"Thou hast disfigured me wrongfully," he said, "for I am innocent."
"Thou speakest truth," she replied; "it was Gwion Bach robbed me."
And Caridwen went forth after Gwion Bach, running.
When little Gwion saw her coming, because of the magic drops that had touched his finger, he was able to change himself into a hare. But thereupon Caridwen changed herself into a greyhound, and there was a race fleeter almost than the wind. Caridwen was nearly upon him when little Gwion turned toward the river and became a fish. Then Caridwen changed herself from a greyhound into an otter, and chased little Gwion under the water. So close was the chase that he had to turn himself into a bird of the air. Whereupon Caridwen became a hawk and followed him and gave him no rest in the sky. She was just swooping down upon him, and little Gwion thought that the hour of his death had come, when he saw a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of the barn, and he dropped into the wheat and turned himself into one of the grains. And then what do you think happened? Caridwen changed herself into a high-crested black hen, hopped into the wheat, scratching it with her feet, found poor little Gwion Bach, who had once been a boy, then in turn became a rabbit, a fish, a bird of the air, and was now a grain of wheat.
Caridwen swallowed him! But so powerful was the magic of those three drops of Inspiration which had touched his finger, that little Gwion appeared in the world again, entering it as a beautiful child. And even Caridwen, because of his beauty, could not bear to kill him, so she wrapped him in a leathern bag and cast him into the sea. That was on the twenty-ninth day of April.
Where Caridwen threw little Gwion into the sea was near the fishing-weir of Gwyddno by Aberstwyth. And even as Caridwen had the ugliest son in all the world, so had Gwyddno the most unlucky, and his name was Elphin. This year Gwyddno had told Elphin that he might have the drawing of the weir on May Eve. Usually the fish they drew from the weir were worth about one hundred pounds in good English silver. His father thought that if luck were ever going to come to Elphin, it would come with the drawing of the weir on May Eve.
But on the next day, when Elphin went to look, there was nothing in the weir except a leathern bag hanging on a pole.
One of the men by the weir said to Elphin: "Now hast thou destroyed the virtue of the weir. There is nothing in it but this worthless bag."
"How now," said Elphin, "there may be in this bag the value of an hundred pounds."