"Wherefore should a stone be hard; Why should a thorn be sharp-pointed; Who is hard like flint; Who is salt like brine; Who is sweet like honey; Who rides in the gale?"
Then bade he Elphin wager the King that he had a horse better and swifter than any of the King's horses. Thus Elphin did, and the King set the day and the time for the race at the place called the Marsh of Rhiannedd. And thither every one followed the King, who took with him four-and-twenty of his swiftest horses.
The course was marked and the horses were placed for running. Then in came Taliesin with four-and-twenty twigs of holly, which he had burned black, and he put them in the belt of the youth who was to ride Elphin's horse. He told this youth to let all the King's horses get ahead of him; but as he overtook one horse after the other he was to take one of the burnt twigs of holly and strike the horse over the crupper, then let the twig fall. This the youth who rode Elphin's horse was to do to each of the King's horses as he overtook it, and he was to watch where his own horse should stumble, and throw down his cap on that spot.
Thereupon the youth who rode Elphin's horse, and all the King's riders, pricked forth upon their steeds, their horses with bridles of linked gold on their heads, and gold saddles upon their backs. And the racing horses with their shell-formed hoofs cast up sods, so swiftly did they run, like swallows in the air. Blades of grass bent not beneath the fleet, light hoofs of the coursers.
Elphin's horse won the race. Taliesin brought Elphin, when the race was over, to the place where the horse had stumbled and where the youth had thrown down his cap as he had been told. Elphin did as Taliesin bade him and put workmen to dig a hole in this spot. And when they had dug the ground deep enough, there was found a large caldron full of gold.
Then said Taliesin: "Elphin, behold! See what I give thee for having taken me out of the weir and the leathern bag! Is this not worth more to thee than three hundred salmon?"
In the Mabinogion stories, first collected and set down some time in the twelfth century, we live in a world of enchantment and fairies. Those tales are full of gold—the gold of a wondrous imagination. It would be nice if we could keep this door, over which is written Welsh, open long enough so that I might tell you the story of Pryderi, too, and how Pryderi found a castle where no castle had ever been, how he entered it and saw "In the center of the castle floor ... a fountain with marble-work around it, and on the margin of the fountain a golden bowl on a marble slab, and chains hanging from the air, to which he saw no end." What happened to him when he seized this cup, how the castle faded away, how the heroes of the story were changed to mice—for none of this can we hold open the golden door any longer. The ends of the golden chains of many a story are not to be seen by us.