Exactly what myth is retold in this history of Leir and his three daughters we are hardly likely ever to discover. But its mythological nature is clear enough in the light of the description of the underground temple dedicated to Llyr, at once the god of the subaqueous, and therefore subterranean, world and a British Dis Pater, connected with the origin of things, like the Roman god Janus, with whom he was apparently identified.[[538]]
Ten kings or so after this (for any more exact way of measuring the flight of time is absent from Geoffrey’s History) we recognize two other British gods upon the scene. Brennius (that is, Brân) disputes the kingdom with his brother Belinus. Clearly this is a version of the ancient myth of the twin brothers, Darkness and Light, which we have seen expressed in so many ways in Celtic mythology. Brân, the god of death and the underworld, is opposed to Belinus, god of the sun and health. In the original, lost myth, probably they alternately conquered and were conquered—a symbol of the alternation of night and day and of winter and summer. In Geoffrey’s History[[539]], they divided Britain, Belinus taking “the crown of the island with the dominions of Loegria, Kambria, and Cornwall, because, according to the Trojan constitution, the right of inheritance would come to him as the elder”, while Brennius, as the younger, had “Northumberland, which extended from the River Humber to Caithness”. But flatterers persuaded Brennius to ally himself with the King of the Norwegians, and attack Belinus. A battle was fought, in which Belinus was conqueror, and Brennius escaped to Gaul, where he married the daughter of the Duke of the Allobroges, and on that ruler’s death was declared successor to the throne. Thus firmly established with an army, he invaded Britain again. Belinus marched with the whole strength of the kingdom to meet him, and the armies were already drawn out opposite to one another in battle array when Conwenna, the mother of the two kings, succeeded in reconciling them. Not having one another to fight with, the brothers now agreed upon a joint expedition with their armies into Gaul. The Britons and the Allobroges conquered all the other kings of the Franks, and then entered Italy, destroying villages and cities as they marched to Rome. Gabius and Porsena, the Roman consuls, bought them off with large presents of gold and silver and the promise of a yearly tribute, whereupon Brennius and Belinus withdrew their army into Germany and began to devastate it. But the Romans, now no longer taken by surprise and unprepared, came to the help of the Germans. This brought Brennius and Belinus back to Rome, which, after a long siege, they succeeded in taking. Brennius remained in Italy, “where he exercised unheard-of tyranny over the people”; and one may take the whole of this veracious history to be due to a patriotic desire to make out the Brennus of “Vae Victis” fame—who actually did sack Rome, in B.C. 390—a Briton. Belinus, the other brother, returned to England. “He made a gate of wonderful structure in Trinovantum, upon the bank of the Thames, which the citizens call after his name Billingsgate to this day. Over it he built a prodigiously large tower, and under it a haven or quay for ships.... At last, when he had finished his days, his body was burned, and the ashes put up in a golden urn, which they placed at Trinovantum, with wonderful art, on the top of the tower above mentioned.” He was succeeded by Gurgiunt Brabtruc,[[540]] who, as he was returning by way of the Orkneys from a raid on the Danes, met the ships of Partholon and his people as they came from Spain to settle in Ireland.[[541]]
Llyr and his children, large as they bulk in mythical history, were hardly less illustrious as saints. The family of Llyr Llediath is always described by the early Welsh hagiologists as the first of the “Three chief Holy Families of the Isle of Britain”. The glory of Llyr himself, however, is but a reflected one; for it was his son Brân “the Blesséd” who actually introduced Christianity into Britain. Legend tells us that he was taken captive to Rome with his son Caradawc (who was identified for the purpose with the historical Caratacus), and the rest of his family, and remained there seven years, during which time he became converted to the Gospel, and spread it enthusiastically on his return. Neither his son Caradawc nor his half-brother Manawyddan exactly followed in his footsteps, but their descendants did. Caradawc’s sons were all saintly, while his daughter Eigen, who married a chief called Sarrlog, lord of Caer Sarrlog (Old Sarum), was the first female saint in Britain. Manawyddan’s side of the family was less adaptable. His son and his grandson were both pagans, but his great-grandson obtained Christian fame as St. Dyfan, who was sent as a bishop to Wales by Pope Eleutherius, and was martyred at Merthyr Dyvan. After this, the saintly line of Llyr increases and flourishes. Singularly inappropriate persons are found in it—Mabon, the Gallo-British Apollo, as well as Geraint and others of King Arthur’s court.[[542]]
It is so quaint a conceit that Christianity should have been, like all other things, the gift of the Celtic Hades, that it seems almost a pity to cast doubt on it. The witness of the classical historians sums up, however, dead in its disfavour. Tacitus carefully enumerates the family of Caratacus, and describes how he and his wife, daughter, and brother were separately interviewed by the Emperor Claudius, but makes no mention at all of the chieftain’s supposed father Brân. Moreover, Dio Cassius gives the name of Caratacus’s father as Cunobelinus—Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline”—who, he adds, had died before the Romans first invaded Britain. The evidence is wholly against Brân as a Christian pioneer. He remains the grim old god of war and death, “blesséd” only to his pagan votaries, and especially to the bards, who probably first called him Bendigeid Vran, and whose stubborn adherence must have been the cause of the not less stubborn efforts of their enemies, the Christian clerics, to bring him over to their own side by canonization.[[543]]
