can transform himself at will;57 and the gift of transformation and rebirth is then associated with inspiration in the Hanes Taliesin. Here the equation with Fionn and Oisin, already noted by J. G. Campbell and accepted by Rhŷs, is worth observing. Fionn and Gwion obtain inspiration accidentally. Fionn is reborn, not as Oisin, but as Mongan, and Gwion as Taliesin. Oisin and Taliesin are both bards, and Oisin's name is perhaps equivalent to -essin or -eisin in Taliesin. Taliesln's shape-shifting has no parallel with Fionn or Oisin, but Oisin's mother and, in one tradition, Fionn's also became a fawn. Thus inspiration, rebirth, and shape-shifting are attached to different personages in different ways, showing that mythical elements common to the Celtic race have been employed.
Tegid is a god of the world under waters, but is not other- wise known to existing myth; though he and Cerridwen, pos- sessor of a cauldron, are perhaps parallel to the giant pair out of a lake with their cauldron in Branwen, Cerridwen being a local goddess of inspiration, as her cauldron of knowledge shows. The Celtic mythical cauldron, bestowing knowledge, plenty (Hke Dagda's), and life (like Bran's),58 is recognizable as a property of the gods' land; but it was dangerous, and a bard sings of his chair being defended from Cerridwen's cauldron.59 Cerridwen was regarded as a daughter of Ogyrven, from whose cauldron came three muses, and who was perhaps an epony- mous deity of the elements of language, poetry, and the letters of the alphabet, called ogyrvens, as well as a god of bards. Cerridwen is styled "the ogyrven of various seeds, those of poetic harmony, the exalted spirit of the minstrel"; but ogyrven also means "a spiritual form," "a personified idea," and may here be equivalent to "goddess."60 Thus Cerridwen was a deity of inspiration, like Brigit, though, like other Celtic goddesses, her primary function may have been with fertility, of which the cauldron, supplying plenty and giving life, is a symbol. She is also called a "goddess of grain."61
Tegid's water-world is the land under waves of Irish myth—
