and lifted the boy gently to his horse, and made it amble softly, and went sorrowfully homeward.

But the boy as he rode behind sang him a song of consolation [given as a poem in the romance], saying that although he was little he was highly gifted. And this was the first poem Taliesin ever sang. Then Elphin asked him whether he was man or spirit, and he sang a second song [given as a poem in the romance], telling what he had been, how he had fled from Caridwen, and so how he came to be entangled in the weir. Then came Elphin to the house of Gwyddno, his father, who asked whether his haul was good. He said he had got a bard. Then said Gwyddno, "Alas! what will he profit thee?" And Taliesin himself replied, "He will profit him more than the weir ever profited thee." Asked Gwyddno, "Art thou able to speak, and yet so little?" Taliesin answered, "I am better able to speak than you to question." "What canst thou say?" asked Gwyddno. Then Taliesin sang [the next poem in the romance] his trust in God.

Elphin having been thrown into prison by Maelgwn Gwynedd, Taliesin undertook his rescue, and, in reply to the question of Elphin's wife, told her in a poem that refers to the history of King Arthur [also given in the romance] that he would do it by his power as a bard. At Maelgwn's court he cast a spell upon the bards there, so that when they appeared before their king, instead of singing his praises, they could only pout out their lips and make mouths at him, playing "Blerwm, blerwm " on their lips with their fingers as they had seen Taliesin do. Maelgwn, supposing them to be drunk, "ordered one of his squires to give a blow to the chief of them, named Heinin Vardd ; and the squire took a broom and struck him on the head, so that he fell back on his seat." This brought them all to, and the chief bard then explained that they were not drunk, but affected by a spirit sitting in a corner of the hall in the form of a child.

So the king ordered the squire to fetch the child, and Taliesin, being brought forward and asked what he was and whence he came, replied with the next poem introduced into the romance, which tells how he was the chief bard of Elphin, a bard whose accustomed country was the land of the Cherubim, who was called by Merlin, John the Diviner, who carried the banner before Alexander, was in Caer Bedin tetragrammaton, and so forth, and who should be on the face of the earth until the Judgment Day. The king and his nobles wondered, for they had never before heard the like from a boy so young as he.

But as he was the bard of Elphin, the king bade Heinin, his chief bard, strive with him; and he and all the others of the four-and

twenty bards, when they came forward, could do no other than play "Blerwm" on their lips. Then Maelgwn asked the boy Taliesin what was his errand? He replied in song that he came to deliver Elphin, who was in Caer Deganwy under thirteen locks, and to demand the chair of Deganwy. When the contest with the bards seemed to be fruitless, Taliesin prophesied the coming of a wonderful golden worm from the sea marsh of Rhianedd, who should take vengeance on Maelgwn. His threat having no effect, Taliesin went out and uttered a charm to the wind [given as one of the poems of the story], bidding it blow open the prison of Elphin. And while he thus sang near the door, there arose a mighty storm of wind, so that the king and all his nobles thought the castle would fall on their heads. Then Maelgwn ordered them to fetch Elphin from his dungeon and place him before Taliesin. And when he was brought, Taliesin sang a Mead song that caused the chains upon Elphin's feet to open. Then he sang of the excellence of the bards, and poured down riddles upon Heinin and his companions: " Why is a stone hard? Why is a thorn sharp-pointed? What is as hard as steel? What is as salt as brine? What is as sweet as honey? Who rides on the gale? Why is the nose ridged? Why is a wheel round? Why is the tongue's speech different from every other gift? If you and your bards are able, O Heinin, let them give an answer to me, Taliesin." They were not able, and therefore Taliesin in his next song reproved and defied them. Then follows an attack from Taliesin on the immoral songs and habits, the senseless stories, and the tasteless delivery of deeds of heroes by the strolling minstrels -a piece which is found to have been written by Jonas Athraw, that is, Doctor Jonas, a monk of St. David's. But the whole putting together of the romance is from the hand of a certain Thomas ap Einion. It ends with a horse-race, in which, by Taliesin's help, Elphin defeats the twenty-four horses of Maelgwn, and wins the cup, in the shape of a large cauldron full of gold, which Taliesin's skill enables him to find buried underneath the racecourse.

