There are two other sons of Beli and Dôn of whom so little is recorded that it would hardly be worth while mentioning them, were it not for the wild poetry of the legend connected with them. The tale, put into writing at a time when all the gods were being transfigured into simple mortals, tells us that they were two kings of Britain, brothers. One starlight night they were walking together. “See,” said Nynniaw to Peibaw, “what a fine, wide-spreading field I have.” “Where is it?” asked Peibaw. “There,” replied Nynniaw; “the whole stretch of the sky, as far as the eye reaches.” “Look then,” returned Peibaw, “what a number of cattle I have grazing on your field.” “Where are they?” asked Nynniaw. “All the stars that you can see,” replied Peibaw, “every one of them of fiery-coloured gold, with the moon for a shepherd over them.” “They shall not feed on my field,” cried Nynniaw. “They shall,” exclaimed Peibaw. “They shall not,” cried Nynniaw, “They shall,” said Peibaw. “They shall not,” Nynniaw answered; and so they went on, from contradiction to quarrel, and from private quarrel to civil war, until the armies of both of them were destroyed, and the two authors of the evil were turned by God into oxen for their sins.[[310]]
Last of the children of Dôn, we find a goddess called Penardun, of whom little is known except that she was married to the sea-god Llyr. This incident is curious, as forming a parallel to the Gaelic story which tells of intermarriage between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomors.[[311]] Brigit, the Dagda’s daughter, was married to Bress, son of Elathan, while Cian, the son of Diancecht, wedded Ethniu, the daughter of Balor. So, in this kindred mythology, a slender tie of relationship binds the gods of the sky to the gods of the sea.
The name Llyr is supposed, like its Irish equivalent Lêr, to have meant “the Sea”.[[312]] The British sea-god is undoubtedly the same as the Gaelic; indeed, the two facts that he is described in Welsh literature as Llyr Llediath, that is, “Llyr of the Foreign Dialect”, and is given a wife called Iweridd (Ireland)[[313]], suggest that he may have been borrowed by the Britons from the Gaels later than any mythology common to both. As a British god, he was the far-off original of Shakespeare’s “King Lear”. The chief city of his worship is still called after him, Leicester, that is, Llyr-cestre, in still earlier days, Caer Llyr.
Llyr, we have noticed, married two wives, Penardun and Iweridd. By the daughter of Dôn he had a son called Manawyddan, who is identical with the Gaelic Manannán mac Lir.[[314]] We know less of his character and attributes than we do of the Irish god; but we find him equally a ruler in that Hades or Elysium which the Celtic mind ever connected with the sea. Like all the inhabitants of that other world, he is at once a master of magic and of the useful arts, which he taught willingly to his friends. To his enemies, however, he could show a different side of his character. A triad tells us that—
“The achievement of Manawyddan the Wise,
After lamentation and fiery wrath,
Was the constructing of the bone-fortress of Oeth and Anoeth”,[[315]]
which is described as a prison made, in the shape of a bee-hive, entirely of human bones mortared together, and divided into innumerable cells, forming a kind of labyrinth. In this ghastly place he immured those whom he found trespassing in Hades; and among his captives was no less a person than the famous Arthur.[[316]]
“Ireland” bore two children to Llyr: a daughter called Branwen and a son called Brân. The little we know of Branwen of the “Fair Bosom” shows her as a goddess of love—child, like the Greek Aphrodité, of the sea. Brân, on the other hand, is, even more clearly than Manawyddan, a dark deity of Hades. He is represented as of colossal size, so huge, in fact, that no house or ship was big enough to hold him.[[317]] He delighted in battle and carnage, like the hoodie-crow or raven from which he probably took his name,[[318]] but he was also the especial patron of bards, minstrels, and musicians, and we find him in one of the poems ascribed to Taliesin claiming to be himself a bard, a harper, a player on the crowth, and seven-score other musicians all at once.[[319]] His son was called Caradawc the Strong-armed, who, as the British mythology crumbled, became confounded with the historical Caratacus, known popularly as “Caractacus”.
Both Brân and Manawyddan were especially connected with the Swansea peninsula. The bone-fortress of Oeth and Anoeth was placed by tradition in Gower.[[320]] That Brân was equally at home there may be proved from the Morte Darthur, in which storehouse of forgotten and misunderstood mythology Brân of Gower survives as “King Brandegore”.[[321]]