They had an easier task with Brân’s sister, Branwen of the “Fair Bosom”. Goddesses, indeed, seem to have stood the process better than gods—witness “Saint” Brigit, the “Mary of the Gael”. The British Aphrodité became, under the name of Brynwyn, or Dwynwen, a patron saint of lovers. As late as the fourteenth century, her shrine at Llandwynwyn, in Anglesey, was the favourite resort of the disappointed of both sexes, who came to pray to her image for either success or forgetfulness. To make the result the more certain, the monks of the church sold Lethean draughts from her sacred well. The legend told of her is that, having vowed herself to perpetual celibacy, she fell in love with a young chief called Maelon. One night, as she was praying for guidance in her difficulty, she had a vision in which she was offered a goblet of delicious liquor as a draught of oblivion, and she also saw the same sweet medicine given to Maelon, whom it at once froze into a block of ice. She was then, for her faith, offered the granting of three boons. The first she chose was that Maelon might be allowed to resume his natural form and temperature; the second, that she should no longer desire to be married; and the third, that her intercessions might be granted for all true-hearted lovers, so that they should either wed the objects of their affection or be cured of their passion.[[544]] From this cause came the virtues of her shrine and fountain. But the modern generation no longer flocks there, and the efficacious well is choked with sand. None the less, she whom the Welsh bards called the “Saint of Love”[[545]] still has her occasional votaries. Country girls of the neighbourhood seek her help when all else fails. The water nearest to the church is thought to be the best substitute for the now dry and ruined original well.[[546]]
A striking contrast to this easy victory over paganism is the stubborn resistance to Christian adoption of Gwyn son of Nudd. It is true that he was once enrolled by some monk in the train of the “Blesséd Brân”,[[547]] but it was done in so half-hearted a way that, even now, one can discern that the writer felt almost ashamed of himself. His fame as at least a powerful fairy was too vital to be thus tampered with. Even Spenser, though, in his Faerie Queene, he calls him “the good Sir Guyon ... in whom great rule of Temp’raunce goodly doth appeare”,[[548]] does not attempt to conceal his real nature. It is no man, but
“an Elfin born, of noble state
And mickle worship in his native land”,[[549]]
who sets forth the beauties of that virtue for which the original Celtic paradise, with its unfailing ale and rivers of mead and wine, would hardly seem to have been the best possible school. Save for Spenser, all authorities agree in making Gwyn the determined opponent of things Christian. A curious and picturesque legend[[550]] is told of him in connection with St. Collen, who was himself the great-grandson of Brân’s son, Caradawc. The saint, desirous of still further retirement from the world, had made himself a cell beneath a rock near Glastonbury Tor, in Gwyn’s own “island of Avilion”. It was close to a road, and one day he heard two men pass by talking about Gwyn son of Nudd, and declaring him to be King of Annwn and the fairies. St. Collen put his head out of the cell, and told them to hold their tongues, and that Gwyn and his fairies were only demons. The two men retorted by warning the saint that he would soon have to meet the dark ruler face to face. They passed on, and not long afterwards St. Collen heard someone knocking at his door. On asking who was there, he got the answer: “I am here, the messenger of Gwyn ap Nudd, King of Hades, to bid thee come by the middle of the day to speak with him on the top of the hill.” The saint did not go; and the messenger came a second time with the same message. On the third visit, he added a threat that, if St. Collen did not come now, it would be the worse for him. So, a little disquieted, he went, but not unarmed. He consecrated some water, and took it with him.
On other days the top of Glastonbury Tor had always been bare, but on this occasion the saint found it crowned by a splendid castle. Men and maidens, beautifully dressed, were going in and out. A page received him and told him that the king was waiting for him to be his guest at dinner. St. Collen found Gwyn sitting on a golden chair in front of a table covered with the rarest dainties and wines. He invited him to share them, adding that if there was anything he especially liked, it should be brought to him with all honour. “I do not eat the leaves of trees,” replied the saint, who knew what fairy meats and drinks were made of. Not taken aback by this discourteous answer, the King of Annwn genially asked the saint if he did not admire his servants’ livery, which was a motley costume, red on one side and blue on the other. “Their dress is good enough for its kind,” said St. Collen. “What kind is that?” asked Gwyn. “The red shows which side is being scorched, and the blue shows which side is being frozen,” replied the saint, and, splashing his holy water all round him, he saw castle, serving-men, and king vanish, leaving him alone on the bare, windy hill-top.