We see here that we have got far from primitive Celtic legend. The heroes fight like mediaeval knights on horseback, tilting at each other with spears, not in chariots or on foot, and not with the strange weapons which figure in Gaelic battle-tales.
Hēn, “the Ancient”; an epithet generally implying a hoary antiquity associated with mythological tradition.
Pronounced “Pry-dair´y.”
Evidently this was the triangular Norman shield, not the round or oval Celtic one. It has already been noticed that in these Welsh tales the knights when they fight tilt at each other with spears.
The reader may pronounce this “Matholaw.”
Compare the description of Mac Cecht in the tale of the Hostel of De Derga, p. 173.
Where the Tower of London now stands.
These stories, in Ireland and in Wales, always attach themselves to actual burial-places. In 1813 a funeral urn containing ashes and half-burnt bones was found in the spot traditionally supposed to be Branwen's sepulchre.
Saxon Britain.