Note 233 — Chapter IV · ETHNOLOGY OF BRITAIN.

The author does not here adduce the superabundant evidence furnished by the old Welsh poems, which will be found in The Four Ancient Books of Wales. Neither does he refer to the so-called Historic Triads, because he considers them spurious; but among the genuine ‘Triads of Arthur and his Warriors’ (ib. vol. ii. p. 457) there is one to this effect:—‘Three oppressions came to this island, and did not go out of it. The nation of the Coranyeit, who came in the time of Llud, son of Beli, and did not go out of it; and the oppression of the Gwyddyl Ffichti, and they did not again go out of it. The third, the oppression of the Saxons, and they did not again go out of it.’ Here the term Gwyddyl Ffichti is clearly applied to the whole Pictish nation who settled in Britain. The same designation is given to them by one edition of the Chronicle called the Brut of Tywysogion, which records, in A.D. 750, ‘the action of Mygedawc, in which the Britons (Britanyat) conquered the Gwyddyl Ffichti, after a bloody battle’ (Myv. Ar. vol. ii. p. 472). This is the same battle which Tighernac thus gives: ‘A battle between the Pictones and the Britones, viz., Talorgan, the son of Fergus, and his brother, and the slaughter of the Piccardach with him.’—Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 76.