to seek a living as saddlers, shield-makers, and shoe-makers successively, but they were always expelled by the regular craftsmen. One day they pursued a boar to a strange castle, and Pryderi entered, but trying to lift a golden cup, his hands stuck fast to it, nor could he move his feet. Manawyddan told Rhiannon of Pryderi's disappearance, and when she sought him, she met the same fate, until at another clap of thunder the castle disappeared. Manawyddan and Kicva, as shoe-makers, were again foiled by envious cobblers, and he now sowed three fields, but an army of mice ate the grain. One of these he caught and was about to hang, in spite of the entreaties of Kicva, of a clerk, and of a priest, when a bishop appeared, and Manawyddan bargained to give up the mouse if the bishop released Pryderi and Rhiannon, removed the enchantment from Dyved, and told him who and what the mouse was. The bishop was Llwyd, a friend of Gwawl, whom Pryderi's father, Pwyll, had insulted. All had happened in revenge for that: the mouse was Llwyd's wife, the other mice the ladies of the court. Everything was now restored; Pryderi and Rhiannon reappeared; and Llwyd agreed to seek no further revenge.
While the framework of Branwen is connected with Scandinavian and German sagas, whether borrowed by Welshmen from their Norse allies in the ninth and tenth centuries, as Nutt supposed,19 or by Norsemen from Wales, its personages are Celtic, and it contains many native elements. Llyr Half-Speech and Manawyddan are the equivalents of the Irish sea-gods Ler and Manannan, the latter of whom is also associated with Elysium. It is uncertain whether these two were common to Goidels and Brythons, or were borrowed by the latter; but at all events they have a definite position in Welsh tradition, which knows of two other Llyrs—Llyr Marini and Llyr, father of Cordelia in Geoffrey's History— Shakespeare's Lear.20 These are probably varying presentments of a sea-god. Llyr is sometimes confused with Lludd
