Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic | Page 4

BROW
In times past there were enchanted islands in the Atlantic Ocean, off the
coast of Wales, and even now the fishermen sometimes think they see
them. On one of these there lived a man named Tegid Voel and his wife
called Cardiwen. They had a son, the ugliest boy in the world, and
Cardiwen formed a plan to make him more attractive by teaching him
all possible wisdom. She was a great magician and resolved to boil a
large caldron full of knowledge for her son, so that he might know all
things and be able to predict all that was to happen. Then she thought
people would value him in spite of his ugliness. But she knew that the
caldron must burn a year and a day without ceasing, until three blessed
drops of the water of knowledge were obtained from it; and those three
drops would give all the wisdom she wanted.
So she put a boy named Gwion to stir the caldron and a blind man
named Morda to feed the fire; and made them promise never to let it
cease boiling for a year and a day. She herself kept gathering magic
herbs and putting them into it. One day when the year was nearly over,
it chanced that three drops of the liquor flew out of the caldron and fell
on the finger of Gwion. They were fiery hot, and he put his finger to his
mouth, and the instant he tasted them he knew that they were the
enchanted drops for which so much trouble had been taken. By their
magic he at once foresaw all that was to come, and especially that
Cardiwen the enchantress would never forgive him.
Then Gwion fled. The caldron burst in two, and all the liquor flowed
forth, poisoning some horses which drank it. These horses belonged to
a king named Gwyddno. Cardiwen came in and saw all the toil of the
whole year lost. Seizing a stick of wood, she struck the blind man
Morda fiercely on the head, but he said, "I am innocent. It was not I
who did it." "True," said Cardiwen; "it was the boy Gwion who robbed
me;" and she rushed to pursue him. He saw her and fled, changing into
a hare; but she became a greyhound and followed him. Running to the

water, he became a fish; but she became another and chased him below
the waves. He turned himself into a bird, when she became a hawk and
gave him no rest in the sky. Just as she swooped on him, he espied a
pile of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and dropping upon it, he
became one of the wheat-grains. Changing herself into a high-crested
black hen, Cardiwen scratched him up and swallowed him, when he
changed at last into a boy again and was so beautiful that she could not
kill him outright, but wrapped him in a leathern bag and cast him into
the sea, committing him to the mercy of God. This was on the
twenty-ninth of April.
Now Gwyddno had a weir for catching fish on the sea-strand near his
castle, and every day in May he was wont to take a hundred pounds'
worth of fish. He had a son named Elphin, who was always poor and
unsuccessful, but that year the father had given the son leave to draw
all the fish from the weir, to see if good luck would ever befall him and
give him something with which to begin the world.
When Elphin went next to draw the weir, the man who had charge of it
said in pity, "Thou art always unlucky; there is nothing in the weir but a
leathern bag, which is caught on one of the poles." "How do we know,"
said Elphin, "that it may not contain the value of a hundred pounds?"
Taking up the bag and opening it, the man saw the forehead of the boy
and said to Elphin, "Behold, what a radiant brow" (Taliessin). "Let him
be called Taliessin," said Elphin. Then he lifted the boy and placed him
sorrowfully behind him; and made his horse amble gently, that before
had been trotting, and carried him as softly as if he had been sitting in
the easiest chair in the world, and the boy of the radiant brow made a
song to Elphin as they went along.
"Never in Gwyddno's weir Was there such good luck as this night. Fair
Elphin, dry thy cheeks! Being too sad will not avail, Although thou
thinkest thou hast no gain. Too much grief will bring thee no good; Nor
doubt the miracles of the Almighty: Although I am but little, I am
highly gifted. From seas, and from mountains, And