to look after itself. An able family, called the House of Cunedda, took the power of the Dux Britanniae, and they translated the title into Gwledig—"the ruler of a gwlad (country)." Of this family Maelgwn Gwynedd is the most famous. It was his work to try to unite all the smaller kings or chiefs of Wales under his own power as "the island dragon." It was a difficult thing to persuade them; they all wanted to be independent. A legend shows that Maelgwn tried guile as well as force. The kings met him at Aberdovey, and they all sat in their royal chairs on the sands. And Maelgwn said: "Let him be king over all who can sit longest on his chair as the tide comes in." But he had made his own chair of birds' wings, and it floated erect when all the other chairs had been thrown down. Before Maelgwn died of the yellow plague in 547, his strong arm had made Wales one united country, and had made every corner of it Christian.
The new wave of nations, coming on as surely as the tide, began to beat against Wales. The Picts came from the northern parts of Britain, and Teutonic tribes swarmed across the eastern sea. The Angles came to the Humber, and spread over the plains
