As regards the other personages who figure in the present Tale, we find that the two most conspicuous, Kynan (or Kynan Meriadawc, as he is usually called), and his sister Helen Luyddawg, or Helen of mighty hosts, were the children of Eudav. A Triad is preserved, which goes at some length into the account of the expedition they undertook for the purpose of supporting the claim of Maximus to the Imperial throne. They raised an army of sixty thousand men in Britain, and proceeded with it across the sea to Armorica, A.D. 383. The desolation caused by this abstraction of its inhabitants from the Island is said to have been the remote cause of the Saxon invasion.—Tr. 14.
The history of Kynan is also preserved in a Legendary Life.
The Brut Gruffydd ab Arthur gives a different account of the personages and events alluded to in this Mabinogi, but does not advert to the dream, though it mentions St Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, who were sent from Britain as wives for the emigrated hosts of Kynan Meriadawc, in Armorica. According to Gruffydd, Helen Luyddawg was the only child of King Coel (the founder of Colchester), and was bestowed in marriage, with the dominions she inherited, upon the Roman Constans. Their son, the celebrated Constantino, was called from his kingdom of Britain to the Imperial throne, in place of Maximus the Cruel; after his departure, Eudav earl of Cornwall, rose up and wrested the government of the Island from the hands of those princes to whom Constantino had consigned it, and, in spite of the Roman forces sent against him under Trahayam, Helen's uncle, established himself on the throne.
Eudav's reign extended to the time of the emperors Qratian and Valentinian. His heir was an only daughter, whose name does not appear, but whom, by advice of his nobles, he married to the Boman senator, Maxen Wledig, who boasted British descent, being the son of Helen's uncle Llewelyn. Maxen's marriage, and his succession to the sovereign power, were long and strenuously opposed by Eudav's nephew, Kynan Meriadawc, who himself aspired to the crown.
But peace having at length been concluded between them, Kynan accompanied Maxen in an expedition which he undertook on the continent, and was rewarded for his assistance with the kingdom of Llydaw, or Armorica, in which Maxen left him to establish himself, whilst he proceeded to contend for the nobler prize. But having killed Yalentiniany and driven Gratian from the empire,