Note (return) — Chapter VI

A fourth group is that of Beli and his sons, referred to in the Mabinogi of Branwen, where one of them, Caswallawn, usurps the throne, and thus makes Manawyddan, like MacGregor, landless. In the Dream of Maxen, the sons of Beli are Lludd, Caswallawn, Nynnyaw, and Llevelys.403 Geoffrey calls Beli Heli, and speaks of an earlier king Belinus, at enmity with his brother Brennius.404 But probably Beli or Heli and Belinus are one and the same, and both represent the earlier god Belenos. Caswellawn becomes Cassivellaunus, opponent of Cæsar, but in the Mabinogi he is hostile to the race of Llyr, and this may be connected with whatever underlies Geoffrey's account of the hostility of Belinus and Brennius (=Bran, son of Llyr), perhaps, like the enmity of the race of D[^o]n to Pryderi, a reminiscence of the strife of rival tribes or of Goidel and Brython.405 As has been seen, the evidence for regarding Beli as D[^o]n's consort or the equivalent of Bile is slender. Nor, if he is Belenos, the equivalent of Apollo, is he in any sense a "dark" god. He is regarded as a victorious champion, preserver of his "honey isle" and of the stability of his kingdom, in a Taliesin poem and in the Triads.406