privation and pain, of long fastings and strange penances, in order to get his wisdom: according to another account, he pledged one of his eyes to Sokk-mimi, the Giant of the Abyss, for a draught of the deep well of wisdom: poetry is 'the billows of Woden's breast' and 'the stream of the lip-beard of Woden.'
5. Gwydion eats and drinks with Arianrhod, and they converse of stories and histories in her castle, now ridden over by the billows of the Irish Sea.
Woden and Sága the seeress drink joyously out of golden cups at her abode of Sunk-bench, over which the cold waves ever murmur.[1]
6. Gwydion's favourite disguise was to take the form of a bard, for which he was fitted as being the best historian or story-teller in the world.
Woden figures in story as a cowled, one-eyed, long-bearded old sage, who tells king Olaf tales of days long gone by.
v. Their Promethean rôle.
1. Gwydion, with his brother Amaethon the farmer, procures from the powers terrene the animals useful to man, such as the dog, the pig, and others.
No corresponding myth about Woden seems to be extant.
2. Gwydion and his friends harry Hades in order to secure its king's cauldron, which was one of the mystic vessels out of which voices issued and the inspiration of wisdom and poetry.
One of Woden's most striking adventures was his journey in quest of the holy draught from giant Sup-
- ↑ Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. 70.
