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It is always used as meaning "the green sward." Then he evidently supposes that glas is the English word "glass," instead of the middle form of clas, a region; and thus here, too, he would rather suppose that the bard had used the English word "glass," and the Latin word "pictus" in its corrupt form ffichti, than that the Picts could have been mentioned; but the technical use in Welsh of Ffichti for the Picts is quite established.

The last passage he thus translates :-"Hearnddur and Hyfeid Hir, and Gwallawg and Owen of Mona, and Maelgwn of great reputation, they would prostrate the foe;" thus quietly suppressing the word Peithwyr, which certainly does not mean simply "foe."*

Nennius mentions the Picts whom Arthur defeated at the battle of Mynyd Eiddyn, or Edinburgh, by the strange and unusual name of Catbregion; but we find them appearing under that name in another poem in the Book of Taliessin (50):

The Catbreith of a strange language will be troubled,
From the ford of Taradyr to Portwygyr in Mona.

The ford of Taradyr is the ford of Torrador, across the river Carron, the northern boundary of the Picts of Manau, near Falkirk.

In noticing Mr. Nash's so-called translations, I may remark that he invariably translates Welsh on the principle that, if any Welsh word resembles an English word, it must be the English word that is used. He carries this so far as to translate the well-known word for a ford in Welsh, rhyd, by the English word "road." He appears to me to translate Welsh somewhat in the same fashion as Hood's school-boy translated the first line of Virgil-Arma, virumque cano-An arm, a man, and a cane.

This poem, too, is ignored by Mr. Nash.

Another portion of these poems must evidently have been known to the author of the Genealogia, written in the eighth century. After narrating the reign of Ida, king of Northumbria, who died in 559, he says "Tunc Talhaern Cataguen in poemate claruit et Neirin et Taliesin et Bluchbard et Cian qui vocatur Gueinthgwant simul uno tempore in poemate Britannico claruerunt." Of these four who shone in British poetry, it is admitted that the first three are Aneurin, Taliessin, and Llywarch Hen, and being mentioned in the course of his notice of Bernicia, they must have been connected with the north. The expression used with regard to them is remarkable. It does not simply say that they flourished then, but "in poemate Britannico claruerunt." Could he have used that expression had there not been poemata Britannica, Welsh poems, then well known? and then connect with this some of the subsequent notices, "Contra illum (i.e. Hussa) quatuor regis Urbgen / et Ridderch Hen et Guallauc et Morcant dimicaverunt." The idea that runs through these notices, and accounts for the otherwise apparently unconnected and intrusive mention of the bards, is this: Aneurin, Taliessin, and Llywarch Hen, wrote Welsh poems, and it was against Hussa that Urien, Ridderch Hen, Gwallawg, and Morcant fought. Add to this, that the subject of a number of the poems of Taliessin and Llywarch Hen was the wars of these very heroes against the Saxons; and can we reasonably doubt that these poems were

known to the writer? The next notice is still more signicant "Deodric, contra illum Urbgen cum filiis dimicabat fortiter." There is but one poem in which Urien is mentioned as fighting along with any of his sons. It is the Battle of Argoed Llwyfain, attributed to Taliessin (B. T. 35), in which Urien and his son Owen are attacked by Flamddwyn, the Saxon king, and fight valiantly against him. Must this poem not have been in the mind of the writer when he here notes-It was against Deodric that Urien and his sons fought,-thus identifying him with Flamddwyn? There is another allusion of the same kind equally significant. After narrating the war between Oswy and Penda, with the thirty British kings who assisted him, and their slaughter in Campo Gai, he adds, "Et nunc facta est strages Gai Campi." Is the idea not this-And it was now that the well-known slaughter of Catraeth took place? for traeth, a shore, is here rendered by Campus and Ca, forming in combination Ga, as in Gatraeth, is the adjective Gaus agreeing with Campus, and the great poem of the Gododin, including the mixed portion, which belongs to this period, must have been known to the writer. If these inferences are at all legitimate, a body of historical poems attributed to the same bards, and narrating the same events by the same warriors as those which we now have, must have been in existence when the author of the Genealogia wrote-that is, in the eighth century.

Further, in examining these poems, we find that there runs through the poems in each of the four books

a date indicated in the poem itself, which is nearly the same in all, and is comprised within the first sixty years of the seventh or immediately preceding century. Thus, in the Book of Caermarthen, there is what I conceive to be the text of the Avallenau in its original shape, and in this text the bard says—

Ten years and forty, with my treasures,

Have I been sojourning among ghosts and sprites.

And the first poem tells us that, after the battle of Ardderyd,

Seven score generous ones become ghosts.

In the wood of Celyddon they came to an end.

The battle of Ardderyd was fought in the year 573, and ten years and forty will bring us to 623, not long after which the poem may have been composed.

In the Book of Aneurin, the bard who wrote the last part of the Gododin tells us that "from the height of Adoyn he saw the head of Dyfnwal Brec devoured by ravens;" but Dyfnwal Brec is no other than Donald Brec, king of Dalriada, and the year of his death is a fixed era. It was in 642.

In the Book of Taliessin there is a poem (49) which has been much misunderstood. It contains these verses :

Five chiefs there will be to me

Of the Gwyddyl Ffichti,

Of a sinner's disposition,

Of a race of the knife;

Five others there will be to me

Of the Norddmyn place;

The sixth a wonderful king,

From the sowing to the reaping;

The seventh proceeded

To the land over the flood;
The eighth, of the line of Dyfi,

Shall not be freed from prosperity.

The Dyfi or Dovey flows past Corsfochno; and the Traeth Maclgwn, where Maelgwn Gwynedd established the sovereignty in his family, is on its shore. The kings of his race are the only kings who could be said to be of the line of Dyfi or Dovey. The word Norddmyn is probably the word translated by the author of the Genealogia, where he calls Oswald "Rex Nordorum." It is only used on this one occasion, and seems, during his reign, to have been applied to the kings of the Nordanhymbri. We know that the Saxons of Bernicia superseded a Pictish population; and there is but one king of the line of Dyfi who became a king of Bernicia, and he was Cadwallawn, a descendant of Maelgwn Gwynedd. The passage,

therefore, appears to refer to Bernicia, which lay south of the Firth of Forth. We have first five kings of the Gwyddyl Ffichti, then five kings of the NorddmynIda, Ella, Ethelric, Ethelfred, and Edwin. The sixth, from the sowing to the reaping-that is, from spring to harvest-was Osric, who only reigned a few months, when he was slain in autumn by Cadwallawn. The seventh was Eanfrid, who crossed the flood-that is, the Firth of Forth-from the land of the Picts, where he had taken refuge, and was likewise slain by Cadwallawn, who is the eighth king of the line of Dyfi, and the poem must have been written before his

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