HANES TALIESIN (THE CAULDRON OF CERIDWEN)
The Sage Ceridwen was the wife
Of Tegid Voel, of Pemble Mere:
Two children blessed their wedded life,
Morvran and Creirwy, fair and dear;
Morvran, a son of peerless worth,
And Creirway, lovely nymph of earth:
But one more son Ceridwen bare,
As foul as they before were fair.
She strove to make Avagddu wise;
She knew he never could be fair:
And, studying magic mysteries,
She gathered plants of virtue rare:
She placed the gifted plants to steep
Within the magic cauldron deep,
Where they a year and day must boil,
‘Till three drops crown the matrons toil.
Nine damsels raised the mystic flame;
Gwion the Little near it stood:
The while for simples roved the dame
Through tangles dell and pathless wood.
And when the year and day had passed,
The dame within the cauldron cast
The consummating chaplet wild,
While Gwion held the hideous child.
But from the cauldron rose a smoke
That filled with darkness all the air:
When through its folds the torchlight broke,
Nor Gwion, nor the boy, was there.
The fire was dead, the cauldron cold,
And in it lay, in sleep uprolled,
Fair as the morning-star, a child,
That woke and stretched its arms and smiled.
What chanced her labours to destroy;
She never knew, and sought in vain
If ‘twere her own misshapen boy,
Or little Gwion, born again:
And vexed with doubt, the babe she rolled,
In cloth of purple and of gold,
And in a coracle consigned
Its fortunes to the sea and wind.
The summer night was still and bright,
The summer moon was large and clear,
The frail bark, on the springtide’s height,
Was floated into Elphin’s weir:
The baby in his arms he raised:
His lovely spouse stood by, and gazed,
And, blessing it with gentle vow,
Cried “TALIESIN!” “Radiant brow!”
And I am he, and well I know
Ceridwen’s power protects me still:
And hence o’er hill and vale I go,
And sing, unharmed, what’er I will.
She has for me Time’s veil withdrawn:
The images of things long gone,
The shadows of the coming days,
Are present to my visioned gaze.
And I have heard the words of power,
By Ceiron’s solitary lake,
That bid, at midnight’s thrilling hour,
Eyri’s hundred echoes wake.
I to Diganwy’s towers have sped,
And now Caer Lleon’s halls I tread,
Demanding justice, now as then,
From Maelgon, most unjust of men.
This poem comes from The Misfortunes of Elphin written by Thomas Love Peacock in 1829. It is (very loosely) based on the last part of the Hanes Taliesin, in which the Bard Taliesin he has to free his patron Prince Elphin from imprisonment by Maelgon, the ruler of North Wales. Taliesin has to win a Bardic contest at the court of the High King, Arthur and thus be able to ask for Arthur’s support. Elphin is indeed liberated, through Arthur’s arrangement of a prisoner exchange. The poem above is presented as the Taliesin’s winning entry and concerns his mysterious birth. It differs somewhat from the version presented 20 years later by Lady Charlotte Guest, whilst being a recognisable if variant presentation of the same tale. The audience “shouted with delight” at this song, which wins the contest for Taliesin and entitles him to a boon from Arthur.
Thomas Love Peacock was a slightly older contemporary of the Romantic poet Shelley and a close friend from 1812 until the latter’s departure for Italy in 1816. Indeed they continued to correspond, in letters that have been preserved, giving us valuable information about Shelley’s life in Italy. Peacock too wrote poetry and within The Misfortunes of Elphin he offers a characteristically Romantic view of Awen as “the rapturous and abstracted state of poetical inspiration”, and also recommends the triad: “the three dignities of poetry: the union of the true and the wonderful; the union of the beautiful and the wise; the union of art and of nature”. Peacock travelled in Wales and lived in Maentwrog in Merionethshire for a time. I have used Peacock’s spellings of proper names throughout.
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