The Mabinogi relates how it happened to the seven men as Brân had foretold them; how they sat seven years at dinner at Harlech enjoying the friendly society of Brân's Head and the song of the Birds of Rhiannon, and how they enjoyed themselves eighty years in the island of Gwales. This part of the story takes its name from Brân's Urᵭawl Benn, that is to say, the Venerable or dignified Head. Time would fail me to discuss the probable identity of this Venerable Head with the Uthr Ben, the Wonderful Head, forming the subject of one of the most mythological poems ascribed to Taliessin;[1] and I will close these remarks with a brief mention of what would seem to be an echo of the Cernunnos myth in modern Wales. Lewis Morris, an antiquarian and patriot well known in the Principality in the last century, writing to a friend of his about his protégé the Welsh poet Goronwy Owen, complains of the uselessness of giving that genius of Bohemian proclivities any more money, as it seemed only to sink him deeper in difficulties, and he uses the words: 'It is surprising what confusion money will make. Is it any wonder that the devil should sit cross-legged in Ogo Maen Cymwd to guard the treasures there?'[2] Whether Lewis Morris had deliberately meant to represent the devil as a wellwisher of man need not be seriously discussed: what interests us at this
- ↑ Skene, ii. 203-4.
- ↑ The Brython for 1861, p. 312a, where the name of the cave is wrongly printed as that of Maen Cymrwd instead of Maen Cymwd, for which information I am indebted to the kindness of the editor of the Brython, Mr. Silvan Evans. Unfortunately, neither he nor I can find where the cave was situated, but I have in my childhood heard similar descriptions of the devil, though I can no longer localize them.
