"Complete is my chair in Caer Sidi;
Plague and age hurt not him who is in it,
They know Manawyddan and Pryderi;
Three organs round a fire sing before it,
And about its points are ocean's streams.
And the abundant well above it—
Sweeter than white wine the drink of it."25
Rhiannon's magic birds, whose song brought joy and oblivion for seven years, like that of Ler's bird-children,26 and awoke the dead and made the living sleep,27 have an Elysian note and confirm the supposition that she is an Elysian goddess. Beyond that we need not go, and there is nothing to connect her with the dawn or the moon.
Branwen or Bronwen ("White Bosom") has no definite traits. Her marriage to Matholwych and her subsequent sufferings recall the stories of Gudrun, Kriemhild, and Signy; but whether she ever was connected as a goddess of fertility with her brother's cauldron of regeneration must remain an ingenious conjecture, not supported by the Mabinogi. As a sea-god's daughter, she may be "the Venus of the northern sea," as Elton supposed,28 while the Black Book of Caermarthen calls the sea "the fountain of Venus,"29 though this is, perhaps, nothing more than a Classical recollection. Later romance knew her as Brangwaine, the confidante of Tristram and Yseult, giving the knight the love-potion which bound him in illicit amour with Yseult.
Bran is a more obviously mythological figure, and his gigantic size is an earlier or later method of indicating his divinity. His buried head protected the land from invasion—a mythical expression of actual custom—for bodies and heads of warriors had apotropaic virtues and were sometimes exhibited or buried in the direction whence danger was expected.30 Hence the image of a divine head might have greater powers, and this may explain the existence of Celtic images of a god's head, often in triple form. These figures, found in Gaul, were believed by Rhys to be images of Cernunnos, a
