"Yn nrws rhyd gwelais i wyr lledruddion,
Eirf ddillwng y rhag blawt gofedon,
Unynt tanc gan aethant golludion,
Llaw ynghroes gryd ygro granwynion."
And here is a rough, vigorous translation of these lines from the same volume:—
"In the pass of the fort have I seen men, dyed with red, who hurtled their arms.... They fell to the ground together when the day was lost, their hands on the crucifix. And horror was in the pale face of the dead warriors."
A succeeding line,
"A gwyar a uaglei ar ddillad,"
(And the blood was tangled in their clothing),
adds the last touch of dreadful sincerity to the account. And in other primitive poems that we may ascribe to Taliesin are effects as convincing and vivid.
But we must leave Taliesin and his difficulties, to sketch briefly the course of poetry between his actual date in early time and his poetic resurrection in the Middle Ages. Not so interesting poetically but more important historically is the next of the Welsh bards, Aneurin, who wrote the 'Gododin.' This curious and interesting war poem tells of a foray made by the Ottadini, an early Kymric tribe, living in the greater Wales of their time, on the Northumbrian coast. Mr. Stephens imagines Cattraeth, which figures as a central scene of the action of the poem, to be Catterick in Yorkshire; and this we may provisionally accept.
"The Welshmen went to Cattraeth; and merry marched the host.
But thro' drinking the gray mead, the day—the day was lost."
The expedition was one of those which show the gradual cession of greater Wales by the Welsh, and their retreat to the lesser Wales that is still theirs.
We may pause here to remark that the bardic order was early constituted among the Welsh, as among the Irish. In the Laws of Howel Dda (Howel the Good), who flourished in the tenth century, we find very explicit provision made for the bard:—