Just as he was in fear of death, he saw a heap of grains of wheat on the floor of a barn; so he dropped among them, and became one of the grains. Then Caridwen changed herself into a high-crested black hen, and scratched among the grains till she found him. She was just about to swallow him, when, with his last remaining effort of skill, he became a very beautiful little child, and when she looked at him she had not the heart to kill him on the spot. So she took her own form again, and, having put the child into a leathern bag, she cast him into the sea just below the weir of Gwyddno, which is not far from Aberystwith, on the 29th of April. Then Caridwen returned home again, and thought no more of the matter.
Now, it had been the custom on every May-day eve to go fishing in that weir, and every year fish were taken to the value of a hundred pounds. Its owner, Gwyddno, had an only son named Elphin, the most unlucky of youths, who was always needing and never getting. This year his father, pitying his ill fortune, granted to him all the weir should contain on May-day, in order to give him something wherewith to begin the world. So the nets were set to catch the fish below the weir, and next day Elphin hurried to see how many they had caught. But the nets were quite empty, and nothing was to be found but a leathern bag which had caught in one of the poles of the weir. Then said one of his companions: "Men were unfortunate before, but never so much as now, when your luck has turned away the fish from a weir that has been worth a hundred pounds every May-eve till now, when there is nothing but a skin in it."
"Perhaps," said Elphin, "the bag may have something in it which is worth a hundred pounds." So his friend hooked up the bag, and opened it, and there peeped out the bright face of a little lad. "See, what a bright face within the bag!" cried his companion. And Elphin said: "Let him be called Taliesin, then" (which means "bright or shining face"), and lifted the child gently on to his horse, and made it walk softly, and went homeward with a very heavy heart.
THE FINDING OF TALIESIN
But as he rode along, the boy behind him sang to him a song of consolation so sweetly that Elphin was much amazed, and asked how he had learnt so beautiful a song. The child replied that, though he was very little, he was notwithstanding very wise.
Then Elphin asked if he were a mortal child or a spirit; upon which the boy sang another song, telling what he had been, and how he had fled from Caridwen, and how he came to be entangled in the weir.
When Elphin reached the house of his father, the latter asked him if his haul were good.
"Father," he answered, "I have caught a poet-minstrel."