Note 213.1 — Chapter VII · DEATH AND BIRTH AS TRANSFORMATION.

The story of Taliessin, though only found in a manuscript of the seventeenth century, comes, it is generally conceded, within this category; for its coincidences with the older Celtic traditions are too striking to allow of any other explanation. Ceridwen, the wife of Tegid the Bald, had, among other children, a son of such extreme ugliness that she thought he was not likely to be admitted amongst men of noble birth unless he had some exalted merits or knowledge. So she undertook, with the aid of the books of Fferyll—that is to say, Vergil the Magician, a character which Vergil the poet is made to sustain in mediæval tradition—to boil a caldron of Inspiration and Science for his benefit. Now, this caldron required to be boiled for a year and a day; at the end of which time three precious drops would be obtained, the rest of its contents being poisonous, and indeed highly explosive. The caldron was placed in charge of Gwion the Little and a blind man named Mordav, while Ceridwen herself went to gather herbs of virtue. But before the expiration of the year and a day the three precious drops flew out of the caldron and fell upon Gwion’s finger, which he instinctively put to his mouth to allay the scalding. He at once became possessed of all knowledge, and foresaw his danger from Ceridwen’s rage when she found her preparations had been in vain. He, therefore, fled, hotly pursued by the witch. To elude her he changed into a hare, whereupon she took the shape of a greyhound. He ran towards the river, and became a fish, to chase which she assumed the form of an otter. Gwion then flew up as a bird. He soon found himself followed by a hawk, which was no other than his enemy; and just as she was about to stoop upon him he dropped among a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and turned himself into one of the grains. From a hawk to a black hen the transformation was easy; and Ceridwen thus pecked up the grain in question and swallowed it. She became by this means pregnant, and gave birth to a beautiful boy—a new manifestation of Gwion the Little; and when he was born she wrapped him up in a hide and cast him into the sea, by which he was ultimately thrown upon the weir of Gwyddno. From thence he was rescued to become the king of the bards, Taliessin.213.1 Two poems attributed to Taliessin enumerate many more metamorphoses than are mentioned in the tale. The exact date of these poems is, in the present state of Welsh scholarship, unascertainable; but they are certainly not later than the fourteenth century. One of them speaks of the poet’s original country as the region of the summer stars, and identifies him with Merlin and other sages and bards. Confining our attention, however, to the narrative, we may lay aside the earlier changes as links of a chain of incidents common in fairy-tales, and known technically as the Transformation-fight. An example of it familiar to every reader is the contest between the princess and the Jinn in the story of the Second Calender in the Arabian Nights. These changes are not effected by death and birth as are the ones we are considering now. In the final change, on the other hand, Gwion is devoured by the witch and reproduced as her son, just as Bata is swallowed in the shape of a splinter of the persea-tree by the king’s Favourite, and born again of her, to become her destruction.