They took the bag down from the pole, and Elphin opened it, and as he opened it he saw the forehead of a beautiful boy.
"Behold a radiant brow!" cried Elphin. "Taliesin shall he be called."
Although Elphin lamented his bad luck at the weir, yet he carried the child home gently on his ambling horse. Suddenly the little boy began to sing a song in which he told Elphin that the day would come when he would be of more service to him than the value of three hundred salmon.
And this song of comfort was the first poem the little, radiant-browed Taliesin ever sang. But when Gwyddno, the father of Elphin, asked him what he was, he sang again and told the story of how he had fled in many shapes from Caridwen; as a frog, as a crow, as a chain, as a rose entangled in a thicket, as a wolf cub, as a thrush, as a fox, as a martin, as a squirrel, as a stag's antler, as iron in glowing fire, as a spear-head from the hand of one who fights, as a fierce bull, as a bristly boar, and in many other forms, only to be gobbled up in the end as a grain of wheat by a black hen.
"What is this?" said Gwyddno to his son Elphin.
"It is a bard—a poet," the son answered.
"Alas! what will he profit thee?"
"I shall profit Elphin more than the weir has ever profited thee," answered Taliesin.
And the little, radiant-browed boy began to sing another song: