"They shall not," cried Nynniaw.
And then words arose between these two kings so bitter that they summoned their soldiers and fell to war wherein they continued until the armies of both were nearly destroyed. Seeing that such was the fact, Rhitta the giant, King of Wales (who is Sir Thomas Malory's King Ryens of North Wales), levied war against both, as being madmen dangerous to all their neighbors; and, having defeated their forces, he cut off the beards of kings Nynniaw and Peibiaw. But at this time there were twenty-eight kings in the Island of Britain, and when the others heard of these things, they marched all together against King Rhitta to avenge the insult of the beard. In the battle which followed, however, Rhitta was again victor. "This field is mine," said he, and cut off the beards of those kings. These matters being told abroad, the kings of all the surrounding countries made common cause against Rhitta, and presently waged a great battle with him. Still, Rhitta conquered all these. "The great field is mine," he said again; "and," cutting off all their beards, "these are the herds that fed in my field; but I have driven them out." Then he made a mantle for himself out of all those beards, and although he was a giant twice as large as the largest man ever known, that mantle reached from his head to his heels.
Or take the exactions of a certain messenger called "The Little Peacock" (Y Paun Bach), who was sent by a certain David, Prince of North Wales, to fetch Gwgan (Googan, nearly) the bard to court. After a long journey, towards the close of the evening the Little Peacock heard sounds of the tuning of a harp from a house in a wooded valley where he had arrived. "The style of playing and the modulation" led him to suspect that this was Gwgan's house; and in order to be sure he advances and pours forth a high-flown speech to Gwgan, who replies in the like lofty vein, finally inquiring what he would have. "I want lodging," quoth Y Paun Bach, "for to-night ... and that not better than I know how to ask for.... A lightsome hall, floored with tile, and swept, in which there has been neither flood nor raindrop for the last hundred years, dressed with fresh green rushes, laid so evenly that one rush be not higher than the other the height of a gnat's eye, so that my foot should not slip either backward or forward the space of a mote in the sunshine of June;" together with similar superb requirements as to the cushion beneath him, the pillow under each elbow, the fire, the supper, the servants' livery, and the quantity of his ale.
Or this itemized account of a monster, which, though not Welsh, is Gælic, and shows the general Keltic proclivity. "... they saw a couple approaching them,—a woman and a man; larger than the summit of ... a mountain was each ... of their members; sharper than a shaving-knife the edge of their shins; their heels and hams [were] in front of them; should a sackful of apples be thrown on their heads not one of them would fall to the ground, but would stick on the points of the strong, bristly hair which grew out of their heads; ... whiter than snow their eyes; a lock of the lower beard was carried round the back of the head, and a lock of the upper beard descended so as to cover the knees; the woman had whiskers, but the man was without whiskers."
Or the King Yspaddaden Penkawr, in the following story of Kilhwch and Olwen, whose eyebrows hung over his eyes to such a degree that they had to be propped up with forks; as well as the amazing qualifications of King Arthur's warriors, detailed in the same story,—such as of him whose dagger was so broad that King Arthur's army was accustomed to use it for a bridge in passing rivers; or him who could hear the touch of a gnat's foot on the ground at a great distance, or of him who could see a mote in a sunbeam at either of the four corners of the earth, or him whose red beard lay completely along the twenty-eight rafters of the king's hall, or of him whose lips were so large that he was accustomed to draw the lower down for an apron and to lift up the other for a hood; and others still more marvellously absurd. If we compare these with the wildest flights in Malory's King Arthur, nothing can be clearer than the constant presence in the latter of a certain reasonable restraint, a sober proportion, a sense of the supreme value of law, even in the most apparently lawless excursions. It would be going far beyond proper bounds to discuss here how this subtle feeling for the beauty of restraint, this underlying perception of the artistic necessity of law and order, has quietly reigned, not only over the advance of English literature, but has been also the moving spirit, the perpetual King Alfred, of the whole of English development in general. And, as hinted, I have thought this consideration particularly forcible at the present moment in our own country, where the making of statutes increases in exact proportion to the decrease in the popular esteem for them. Daily and endlessly our Legislatures multiply laws and murder Law. But—may I not add, if only as one of those utterances which a boy sometimes profitably remembers, though at first dimly understood—the love of Law beyond all laws would seem to be particularly vital in a republic; being a principle so comprehensive, that at one extreme, in contact with certain tendencies, it flowers into that sense of proportion, of the due relation of all parts of the universe to the whole, which is the artist's largest perception of beauty, and is the main outfit of genius in constructing Mabinogion, in literature, in all art; while at the other extreme, working with certain other tendencies of character, the same love of Law is at once the root of decorous behavior on the part of the private citizen, and of large statesmanship on the part of the public official.
But while this danger of extravagance certainly exists in the products of Welsh fancy, they possess many qualities which have wrought with fine influence upon general English life and literature. Among the oldest remains of Welsh poetic wisdom that have come down to us are what were called The Triads, in which wise aphorisms and sayings are effectively grouped together by threes. The four following examples of this form of composition show an insight and breadth which render them instructive to the wisest readers of our own time.
I.
The three qualifications of poetry: Endowment of genius, judgment from experience, and happiness of mind.
II.
The three primary requisites of genius: An eye that can see nature, a heart that can feel nature, and boldness that dares follow nature.