A story like this belongs, not to the beginning, but to the end of the Welsh literary epoch. The death of Llewelyn deprived the Welsh poets of their patron, and after him there was almost a silence. This has been accounted for by supposing that the bards were all hanged by order of Edward I.-ruin seize him, ruthless king-or, according to another theory, that many

Close of the Welsh literary period.

But

Welsh MSS. sent to the Tower for use of the imprisoned Cambrian princes were destroyed there by one Scolan. there was no destruction of the bards by Edward I.; the oldest authority for that fable will not bear five minutes' scrutiny. Even his prohibition soon became a dead letter. As for the other story about the destructive Master Scolan, it has grown out of confused apprehension of a tradition of St. Columba (Ys Colan), who in his zeal for Christianity was said to have destroyed some heathen books.

CHAPTER XI.

ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCE.

OUR way is now through the great field of English metrical romance, that had its fragrant blossom-time in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

English metrical

romances.

romance.

M. Francisque Michel believed that the curiosity of the Norman trouvères after the Conquest sought as material Dano-Saxon for romance all the traditions of the conquered people. Besides the Arthurian cycle, and the cycle of the romances of Charlemagne, which the livelier patriotic interest in our own hero, King Arthur, kept out of England, there was, he said, a Dano-Saxon cycle of romances re-composed in French, whereof only a few portions remain. There is the romance of Havelok, and there is the romance of Horn and Rimenhild, of which latter story the French version is preserved in three MSS., so imperfect that by collation of all three a complete text is not obtained. There are, however, two English translations which supply all that is wanting. The singer of Horn is a Thomas, of whom Sir Walter Scott said there was some room to conjecture that it may have been" his Thomas of Erceldoune, Thomas the Rhymer, to

King Horn.

66

* "Horn et Rimenhild. Recueil de ce qui reste des Poèmes relatifs à leurs Aventures, composées en Anglois et en Écossois dans les 13 me, 14me, 15me, et 16me siècles, publié d'après les MSS. de Londres, de Cambridge, d'Oxford et d'Edinburgh, par Francisque Michel." Published for the Bannatyne Club (Paris, 1854).

whom he ascribed the Auchinleck copy of the English romance of Sir Tristrem.

King Horn.

The story of the romance is that after King Murray, Horn's father, had been killed by the "Saracen " Vikings from Denmark, and all his countrymen who would not renounce Christianity were killed, Horn himself was put out to sea in a small boat, and landed in Westernesse, where King Aylmer took him for page, and he became enamoured of King Aylmer's only daughter Rimenhild. Dubbed knight, he achieved brave adventures, and brought Aylmer the head of a great Saracen Viking. Banished for his love, he bade Rimenhild wait for him seven years, but marry another suitor if she heard evil of him within that time. Within the time, suit was pressed on her by King Modi; she therefore sent for Horn, who came home from his life of adventure, married her, and then departed with a troop of Irish soldiers to recover his native land Suddene from the infidel. He not only did this, but found his mother, who had all this while been hiding herself in a cave; but he returned to learn that a false friend, Fykenild, had seized his wife. Then he went as a harper into Fykenild's castle, killed him, and recovered Rimenhild.

The Anglo-Danish legend of Havelok* was rhymed by a Norman into French not many years after the first Crusade, and afterwards retaken for the English

by a native poet.

The lay of Havelok the Dane.

The earliest shape in which we have the story is that of a French romance, which was abridged by

* The text of the old French romance was transcribed by Sir F. Madden from a MS. of the reign of Edward II., marked E. D. N. No. 14, in the Heralds' College, and published, together with the English version found in the Bodleian, as "The Ancient English Romance of Havelok the Dane, accompanied by the French Text; with an Introduction, Notes, and a Glossary by Frederic Madden, Esq., Sub-keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum. Printed for the Roxburghe Club" (London, 1828). King Horn was re-edited for the Early English Text Society by Mr. J. Rawson Lumby in 1876, with fragments of Floris and Blanchefleur and of the Assumption of our Lady from MSS. in the Cambridge University Library and in the British Museum.