen”, the “Dream of Rhonabwy”, and “Geraint, the Son of Erbin”. He
accompanied Arthur on his expedition to Rome, and is said also to have
slain “three most atrocious giants” at Brentenol (Brent Knoll), near
Glastonbury. His name occurs in a catalogue of Welsh saints, where he
is described as a bard, and the chapel of Bodedyrn, near Holyhead,
still stands to his honour. Modern readers will know him from
Tennyson’s Idyll of “Geraint and Enid”, which follows very closely the
Welsh romance of “Geraint, the Son of Erbin”.
Footnote 302:
Rhys—who calls him “a Cambrian Pluto”: _Lectures on Welsh Philology_,
p. 414.
Footnote 303:
_Book of Taliesin_, XLIII. _The Death-song of Dylan, Son of the Wave_,
Vol. I, p. 288 of Skene.
Footnote 304:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 387.
Footnote 305:
Rhys: _Celtic Folklore_, p. 210.
Footnote 306:
_i.e._ The Lion with the Steady Hand.
Footnote 307:
See Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, note to p. 237.
Footnote 308:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 240.
Footnote 309:
Retold from the Mabinogi of _Math, Son of Mathonwy_, in Lady Guest’s
_Mabinogion_.
Footnote 310:
The Iolo Manuscripts: collected by Edward Williams, the bard, at about
the beginning of the nineteenth century—_The Tale of Rhitta Gawr_.
Footnote 311:
See Chapter VII—“The Rise of the Sun-God”.
Footnote 312:
Rhys: _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_, p. 130.
Footnote 313:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 130.
Footnote 314:
The old Irish tract called _Coir Anmann_ (the _Choice of Names_) says:
“Manannan mac Lir ... the Britons and the men of Erin deemed that he
was the god of the sea”.
Footnote 315:
_Iolo MSS._, stanza 18 of _The Stanzas of the Achievements_, composed
by the Azure Bard of the Chair.
Footnote 316:
See note to chap. XXII—“The Treasures of Britain”.
Footnote 317:
Mabinogi of _Branwen, Daughter of Llyr_.
Footnote 318:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 245.
Footnote 319:
_Book of Taliesin_, poem XLVIII, in Skene’s _Four Ancient Books of
Wales_, Vol. I, p. 297.
Footnote 320:
The _Verses of the Graves of the Warriors_, in the Black Book of
Caermarthen. See also Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 347.
Footnote 321:
Rhys: _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_, p. 160.
Footnote 322:
Mabinogi of _Manawyddan, Son of Llyr_.
Footnote 323:
_Book of Taliesin_, poem xiv, Vol. I, p. 276, of Skene.
Footnote 324:
Rhys: _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_, p. 48 and note.
Footnote 325:
See a paper in the _Edinburgh Review_ for July, 1851—“The Romans in
Britain”.
Footnote 326:
It is said that the “Old King Cole” of the popular ballad, who “was a
merry old soul”, represents the last faint tradition of the Celtic
god.
Footnote 327:
_Geoffrey of Monmouth_, Book III, chap. I.
Footnote 328:
_Morte Darthur_, Book I, chap. XVI.
Footnote 329:
For full account of Gaulish gods, and their Gaelic and British
affinities, see Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, I and II—“The Gaulish
Pantheon”.
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