III. 547. 34 BOOK time after Hengist had died. To this decisive evidence, from its chronology, may be added a remark, that although to the praise of his several heroes, or of their exploits, he annexes, almost invariably, a lamentation of their festive indulgence; yet this is not accompanied with any specific charge of treachery on the part of the Saxons. If it related to the reported massacre, the natural process of the poet's mind would have been to have inveighed against the Saxons for their perfidy; instead of so continuously censuring the Britons 34 Mr. Davies escapes the difficulties of chronology by three large suppositions. First, he supposes, that though Hengist came in 449, yet that the reputed massacre did not occur till 472. But though Hengist was then alive, the Saxon Chronicle states, that he obtained his kingdom after a battle in 455; and that in 457, after another battle, the Britons abandoned Kent. Another battle, in which twelve British leaders fell, occurred in 465. After such transactions as these, such a confiding banquet was not likely to have occurred on the part of the Britons, nor was such a massacre wanted to give Hengist that kingdom, which he had both acquired and maintained. His second and third will best speak for themselves: "There is no improbability in Aneurin's having attended the feast, as a young bard, in 472, and his having bewailed the friends of his youth, thirty-eight years afterwards, when he had fallen into the hands of the foe, and was confined in a dreary dungeon," p. 322. Yet according to Aneurin's own expressions in the preceding note, the captivity seems to me to be clearly referred to the destruction at Cattraeth. His words are: Yn y ty deyerin O Gattraeth wnin. Then follows the passage, in note 32., on himself and Taliesin. 35 Mr. Davies believes he discerns such charges. But the supposed allusions are not direct, and do not seem to me to be the natural construction of the passages so applied. IV. 547. for their inebriety. If Hengist had invited them CHA P. to a banquet of peace and friendship, it was not merely natural, but it was even laudable, according to the customs of that age, that the festivity should advance to intoxication. As it is not likely that the bards ever witnessed a public banquet without this termination, it could not justly form, nor would have been made a subject of inculpation. THAT the Gododin should commemorate so many British chiefs, Ceawg, Cynon, Madawg, Tulvwlch, Mynnydawg, Cyvwlch, Caradawg, Owen, Eidiol, Pereddur, and Aeddan; and yet not actually name either Gwrthyrn, Guortemir, or Ambrosius, cannot but strengthen the inference, that it has no concern with the latter; for why should some be mentioned directly and plainly, and others, the most important in rank and power, be never named, but implied, as he thinks, by some periphrasis? THE locality of the incident, alluded to in the poem, seems also, as far as it can be ascertained, to be inconsistent with the massacre imputed to Hengist. It fixes the scene at Cattraeth, and it implies that the people of Deira and Bernicia were in the conflict. 37 Cattraeth has been always placed 36 This hero, whose name begins four of the stanzas of the poem, and whose praise seems to be their import, has been converted by Mr. Davies, contrary to all former translations, into an epithet. But by the same mode of interpretation, when we meet with the names Hengist, Cicero, and Naso, we may, if we please, turn our Saxon ancestor into a war-horse; the Roman orator into a bean: and the poet of the metamorphoses into a nose. 37 Of the men of Dewyr and Bryneich: The dreadful ones! Twenty hundred perished in an hour. O wyr Dewyr a Bryneich dychrawr God. p. 2. III. 547. BOOK in the northern districts. So has Eidyn, from which Mynnydawg came, whose courteousness is repeatedly praised in the poem, and whom in its natural construction it mentions as the commander of the British force. His host is also mentioned in the conflict, not as if he was feasting with a small retinue, but as his warlike tribe 38; and it is correspondent with this view that the Triads mention his host at the battle of Cattraeth, as one of the three gallant hosts of Britain, because they followed their chiefs at their own charge. 39 THE natural import of the poem is, that the Britons had fought hastily on one of their festive days. And this leads us to infer, that they might have been surprised by an unexpected advance of the Saxon forces. That 360 nobles, intoxicated at a previous banquet, should have perished in this battle, and that 360 should be the number said to have been massacred by Hengist at his feast, are coincidences that lead the mind to believe there may be some connection between the two incidents. But every other circumstance is so unlike, that we may more 38 The Gorgordd Mynnydawc mwyn vawr: "the host of Mynnydawg the Courteous," is mentioned in several passages: as Rac Gorgordd Mynydawc mwyn vawr.-Twice in p. 2. Of the host of Mynnydawg there escaped Mr. Davies transforms this proper name into an epithet, imply- 39 See Triad 79.; 2 Welch Arch. p. 69.; and Triad 36, p.8. IV. 547. reasonably suppose, that the actual event occurred CHA P. in a battle, as Aneurin has exhibited it; and upon a surprise, as we have suggested, and that tradition has erroneously attached it to the first Saxon invader, and feigned the banquet and its calamitous consequences to be the result of a premeditated treachery on a festive invitation; or that they are what they have been always thought to be, really distinct transactions. THE same conflict is alluded to in other poems; but its disastrous issue and the inebriety, not the Saxon perfidy, is the usual topic. 40 Even Golyddan, who mentions the massacre of Hengist, has no 40 It is so mentioned in a poem printed in the Welsh Archaiology, as a part of Taliesin's Dyhuddiant Elphin, though it obviously begins as that ends. Mr. Davies found it to be in one MS. appended to Aneurin's Gododin, Celt. Res. 574. The passage may be thus translated: In the Gorchan Cynvelyn, the incantation of Cynbelyn, it is thus mentioned, as if by Aneurin himself: Three warriors, and three score, and three hundred, Went to the tumult at Cattraeth. Of those that hastened To the bearers of the mead, Except three, none returned. Cynon and Cattraeth With songs they preserve, And me for blood they bewailed me my The son of the omen fire, They made a ransom, Of pure gold, and steel, and silver. Ibid. p. 61. III. BOOK allusion to Cattraeth or Mynnydawg, nor gives any intimation that it relates to the subject of the Gododin. 41 547. Slow progress of THE progress of the Angles in the north was the Angles. slow and difficult. The Britons appear to have fought more obstinately in these parts than in any other. Three of their kings, besides Urien and his son, are named, Ryderthen, Guallawc, and Morcant, as maintaining the struggle against the sons of Ida, and with alternate success. Sometimes the Britons, sometimes the Angles conquered. After one battle, the latter were driven into an adjoining island, and were for three days besieged there, till Urien, their pursuer, was assassinated, by an agent of Morcant, one of the British kings that had joined him in the attack on the invaders. The motive to this atrocious action was the military fame which Urien was acquiring. The short 44 41 The golden torques mentioned by Aneurin was then worn in Britain. "In 1692, an ancient golden torques was dug up near the castle of Harlech, in Merionethshire. It is a wreathed bar of gold, or perhaps three or four rods jointly twisted, about four feet long, flexile, but naturally bending only one way in form of a hat band; it is hooked at both ends; it is of a round form, about an inch in circumference, and weighs eight ounces.' Gibson's Additions to Camden, p. 658. ed. 1695.— Bonduca wore one, Xiphelin. Epit. Dionis. p. 169. ed. H. S. 1591; and the Gauls used them, Livy, lib. xxxvi. c. 40. Gibson quotes a passage of Virgil, Æneid, lib. v. v. 559., which implies that the Trojan youth wore them.- Llywarch, p. 135., says, that his twenty-four sons were eudorchawg, or wearers of the golden torques, which, from the above description, we perceive was not a chain. 42 Nennius Geneal. p. 117. 43 Nennius, p. 117. 44 Nenn. p. 117. The Welsh Triads mention this murder in noticing the three foul assassins of Britain. "Llofan Llawddmo, who killed Urien, the son of Cynfarch," Trioedd 38. 2 W. A. p. 9. |